Talk:Physicalism

Great material here, but desperately needs to be rewritten to sound more like an encyclopedia article and less like a lecture. Wesley 20:33 Sep 18, 2002 (UTC)

Also needs to be basically completely rewritten taking recent (i.e. last 20 years) developments into account: the current text is basically discussing reductive physicalism, which is only one of the two main branches of physicalist thought (the other, unsurprisingly, being nonreductive physicalism), and makes it sound as if reductionism is synonymous with physicalism. I may attempt to begin a rewrite at some point, but it's a major project; there've been quite a few entire books on the subject. --Delirium 07:31 9 Jul 2003 (UTC)

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Getting this page in order

Since a gigantic chunk of Larry's Text had been sitting fallow on this page for two years, attracting little to no edits, I decided to be bold and remove it. The sheer size of the editing project was enough to turn anyone away, including me. Plus, the text itself was entirely un-encyclopediac, being full of "What, that didn't make sense? Let me explain it again" and whatnot.

So here's my suggestion: let's start start from the first paragraph of Larry's text and expand from there organically, in our own words. I have retained Larry's Text on this subject in Talk:Physicalism/LT, so we can still use it as source material. I feel that this will produce a much more useful and readable article. If anyone disagrees, please speak up! -Adam Conover 02:58, Mar 27, 2004 (UTC)

I agree with your decision. I added a notice at the article so that people can know there is a huge chunk of text that can be used. -- Taku 03:11, Mar 27, 2004 (UTC)

Thank you, that's good to know. I also agree with your renaming of the sub-page. Man, we still have a lot of work to do, though... first order of business below. Adam Conover 03:13, Mar 27, 2004 (UTC)

Non-reductive physicalism?

As this article stands it's currently only considering reductive physicalism. Even though I'm writing my senior thesis on this topic, I've always been frustrated by question of whether or not there's a viable non-reductive form of physicalism. If so, could someone give an outline of it on the article? Adam Conover 03:13, Mar 27, 2004 (UTC)

Physicalism and Subjective Idealism - What is the Difference?

I am a little unclear on the precise difference between physicalism and subjective idealism. Could it be that the only difference is subjective labels used? Both seem to claim that the world is made of one kind of substance, and simply give difference names for this substance. Different labels are not clear evidence of an actual difference.

So, what is the difference between the two? --Michael V.

Michael -- I think your characterization of subjective idealism is apt. I agree that the distinction seems as though it may be meaningless -- if there's only one kind of things, what's the difference between saying everything is made out of stuff A or made out of stuff B? Still, I would say that that's a meta-position about these two positions, and is thus one we don't have approach yet.

However, I would be wary saying that subjective idealism is the opposite of physicalism, because dualism is also the opposite of physicalism in a sense -- perhaps "another view opposed to physicalism"? — Adam Conover † 16:39, Apr 10, 2004 (UTC)