Stoljar’s Dilemma and Three Conceptions of the Physical: A Defence of the Via Negativa

Erkenntnis 81 (2):201-229 (2016)
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Abstract

Physicalism is the thesis that everything is physical. But what does it mean to say that everything is physical? Daniel Stoljar has recently argued that no account of the physical is available which allows for a formulation of physicalism that is both possibly true and deserving of the name. As against this claim, I argue that a version of the via negativa—roughly, the view that the physical is to be characterised in terms of the nonmental—provides just such an account.

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Raphael Fiorese
Monash University

Citations of this work

Physical Constants as Identifiers of Modern Universal Laws of Nature.Orli Dahan - 2020 - Organon F: Medzinárodný Časopis Pre Analytickú Filozofiu 27 (3):325-345.
The nature of the physical and the meaning of physicalism.Mahmoud Jalloh - 2023 - Theoria. An International Journal for Theory, History and Foundations of Science 38 (2):205-223.

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