Crumbling Physicalism - When Physical Became Synonym with “You’ve Got to Take This Seriously”

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• published: 08 Dec 2014
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What is the physical world? What qualifies as physical? Do non-physical entities exist? What is the scope of science? When it comes to phenomena and entities which are not directly measurable, how can we possibly discern what is real from what is not? From virtual particles, wave functions and black holes to hidden dimensions and parallel universes, modern science currently deals with a vast array of theoretical entities which seem to be nothing but our own conceptual abstractions, our own tools for describing those layers of reality which we cannot directly measure. In this video, I explore the question of what is physical in detail and the idea that physicalism may be nothing more than our desperate attempt to re-establish clearly defined boundaries after the fall of classical materialism. But with the advance of modern physics and the dissolution of those boundaries it looks like physicalism is crumbling before our eyes... Is it time for a radical change in perspective? Full script available here: http://crackingthenutshell.com/crumbling-physicalism-what-is-physical Summary: - Physicalism: the ontological thesis that everything is physical or that the real world consists only of physical entities - Physicalism vs materialism. Historical factors - Other associated metaphysical views and methodological doctrines: reductionism, causal closure, empiricism or atheism - What is physical? Is physical just all of that which we can directly measure with our instruments? Or does the term physical also extend to other theoretical entities which may not be directly measurable, but nevertheless entities which have more or less become accepted within mainstream science? - What qualifies as a measuring instrument, anyway? Is human consciousness a valid instrument? Is consciousness itself physical? - How about all those things we cannot measure directly but which can still produce consistent, indirect measureable effects? Are those things real? Are they physical? Are they natural? - The physical vs non-physical, the natural vs supernatural, or real vs not real discussion seems to be a waste of time - A great part of the problem stems from the fact that we all tend to get a bit too attached to creating clearly defined boundaries, to establishing too rigid categories of understanding - The terms physical and non-physical often mean very different things to each of us, depending on the world view we might identify the most with (e.g. idealism, physicalism, dualism) - Noam Chomsky’s quote - Not only we create unnecessarily rigid conceptual boundaries but we then proceed to equate these purely conceptual barriers with real existing barriers which we think divide ontologically distinct realities - Anthropologist Mary Douglass' quote - Dualistic trap. How can something as immaterial as mind interact with something as physical as the material body? How can a wave function, a mathematical abstraction operating in an abstract space, possibly have a real effect on the physical world? - Mainstream science subscribed to materialism, which has now evolved into physicalism / naturalism - As the definition of matter has become more and more ethereal, and as entities such as immaterial fields, space-time, virtual particles, black holes or parallel universes are being discussed within science as real existing entities, classical materialism has had to inevitably evolve into something which can potentially accommodate all sorts of weird abstract entities - Alan Wallace, Thomas Kuhn's quotes - ESP phenomena, mind-matter interaction, Dean Radin's quote - Mind-body problem, hard problem of consciousness. Consciousness, subjective experience, thoughts, emotions, intent… None of these seem to have any of the attributes of what we call a physical thing (such as charge, mass, location, momentum, etc) - Eliminative materialism, reductive physicalism, non-reductive physicalism, emergence - How about letting go of physicalism altogether? Abandoning all of its implicit assumptions. Time for a radical change? - Exploring the physicality of the quantum wave function - Exploring the physicality of virtual particles. Casimir effect. Zero point field - Examples show that the objectification, the conceptualisation, the physicalisation of reality is proving more and more elusive, as we dig deeper and deeper into the rabbit hole. Our definitions of physical and non-physical are so fuzzy that they are becoming irrelevant - Tom Campbell's thoughts. Operational functionality. What is real? Indirect and direct measurement of physical / non-physical phenomena - Nikola Tesla quote and final thoughts