Physicalism

Physicalism is a philosophical doctrine on the nature of reality, which affirms that what exists is exclusively physical, to which it even reduces the mental. Physicalism is a form of monism and is closely related to materialism.

The philosophy of mind is the philosophical branch that physicalism has dealt with the most. Referenced to the mind, most physicalists maintain that this is an epiphenomenon of a constraining physical system, devoid of entity or substance by itself. He ensures that the control of mental processes can be explained when science reaches sufficient development, from brain activity. This theory is opposed by some such as the philosopher Daniel C. Dennett, who supports free will despite his radical physicalism.

Dualism and subjective idealism are alternative positions to monism and physicalism. Dualism, unlike monism, affirms that there are two substances, the physical and the mental or spiritual, both with the same degree of reality. Subjective idealism, like the metaphysics proposed by George Berkeley, is the opposite of physicalism. It holds that there is no physical reality at all; all existing substance is spiritual or mental.

Applied to the methodology of science (methodological materialism or physicalism) it does not imply an ideological position but a working hypothesis. It means that we work with the observed phenomena as if they were the only reality, since we do not have the appropriate methodology to scientifically consider non-physical entities (eg see conceptual differentiation). Methodological physicalism is purely operational, neither affirming nor refuting a possible ontological physicalism.

Many 20th-century authors, particularly epistemologists and philosophers of science, prefer the name physicalism because it lacks both the emotional connotations of the word materialism and the historical constraints associated with it. It emphasizes the physical, be it matter or energy.

Like materialism, physicalism denies the existence of God and the soul. Some philosophers also deny free will, the ability to cause our behavior and even the very existence of subjective experiences (consciousness). The idea of "mind" it would then be wrong and the human brain would only be an objective body that would operate strictly according to certain physical laws. These physical laws and neurochemical reactions would be totally deterministic in the manner of classical Newtonian physics, determining what a person says and does in response to a stimulus.

This position in favor of a complete determinism of the "mental" it is popular in the physicalist philosophy of mind, which is a part of analytic philosophy. However, philosophers such as Steven Horst and Noam Chomsky and neuroscientists Gerald Edelman and Vilayanur Ramachandran have pointed out that scientific inquiry, which occurs in the natural sciences, does not embrace physicalism or the concept of "science" that characterizes the physicalist philosophy of mind.