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I have asserted many times here that physicalism as degraded into an undecidable question, and I would like to see how strong my understanding is.

It seems to me that whenever we approach the boundary of what should be considered physical, it retreats, without those insistent on physicalism ever having to admit any new limitation on what the new boundaries are.

We accepted that there is an absolute limitation on how well we can apply any physical law. And we declared that physics... Previous generations would have declare that mysticism (and quite a few since, have, actually, to the resounding dismissive moans of the literati.)

If an angel came up to someone and demonstrated his powers, a modern man is just as likely to assume they are some kind of advanced alien, rather than an angel. Or we will anthropologically and psychologically explain why they are the 'cause' of the mythology of angels, like in Arthur Clarkes "Childhood's End."

So, is there something that we could imagine having no physical explanation? Is physical well-defined enough to even have boundaries? If not, why ask questions about it?

Direct violations of existing paradigms don't count. We all know what happens when you break a physical law -- the law changes. What is really physically impossible (for you)?

  • Classical trap -> having technology does not mean understanding it, understanding it does not mean being able to create it. Difference between advanced alien and Angel is simple. Advanced alien is >advancing< through universe (getting new technologies and losing old ones) while Angel in common sense should be close to the complete picture of reality >thus< having no advances in simple sense. So the difference between angel and alien is difference between human and god. In their overall scope. They are similar yes, but what isn't? – Asphir Dom Nov 10 '14 at 18:39
  • Right, so if you already accept the non-physical, you need no boundary around the physical. And if you do not accept the non-physical, you do not need a boundary around the physical. To me this is just another way of saying there is no question, just meaningless bias. What is the contribution? –  Nov 10 '14 at 19:25
  • The physical is, trivially, what is studied by physics. The real question then is: what is actually studied by physics? This question is a lot easier to answer. – user132181 Nov 10 '14 at 20:21
  • So before anyone studied it, there was nothing physical? Your real name isn't Berkeley by any chance... –  Nov 10 '14 at 21:09
  • @jobermark well yes I guess that's true: If physics is what we study, then it's an excercise in finding the "unknown unknowns". Before physics was studied, basic physics now would have been considered witchcraft or magic. It's still the case in a way. eg. Einstein predicted entangled photons (2 x photons which act the same way regardless of their location) and thought it odd so he called it "spooky interaction". It's since been demonsstrated. – user2808054 Nov 11 '14 at 10:00
  • @jobermark There is no paradox of blahblah here. Physical is the one which can be perceived. It is perception. It does have boundaries, but unlikely it has limits. Even here on Earth we have huge differences in perception. So we >DO< have real angels here -- the beings with super high/clear perception compare to average JOE PHD. Simple. You maybe want to see clearly where is the border of your perception? PS: most important part of perception is Imagination. Which is also physical >>>BTW. – Asphir Dom Nov 11 '14 at 15:54
  • @AsphirDom I personally, might consider it physical, but then I would not be a physicalist, or I would have to have a very fancy idea of imagination, which I would hate. I am talking about whether the classical distinction here has eroded too much to be helpful, not whether or not I personally fall on one side or the other. The reason I find it not helpful is that I do come down on both sides, (with you, I think, to the degree I feel I understand you.) –  Nov 12 '14 at 18:44

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You're right, defining the physical properly is not an easy task.

There are two types of approaches: you can start a priori by assuming some defining characterisics -- among the various propositions, being located in space-time, having only objective properties independent from the mental, being structural or amenable to mathematical description, being constituted by ponctual entities...

The risk with this approach is ending up assuming that what physicists study is not physical after all. Many past intuitions on the physical are now known to be false (fundamental particles are not perfectly localised or impenetrable, their evolution is not strictly predictable, ...).

Or you can define the physical a posteriori: the physical is whatever physicists say it is, or whatever an ideal physics would say it is. The problem is: in the first case, your conception will be superseded as soon as new theories are discovered. In the second case, your conception might render physicalism vacuous. Of course everything is physical if "physical" is everything that is addressed by an ideal "theory of everything". This conception is not very informative. Or perhaps you have to say more about what theorising is about and what is admissible in physics (then you introduce some a priori characterisics). I suppose the argument you develop in your question is directed against this brand of physicalism, which seems not far from a vacuous position.

Although no approach is devoid of difficulties, there are arguments on each side and attempts to overcome these difficulties. You'll find an interesting, open access book chapter on the topic (from which I took my inspiration) for more detail and counterarguments on each sides: http://www.philipgoffphilosophy.com/publications.html (chapter 3)

Quentin Ruyant
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  • These directions both set a minimum and not a maximum -- i.e. a basis and not a boundary. Many people seem convinced 'everything is physical' in a way that is not just a definition of 'everything', so neither of these can be such a person's operational definition of 'physical'. –  Nov 10 '14 at 17:42
  • I edited my answer before I saw your comment. I agree for a posteriori approaches, not for a priori, which clearly set a boundary (e.g. being localised). – Quentin Ruyant Nov 10 '14 at 17:57
  • But fields are not localised, and neither are Schroedinger distributions. So we have moved on from there, either at Maxwell or at Copenhagen. And we decided that was just fine. Same for point particles, etc. The only thing left is 'independent from the mental'. But no measurement or observation can be independent of eventually becoming mental, or we would not be observing it. So, if these are boundaries, they get crossed. –  Nov 10 '14 at 18:18
  • I guess I skipped over mathematizability. But I reject that as a criterion for physicality, because I think we find math to predict things, we do not just happen to notice that we have math that predicts things. And if we didn't find any, we would not think "Oh, that must not be physical" we would think "Gee, we're stupid." –  Nov 10 '14 at 23:59
  • I agree for localisation of fields (that was one of my point). One important aspect is: do not expect physicalism to be an empirical position, it's a pure metaphysical one. – Quentin Ruyant Nov 11 '14 at 00:20
  • That no measurement is independent on the mental does not imply that what we measure is not. Nothing ever proves that our objects are independent and you can be an idealist or a solipsist if you like, but that's nothing more than traditional skepticism. The point is not what you can prove or not, but what is reasonable to believe. It's metaphysics. – Quentin Ruyant Nov 11 '14 at 00:24
  • The same goes for mathematics: a physicalist will say "gee we are stupid", an emergentist will say "this is a case of irreducibility"... Now what good metaphysical arguments do they have? Are their position consistent? Plausible? Fruitful for scientific inquiry? – Quentin Ruyant Nov 11 '14 at 00:32
  • If any philosophical position should be required to be empirically validated, it is the one that insists everything must ultimately be empirically validated. People who insist science covers everything, eventually, especially those for whom science requires 'falsifiability' should be able to say what they would accept as proof they are wrong. –  Nov 11 '14 at 04:06
  • Being a physicalist and being an empiricist in the strong sense you're describing are two different things. Few people entertain the view that science covers everything and is clearly distinct from philosophy since the demise of logical empiricism (who held such views) in the mid-20th century. Today's physicalists are happy to say they're doing metaphysics, not science. – Quentin Ruyant Nov 11 '14 at 08:54
  • That is just evasive. If everything is physical, physics encompasses everything, even if its task is not in principle able to ever be completed. So these are not "two different things". Either there is nothing purely outside the purvey of all of science, or something is not physical. Metaphysics may not be science, but that is not germane to the question, exactly because it is this particular metaphysical position being addressed. –  Nov 11 '14 at 09:27
  • "Everything is physical" and "Every claim is empirically testable" are very different things. Physicalists might think that an ideal science with unlimited ressources could in principle answer any question. That doesn't mean that they must tell, for whatever they say, how exactly they would prove that empirically. They just leave that to future (or ideal) science, and they'll try to convince you with philosophical arguments in the meantime. – Quentin Ruyant Nov 11 '14 at 10:07
  • Which does not mean that their position is inconsistent. – Quentin Ruyant Nov 11 '14 at 10:08
  • Plus a priori physicalism does not entail at all that every claim is empirically testable. "Physical" (=non mental for example) does not a priori mean "empirically knowable". Let me move the discussion to a chat if you don't mind. – Quentin Ruyant Nov 11 '14 at 10:12
  • Let us [continue this discussion in chat](http://chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/18556/discussion-between-quen-tin-and-jobermark). – Quentin Ruyant Nov 11 '14 at 10:12
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I think physicalism is most parsimoniously understood as an alternative to a model where there is a fundamental intelligence of some sort. For example, it rejects both the mental sphere of Cartesian dualism and the claim that reality is a dream of Vishnu.

In particular, this means that things are fundamentally composed of simple components that interact with each other via mathematical rules rather than social ones.

Now, one can object and say that one can imagine an entire continuum from simple equations based off of a tiny number of local states through simple probability distributions and then complex contingent ones based on sizable numbers of variables to something indistinguishable from thoughts of intelligent beings. Indeed! But the physicalist is committed to a vague statement of nothing going too far up that hierarchy--if it seems like it does, the physicalist is committed to the idea that it is composed of simpler parts with simpler interactions.

Exactly where that boundary lies is not, at present, all that important, as we haven't demonstrated that there is anything whose most fundamental behavior is terribly complex. (All sorts of emergent behaviors are terribly complex, of course.)

Rex Kerr
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  • Comments are not for extended discussion; this conversation has been [moved to chat](http://chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/18635/discussion-on-answer-by-rex-kerr-is-there-a-boundary-on-physical). – stoicfury Nov 14 '14 at 03:06
  • @stoicfury - It would be nice if we got the option a little sooner to do the move so you didn't have to keep doing it manually. – Rex Kerr Nov 14 '14 at 04:45
  • I **KNOW** right? It gets auto-flagged at 20 comments, then I can one-click "move comments to chat" but then I have to delete every comment by hand, which is sort of like playing minesweeper with the little red x right next to the edit link. 406 deletions and counting... – stoicfury Nov 14 '14 at 18:01
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The transition from the common use of "materialism" to "physicalism" represents a recognition that the boundaries of the former are too narrow to accommodate what is now accepted about the nature of the world. I don't see a good reason to think that it is impossible that we cannot have a similar transition from physicalism to some x-alism if we were to conclude that there are some non-physical things that are none the less real (I don't know of any such things, but 17th century scientists/philosophers didn't now about quantum fields either).

Materialism, especially when differentiated from physicalism, tends to connote the idea that all that there is is matter moving around. Nowadays we consider various kinds of non-matter stuff -- energy, momentum, quantum fields... as being real. These non-material things are sufficiently different from (the conception of) "matter" as used by the early materialists and thus a new term is required. I can't rule out the possibility that in the future there will be some other kind of stuff, sufficiently different from what we currently accept lives under the term physical, that we'll again need to construct a new category. Of course I can't imagine what such stuff would be. Just poking around on the web I've found the mathematical universe hypothesis by Max Tegmark -- which has in it the idea that mathematics is "really real". If that hypothesis were to pan out, then one might reasonably say that physcialism missed the mark. There are probably other ways that one could immesh the laws of physics, or even mathematics itself, in with the the structure of the universe such that it would not be precise to describe these ontologies as being strictly physical.

Dave
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This is a stronger version of @Dave's answer. It is given elsewhere, but it convinces me on this issue. There is a way to strip 'physics' off of this position that maintains the position, and that is to retreat to a weaker, but adequate position. Dave did not capture the position, but I buy this:

https://philosophy.stackexchange.com/a/18074/9166

What I was looking for (had I known) is the decoding of physicalism as reductivist monism, as opposed to a bias against any specific wasteful trend, or an attachment to actual physics as a basis for judging acceptable notions.

Sorry if, in retrospect that makes the question quite badly put.

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