Grant Bartley's argument against Physicalism

Why Physicalism is Wrong

Grant Bartley, editor of Philosophy Now

Since the brain is a physical object, the changing states of the brain can be explained with reference to electrochemical processes and so on. However, the physicalist goes further, and, ignoring quantum mechanics, claims that since scientists can give entirely physical explanations for what happens in the physical world, not only do we not need anything non-physical in our explanation of the world, there is no room for anything non-physical in our explanation of how this big machine runs. Therefore everything must be physical, even experiences and the mind.

The most extreme version of this idea is eliminative materialism. This says that distinct minds and experiences don’t exist: there are only brains and their physical activities.

As just formulated, this is an absurd doctrine. If it were true as stated, you could not be having experiences, such as the experiences you’re having now, and the perpetrators of this doctrine would have to claim themselves to be mindless zombies or automata, writing their books mindlessly. Even to say that experience is an illusion ignores the fact that a supposed ‘illusion’ of having an experience is still having an experience; and for an experience to exist, all that is necessary is that the experience is experienced, regardless of whatever else one might say about its nature or cause.

Well, a clearer-minded materialist might say, “You do have experience; but to speak in terms of experience as something extra to brain activity is simply to misrepresent brain activity. In the end, there is only the physical activity of the brain, and experience is this brain activity.” This variant is often called reductive materialism. This says that science will eventually be able to describe all mind states in the same terms in which we describe brain states.

However, I would reply that this idea doesn’t make sense, since experiences must be defined as not being brain activity. This is because experience content is only specifiable through properties that are distinctly different from brains and brain activity. Indeed, if the mind were not distinctly different from the brain, we could never have come up with the distinct concept of ‘mind’.

Allow me to try and justify this response.

[Laird]

A belated note that Ian had shared this article mid last year in his thread Why Physicalism Is Wrong. There was some discussion in that thread. Not sure why the duplicate link warner didn't catch this!