Distinctions between materialism and physicalism
This in response to Paul Austin Murphy’s post on materialism and physicalism.
The Medium philosopher Paul Austin Murphy and I share an interest in questions about materialism, physicalism and competing belief systems relating to those topics. He is a philosopher, and I am not. In his post, in part responding to my questions and objections to some of his approach and positions, he helped clarify some important distinctions and pointed to a possible confusion on my part about the differences between the two terms. The distinction he makes is helpful and has helped me think through my ideas about physicalism.
I enjoy debate and discussing topics of mutual interest. I tried to be honest and respectful to Mr. Murphy in my responses, but I have clearly irritated him so he has declared our “debate” over. That’s too bad as I was finding it useful. So, this is not a debate but only reflections on what I find helpful and less helpful in Murphy’s post and ideas on the distinctions between materialism and physicalism.
It’s tempting to take on in detail Murphy’s earlier post where he discusses previous posts where I have discussed and defined physicalism. There are many examples of misrepresentation here and false statements. I’ll mention one. Here is a selection from that post:
“Baron then…
