Does physicalism need fixing?

Abstract

1. Physicalism is the thesis that everything that exists is just what a true and complete physics would say exists. Crane argues that the physical facts at this world cannot be systematically connected to, and thus fix, all the mental facts unless there are laws relating such facts to each other. But since such laws would not be part even of a true and complete physics, they will not be physical facts. Therefore, physicalism is false. Pettit has replied that mental facts can be systematically connected to physical facts without being related by laws. As a parallel, following David Lewis ([5], p. 14), he suggests that facts about configurations of dots can be systematically connected to and thereby fix, but in a nonlawlike way, facts about configurations of shapes. (Think of how the shapes presented in newspaper photographs are formed from patterns of ink dots). However, a simple variant on Crane's argumentative strategy can meet this new spin on physicalism. Crane can reply that in both the mentalphysical and the dot-shape cases there is a hidden assumption. To take the latter case, what must be assumed is that there are necessary facts of the form: if certain facts about configurations of dots obtain, then certain facts about configurations of shapes obtain. Carrying the parallel back to the mental-physical case, Crane can reply that physicalism makes a hidden assumption, namely that there are necessary facts of the form: if certain physical facts obtain, then certain mental facts obtain. So it is inessential to Crane's argument whether physicalism must assume that mental and physical facts are connected by laws and a fortiori whether the sorts of systematic connection Pettit cites are themselves laws. Crane need only be right in claiming that the necessary facts which physicalism must assume are not physical facts. And it seems that they are not. In his [7] Pettit does not challenge Crane's original assumption that laws relating mental and physical facts are not physical facts. And the above necessary facts connecting physical and mental facts no more appear to be physical facts than these laws do. In both cases we are concerned with certain kinds of systematic connections between the mental and the physi-