why can't we experience the world as it is in itself? — Noble Dust
The 2nd time you use "physical" above do you mean physical as in "an object of physics" like you do the 1st time you used the word? Because physical can mean different things — bloodninja
Fundamental to what? Terms are defined in the context of specific theories or models. So, if such a model or theory fails to give us something good, then some other might. — Πετροκότσυφας
I don't know; maybe we can; but the question is whether we can know that we can; and I'd have to say 'no' to that. — Janus
If things which cannot be understood in terms of physics are non-physical, then animals must be non-physical, since biology cannot be reduced to physics. Also what do you think is meant when it is said that things are immaterial? — Janus
Obviously, someone who thinks that this is meaningful and true, would also hold that biology is reducible to physics. — Πετροκότσυφας
Naturalism, in at least one rough sense, is the claim that the entire world may be described and explained using the laws of nature, in other words, that all phenomena are natural phenomena. This leaves open the question of what is 'natural', but one common understanding of the claim is that everything in the world is ultimately explicable in the terms of physics. This is known as reductive physicalism. However, this type of physicalism in its turn leaves open the question of what we are to consider as the proper terms of physics. There seem to be two options here, and these options form the horns of Hempel's dilemma, because neither seems satisfactory.
On the one hand, we may define the physical as whatever is currently explained by our best physical theories, e.g., quantum mechanics, general relativity. Though many would find this definition unsatisfactory, some would accept that we have at least a general understanding of the physical based on these theories, and can use them to assess what is physical and what is not. And therein lies the rub, as a worked-out explanation of mentality currently lies outside the scope of such theories.
On the other hand, if we say that some future, "ideal" physics is what is meant, then the claim is rather empty, for we have no idea of what this means. The "ideal" physics may even come to define what we think of as mental as part of the physical world. In effect, physicalism by this second account becomes the circular claim that all phenomena are explicable in terms of physics because physics properly defined is whatever explains all phenomena.
What kind of existence do numbers, shapes and ideas have outside our thinking them, and their temporal and spatial instantiations in nature? — Janus
On the one hand, we may define the physical as whatever is currently explained by our best physical theories, e.g., quantum mechanics, general relativity. Though many would find this definition unsatisfactory, some would accept that we have at least a general understanding of the physical based on these theories, and can use them to assess what is physical and what is not. And therein lies the rub, as a worked-out explanation of mentality currently lies outside the scope of such theories.
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