Talk:Physicalism

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Physicalism was a good article nominee, but did not meet the good article criteria at the time. There are suggestions below for improving the article. Once these are addressed, the article can be renominated. Editors may also seek a reassessment of the decision if they believe there was a mistake.

^{Reviewed version: June 28, 2006}

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[edit] Needs to be split

I've just edited this article a fair bit, and placed a notice about it at WikiProject Philosophy of Mind - the introduction is about physicalism generally, and then the article goes on to talk about physicalism about the mental. I think it needs to be split into one article about physicalism generally (called just 'Physicalism') and one about physicalism in the phil of mind (or perhaps this content can be merged into articles about that which already exist?)

What does anyone think? Thomas Ash 11:14, 13 December 2005 (UTC)

Alright, so I picked up this link from WikiProject Philosophy of Mind and decided to comment. While I agree with your (implied) point that there is a difference between Physcalism in general and Physicalism in the philosophy of mind, this distinction doesn't seem terribly meaningful to me. What I mean, is that while the doctrine of physicalism is applicable to more than the philosophy of mind there is a serious lack of publications that chase this idea. Perhaps it is only just that I have been reading the wrong things, but can you point to anything on physicalism written outside the philosophy of mind? Ig0774 15:52, 10 February 2006 (UTC)

There is quite a lot of literature outside of the philosophy of mind on physicalism. It appears everywhere in philosophy of mind because it is, at present, the dominant position. Physicalism, on it's own, just says (in a variety of ways, with varying degrees of strength) that everything that is, is physical. The dominant position in philosophy of mind is that the mind is physica, but this just follows from one form of physicalism; so there's a sense in which the dominant position in philosophy of mind is a consequence of a more general physicalist commitment (though the commitment could run the other way too). Here's (http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/physicalism/) a good article on physicalism in general, including a discussion of it's role in debates on the mind. (This coment was written by Fabulist)

[edit] Old comments about Larry's Text

Great material here, but desperately needs to be rewritten to sound more like an encyclopedia article and less like a lecture. Wesley 20:33 Sep 18, 2002 (UTC)

Also needs to be basically completely rewritten taking recent (i.e. last 20 years) developments into account: the current text is basically discussing reductive physicalism, which is only one of the two main branches of physicalist thought (the other, unsurprisingly, being nonreductive physicalism), and makes it sound as if reductionism is synonymous with physicalism. I may attempt to begin a rewrite at some point, but it's a major project; there've been quite a few entire books on the subject. --Delirium 07:31 9 Jul 2003 (UTC)

Since a gigantic chunk of Larry's Text had been sitting fallow on this page for two years, attracting little to no edits, I decided to be bold and remove it. The sheer size of the editing project was enough to turn anyone away, including me. Plus, the text itself was entirely un-encyclopediac, being full of "What, that didn't make sense? Let me explain it again" and whatnot.

So here's my suggestion: let's start start from the first paragraph of Larry's text and expand from there organically, in our own words. I have retained Larry's Text on this subject in Talk:Physicalism/LT, so we can still use it as source material. I feel that this will produce a much more useful and readable article. If anyone disagrees, please speak up! -Adam Conover 02:58, Mar 27, 2004 (UTC)

I agree with your decision. I added a notice at the article so that people can know there is a huge chunk of text that can be used. -- Taku 03:11, Mar 27, 2004 (UTC)

Thank you, that's good to know. I also agree with your renaming of the sub-page. Man, we still have a lot of work to do, though... first order of business below. Adam Conover 03:13, Mar 27, 2004 (UTC)

[edit] Non-reductive physicalism?

As this article stands it's currently only considering reductive physicalism. Even though I'm writing my senior thesis on this topic, I've always been frustrated by question of whether or not there's a viable non-reductive form of physicalism. If so, could someone give an outline of it on the article? Adam Conover 03:13, Mar 27, 2004 (UTC)

I don't see how a physicalism could be non-reductive?

[edit] Physicalism and Subjective Idealism - What is the Difference?

I am a little unclear on the precise difference between physicalism and subjective idealism. Could it be that the only difference is subjective labels used? Both seem to claim that the world is made of one kind of substance, and simply give difference names for this substance. Different labels are not clear evidence of an actual difference.

So, what is the difference between the two? --Michael V.

Michael -- I think your characterization of subjective idealism is apt. I agree that the distinction seems as though it may be meaningless -- if there's only one kind of things, what's the difference between saying everything is made out of stuff A or made out of stuff B? Still, I would say that that's a meta-position about these two positions, and is thus one we don't have approach yet.

However, I would be wary saying that subjective idealism is the opposite of physicalism, because dualism is also the opposite of physicalism in a sense -- perhaps "another view opposed to physicalism"? — Adam Conover † 16:39, Apr 10, 2004 (UTC)

I would answer very differently (and forgive the quick and dirty summary). Stuff A and B have very different properties and thus make up very different kinds of worlds, where very different kinds of things can happen. In p'ism, there can be a world of 'dead' matter with no minds at all, as possibly was the case a few billion years ago. And a universal grey goo scenario could kill all life, but the universe would still be there, perhaps to be noticed by life which evolved again later. On the other hand, in i'ism some kind of mind is required for the appearance of matter. Life/mind is not an emergent property of matter, and could not have evolved as science suggests it did. (Or evolution took place among matter-like ideas within a larger mind, etc.) Hope that helps. "alyosha" 22:45, 20 December 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Criticisms?

Seems like at least a cursory review of criticisms of reductionism and physicalism/materialism are in order. Anyone care to tackle that?

[edit] Supervenience

Supervenience is not the claim that "every particular or property is at root a physical property or particular." It is the claim that "any change in a physical particular or property will cause a change in the corresponding supervening particular or property" (and not just "in effect"). I changed this section. (anon)

No that's the wrong way round. I've corrected it. Thomas Ash 11:10, 13 December 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Please help

We need to go through a major cleanup of these philosophical pages. Right now there are pages on reductionism monism pragmatism materialism physicalism naturalism (philosophy) natural philosophy rationalism empiricism positivism (philosophy) and hordes of others. There should be some way to distinguish between these so that they do not tread on each other. Does anybody have any suggestions on how to improve this growing spiderweb of interrelated articles? --ScienceApologist 01:27, 15 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] materialism

Can any one please help me understand the difference between this philsophical approach to materialism...?--Procrastinating@^talk2me 14:03, 28 January 2006 (UTC)

While I am in no means an expert on this subject, I believe that physicalism differentiates itself from materialism in allowing for a process to be viewed as physical, and not only that which is clearly material, such as a rock or tree. Also, anything that can be understood and studied by physics, such as gravity, is viewed as physical but it is unlikely that gravity is in any way of a material nature.--Laplace's Demon 05:22, 4 March 2006 (UTC)

Wait, according to special relativity, doesn't $E = m c 2$ say that matter and energy are interchangable (i.e matter can become energy and vice versa), meaning that materialism is effectively the same as physicalism? D Hill 21:10, 1 June 2006 (UTC)

Yes, according to special relativity, there is no distinction between energy and matter. However, that does not mean that materialism is equivalent to physicalism. Materialism is the philosophy that everything is composed of, or supervenes upon matter. Physicalism is the philosophy that everything is composed of, or supervenes upon the physical. The two terms are not synonomous. For example, in contemporary physics, matter is made up of elementary fermions, i.e, quarks and leptons. However, gauge bosons, such as the gluon, photon, or hypothetical graviton are not considered matter as they mediate the fundamental interactions between matter. Though I know of no one who denies that photons are, in fact, physical.--Laplace's Demon 21:39, 2 June 2006 (UTC)

Demon, this is a great explenation how bout adding it to the article ? (process vs. matter/energy) --Procrastinating@^talk2me 09:00, 4 June 2006 (UTC)

I'm placing this on both the materialism and physicalism talk pages. Wikipedia articles on philosophy should conform to terminology used in the philosophy field. The term 'materialism' was first used prior to knowledge of subatomic particles. The modern western philosophers were either idealist (believing that only minds/spirits exist), materialist (believing that only matter exists), or dualist (believing that both exist). The term materialist is used to refer to someone who does not believe in the existence of spirits. Here it has been distorted to be defined as a position on physics rather than philosophy. The fact that the meaning of the word 'matter' has changed as a result of the discovery of subatomic particles etc. does not mean that the philosophical term 'materialism' should be redefined. Are there any philosophers who identify themselves as materialist and argue that quarks do not exist? If not then I suggest that the materialism and physicalism articles be revised to reflect that they are essentially synonyms (i.e. possibly merged). Some sources that appear to indicate that materialism and physicalism are synonymous: "Physicalism is sometimes known as materialism."-http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/physicalism/ "the word Materialism is here used to indicate a particular philosophical position, rather than a hedonistic lifestyle. A less well-knwon but more precise term is Physicalism."-http://www.kheper.net/topics/worldviews/materialism.htm Brent (talk) 02:19, 30 January 2008 (UTC)

[edit] physicalism about the mental

Need a better explanation of the phrase "physicalism about the mental". It is used several times in that exact and peculiar wording so appears to be some sort of jargon, but its meaning is unclear to the general reader, well, it's unclear to me anyway. Nurg 12:46, 7 April 2006 (UTC)

"Physicalism about the mental" simply means that the mind is physical in some way, and not non-physical as the mind is in Cartesian dualism or psycho-physical parallelism. Check out monism.

[edit] Failed GA nomination

I'm afraid this article doesn't meet the Good Article Qualifications just yet. Here is a brief list of some issues associated with this article that I feel are holding it back. Once these issues have been tackled, feel free to renominate the article.

There are some serious jargon issues... While much of the 'philosopher jargon' is wikilinked, the reliance on jargon means that there should be more in-text explanations of terms, and wherever possible, jargon should be replaced with equivalent terms or sentences. I found it very difficult to get through the article, particularly in the Non-Reductive Physicalism section, where even the infographic seemed confusing and under-explained. "The ideal reader of an encyclopedia should be primarily the curious average man. He should only secondarily be the specialist and/or the high school student." - Charles van Doren. This article is currently aimed a bit up toward specialist. When one is an expert in something, it makes explanations that are clear to the non-expert a challenging task. Don't think of it as 'dumbing down' the article, think of it as casting a line out to those who wish to know more.
The lead section does not give a clear view of what physicalism actually is. In fact, after reading it, I still find myself at a bit of a loss of how I would describe it to someone. The lead section should be able to stand on its own as a concise description of what physicalism is, and why anyone cares.
There are some comprehensiveness issues. While comprehensiveness isn't as critical with GA as it is with FA, there are still some things that I think could be improved. The lead section itself admits that the rest of the article is about 'mental' physicalism. What are the other kinds? Where would we learn about those? The article should link to the 'other' physicalisms, or better yet, summarize the various types, and link to the main articles associated with them. Likewise, I feel like the lack of a 'history' section is a bit jarring. I'm left with some uncertainty about whether this is a modern viewpoint, or an ancient viewpoint. Was this something that Greek philosophers where discussing? Beat poets? Modern college professors? A brief history section could provide some valuable context for understanding.
The tone is odd in some areas as well. Note the section on Token Physicalism - "It requires that for social, moral, and psychological particulars there must be a physical particular identical with them. Consider the Supreme Court of the United States. The Supreme Court exists, but according to token physicalism, there is a physical object that is identical to the Supreme Court. However, this physical particular does not necessarily exist in any conventional use of the word 'physical'." This sounds more like something a professor would say to a class, than something I'd read in an encyclopedia. Would it be possible to quote an expert giving an example, for instance?
A bit under-referenced. This isn't critical, but there should be more references (inline, using the WP:CITET templates, if possible). When explaining a metaphysical concept, it can be easy to transition from explaining the most common viewpoint, to original research via creative interpretation. References will make it clear that the article represents the current accepted view, and not just the view of the editors.
Minor formatting and copyediting issues. There are some spelling errors and grammarical errors sifted around. I'll try to clean a few of those up myself, since they aren't difficult, but a thorough copyedit would be helpful.

Finally, I'd like to note that I do think this article is a good one. I know its a challenging subject to translate, and it seems like the details of the concept are well laid out, including arguments for and against. The article has come a long way, and has a lot of potential. The biggest challenge is the tone and jargon/technical language issues, the rest are small, and should be quickly resolvable. Feel free to leave a message on my talk page if you want any more clarification on my reasons. Phidauex 16:55, 28 June 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Mostly Wrong

Practically everything about this article appears to be wrong. Physicalism is not a metaphysical position, it is not the same as materialism, it is not associated with Quine (a major critic of the philosophy), it is mostly associated with Carnap and Neurath. The references for this section do not include Carnap, Neurath, Schlick or Quine who might be relevant. Even more relevant would be the chapter "Physicalism" in A J Ayer's "Philosophy in the Twentieth Century". It seems odd that an entry on Physicalism would fail to cite an entire chapter on the subject by one of the most respected philosophers of the twentieth century.

Robin 17 July 2006

[edit] History

I have done a fair amount of research, but have found nothing on the history of physicalism. If anyone has any sources, this page needs to cover the history of physicalism. Гырша 13:12, 9 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] et al?

Should the "et al" in the opening paragraph be replaced with an "etc"? The article on etc says that "et al" should only be used with persons or maybe places. Andrew zot 01:37, 27 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] distinct types of physicalism?

I don't know much about this subject. In any case, I just spent several minutes convinced that Jackson's argument about Mary's Room is completely wrong. Then, in the "Mary's Room" article, i found this sentence.

"It is important to note that in Jackson's article, physicalism refers to the epistemological doctrine that all knowledge is knowledge of physical facts, and not the metaphysical doctrine that all things are physical things."

Should there be mention early on in this article of the distinction between these two doctrines so other's don't get similarly confused? SH

[edit] Writing style

"The zombie argument is a thought experiment that attempts to show that it is conceivable, and therefore possible" This is bad writing style.

[edit] Zombies

Has anyone noticed that this argument against physicalism affirms the consequent? If any one can find a source that says that it might help the argument. —Preceding unsigned comment added by J Hill (talk • contribs)

[edit] Definition of "supervenience".

Something is wrong here.

"Supervenience is the relationship between a higher level and lower level where the higher level is dependent on the lower level."

Okay, with you so far.

"This means that one level supervenes on another if and only if a change in the lower level causes a change in the higher level..."

Makes sense, although should it not be "any" change?

"(e.g. a set of properties A supervenes upon a set of properties B when there cannot be an A difference without a B difference)."

Here is where I get lost. Isn't this backwards? Alternatively, the position of the biconditional in the main (non-parenthetical) sentence is wrong.

Either of these would make sense to me:

1) This means that one level supervenes on another if and only if any change in the lower level causes a change in the higher level (e.g. a set of properties A supervenes upon a set of properties B when there cannot be a B difference without an A difference).

2) This means that one level supervenes on another when there can be a change in the higher level if and only if there is a change in the lower level.

I am not familiar with the material, so I leave it to somebody else to rephrase this.

Drake Dun 07:53, 19 December 2006 (UTC)

Since nobody has addressed this I have rolled it around and concluded that logically the answer must be (2) above. I am going to make the change myself.

Drake Dun 13:40, 4 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Information

"The essential objects of physicalism ultimately include whatever is described by physics -- not just matter but energy, space, time, physical forces, structure, physical processes, information, state, et al."

Would "information" as used in the introduction to this article refer specically to physical information? If so, I'm going to change the link. Canadianism 01:49, 20 December 2006 (UTC)

Since its been a few days and I'm almost certain physical information is the proper word, I'm going to change it. Canadianism 02:00, 22 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] New discoveries

Physicalism is not locked into 19th century mechanics as this article suggests - it expects that new discoveries concerning the nature of perception will extend physics. References can be found in the work of the Vienna Circle - who are all also positivists.

--Myscience 00:18, 13 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] The relationship between physicalism and materialism

This physicalism article says: "Physicalism is also called 'materialism', but the term 'physicalism' is preferable because it has evolved with the physical sciences to incorporate far more sophisticated notions of physicality than matter." However, the materialism article says: "Materialism is that form of physicalism which holds that the only thing that can truly be said to exist is matter." After reading these two passages, I don't know whether physicalism are equivalent views, different views, or variants of the same view, or if one is a variant of the other. Judging from the first passage, I'm guessing materialism can be considered a form of physicalism. However, the second passage leads me to suspect that people often use the two terms interchangeably. Could someone clear this up? --Phatius McBluff 04:41, 2 April 2007 (UTC)

Well, it's a bit murky. My understanding, which the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy shares, is that "materialism" was a historical doctrine that held everything is matter; this was later refined, in light of new discoveries in physics, to admit a few things other than matter but still in the same general spirit of the materialist doctrine, like gravity and the strong nuclear force. So the doctrine was renamed to "physicalism" to both stress the connection with physics, and avoid the now-misleading focus on only matter. In that view, "physicalism" is basically the modern form of materialism, and the latter is primarily a historical term. I'm not aware (but I could be wrong) of a modern doctrine of materialism that sees itself as a specific, more radical kind of physicalism. --Delirium 02:05, 9 May 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Berkeley and Physicalism

Point of clarification that I'm not sure is worthy of mention on this page: Berkeley wholeheartedly believed in PHYSICAL things, inasmuch as that meant things which could be seen and heard and kicked. He disavowed the existence of MATERIAL things, inasmuch as that meant some metaphysical material substance beyond what can be seen/heard/etc. Berkeley himself emphasized this distinction, so it may be relevant for inclusion here, IMO. Opinions?

Addendum: I don't mean to call Berkeley a physicalist, as he clearly believes in non-physical things as well (souls and God, namely). Rather, I'm objecting the the phrase currently in the article "...George Berkeley, holds that there is no physical reality at all...", which Berkeley himself would object to - Berkeley was all for the real existence of the things discovered by empirical science, and just questioned the metaphysical nature of those things (namely rejecting the existence of material substances)

On a related note, the phenomenalism of the positivists is clearly physicalist in nature, and yet phenomenalism is usually considered more closely related to idealism than to materialism. I'm not sure what to say about this as relates to the article; perhaps don't imply that physicalism is so closely tied to materialism, but leave it as a monist position without any particular commitment to any metaphysical substrate? -- Forrest

You're absolutely right about Berkeley's distinction between "objects" (those things that are immediately present to the senses) and material objects (objects that, in some sense, exist "out there", independent of our impressions of them). In other words, Berkeley believed in objects, but he thought objects were no more than our ideas of them. A chair is no more (or less) than my idea of that chair. However, I'm not sure whether he used the word "physical" in his writings. As far as I remember, the distinction he presented was strictly between "objects" and "material objects", not between "physical objects" and "material objects". I'm not saying you're wrong. You seem to know what you're talking about, and I only know about Berkeley's writings from an introductory course I took recently. In fact, I may not remember my Berkeley very well. But I'm anxious to know whether Berkeley himself actually used the word "physical" in opposition to the word "material" in his writings. If he doesn't, then it might be a good idea to avoid any references to him in this article (although he's obviously an appropriate topic in the materialism article). --Phatius McBluff 01:28, 18 May 2007 (UTC)

I recently took an upper division class on Berkeley (I'm a graduating philosophy major at UCSB) and I recall that distinction being made quite emphatically, that Berkeley does not deny the physical world, he merely denies that it is material; that he thinks the physical sciences are all great, but strictly speaking we should understand ourselves (as scientists) merely to be investigating the patterns of ideas which are the physical world, and we should not inject any notion of 'material substance' into that science. I think I sold my books back from that class, might have them around here somewhere to check, but if I do have them they're buried in my closet. A quick Google search returns a Standord Encyclopedia of Philosophy article [1] and an Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy article [2] which both seem to speak in the same way (though neither of them cite passages where Berkeley himself uses the term "physical"), seeming to mean by "physical" only 'those things discoverable by empirical science' with no commitment to what substrate they rest upon, if any.

Which I guess is my point of contention here; I don't think the article should position physicalism as roughly-synonymous with materialism as far as monistic ontologies go, as contrasted with idealism. Idealism and materialism contrast, yes; but physicalism in the broadest sense is compatible with either (e.g. the logical positivists' physicalist phenomenalism). Or, I suppose you might say, it's incompatible with either - as the physical sciences consider metaphysical issues like "substance" outside their scope, and thus, if physicalism holds that all that exists is that which is the domain of the physical sciences, then any talk of mental or physical "substances" is already stepping beyond physicalism. Perhaps we should just delete the entire section contrasting physicalism to other monisms, and merely mention that physicalism is a monistic position? -- Forrest 09:25, 18 May 2007 (UTC)

I basically agree with you here. However, simply deleting Berkeley from the whole article might be a little bit unwarranted, especially since someone else clearly thought he was relevant enough to add.

But, at any rate, I don't know what a reference to Berkeley (or Spinoza, for that matter) is doing in the article's header. The header should contain just enough information to let the reader know what the term "physicalism" means. Comparisons to neutral monism, etc. belong in a later section. --Phatius McBluff 04:43, 20 May 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Spinoza and neutral monism

Er, I think I see a problem with the header for this article. It says that Spinoza believed that there's only a single substance, neither material nor mental. Well, Spinoza does say that there's only one substance. And he doesn't think of it as solely material substance or solely mental substance. But doesn't he say that it's both material and mental in its attributes? If I remember Spinoza's Ethics correctly, Spinoza says (1) the universe is a single substance; (2) a human being, myself for instance, is a mode of that substance; (3) my body is a mode of the one substance, considered under the attribute of extension (material existence), and my mind is that very same mode, considered under the attribute of thought (mental existence). Wouldn't it be more accurate to say that Spinoza believes in a single substance that's both mental and material? --Phatius McBluff 01:37, 18 May 2007 (UTC)

Not that it probably matters much, but my recollection of Spinoza's ontology is as you describe; however, according to the Neutral Monism and Spinoza articles, Neutral Monism is what Spinoza's ontological position is called (though it seems a bad name to me). Although, this mention of Spinoza, like the mention of Berkeley, seems to me a bit out of place in a page about physicalism (see my above comments about deleting that entire paragraph), unless we wanted to go into a lot more detail about whether physicalism is compatible with these various ontological positions. It seems intuitively compatible and nearly identical with materialism, though again see my comments in the Berkeley discussion above; and yet it also seems compatible with immaterialist, 'idealist' phenomenalism as of the positivists; and perhaps with Spinoza's ontology as well (as there is nothing in Spinoza's world which lacks a physical property, they've just all got mental properties too). And while I'd be happy to write at length about that, that would be original research; and I'm not aware of any text that have been written specifically on that issue, so I do think it's perhaps best just not to have that discussion in this article. -- Forrest 09:50, 18 May 2007 (UTC)

Again, I basically agree. At this point, no one looking at this article is even sure about the relationship between physicalism and materialism. Spinoza's philosophy definitely relates to materialism (since Spinoza uses the word "matter" in his own writings), but we can't be sure at this point what Spinoza would say about "physicalism", defined as something distinct from materialism. --Phatius McBluff 04:47, 20 May 2007 (UTC)

[edit] arguments for and against

The Arguments for and against section really needs to be broken down into a distinction between reductive and non-reductive, or between token and type, physicalism. As it stands it is very confusing, as in many cases the arguments for one type are the very arguments against the other. e.g. the exclusion principle may be an argument for reductive physicalism but it is certainly not an argument for non-reductive physicalism. Likewise the knowledge argument is problematic for reductive physicalism, but perfectly compatible with non-reduction. Any suggestions as to how best restructure things? --Altundra, 2 June 2007--

[edit] The Zombie criticism

I fail to see how the theoretical possibility of the existence of zombies would refute physicalism. The notion that physicalists must prove that zombies don't exist is an unfair and unnecessary burden. So what if there can be zombies? The existence of machines that behave exactly like humans, and the existence of humans themselves, are not mutually exclusive.

Unless the argument is referring to zombies which physically "under the hood" function using the exact same means by which humans function (identical brains, etc.). But that makes the argument meaningless, because it is simply a denial that the mind arises from the brain. It is saying "physicalism is false because brains might not be the center of consciousness", the second part of which is debatable, but is a red herring (does not refute physicalism, but the notion that functioning brains will inherently be conscious) and thus the whole argument is a non-sequitur. It does not refute the notion that people who are not zombies have their consciousness arising from physical properties. It should also be noted that consciousness does have an effect on physical reality (if it did not, we would not be discussing it... this is also a fairly decent argument against epiphenomenalism IMO). So these zombies could not 1) be physically identical to humans, 2) behave exactly like humans, and 3) not have consciousness, all at the same time, without a contradiction.

I wonder if anyone can find a reliable source that makes these arguments, and if so, could add them to the article. Either that or remove the zombies argument, since, while a valid thought experiment for a lot of purposes, does not really serve the purpose of refuting physicalism.

Either that, or I'd like someone to put me in my place.

Mbarbier 17:24, 13 August 2007 (UTC)

I haven't really read your specific objection (since this isn't the place to debate philosophy), but the point of this article is to summarize the literature, and the zombie argument has been put forth as a criticism of physicalism. That you disagree with its claim to refute physicalism isn't really an objection to including that section in the article, though of course if you feel it inaccurately summarizes the literature that's another matter. --Delirium 19:57, 13 August 2007 (UTC)

Fair enough. My main point was that I didn't even see how it addresses physicalism in the first place, except only vaguely. But if it is presented in the literature (which I admittedly am not up on) as a refutation of physicalism then you're right; that means it belongs in this article. Mbarbier 17:06, 14 August 2007 (UTC)

[edit] K. V. Wilkes

Hasn't Wilkes been important enough to be mentioned? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 82.134.121.18 (talk) 21:48, 5 May 2008 (UTC)