Abstract
How should the “physical” in “physicalism” be understood? I here set out systematic criteria of adequacy, propose an account, and show how the account meets those criteria. The criteria of adequacy focus on the idea of rational management: to vindicate philosophical practice, the account must make it plausible that we can assess various questions about physicalism. The account on offer is dubbed the “Ideal Naturalist Physics” account, according to which the physical is that which appears in an ideal theory that both meets the explanatory goals of physics (understood in terms of explaining all ordinary physical events and all of its own domain) and is naturalist in a sense to be explained. The combination of these two provides a satisfying account of the physical that meets the criteria of adequacy and can be used to predict puzzle cases as well.
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Notes
Some of the important publications in this debate include (Crane and Mellor 1990; van Fraassen 1996; Melnyk 1997; Daly 1998; Montero 1999; Spurrett and Papineau 1999; Spurrett 2001; Crook and Gillett 2001; Poland 2003; Dowell 2006; Wilson 2006; Ney 2008b; Stoljar 2010). A useful survey can be found in (Ney 2008a).
Much more deserves to be said here, both about the “everything” (which should be qualified in some way) and the “nothing over and above” locution (For my own take on these questions, see Witmer 2001). These complexities will not, though, make any difference to the current project of giving an account of physicality.
I am treating “irreducible,” “primitive,” “emergent,” and “fundamental” as synonymous here, varying the terms for stylistic reasons.
One position that is rather hard to classify is Russellian monism, the view (as I here use the term) that physical properties are themselves either identical with or wholly grounded in intrinsic properties of a sort that are in some sense not revealed in physical theory. A panpsychist version of Russellian monism identifies those intrinsic properties with mental properties, while a “neutral” version leaves them unidentified. Pace Strawson (2006), the panpsychist version seems plainly inconsistent with physicalism, but it is less obvious whether the neutral version should be classified in the same way.
The "unconfused" qualifier in C1 is needed because some intuitive judgements might be discounted, as discussed earlier, due to confusion of some sort.
Consider, for instance, the very interesting “Are Naturalists Materialists?” (1945), by John Dewey, Sidney Hook, and Ernest Nagel, where they argue that naturalism is not committed to materialism. Closer to the present, in his “Naturalism, Materialism and First Philosophy” (1978), David Armstrong defines naturalism as the claim that “[t]he world is nothing but a single spatio-temporal system” (126) and materialism as the thesis that “the world is completely described in terms of (completed) physics” (Armstrong 1978: 126). While these definitions make the doctrines distinct, they seem plainly intended to relate them in a significant way, as it seems likely that the completed physics would only posit entities within a single spatio-temporal system.
The interpretation is presented in Witmer (2012), and a more sustained and careful rendition is in my “Making Sense of 'Naturalism',” still in development.
For convenience, I will often use phrases like “the HIP entities” even though substituting the original “Human Interest Phenomena” in that phrase results in bad English.
My thanks to an anonymous referee for pushing the point that led to this paragraph. That referee suggested a different move than the one I make in the text, namely, to say that the physical theory does not have any fundamental HIP entities in its ontology. I am hesitant to opt for this, however. Suppose that, as imagined in the main text, the ideal physical theory introduces a property P, and P is identical with some mental property M. Would it be correct to say, in that case, that M is not basic or fundamental, that it is P that fundamental or basic? I would hesitate to do so given the case as described, since that description gives us no reason yet to say that P is basic and M non-basic than to say that M is basic and P non-basic.
For a useful defense of the strategy of appealing to an “ordinary physical” notion to pin down physical theory without running the risk of circularity or making an ideal physical theory too comprehensive, see Spurrett (2001).
I hereafter drop the “and/or nomological,” but it should be understood throughout. The kinds of explanations at issue might not be causal exactly, but they are certainly ones that appeal to the laws of nature and the way those laws shape the universe.
In “Post-Physicalism,” Montero (2001) acknowledges that a physicalist may predict that the ideal physics is devoid of mentality without imposing the requirement that physics proceed without appealing to such mentality. This is evidently alluding to comments I made on her presentation of a draft of that paper at the 2000 Pacific APA meeting. Her published response, however, leaves me puzzled. She writes:
Naturalists might try to avoid this conflict by claiming that their intent is not to place restrictions on the posits of science but, rather, to make a prediction about its course, namely, that mentality will not show up as a fundamental. But this consistency is purchased at a price. For to adopt a policy of strict noninterference and recede to mere prediction is to step out of the debate between physicalists and dualists (Montero 2001: 70).
I do not understand why she describes this as stepping out of the debate. If I make the prediction that the ideal physics is naturalist, I am of course allowing that I may be wrong, but I am not saying that I have no opinion. I can put forward the prediction and give empirical evidence for it without declaring, in some bizarre fit of philosophical imperialism, that physics are hereby forbidden from using HIP categories.
In fact, it could even turn out to be the case that physicists shouldn't even aim at what I've defined as the “ideal physical theory,” since (1) I might be mistaken about the aims of physics and, (2) even if I am right about what those aims have been, it might be that physicists would do better science if they changed those aims. In any case, there is nothing in the account on offer that can be construed as setting down epistemic constraints on how scientists or physicists should proceed.
If one thinks that color is metaphysically dependent on mentality—as on a classical dispositionalist view of color—then color is plainly dependent on something HIP. On that view, it seems the primitiveness of mentality is ensured, so it would be incompatible with physicalism. For a discussion of related points, see (Wilson 2006: 74–77), where she considers the question as to how a variety of distinct threats to physicalism might be handled. She does not consider the case of color but argues that “it is very plausible that moral agency, free will, and aesthetic response are to some degree constituted by mentality” (76), and that this explains why primitive moral agency, free will, etc. are incompatible with physicalism. I am sympathetic with Wilson here, but disagree that focus on the mental can do all the work needed to delineate the proper contours of physicalism.
While it is implicit in my discussion throughout, let me make explicit here that the ideal naturalist physical theory by reference to which physicality is to be understood is the theory that is true in the actual world. Stoljar (2010: 74–78) aims to cause trouble for theory-based accounts of physicality by posing a dilemma between using just the physical theory true in the actual world and using any physical theory true in some possible world. However, his argument against using the former turns on counting as physicalist worlds that on my account are best understood as worlds in which a Compatriot of physicalism is true instead.
Note that in A Physicalist Manifesto (2003), Andrew Melnyk allows “strongly emergent” properties to count as physical, where he seems to have in mind something similar to primitive chemical properties (see page 16 and the discussion of condensed matter physics). By contrast, Daniel Stoljar confidently takes it that a world with emergent chemical properties must be inconsistent with physicalism (2010: 85).
Consider Barbara Montero’s remark:
[W]e are looking for an understanding of physicalism that classifies free floating minds, a God that is not determined by anything other than God, and fundamental, irreducible norms all as nonphysical. I think we can achieve this if we merely defined the fundamental, physical properties negatively, that is in terms of the types of properties it excludes…. But why should those and only those be excluded on a physicalistic account of the world?… [D]oesn’t this leave us with just a disparate list of properties that are to count as non-physical?” (Montero 2011: 100)
See also (Wilson 2006, 74–77) on the worry about her account lacking systematicity.
Another example worth mentioning here is the “Twin Physics” world described by (Stoljar 2010: 77). This is a world he classifies as physicalist, but it should, in my view, be classified as vindicating a Compatriot position but incompatible with physicalism itself, much as I treat his Atomist World from the same work (See also note 15).
Not everyone agrees that the problem with consciousness is based on a gap between the mental and non-mental. In “Panpsychism and panprotopsychism,” for instance, Chalmers (2015) argues as follows:
According to this objection, the epistemic arguments against materialism all turn on there being a fundamental epistemic (and therefore ontological) gap between the non-phenomenal and the phenomenal; there is no a priori entailment from non-phenomenal truths to phenomenal truths…. I do not think this is right, however. The epistemic arguments all turn on a more specific gap between the physical and the phenomenal, ultimately arising from a gap between the structural (or the structural/dynamical) and the phenomenal. We have principled reasons to think that phenomenal truths cannot be wholly grounded in structural truths. But we have no correspondingly good reason to think that phenomenal truths cannot be wholly grounded in nonphenomenal (and nonstructural) truths (260).
This seems to me just mistaken. Nonphenomenal and nonstructural truths are exactly as unlikely to ground the phenomenal as nonphenomenal structural truths. But be that as it may, it's a bit beside the point if the ideal naturalist physical theory is one we can be assured implies that physical truths are not only nonphenomenal but also structural—in whatever sense, exactly, Chalmers has in mind there. While it may turn out that we can't be thus assured, it is at least not immediately obvious that we can't be thus assured, and so at least the prima facie status of this counterevidence is vindicated, on the INP account, as prima facie counterevidence.
In Gillett and Witmer (2001), Carl Gillett and I took a shot at criticizing the “via negativa” on these sorts of grounds. Montero and Papineau (2005) offer a reply. While I do not find the reply satisfactory, I have failed to do my duty and explain yet in print just why. Here’s a very compressed summary, for what it is worth. The problem is that Montero and Papineau appeal to a history of failing to find sui generis mental causes. To fail to find a sui generis mental cause, however, when there is a mental cause, requires finding some other kind of cause. And finding some projectible, general way of describing what other kinds of causes are to be found is where the difficulty lies.
An earlier version of this paper was presented at the CUNY Graduate Center in September 2015; thanks to those present for providing feedback, and thanks especially to Barbara Montero for inviting me. Additional thanks are due to Andreas Elpidorou and an anonymous referee for Topoi for additional feedback.
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Witmer, D.G. Physicality for Physicalists. Topoi 37, 457–472 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11245-016-9415-y
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11245-016-9415-y