Nonreductive Physicalism: Understanding Our Metaphysical Paradigm
Nonreductive Physicalism: Understanding Our Metaphysical Paradigm

Summary/Abstract: My purpose in this paper is to analyze the proposal of nonreductive physicalism (NRP) and to argue that this philosophical approach should be understood in terms of macrophysicalism, that is, emergentism. My claim is that this version of physicalism is a philosophical theory that allows us to understand the coherence and irreducibility of the different scientific approaches, from microphysics and chemistry to psychology and sociology, trying to explain the various levels of organization of our empirical world. In the first part I analyze the standard (that is, the functionalist)formulation of NRP, which claims that although the higher level facts metaphysically supervene on the facts of the lower levels, ultimately on the microphysical facts, they cannot be reduced to the latter because of their multiple realizability. I explain the kind of criticisms that in recent years this perspective has received about its capability to account for the causal irreducibility of the higher level properties, a problem which arises from the assumption of the metaphysical supervenience of the macro-properties on their microphysical realizers or conditions; an assumption that is plausibly an empirically false claim. Then, I introduce emergentism or macrophysicalism as a nonreductive physicalist proposal which claims that the higher-level properties cannot be reduced to their lower level bases because although they are metaphysically dependent on the latter, are not determined by these. Finally, I explain the downward causal influence that on this view the higher level properties should have on the lower causal processes.

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