Physicalism - Essay Example

Even living beings do not have any mental state of existence. Everything is either physical or happens on the physical. The worldview of physicalism is supported by past scientific proofs. In other words, many events in the history of mankind could not be substantiated by appeal to nonphysical entities or by assuming the existence of such entities. Contrary to this failure, scientific explanations have always succeeded in underscoring the physical properties of things. Therefore, it is only logical to infer that all nonmaterial conditions will fail and all physicalist accounts will prevail.

As a physicalist, I would now try to validate the aforementioned conjectures. Let us say for example, that everything is atomic. Making such an analogy immediately calls for substantiation. Is the piece of paper I am writing on atomic? If yes, then how does it exist? What I am using is a piece of paper and not any kind of atom. But the thesis of physicalism counters this argument by claiming that the piece of paper, if it exists in the real world (which it does), is made of countless atoms. Hence, the fundamental elements of any matter are physical, or can be represented in purely physical vocabulary, by using the conceptual resources of physics.

The earlier example I chose concerned an inanimate object. But what if I consider living organisms? For a layman, it is quite natural to hold the view that a human being does have mental capacities just as much as physical ones. In the light of physicalism, the 2nd premise is more substantial than the 1st one. If I claim that Andy Hartwood is the only person to reside in the house next door, it does not allow me to draw the conclusion that Robert McLean does not live in the same house. What it implies is that if I happen to mentally substitute Andy Hartwood with Robert McLean, there must be some physical resemblance between both the entities.

In other words, what our mind conceives is