Stoljar, Baltimore, and Strawson on Physicalism
Stoljar, Baltimore, and Strawson on Physicalism

Summary/Abstract: I argue that Baltimore’s criticism of Stoljar’s twin-physics world is bothwrong, insofar as I think panpsychism can be intuitively construed as a form of physicalism; and right, insofar as it’s true that Stoljar can’t have it both ways in regards to his treatment of via negativa. In the case of the former, I consider Strawson’s (2008) argument to the effect that “real physicalism” actually entails panpsychism. In the case of the latter, I argue, as does Stoljar, that via negativa is a bad strategy for formulating the thesis of physicalism. More controversially, however, I briefly argue that via negativa is at the heart of all widely held formulations of physicalism albeit implicitly. In that sense, I think Stoljar is actually correct in thinking that that there is no version of physicalism that is both true and substantive (i.e., non-trivially true).

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