Metaphysics · The fundamental nature of reality

Physicalism

Everything is physical or fully determined by the physical.

What it claims

Physicalism holds that reality contains no fundamental addition beyond the physical world and its organization. A familiar formulation uses supervenience: fixing all physical facts fixes all other facts, including mental facts. This opposes a separate mental substance, irreducible nonphysical phenomenal properties, and the idealist claim that matter depends fundamentally on mind.

Nearby positions

Key thinkers

U. T. Place · J. J. C. Smart · David Lewis · Jaegwon Kim · David Papineau