Crossword clues for physicalism
physicalism
Wiktionary
n. (context philosophy English) A philosophical position holding that everything which exists is no more extensive than its physical properties; that is, that there are no kinds of things other than physical things.
WordNet
n. (philosophy) the philosophical theory that matter is the only reality [syn: materialism]
Wikipedia
In philosophy, physicalism is the ontological thesis that "everything is physical", that there is "nothing over and above" the physical, or that everything supervenes on the physical. Physicalism is a form of ontological monism—a "one substance" view of the nature of reality as opposed to a "two-substance" ( dualism) or "many-substance" ( pluralism) view. Both the definition of "physical" and the meaning of physicalism have been debated.
Physicalism is closely related to materialism. Physicalism grew out of materialism with the success of the physical sciences in explaining observed phenomena. The terms are often used interchangeably, although they are sometimes distinguished, for example on the basis of physics describing more than just matter (including energy and physical law). Common arguments against physicalism include both the philosophical zombie argument and the multiple observers argument, that the existence of a physical being may imply zero or more distinct conscious entities.
Usage examples of "physicalism".
Nevertheless, science has progressed together with the ideology of scientific materialism that does embody a number of sacrosanct theories and a priori statements, namely the principles of objectivism, monism, universalism, reductionism, the closure principle, and physicalism.
Thus, in the infancy of Western metaphysical speculation, the principles of monism, physicalism, and re-ductionism were already prevalent.
While the nineteenth-century adoption of the closure principle denied causal efficacy to anything that is nonphysical, the twentieth-century version of physicalism denies that anything nonphysical even exists in reality.
One might just as well ask the same question of those scientists who believe that the empirical evidence does confirm the hypothesis of physicalism: Are they overinterpreting scientific evidence to make it conform to their metaphysical beliefs?
There are many scientists and philosophers, of course, who deny that physicalism is simply a metaphysical principle.