The Physicalisme is a thesis Métaphysique (constant, inter alia by Quine) according to which any existing entity is of physical nature, i.e. there are nothing apart from the things known as physical. In Philosophy of the spirit, physicalism admits that the mental one is a physical reality; it is thus about a form of Matérialisme and Monisme, which can be put in parallel with the first Greek philosophers, as Thalès which supported that all is water. In his most radical version, one can express this thesis as follows: “A monist materialist supposes that all the phenomena chemical, biological, psychological, linguistic, cultural and sociological are physical phenomena which obey the fundamental laws of physics. ”

The contradictory thesis, and however also monist, is the subjective Idéalisme, illustrated by George Berkeley, which supported that all that exists is a mental phenomenon. The contradictory thesis non-monist is the Dualisme.

Presentation

Physicalism is distinguished from the Problème body-spirit insofar as in this last problem it is supposed that the mental one and the body is two distinct things of which the relations should be explained. The Problème body-spirit thus supposes, to be a problem, that the spirit is not a physical entity, but must be included in a different metaphysical category. However, this problem strictly speaking does not suppose necessarily the metaphysical Dualisme .

Physicalism does not deny that certain realities can appear like not-physics to us, such as the social phenomena, moral and psychic; but it supports that these realities could be explained one day from an entirely physical point of view.

Otto Neurath : “According to physicalism, the language of physics is the universal language of science and, consequently, any knowledge can be brought back to the statements on the physical objects”.

Interpretation, complétude and condition of physicalism

Physicalism can be included/understood like the whole of the answers to the following questions:

• Which means to say that all is physical? This question concerns the interpretation of physicalism.
• is it true to say that all is physical? This question concerns the truth of physicalism.

For Daniel Stoljar, it is first of all necessary to include/understand what physicalism means, before evaluating its value of truth. It is thus necessary to answer the first question before being able to answer the second. However, the first question is, according to him, double, because it carries at the same time on the question of the direction of all , and on the question of the physical direction of . In other words, the first question relates on the really complete character of physicalism ( all is physical), and to its condition of realisability (all physical is ). When one puts the question with the first direction, it is thus a question of including/understanding how each reality can satisfy the condition; with the second direction, it is a question of knowing what the fact means of being physical for each reality, i.e in what the condition ( to be physical ) consists and how it is carried out by each reality.

Designs of physicalism

Physicalism endeavors to reduce the mental one to the physique, i.e that according to this thesis mental the is physical; it is an identity materialist. This type of thesis can take two principal forms:

• Design known as standard , according to which any mental property is identical to a physical property;
• Design known as token , according to which there is, for any singular mental event, a particular physical event to which first is identical.

The difference is thus the following one: in a case, one poses that any mental event is identical to one - and only one - physical event; in the other, one poses that the same mental event can be identical to several physical events from which the same mental property results. The first thesis is not generally any more supported, because it gives an account of the experiment little: indeed, the Douleur, which is well a singular mental event ( I have badly), can be caused by various very different physical events, and is not identical to a physical event.

Daniel Stoljar proposes the following logical formulation:

• “For every actual particular (object, vent gold process) X, there is nap physical particular there such that X = Y.”
• “mental For every actually instantiated property F, there is nap physical property G such that F=G. ”

The concept of supervening

References

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