Reality and the Physical

Abstract

Chapter 5 affirmed the intrinsic reality of our own conscious states and their properties. Chapter 6 asks, about all sorts of physical objects and states, whether they are intrinsically real, and if so, how. Section 6.1 of Chapter 6 traces the development, in modern science and philosophy since 1600 or so, of three schools of thought about the ontological status of physical objects and states, which are then examined more thoroughly in the three succeeding parts of the chapter. Section 6.2 is about physical realism, which ascribes intrinsic reality to physical objects and physical states without requiring any involvement of consciousness in them. That is contrary to arguments in section 5.5.2 of Chapter 5 of this book, and a fuller set of arguments for not doing it are given here. Section 6.3 is about idealism, in a version that regards bodies as merely intentional objects of representations or perceptions. It is an occasionalist theistic version according to which God causes us to have perceptions conforming to “laws of nature” that we are able to learn. Section 6.4 is about panpsychism, which, as defined here, holds that intrinsic reality belongs only to things that are conscious, or have at least something like consciousness. It is more friendly to physicalism than is idealism. Thus far, however, there is little prospect of its delivering a persuasive case for the “causal closure of the physical” so desired by physicalists.