• DOI:10.1007/S11245-017-9488-2
• Corpus ID: 171677880

Introduction: The Character of Physicalism

@article{Elpidorou2018IntroductionTC,
  title={Introduction: The Character of Physicalism},
  author={Andreas Elpidorou},
  journal={Topoi},
  year={2018},
  volume={37},
  pages={435-455}
}

• Andreas Elpidorou
• Published 1 September 2018
• Philosophy
• Topoi

At the heart of physicalism lies an ontological (or if you prefer, ontic) thesis.1 To espouse physicalism is to make certain commitments about what types of things (objects, properties, events, states of affairs) exist in our world (Quine 1948; cf. Hellman and Thompson 1977, p. 310).2 If Not many issues in philosophy can be said to match, let alone rival, physicalism’s importance, persistent influence, and divisiveness. To a first approximation, physicalism holds that everything that exists in our world is physical. An acceptance of physicalism commits thus one to a monistic worldview. Despite how variegated existing entities or properties might appear to be, everything that exists in our world is, according to physicalism, the same: namely, physical. Indeed, it is widely thought that physicalism demands not only that the non-physical (the chemical, the biological, the economic, the social, the mental, etc.) metaphysically depends on the physical but also that the non-physical is nothing over and above the physical. But what type of metaphysical dependence vindicates physicalism? The aim of this editorial introduction is twofold. First, Sects. 1–8 offer a critical introduction to the metaphysical character of physicalism. In those sections, I present and evaluate different ways in which proponents of physicalism have made explicit the metaphysical dependence that is said to hold between the non-physical and the physical. Some of these accounts are found to be problematic; others are shown to be somewhat more promising. In the end, some important lessons are drawn and different options for physicalists are presented. Second, in Sect. 9, the six papers that comprise the special issue are introduced and summarized. Each contribution to the special is, in different ways, concerned with explicating the character of physicalism. New ways of formulating physicalism are assessed; old ways are defended; and the distinctions between physicalism,