PHILOS 1E03 Lecture Notes - Lecture 7: Physicalism, Mental Event, Materialism
8 Dec 2014
School
Department
Course
Professor
Document Summary
The view that everything (including mental states and events) is really physical: this is a metaphysical view: a view about the fundamental nature of reality, also an ontological view: a view about what exists. Materialism is sometimes used as a synonym for physicalism: physicalism has the advantage of allowing that, at least according to modern physics, not everything physical need be a form of matter. Physicalists believe everthing supervenes on the physical: this means everything that happens depends causally on events at the level of physics. They also typically believe that everything could in principle be explained in the terms of physics. If we could completely explain the behaviour of particles, waves, and the like, then we could completely explain everything our account would leave nothing out. Physicalists deny any kind of substance dualism: the idea that the mind and the brain are fundamentally different kinds of thing. Some philosophers have thought that consciousness poses a deep challenge to physicalism.
