<body class="blog" onload="">

Ratiocination

Free Time (1000 words x 8)


When I'm not working, I relax. Sometimes, I play cards with Katherine. Or watch others play video games. Or chat with Tim and Brian. There's always fire at hand. But sometimes I'm tired, and I just watch Patrick.

Physicalism


I'm attracted to physicalism for a variety of reasons, not the least of which is its apparent simplicity and explanatory power. More and more phenomena are turning out to be quite scientifically tame--that is, explainable by the methods of contemporary science. And by physicalism, I mean something like the non-reductive view described and defended in Jessica Wilson's OPC paper. I note that the physicalism I lean toward is restricted; it does not rule out the existence of abstract (and hence non-physical) objects like propositions, sets, states of affairs, possible worlds--or even of Platonic universals.

There is a tradition of arguing against physicalism in the following way: The existence of phenomena F is incompatible with physicalism. But phenomena F is. Therefore, physicalism is false.

Arguments of this form have been advanced against physicalism in its reductive and non-reductive varieties. For F, some have plugged in genuine moral responsibility, a first person perspective, mental properties, morality, value (broadly construed), rationality, and the like. The idea is that if (nearly) everything turned out to be only physical, then there would be no ontological room for all sorts of things we care about--and have good reason to think exist.

I'm unpersuaded. Here's why.

First, I'm convinced that the phenomena in question have being. I conceive of myself as a person with genuine moral responsibility, with a mental life, living in a world brimming with values. Some of my beliefs are rational, others are not. There are things I should and should not do. I hold to these theses about as firmly as I hold to anything. And so on.

But second, on reflection, if it turned out that physicalism were true, I would not be tempted to change this conception of myself and my world. If humans turned out to be nothing but matter and energy, my conception of myself and my community as rational, morally responsible beings wouldn't change in the least bit.

I'm thus suspicious of the incompatibility claims in question (F is incompatible with physicalism). My view of myself as a person doesn't hinge (in this sense) on what sort of world I turn out to live in.

Furthermore, I'm sometimes puzzled as to what motivates this sort of attack against physicalism. I take it that appropriate values and desires have a place in epistemic deliberation. With this in mind, I wonder why anyone would want to believe that their personhood (and everything else they value) hinged on the deliverances of metaphysicians and scientists about whether physicalism is true or false. Isn't it more attractive to see personhood, value, and the like as standing quite independently of what our world is fundamentally like--deep down? I think so.

I'm thus a compatibilist with respect to physicalism and pretty much everything that we humans care about.

Physicalism in all its forms may turn out to be false--I'm not sure on that count. But I don't think all that much hangs on the verdict.

Online Philosophy Conference


Be sure to check out the first Online Philosophy Conference. Of the papers released so far, I found Jessica Wilson’s (University of Toronto) particularly interesting. Wilson attempts to cut out space for a non-reductive physicalism that doesn't collapse into a more extreme position (reductive physicalism or robust emergentism), a project I'm attracted to.

The lineup of contributors is top-notch (caveat: I have a paper in the mix), and it should be fun to see how the comment threads develop in the next four weeks.