The Good Place

This is entirely false. Materialism has a positive definition, and is in no way “simply” a word that combines other positions stating that immaterialism cannot describe all of reality.

I agree, and that is what I was trying to convey. I was pointing out to Malf that I didn't think Sciborg was implying that Immaterialism doesn't have a positive definition (i.e. that it wasn't simply "not Materialism"). And I switched his words around to make this clear, because we also wouldn't say that Materialism doesn't have a positive definition and is simply "not Immaterialism".  

Linda

Absolute metaphysical atheists subscribe to some form of Physicalism, which explicitly denies the existence of non-physical beings.

Quoted from: https://www.philosophybasics.com/branch_atheism.html

That particular version would deny the existence not just of a deity/deities, but of humans too. Seems a little extreme.

That particular version would deny the existence not just of a deity/deities, but of humans too. Seems a little extreme.

Could be seen as extreme, but so is the belief there are deity(ies) and non corporeal humans. Show me either.

Several religions, including Confucianism, Taoism, Jainism and some varieties of Buddhism, either do not include belief in a personal god as a tenet of the religion, 

Yet nobody suggests that it’s no longer science or physics or even physicalism, which all seem to be flexible enough to subsume any new discoveries (as you pointed out)..

Linda

First, let me say that your post was insightful and represents the current state of affairs, except;
there a a lot of folks who firmly declare that physicalism is terribly wrong as a metaphysical stance.  It survives by being flexible to the extent of silliness.

The new discovery - not assimilated - is that  as established math logic processes, formal information and linguistics describe natural patterns that can be used to explicate reality, as to their causal powers.  Assuming these probabilistic and meaning related sciences as being part of the physical environment is not rational.

https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.100...4-1150-8_2

 Our world is technological. According to a longstanding philosophical tradition, the conceptual core of technology can be understood as being based on the relation between two main philosophical categories: the subject and the object (e.g. the relation between ‘culture’ and ‘nature’). This tradition mainly conceives technology as a set of means that can be used to control and manipulate nature (the object), in order to achieve some end (culture) established by human beings (the subject). Consequent to the ICT revolution, this scenario must now be devised in terms of an informational world or environment. This requires a change of paradigm in the study of technology and in the comprehension of our world that displaces the presumed ‘central’ role of the subject. This happens in ways and for motives that have nothing to do with the philosophical hitches that ensue from the post-modern relativistic or nihilistic death of the subject. In the present chapter, we expound the meaning of this scenario, by focusing our attention upon the informational nature of the environment in which we live and act.

Law, business, science methodology and culture have all adapted to this new context and if you ask anyone, "is a VR game & reality the same", they know V(irtual)R(eality) is real information but not natural in the physical environment.

First, let me say that your post was insightful and represents the current state of affairs, except;
there a a lot of folks who firmly declare that physicalism is terribly wrong as a metaphysical stance.  It survives by being flexible to the extent of silliness.

The new discovery - not assimilated - is that  as established math logic processes, formal information and linguistics describe natural patterns that can be used to explicate reality, as to their causal powers.  Assuming these probabilistic and meaning related sciences as being part of the physical environment is not rational.

https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.100...4-1150-8_2


Law, business, science methodology and culture have all adapted to this new context and if you ask anyone, "is a VR game & reality the same", they know V(irtual)R(eality) is real information but not natural in the physical environment.

Well, I don't have any particular horse in this race. And I suspect, given that you, among others, claim that enfolding new findings into Physicalism can become silly, that this demonstrates that science can't be populated by Reductionist Materialists, as many here like to rant about. If Materialism and Physicalism are meant to be fairly resilient to new findings, the plethora of new and weird findings incorporated into science would eliminate those metaphysics in practice.

Can you give me an example of where you see the difference? Can you give an example of two identical physical states (that is, they would have the identical description if we confine ourselves to Physicalism) which would be described as two different states under Information?

Linda

That particular version would deny the existence not just of a deity/deities, but of humans too. Seems a little extreme.

I wonder though what it means to say something is "physical"?

Because dualism would say there are two kinds of "substance", the subtle body or soul stuff vs the fleshy body. 

I think this is where things get dicey and it might be more valuable to ask who believes in Determinism, Mechanistic/Physical Closure, Irreducible Consciousness, and other descriptors that are of a different axis than Physical/Non-physical.

For example if someone says everything is "physical" but not wholly described by quantitative means, does that include souls, God, etc? Does it include Mathematics?

I wonder though what it means to say something is "physical"?

I think people here are using physical in two different senses. One assumes that physics is concerned with the material world of matter and energy. The other assumes that physics would also include non-material things, provided that they obeyed natural laws and could therefore be studied by scientific methods.

I think the latter is potentially confusing, because most people think of the scope of physics as it is now. Maybe it would be better to call the second thing "naturalism". Though Wikipedia says "Some philosophers equate naturalism with materialism", so maybe it needs to be "NNM naturalism" (not necessarily materialistic).

There no need to worry that making this distinction will spoil the fun, because there's still plenty of scope to argue about what "material" means.

Back on the topic of the show, I watched some of the first season and quite liked it but my wife didn't find it exciting enough to keep watching. I was proud of myself though, because I guessed after the first episode that there'd be a twist where she's not actually in heaven. I guessed it would be influenced by Sartre's play No Exit (that has the quote "no need for red hot pokers - hell is other people").

Then I checked the wiki for the season 1 finale and found they were in hell! My guess was that it would really be a purgatory so she learns to be better, and from reading the plot summaries it seems to have gone in that direction.

I wonder though what it means to say something is "physical"?

Because dualism would say there are two kinds of "substance", the subtle body or soul stuff vs the fleshy body. 

I think this is where things get dicey and it might be more valuable to ask who believes in Determinism, Mechanistic/Physical Closure, Irreducible Consciousness, and other descriptors that are of a different axis than Physical/Non-physical.

For example if someone says everything is "physical" but not wholly described by quantitative means, does that include souls, God, etc? Does it include Mathematics?

I think people here are using physical in two different senses. One assumes that physics is concerned with the material world of matter and energy. The other assumes that physics would also include non-material things, provided that they obeyed natural laws and could therefore be studied by scientific methods.

I think the latter is potentially confusing, because most people think of the scope of physics as it is now. Maybe it would be better to call the second thing  "naturalism". Though Wikipedia says "Some philosophers equate naturalism with materialism", so maybe it needs to be "NNM naturalism" (not necessarily materialistic).

There no need to worry that making this distinction will spoil the fun, because there's still plenty of scope to argue about what "material" means.

From the site. Kant's quote is rather insightful.

A huge subject broken down into manageable chunks

Random Quote of the Day: “Metaphysics is a dark ocean without shores or lighthouse, strewn with many a philosophic wreck” – Immanuel Kant

Types of Physicalism
 

Introduction

Physicalism (also known as Materialistic Monism - see the sections on Materialism and Monism) is the philosophical position that everything which exists is no more extensive than its physical properties, and that the only existing substance is physical. Therefore, it argues, the mind is a purely physical construct, and will eventually be explained entirely by physical theory, as it continues to evolve. With the huge strides in science in the 20th Century (especially in atomic theory, evolution, neuroscience and computer technology), Physicalism of various types (see below) has become the dominant doctrine in the Mind/Body argument (see the section on Philosophy of Mind).
The term "physicalism" was first coined by the Austrian philosopher Otto Neurath (1882 - 1945) in the early 20th Century. In some ways, the term "physicalism" is a preferable one to the closely related concept of Materialism because it has evolved with the physical sciences to incorporate far more sophisticated notions of physicality than just matter, for example wave/particle relationships (duality) and non-material forces produced by particles. Physicalism can also be considered a variety of Naturalism (the belief that nature is all that exists, and that all things supernatural therefore do not exist).
An important concept within Physicalism is that of supervenience, which is the idea that higher levels of existence are dependent on lower levels, such that there can only be a change in the higher level if there is also a change in the lower level (the higher level is said to supervene on the lower level).
Objections to Physicalism point out the apparent contradiction of the existence of qualia (properties of sensory experiences, or "the way things seem to us") in an entirely physical world (also known as the knowledge argument). Hempel's Dilemma (propounded by the German philosopher Carl Hempel) attacks how Physicalism is defined: if, for instance, one defines Physicalism as the belief that the universe is composed of everything known by physics, one can point out that physics cannot describe how the mind functions; if Physicalism is defined as anything which may be described by physics in the future, then one is really saying nothing. Against this, it can be argued that many examples of previously dualistic concepts are being eroded by continuous scientific progress, and that the complete physical basis of the mind will almost certainly be known sometime in the future.

Types of Physicalism

There are two main categories of Physicalism, Reductive and Non-Reductive:

• Reductive Physicalism, which asserts that all mental states and properties can be, or will eventually be, explained by scientific accounts of physiological processes and states, has been the most popular form during the 20th Century.
  There are four main types:
  
  • Behaviourism, which holds that mental states are just descriptions of observable behavior and that such behaviors can be described scientifically without recourse either to internal physiological events or to hypothetical constructs such as the mind.
    
  • Type Identity Theory (also known as Type Physicalism), which holds that various kinds of mental states are identical to certain kinds, or types, of physical states of the brain.
    
  • Token Identity Theory, which holds that particular instances of mental states are identical to particular instances of physical states of the brain.
    
  • Functionalism, which holds that mental states (beliefs, desires, being in pain, etc.) are constituted solely by their functional role (the causal relations of mental states to other mental states, sensory inputs, and behavioral outputs), and can be characterized in terms of non-mental functional properties. It further asserts that mental states are multiply realizable, meaning that they can be sufficiently explained without taking into account the underlying physical medium (e.g. the brain, neurons, etc.) so that they can be realized in multiple ways, including, theoretically at least, within non-biological systems such as computers.
    
• [size=undefined]Non-Reductive Physicalism, which argues that, although the brain is all there is to the mind, the predicates and vocabulary used in mental descriptions and explanations cannot be reduced to the language and lower-level explanations of physical science. Thus, mental states supervene (depend) on physical states, and there can be no change in the mental without some change in the physical, but they are not reducible to them.
  There are three main types:[/size]
  • Anomalous Monism, which states that mental events are identical with physical events, but that the mental is anomalous i.e. these mental events are perfectly real, and identical with (some) physical matter, but not regulated by strict physical laws. Therefore, all mental things are physical, but not all physical things are necessarily mental. This doctrine was first proposed by Donald Davidson in the 1970s.
    
  • Emergentism, which involves a layered view of nature, with the layers arranged in terms of increasing complexity, each corresponding to its own special science.
    
  • Eliminativism (or Eliminative Materialism), which holds that people's common-sense understanding of the mind ("folk psychology") is hopelessly flawed, and will eventually be replaced (eliminated) by an alternative, usually taken to be neuroscience.
    
• https://www.philosophybasics.com/branch_...alism.html
  

I think people here are using physical in two different senses. One assumes that physics is concerned with the material world of matter and energy. The other assumes that physics would also include non-material things, provided that they obeyed natural laws and could therefore be studied by scientific methods.

I think the latter is potentially confusing, because most people think of the scope of physics as it is now. Maybe it would be better to call the second thing  "naturalism". Though Wikipedia says "Some philosophers equate naturalism with materialism", so maybe it needs to be "NNM naturalism" (not necessarily materialistic).

There no need to worry that making this distinction will spoil the fun, because there's still plenty of scope to argue about what "material" means.

Yeah I was thinking about this myself. Usually "Physicalism" is a stand-in for the idea that the fundamental Ground of reality is energy, forces, and some laws. Naturalism is usually used in the same way, but it's broader depending on who you ask - the take away is usually that everything known through our senses in an expressible consensus is under this umbrella. So you could, as I understand it, have "Liberal Naturalism" as a world that is in accordance with how Physicalism is usually defined but adds consciousness as irreducible.

I think this is all useful for broad strokes, and possibly decided which authors you might want to read, but the more one thinks about it one can see a variety of cross-overs in the "isms".

Is an entity made of any particular substance merely it's relation to other entities such as atoms and virtual particles, or going up to other chemicals/other cells/other organisms? Does it have some inner essence, some properties that allow it to exist in causal relations with other entities?

You could organize around a different set of concerns that usually done in philosophy and potentially have certain materialists and idealists closer to each other than others of their general metaphysical "ism"...or so it seems at first glance?