Stoljar’s Dilemma and Three Conceptions of the Physical: A Defence of the Via Negativa

Erkenntnis 81 (2):201-229 (2016)
  Copy   BIBTEX

Abstract

Physicalism is the thesis that everything is physical. But what does it mean to say that everything is physical? Daniel Stoljar has recently argued that no account of the physical is available which allows for a formulation of physicalism that is both possibly true and deserving of the name. As against this claim, I argue that a version of the via negativa—roughly, the view that the physical is to be characterised in terms of the nonmental—provides just such an account.

Links

PhilArchive



    Upload a copy of this work     Papers currently archived: 91,349

External links

Setup an account with your affiliations in order to access resources via your University's proxy server

Through your library

Similar books and articles

Current Physics and 'the Physical'.Agustín Vicente - 2011 - British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 62 (2):393-416.
The Via Negativa: Not the Way to Physicalism.Robert Bishop - 2010 - Mind and Matter 8 (2):203-214.
Physicalism and the via negativa.Sara Worley - 2006 - Philosophical Studies 131 (1):101-26.
Dualism, Monism, Physicalism.Tim Crane - 2000 - Mind and Society 1 (2):73-85.
Stoljar’s Twin-Physics World.Joseph A. Baltimore - 2013 - Philosophia 41 (1):127-136.
The importance of physicalism in the philosophy of religion.Leonard Angel - 2010 - International Journal for Philosophy of Religion 67 (3):141 - 156.
Thinking about Physicalism.Restrepo Ricardo - 2012 - Open Journal of Philosophy 2 (2):84.
Physicalism.Daniel Stoljar - 2015 - Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.
The Origins of Qualia.Tim Crane - 2000 - In Tim Crane & Sarah Patterson (eds.), The History of the Mind-Body Problem. London: Routledge.

Analytics

Added to PP
2015-05-20

Downloads
165 (#113,133)

6 months
13 (#185,110)

Historical graph of downloads
How can I increase my downloads?

Author's Profile

Raphael Fiorese
Monash University

Citations of this work

Empirical Physicalism and the Boundaries of Physics.Michele Paolini Paoletti - 2017 - International Studies in the Philosophy of Science 31 (4):343-362.

Add more citations

References found in this work

Fact, Fiction, and Forecast.Nelson Goodman - 1965 - Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press.
A Materialist Theory of the Mind.D. M. Armstrong - 1968 - New York: Routledge. Edited by Ted Honderich.

View all 46 references / Add more references