Physicalism Quotes & Sayings

Naturalism is a methodological rather than a metaphysical view. It's because I am a naturalist, actually, that I am sceptical about physicalism. — Tim Crane

The only fully consistent alternative to belief in God, properly understood, is some version of "materialism" or "physicalism" or (to use the term most widely preferred at present) "naturalism"; and naturalism - the doctrine that there is nothing apart from the physical order, and certainly nothing supernatural - is an incorrigibly incoherent concept, and one that is ultimately indistinguishable from pure magical thinking. — David Bentley Hart

When we no longer look at an organic being as a savage looks at a ship, as at something wholly beyond his comprehension; when we regard every production of nature as one which has had a history; when we contemplate every complex structure and instinct as the summing up of many contrivances, each useful to the possessor, nearly in the same way as when we look at any great mechanical invention as the summing up of the labour, the experience, the reason, and even the blunders of numerous workmen; when we thus view each organic being, how far more interesting, I speak from experience, will the study of natural history become! — Charles Darwin

My plate is full; I dig that. And I can't be everywhere all the time, but my mind, heart and spirit has no bounds. — T.F. Hodge

A certain kind of methodologically-minded philosopher of science is quick to read off metaphysical conclusions from features of scientific practice. Chemists don't derive their laws from fundamental physics, so reductive physicalism must be false. Biologists refer to natural numbers in some of their explanations, so numbers must exist. I think that this kind of thing makes for bad philosophy. — David Papineau

The very use of the term "mental illness" (rather than, say, "neurosis", "insanity", "nervous breakdown", or other euphemisms) can be seen as an effort to move certain kinds of psychological distress into the biomedical realm. — Carl Elliott

In truth a clear-headed physicalist shouldn't be thinking any of these dualist thoughts. If pains are one and the same as C-fibres firing, then there really isn't any possibility of having 'one' without the 'other'. Once you properly appreciates physicalism, this dissociation should cease to appear possible - C-fibres with pains should strike you as no more possible than squares without rectangles. — David Papineau

Some may find comfort in reflecting that the distinction between an eliminative and an explicative physicalism is unreal. — Willard Van Orman Quine

If there is such a simple argument for physicalism, how come everybody hasn't always been a physicalist? That's a good question, and there is a good answer. The 'causal completeness of physics' wasn't widely accepted until recently. — David Papineau

The term physical is just kinda like an honorific word, kinda like the word 'real' when we say 'the real truth'. It doesn't add anything, it just says 'this is serious truth'. So to say that something is 'physical' today just means 'you gotta take this seriously'. — Noam Chomsky