Abstract
Physicalism is the thesis that everything is physical. But what does it mean to say that everything is physical? Daniel Stoljar has recently argued that no account of the physical is available which allows for a formulation of physicalism that is both possibly true and deserving of the name. As against this claim, I argue that a version of the via negativa—roughly, the view that the physical is to be characterised in terms of the nonmental—provides just such an account.
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Notes
All subsequent undated page references are to this book.
None of the substantial points made in this paper rest on these assumptions. In effect then, the reader is free to treat references to the necessitation relation or to instantiated properties as placeholders for whatever relation (realisation, supervenience, grounding, etc.) or entities (objects, facts, etc.) she favours.
This last clause—that the properties instantiated at the possible world at issue duplicate whatever properties are instantiated at the actual world—applies to all the possible worlds we shall be encountering. I henceforth omit it for brevity’s sake.
I shall often leave out the qualification “by the necessitating properties at world w”, and speak instead of condition (x) being satisfied at w [meaning that it is the necessitating properties at w which satisfy (x)]. Talk of necessitating properties should not be taken to imply a commitment to the idea of a fundamental or bottom level (see Sect. 5.1).
It is sufficient for my present purpose to focus on Object since, as we shall see, Object fails at MPw, and that is enough to show that SPP isn’t deserving of the name.
Montero (2012) makes a similar point.
In addition, I would argue that Object also fails to be satisfied at both Aw and AGw. Space limitations prevent me from developing these points.
Space limitations prevent me from examining conditions (c) and (d) in this paper. Let me simply note that, like Stoljar, I hold that neither is adequate. I briefly consider condition (e) in Sect. 5.1.
Stoljar does not define ATP and PTP in quite those terms, but it is clear that these capture what he has in mind (see p. 76).
Rather, it would appear to be an open question whether ATP is true at MPw, for we do not know (as of yet, and possibly never will) what entities a true physics of our world need posit. In point of fact, one might argue that ATP is likely false at MPw (pessimistic meta-induction).
Of course, one might suggest an alternative characterisation of “physical theory”; perhaps, à la Poland (2003) or Dowell (2006), in terms of the methodological/epistemological features of scientific theories rather than in terms of their subject matter. I won’t consider such proposals here—let me simply note that I don’t think they are adequate.
Some of these include: defining the physical in terms of spatiotemporal location (e.g., Markosian 2000), in terms of accessibility to sensory perception (e.g., Feigl 1958), in terms of micro entities (e.g., Pettit 1993), or again in terms of a conception of a physical theory which differs from Stoljar’s (e.g., Melnyk 2003; Poland 2003; Dowell 2006). I won’t consider these proposals here (although see Sect. 7.3 regarding microphysicalism)—suffice it to say that I very much doubt they can be made to work.
A number of philosophers have endorsed some version or other of the via negativa, and I claim no originality for the view. What I do hope to be offering is both a clearer and less objectionable formulation of the via negativa, and a novel argument for it. Much of the credit for putting the via negativa on the philosophical agenda goes to Montero (1999, 2001, 2009), Spurrett and Papineau (1999), Spurrett (2001), and Papineau (2002:40–44). The version of the via negativa defended in this paper is close to Montero’s, although she would resist, I think, the claim that the view provides a sufficient condition for physicality (see Sect. 6.3, where I explain why I think this is problematic). In her (2006), Wilson proposes an account of the physical in terms of two components: a version of the theory view and the requirement that physical entities not be fundamentally mental. But as I explain in Sect. 5.1, that requirement is inadequate, and the via negativa is better formulated in terms of the fundamentally nonmental. I also think that Wilson’s first component is at best redundant, or worse, will exclude from the physical domain some phenomena which ought not to be excluded.
As with Fundamentally Mental Property, and assuming that F belongs to N, condition (i) of VN Physical Property is, strictly speaking, redundant.
I am here assuming that indestructibility is what is left of immortality once one sets aside the mental attributes of souls.
There is an assumption here to the effect that we are properly representing the P-worlds as comprising distinct necessitating properties. But I see no reason to suppose otherwise.
This point is also noted in Baltimore (2013).
Similar considerations hold for Fundamental Mental World (see Sect. 4.2).
Judisch (2008) raises a similar objection to the via negativa.
It is debatable of course to what extent the natural sciences sanction reductionism. But it is not controversial that many philosophers (notably physicalists) have taken them to do so (in particular as regards chemical and biological properties). This belief, when conjoined with the theory view, is one possible source of the judgement that the F-properties aren’t physical.
As McLaughlin remarks, “the main doctrines of British Emergentism receive their most mature and careful formulation [in Broad’s texts]. Moreover, it is Broad’s texts which have received the most attention from critics of emergentism” (1992:50).
The tendency to associate emergentism with mental emergentism (at least insofar as the actual world is concerned) might also be exacerbated by the fact that many philosophers (notably physicalists) regard chemical and biological properties as having been successfully reduced to lower levels, so that from their perspective, only mental emergentism remains a possibility – if only remotely so – at the actual world.
This is because the claim that the inclination to conceive of the F-worlds as contrary to physicalism is linked to either conceiving of these worlds as instantiating fundamentally mental properties, or to tacitly endorsing Object or Theory, is an empirical hypothesis. It is a claim about the source of philosophers’ dispositions to classify certain possible cases as falling under certain concepts. In this section, I offered some empirical evidence for the claim. But the argument from the evidence to the truth of the hypothesis is an inductive one, and is therefore defeasible. Perhaps what is needed here is a survey of professional philosophers; although one would need to be careful of prompting their considered judgements. As Jackson notes, “the method of possible cases needs to be applied with some sophistication. A person's first-up response as to whether something counts as a K may well need to be discounted. One or more of: the theoretical role they give K-hood, evidence concerning other cases they count as instances of K, signs of confused thinking on their part, cases where their classification is, on examination, a derivative one (they say it's a K because it is very obviously a J, and they think, defeasibly, that any J is a K), their readiness to back off under questioning, and the like, can justify rejecting a subject's first-up classifications as revealing their concept of K-hood” (Jackson 1998:35). What is needed, then, is for one to take a representative sample of philosophers, have them reflect on the various worlds which figure in this paper (and possibly others), on the case of gravitation (see next section), on whether their classifying the F-worlds as antiphysicalistic (if they do) is derivative (e.g., they think of the F-properties as non-AT-physical, and think that actualist theory physicalism is an adequate characterisation of physicalism), on whether their classifying the F-worlds as antiphysicalistic (if they do) can be accounted for in terms of a performance error (see Sect. 7.3), and so on. Needless to say, this is not a task I can hope to carry out in this paper.
While the folk sometimes ascribe gravitational properties to everyday objects, these ascriptions are arguably dependent on acquaintance with physical theory.
It is important to note that I am not endorsing the inference here. Rather, I am pointing to a possible psychological, largely unarticulated, source of the F-intuitions.
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Acknowledgments
I am grateful to John Bigelow, Jakob Hohwy, Graham Oppy, and David Spurrett for helpful discussions. Special thanks to Daniel Stoljar, who provided extensive written feedback on an earlier draft, and to two anonymous reviewers for this journal, whose discerning comments much improved the final version of the paper.
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Fiorese, R. Stoljar’s Dilemma and Three Conceptions of the Physical: A Defence of the Via Negativa. Erkenn 81, 201–229 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10670-015-9735-0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10670-015-9735-0