Naturalism Without Metaphysics PDF

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3 Naturalism without metaphysics

John Collins
Our mind is fighting with all its strength against recognising that the road to
understanding passes out of the intuitable.
Heisenberg (1976/1983, 134)
1 Introduction
On a standard view, naturalism is foremost an ontological or metaphysical doc-
trine about what there ultimately is as specified by some notion of ‘basic science’.
Thus, a great number of debates over the last fifty years or so, especially in the
philosophy of mind, have centred on how, if at all, a range of properties appar-
ently essential to a legitimate mode of discourse may be reduced or otherwise
explicated (naturalized) in terms of the notions allowed by the relevant conception
of ‘basic science’. To be a naturalist in this sense is to insist that what is really real
can ultimately be accounted for by the basic science. In opposition, a range of
diverse positions have sought autonomy for the relevant discourse. I shall reject
this metaphysical notion of naturalism and with it the seemingly compelling
demand to ‘naturalize’. I shall not reject naturalism, though. To be a naturalist
on my favoured conception is simply to take one’s lead from the relevant ongoing
empirical inquiry. No metaphysical quandaries here arise or animate the nat-
uralism save for those that arise in the interpretation of the relevant theories. As
we shall see, such a timid approach has significant consequences.
I shall attempt nothing approaching a survey of all the positions that have
sailed under the flag of naturalism and its cognates.1 Sticking to the contemporary
debates, I shall articulate and defend, after Chomsky (2000), a version of metho-
dological naturalism, which, as indicated, stands against any brand of metaphysical
naturalism worth the name; that is, in my proprietary sense of the term, nat-
uralism is an antimetaphysical doctrine, which returns the notion to something like
its traditional sense. The position will be spelt out by a consideration of Chomsky’s
claim that the ‘mind/body problem’ is unformulatable because we have no clear
1 See Kitcher 1992 and Stoljar 2010.

86 John Collins
sense of what bodies are, and Hempel’s similar claim that no substantive content
can be given to the notion of the physical, although my arguments will depart from
both Chomsky’s and Hempel’s considerations. Due to space, I shall have little to
say about the positive characterization of naturalism as a purely methodological
doctrine, but will instead focus on the problems for metaphysical naturalism. The
methodological stance will thus be supported negatively
2 Metaphysical naturalism
The metaphysical thesis that will be my target, most often goes under the label of
materialism or physicalism and accords a metaphysical primacy to the content of
‘basic’ or ‘fundamental’ science. Consider the following characteristic statement
of the doctrine:
What realization physicalism claims about everything (i.e., about every actual
token, past, present, and future, that is contingent or causal) is that either it is
physical in the narrow sense of ‘physical’ ( … ‘mentioned as such in funda-
mental physics’) or else it is physical in a broader sense as standing in a cer-
tain special relation—that of realization—to what is physical in the narrow
sense.
(Melynk 2003, 11)
According to this doctrine, the scope of the real is delimited by the notions pro-
vided by ‘fundamental physics’. The devil here, of course, is how to spell out
‘realization’, but for our concerns the interesting claim is that the relevant science
furnishes what we might think of as a natural metaphysics, i.e., a total or universal
doctrine about the real, but one that is informed by ongoing human practice
(science). Putnam (1983, 210) expresses the attractiveness of the doctrine with his
usual acuteness:
The appeal of materialism lies precisely … in its claim to be natural meta-

physics within the bounds of science. That a doctrine which promises to
gratify our ambition (to know the noumena) and our caution (not to be
unscientific) should have great appeal is hardly something to be wondered at.
One might balk at the thought that any contemporary physicalist fancies herself
to know noumena; still, Putnam’s point is well-taken: it is the universal scope of
physicalism that renders the Kantian description apposite. Unlike with Kant,
though, the basis of the putative knowledge is not a priori, but the ongoing busi-
ness of science. As intimated just above, my concern is not with how the doctrine
might be spelt out as a metaphysical claim, for the objections I shall raise to
physicalism do not turn on some one or other way of characterizing super-
venience, realization, instantiation, property constitution, or other such metaphy-
sical issues. So, for present purposes, I am happy to assume that physicalism can
be somehow or other coherently rendered as a metaphysical doctrine about how
Naturalism without metaphysics 87

all kosher (real) properties are instantiated. The crucial problem for the doctrine,
as I see it, is not that it is metaphysically incoherent, but that it is a doctrine that
cannot be adequately grounded in actual science. In other words, it is precisely
the modesty and ambition Putnam highlights that cannot be reconciled, at least
not so as to produce a doctrine that is both non-trivial and informed by science.
A way of introducing the advertised problem is to reflect on the oddity of the
very label ‘materialism’. Materialism, in the proper or, at any rate, historical,
sense is the ancient doctrine that everything ‘real’ is constituted by very small,
immutable, indivisible entities that are related in causal and spatio-temporal
terms. Loewer (2001, 37), in part commenting on Putnam’s use of ‘materialism’,
says the following:
In this century [the twentieth] physicists have learned that there is more in
the world than matter and, in any case, matter isn’t quite what it seemed to
be. For this reason many philosophers who think metaphysics should be
informed by science advocate physicalism in place of materialism. Physicalism
claims that all facts obtain in virtue of the distribution of the fundamental
entities and properties—whatever they turn out to be—of completed fundamental
physics.
As Loewer explains, physicalism is a less restrictive doctrine than materialism in

that it tethers our ultimate ontological commitment to physics, or our ‘basic sci-
ence’, whatever that turns out to be, without presupposing that the real is mate-
rial in any commonsensical or nineteenth-century sense. I take it, along with
Loewer, that no one nowadays is an avowed materialist in the intended sense.
The problem that now arises, though, is how to say something substantive about
fundamental physics and how it might support a general claim about the real as
such. Materialism, at least, did do precisely that, but here is the rub. Brown and
Ladyman (2009, 20–21) accurately remark that
[m]aterialism was betrayed by its supposed ally, natural science, and by

physics in particular. materialism was made obsolete by developments in the
area of human knowledge which materialists most admired, and for which
they believed they were providing philosophical foundations.
The general moral here, to borrow Putnam’s terms, is that the essential modesty
of physicalism (its appeal to ongoing human inquiry) threatens its essential ambi-
tion to say something general and total about reality. After all, the problem with
materialism is not that dualism turned out to be true or that supernatural forces
were discovered (whatever that might amount to); if it were only the negative
aspect of materialism at issue, I dare say that most of us would be paid-up
materialists. The problem, rather, is that materialism wasn’t able to say something
true about the domain of successful science that could be generalized or made
abstract enough to serve as a metaphysical doctrine about reality in general.
Otherwise put, the problem for materialism as a metaphysical doctrine was not so
88 John Collins
much that it was refuted by physics, but that it didn’t provide a characterization of
reality at all that was invariant over or immune to changes within science.
So, the danger is that physicalism is just materialism, save for the absence of
the outdated science, but such a doctrine just amounts to a fundamentalist
metaphysics without the modesty accrued by tethering one’s commitments to
ongoing inquiry. The problem, then, is that it is far from obvious what, if any-
thing, the resources of our ‘basic science’ are supposed to be such that a physic-
alist doctrine may be formulated by way of appeal to them; nor is it even obvious
that scientific developments lend any credence to the idea of a bottom level (see
Schaffer 2003; Ladyman and Ross 2007; Brown and Ladyman 2009). Of course,
we have a fairly commonsensical idea of materialism in terms of solid things
bumping into each other, and macro things being made up of increasingly smal-
ler things until one reaches a level of primitive simples. This is the mechanical
worldview. As mentioned, though, no one serious could possibly mean such a
position by evoking physicalism. Newton overthrew such common sense in the
seventeenth century and the development of field theories in the mid- to late
nineteenth century was the final blow.2 This is to say nothing of twentieth-century
developments, which have left old-style materialism far behind. Ultimately, I shall
argue that, after the proper demise of materialism, no version of metaphysical nat-
uralism is able to come good on specifying, even in abstract terms, what the basic
resources of science are supposed to be, regardless of any acknowledgment that the
old materialism won’t do. Put bluntly, the modesty of physicalism is a sham. If I’m
right, a metaphysical naturalism of good faith will collapse into methodological
naturalism, i.e., a simple commendation of the aims and means of mature science.
To be sure, there is nothing inconsistent with a physicalism that prescinds from
a ‘fundamentalism’ as regards the putative ‘basic science’ and merely declines a
commitment to a fundamental level without denying its possibility. Brown and
Ladyman (2009), for instance, articulate (without endorsing) an empirical version
of physicalism according to which, (i) if there is a fundamental level, then every-
thing supervenes upon it, and (ii) future physics ‘will not posit entities which have
essentially mental characteristics, such as propositional attitudes or intentions’
(ibid., 24). The first part is understood to be trivial (analytic), while the second is a
prediction. This position is very congenial to me; my target, though, just is the
presumption of fixity about the basic level that has nigh on invariably character-
ized physicalism/materialism. Besides, as Brown and Ladyman are careful to
note, it really isn’t obvious at all that there is a fundamental level, still less that we
shall discover it, should it exist. The physicalism Brown and Ladyman offer,
therefore, does not support the metaphysical distinctions that I understand to be
opposed to a proper methodological naturalism.3
2 Einstein and Infeld (1938) characterize the development of modern physics as a rejection of
mechanism. See Harman 1982 for a history of the demise of materialism in the nineteenth century
and Frisch 2005 for problems of locality in classical electromagnetic field theories.
3 Similar remarks hold for Vicente’s (2011) careful discussion, which seeks to defend physicalism as an
empirical hypothesis without definition.

Unfortunately, it is fairly typical for ‘naturalism’ to be used as a synonym for
‘physicalism/materialism’, as if a naturalistic orientation could be nothing other
than a metaphysical position.4 Even if nothing else, therefore, my criticism should
have a therapeutic effect. In the following section, I shall offer some arguments
why metaphysical naturalism should be rejected.
3 The Chomsky–Hempel problem for physicalism

Metaphysical naturalism on the present understanding is the view that science at
the appropriate ‘basic’ level provides us with the fixed inventory of kinds that
exhaust what is real. We can equate this view with materialism/physicalism on
the presumption that nothing mental, normative, spiritual, vital, or otherwise
human-centric will find itself mentioned in the basic science. Some such claim is
broadly adopted: whatever the physical is, it excludes the motley cluster of prop-
erties apparently eschewed or renounced by contemporary science.5 Such a posi-
tion is at its most anaemic when it merely amounts to a description of the kind of
properties that are not natural kinds as far as current science is concerned.6 Such
a description, however, is hardly to be commended as a positive metaphysical
doctrine, for all we have so far is an exclusion of this or that property or entity,
which, without a positive characterization of the physical or of that which is to be
excluded or reduced, we merely have a list, or perhaps two lists. We shall return
to this via negativa characterization of the physical below. On the face of it, though,
the exclusion of this, that, and the other fails to provide any motivation for a
particularly physicalist doctrine as opposed to a mere fundamentalism. So, the
question now is whether phsyicalism can amount to something less anaemic than
the exclusion of ghosts and spirits and such like. Chomsky (1968/1972, 1988,
2000, 2010) has offered a compelling consideration for a negative answer. The
argument is closely related to the so-called ‘Hempel dilemma’ (Hempel 1966,
1969, 1980). I shall first say something about Chomsky.
Chomsky’s key claim is that Descartes’s dualism, in the seventeenth century,
amounted to a perfectly coherent hypothesis, for mental properties did not find a
place in a purely mechanical, push-pull, contact model of the universe as for-
mulated by Descartes, Galileo, and others; indeed, having such a fixed sense of
what the universe is like precisely allows for a characterization of that which is
non-material, in need of reduction or elimination. Post-Newton, however, we do
4 See, among many others, Hellman and Thompson 1975, Lewis 1983, Field 1992, Jackson 1998,
Chalmers and Jackson 2001, and Kim 2005. Papineau (1993), for one, emphasizes the distinctness of
the two positions.
5 Among others, see Fodor 1987, Papineau 2001, Worley 2006, Montero 2001, Wilson 2006, Kim
1996, and Levine 2001.
6 Here I assume that the naturalist can help herself to abstracta of various kinds; that is, the naturalist
need not be a nominalist. Of course, the naturalist must have quite a lot to say here given the
mathematization of mature science. Equally, though, a thoroughgoing Platonism is nigh on
nonsensical when it comes to understanding the applicability of mathematics (see Steiner 1998;
Maddy 2007). As it is, nothing I wish to argue here hangs on the status of abstracta.
90 John Collins
not have a fixed conception of body (mechanical or otherwise) in terms of which
we might classify that in need of reduction or elimination; indeed, post-Faraday,
it is not even clear if physical theory should sanction things (see Crain and Mellor
1990; van Fraassen 1996; Strawson 2003; Ladyman and Ross 2007). In other
words, although there is a mind–body problem in the sense that mental phe-
nomena are indeed not presently integrated into the domains of lower-level sci-
ences, the label is grossly misleading at best, for the lack of integration does not
equate to a metaphysical problem of how mental properties could possibly be
mechanical or physical. This is because we have no fixed adequate conception of
that which we are supposed to understand, i.e., body, matter. On the face of it,
then, we forsake the metaphysical contrast between mind and body because the
latter notion isn’t stable enough to make the former metaphysically problematic.
Without the contrast, we are left wondering what physicalism is supposed to
exclude apart from dualism, which is unmotivated in the first place without a
clear sense of body. Chomsky frames the argument in terms of mind and body,
but one could, obviously, run the argument for body and X, for it is body that is
problematic, or at least as problematic as X.
What Newton did was to replace an intuitive scheme of interacting bodies,
which commended itself to Descartes, Galileo, Leibniz, Huygens, et al., with an
essentially idealized model of mass points in mathematical relation to one
another. The model applies to the visible world once we abstract to features that
may fit into the model, but the model does not apply to the world as we find it
according to our common store of concepts and notions. The pursuit of science
on this conception is to fill out the model of the ‘universe’ incrementally, but at
no point are we to assume on metaphysical grounds that the ‘essence’ or ‘cause’
of a given phenomenon must give way to some list of fundamental properties.
Thus it was that Newton could boldly present universal gravitation as, effectively,
an all-pervading ‘action at a distance’ force. Newton found such a force highly
problematic, but he certainly didn’t think of it as ‘occult’ as did his European
critics; on the contrary, on the new conception of science, one should expect such
abstractions and await their eventual integration into some as yet perhaps
undreamt of scheme.7 Of course, the point here is not that Newton was right; it is
now understood, thanks to the speed limit of light, that Newton was wrong about
gravity being an instantaneously acting force. All forces, in both general relativity
and quantum mechanics, are local. What is crucial to Chomsky’s point is that
(i) the occult-like action at a distance was accepted, not withstanding its ‘spooki-
ness’, and (ii) the developments that were to restore locality posed ever greater
7 In the Opticks, Query 31, Newton (1730/1979, 401–402) argues that objects qua subject to gravity
have no ‘occult’ properties, but the cause of gravity, why the law holds, is unknown. As Newton
(1726/1972, 530) puts the point in the ‘General Scholium’ of Principia, ‘it is enough that gravity really
exists, and acts according to the laws which we have explained, and sufficiently accounts for all the
motions of the celestial bodies and of our sea’. Newton here famously does not feign hypotheses; in
our terms, he does not need to speculate on what the ultimate causes are or what the properties of
matter are beyond those that actually explain phenomena.

affronts to our intuitive understanding of phenomena, so much so that it is a
standing joke that no one understands quantum mechanics. As Chomsky (1996, 42)
puts it, ‘Newton exorcised the machine, leaving the ghost intact. Furthermore,
nothing has replaced the machine’. Putnam (1983, 227) expresses a similar sentiment:
Science as we know it has been anti-metaphysical from the seventeenth cen-

tury on: and not just because of ‘positivistic interpretations’. Newton was
certainly no positivist; but he strongly rejected the idea that his theory of
universal gravitation could or should be read as a description of metaphysi-
cally ultimate fact. (‘Hypotheses non fingo’ was a rejection of metaphysical
‘hypotheses’, not of scientific ones.)
Such a general take on Newton’s achievement, whereby theories are no longer

constrained to make sense according to prevailing metaphysics and/or common
sense, but only in terms of their consistency, simplicity and economy, and pre-
diction of relevant data, has come to dominate scientific thinking.8 In this light,
Chomsky is simply drawing out the apparently controversial consequence that,
once we take science to be no longer beholden to any intuitive scheme or a fixed
theoretical outlook, then we do not know what body as the subject of fundamental
science is supposed to be in any fixed way that transcends ongoing scientific
inquiry. If this is so, then it would appear that no distinctive mind/body (or
body/X) problem is formulatable, not because mind is irredeemably obscure or
spiritual in some way, but because there just is no scientifically sanctioned fixed
notion of body.9 For sure, it is perfectly fine for physicists to refer to matter, and
even to characterize fermions as ‘matter particles’, but if matter is to be, say, what
the current standard model in quantum mechanics says about fermions, then we
have a whole series of body/body problems, as it were, for mental phenomena
patterns with most other macro phenomena in being relatively inexplicable in
terms of quantum mechanics. This situation need not perturb the methodological
naturalist, who views science as an ongoing activity that has no worldview at all,
let alone one according to which the mind is peculiarly inexplicable. There is
perhaps a more familiar way of posing the challenge that Chomsky pitches by
way of the Newtonian revolution. This is Hempel’s dilemma.10
Hempel (1980 194–195) poses his dilemma as follows:
[T]he physicalist claim that the language of physics can serve as a unitary
language of science is inherently obscure: the language of what physics is
8 For broad historical discussion of this point, see, for example, Koyré 1965, Westfall 1971, Torretti
1999, Cushing 1998, and Smith 2002.
9 Chomsky (2010) argues that the appropriate lessons were recognized by Hume, Priestley, and others,
shortly after Newton, and also articulated by Russell (1927). The extent to which the lessons have not
been heeded in recent decades perhaps signals the hegemony of metaphysical naturalism.
10 Apart from Hempel 1966, 1969, 1980, see Hellman 1985, Poland 1994, and Daly 1998; and Stoljar
2010, for sympathetic discussion.
92 John Collins
meant? Surely not that of, say, eighteenth century physics; for it contains
terms like ‘caloric fluid’, whose use is governed by theoretical assumptions
now thought false. Nor can the language of contemporary physics claim the
role of unitary language, since it will no doubt undergo further changes too.
The thesis of physicalism would seem to require a language in which a true
theory of all physical phenomena can be formulated. But it is quite unclear
what is to be understood here by a physical phenomenon.
It will be noted that Hempel frames the issue of physicalism in linguistic rather
than metaphysical terms (formal rather than material, if you will), but the
underlying point applies equally to the metaphysical construal of physicalism. The
doctrine must be informed by the contingencies of ongoing science; after all, a
modern physicalist, as Hempel notes, is not intending to endorse caloric theory,
still less fifteenth-century alchemy. The question, therefore, is: which particular
theories are supposed to inform physicalism? In general terms, the dilemma sug-
gests that there are only three possible answers to the question and none of them
is adequate to render physicalism a non-trivially true doctrine.
First, then, we might seek to tether physicalism to the history of science, so that
past theories provide the content to the doctrine. The obvious problem with this
thought, though, is that we know, depending how far back we project, that the
scientific theories of the past were either false in detail or only partially correct (as
far as we can presently tell). So much renders physicalism false or highly partial at
best. Of course, it does not follow from this reflection that the ‘pessimistic meta-
induction’—all science is false—is sound. For one thing, science clearly makes
progress, even if the details of newly accepted theories prove to be empirically
inadequate. More saliently, much of contemporary physical science has been with
us for a good number of years now and is under no threat, e.g., Maxwell’s
equations, general relativity, quantum mechanics, etc. Indeed, we may say that
much of our science has always been correct, but only at certain limits, and at
other limits the theories are revealed to be insufficiently general, too parochial,
rather than false.11 In this sense, then, the natural order is simply that about
which we can get deep integrated theories, that which will be true or ‘closed’ at a
certain limit, with the hope of eventual overall integration. Still, on this model,
appeals to past science appear to provide no metaphysical uniformity; they merely
provide a model of successful science, at least to some extent. In other words, it is
not past science that is providing content to physicalism but currently accepted
11 See Worrall 1989 for the suggestion that what is preserved is the structure of theories, not ontology
(also see Ladyman 1998 and Ladyman and Ross 2007). The promise here is a ‘structural realism’
that answers the ‘no miracles’ challenge without falling foul of the pessimistic meta-induction. This
general strategy of avoiding the pessimistic meta-induction perhaps originates with Cassirer (1923).
There is a current lively debate on these issues. My present point is merely that the science of the
past, even on a structuralist reading, does not provide us with the notion of fixed resources; after all,
what is supposed to be preserved are the particular structures of theories, not an overarching
structure that covers all possible phenomena.

science, even if it were developed a few centuries ago. This reflection leads to the
second horn of the dilemma.
In light of the above problems, we might let an account of a given domain
count as physical if it does not contradict currently accepted science, or if we
could somehow see how the account might be integrated into current science.
The physical, therefore, is what we currently know, or at least think we know,
about the constitution of the universe. While this position is clearly an improvement
on the first position, it remains inadequate.
We cannot consistently commit to current physics. It is hardly news that cur-
rent physics is inconsistent, with general relativity making deterministic predic-
tions about each space-time point that quantum mechanics denies. Further, this is
not a mere formal or technical issue that might easily be ironed out. There are
genuine phenomena, such as black holes and the big bang(s), which demand
the attention of both theories, the singularities being both quantum and of mas-
sive mass, hence generating strong gravitational fields. Familiarly, putting both
theories together leads to physical impossibilities, or infinities. Thus it is that the
search for a unified theory is not a mere fancy for unity: current theory, in a sense,
is absurd.
Even if we were to put aside such grand issues of unity, it is pretty empty to
presume that current physics serves as a suitable basis for explaining every real
phenomenon. It well might, but often theories of high-level phenomena remain
constant as lower-level theories alter, as in the development of physics and
chemistry over the last 100 or so years (Brock 1992).12 The simple point here is
that current physics might well be false in large part without that possibility
threatening everything we know. To think that current physics is correct to such
an extent that it can provide the metaphysical basis for everything strikes me as
absurd hubris. One needn’t accept the pessimistic meta-induction to reckon that
current science is far from complete.
If past and current science appears unable to lend substance to metaphysical
naturalism, perhaps future science will. This position recognizes the fallibility of
any particular stage of inquiry, but still acknowledges that we do discover truths
about the universe. Thus, we may project to the stage of inquiry where the truths
are fixed. The problem here, of course, is that ‘future science’ is a bucket to be
filled with whatever one finds amenable. It might well be that certain concepts
have a horizonal or regulative status, but physicalism is hardly of that status, for
such a position is supposed to be informed by what we in fact know, not what we
shall know when all is said and done. Such a contingent empirical restriction on
the construal of ‘physicalism’ is quite apposite, for heaven knows what the
resources of the ‘final science’ will be. Perhaps its metaphysics, if such we wish to
call it, will say that everything is a group representation. As we concluded above,
the metaphysical naturalist is supposed to be taking a stand on the basis of science
12 Another striking example is the nineteenth-century conflict between a Darwinian evolutionary

timescale and the then-understood principles of energy conservation. It took turn-of-the-century
developments to show that the physics was mistaken (see Lindley 2004).
94 John Collins
as it is, in some sense. If the naturalist is to be happy with primitive mental phe-
nomena or Pythagoreanism, both of which, for all we can presently tell, might
characterize final science, then disputes in this area are merely semantic.
So, the moral of Hempel’s dilemma is that there is no ready way of tethering
the metaphysical doctrine of physicalism to scientific inquiry, much as Chomsky
has argued independently: there is no fixed conception of body running through
scientific developments that may serve as a metaphysical base for what there is,
rending certain classes of phenomena inherently problematic. If these thoughts
are sound, then there is no way for the physicalist to square her metaphysical
ambitions to speak of everything with the modesty that comes from constraints of
ongoing empirical inquiry. The rest of this chapter will argue that the Hempel/
Chomsky claim is sound. First let us consider a straightforward objection, before
turning to some ways of characterizing physicalism designed to evade the problem
presented.
Pettit (1993), Poland (1994), Loewer (2001), and Wilson (2006) have argued
that the notion of future or ideal fundamental science need not be entirely empty,
for it may be fixed as being fundamental relative to all other areas of inquiry.
Pettit is most explicit in saddling ultimate physics with a mereological metaphysics
upon which everything else supervenes. Others are less blunt. Wilson’s thought,
for instance, is that the ‘ideal physics’ will ‘treat only of relatively fundamental
entities, existing at orders of constitutional complexity that are low relative to (for
example) molecules, proteins, plants, and people’. Wilson contends that this rela-
tively low complexity of the ‘ideal physics’ will ‘bestow some determinate content
on the associated physicalism’ (Pettit 1993, 68). Wilson recognizes, however, that
such a thin conception will not do; after all, perhaps souls, spirits, gods, purposes,
and feelings are appropriately simple, and nothing so far excludes them from
future fundamental physics. The ‘determinate content’, therefore, does not, with-
out further ado, exclude what we presently think of as that which precisely con-
trasts with the physical. So be it, perhaps, but then physicalism does look trivial: it
amounts to the mere idea of something simple being ultimate, whatever that
might be.
A more serious concern is that the depiction of ideal science in such mer-
eological terms looks quite old-fashioned in the sense that we have little reason, as
far as I can see, to think that the ideal physics will speak of any ‘entities’ at all.
Perhaps, as speculated above, the ideal physics will consist of a certain mathe-
matical structure that applies under transformation to all levels of organization. I
can certainly see no a priori reason to rule out such an ideal. If something
approximate to that level-free conception of finality holds, then we lose Wilson’s
‘determinate content’, for we have lost the very idea of ultimate simple ‘entities’,
even if ‘entity’ is used as a cover term for objects and properties.13
13 Hempel’s (1966, 1969) own solution to his dilemma was to treat physicalism as a ‘heuristic’ attitude
towards ontological questions rather than a determinate thesis about what there is. Ney (2008)
endorses a similar conception, where the theorist makes a kind of ‘oath’ to believe in the existence of
the entities endorsed by current physics and all entities composed of such things. Such an attitudinal

As it stands, therefore, the Chomsky/Hempel accusation is that physicalism is a
naturalistic metaphysical doctrine without any naturalistic content, or at least the
substance of the doctrine massively outstrips its naturalistic content. Given the
prevalence of materialist doctrines in the philosophy of mind, there has been a
surprising lack of discussion of the problem that the very idea of materialism/
physicalism is not properly formulatable. A number of thinkers, though, have
responded to the problem, which I shall discuss in the following section.
4 Metaphysics saved?
In this section I shall assess a number of ways in which metaphysical naturalism
might be formulated so as to avoid the Chomsky/Hempel problem of being
untethered to any reasonable notion of science.
4.1 Current physics is metaphysics enough

Smart (1978), Melnyk (1997), and Lycan (2003) have suggested that the portion of
higher physical theory plausibly relevant to the naturalization of the mind might
well be complete; or at least our epistemic commitment to materialism/physical-
ism as a reductive doctrine should be equal to our commitment to the relevant
portion of physical theory. In terms of Hempel’s dilemma, the position here is
that current physics is secure enough to give metaphysical substance to physical-
ism. In terms of Chomsky’s complaint, the claim is that we don’t need a fixed
characterization of the physical in order to formulate the mind/body problem. A
suitable slogan for this position is ‘Strings or membranes or loops don’t matter’;
view has some resonance with a purely methodological stance. Still, by methodological lights, we
need make no commitment to the currently endorsed entities of any theory, but only a provisional
commitment to the mode of explanation offered. This is appropriately modest, for, as mentioned,
there is no a priori reason to think that a future or final physics, let alone contemporary physics, will
endorse any entities whatsoever, still less sanction a general mereology. Moreover, it is difficult to see
how the proposed ‘oath’ would not render physicalism vacuous, as it appears to exclude nothing
being an appropriate entity. Ney (2008, 12–13) responds to this concern by challenging Chomsky’s
(1968/1972, 83–84) contention that whatever physics does take to be acceptable will ipso facto be
deemed physical. Her riposte is that, on the contrary, if a future physics were to accept
intentionality, say, as a primitive property, then we should surely count physicalism as we presently
conceive of it, however imprecisely, to have been refuted (cf. Brown and Ladyman 2009, who simply
stipulate the exclusion of the mental as an empirical claim, not as part of an analysis). Ney is surely
right about our intuition with respect to the scenario, but this tells us nothing about whether
physicalism is a coherent doctrine. Our intuition is triggered merely by our taking it that physicalism
is intended to exclude the mental as primitive. The intuition does not establish that a physicalist
doctrine can be formulated that would exclude mentality in some robust, non-stipulative fashion. So,
if the primitiveness of the mental is not ruled out as incoherent or somehow inconceivable, and
physicalism would be refuted were the mental to be primitive, then physicalism, as an intuitive
metaphysical doctrine about the divide between the material and the mental, offers no constraint on
the current and future character of physics. That is Chomsky’s point in the passage Ney seeks to
challenge: the physical is whatever physics accepts, not whatever is supposed to fall under physicalism, a
misbegotten metaphysical doctrine.
96 John Collins
that is, while the position concedes that physics is certainly not complete, and so,
strictu dictu, cannot presently deliver on what the physical ultimately is, the portion
of it that is conceivably relevant to the status of higher phenomena is indeed
complete. In this sense, there is a metaphysical mind/body problem after all, for
‘body’, now indexed to the relevant high-level physical theory, possesses sufficient
stability to make ‘mind’ metaphysically troublesome. There are three principal
problems with this position.14
First, it is not clear that there is a particular branch of high-level physical
theory that is especially germane to the naturalization of the mind. Penrose
(1989), among numerous others, has speculated on the relevance of quantum
mechanical effects to the structure of mental properties. Whatever the plausibility
of such ‘quantum-mind’ theses, a materialism/physicalist worth the name should
not decree them to be false, for the matter is empirical. The crucial point is that
we simply do not know the facts here. If quantum mechanics proves to be essen-
tial to understanding mentality, then we do not want this curious turn of events to
refute physicalism; on the contrary, it would appear to justify the doctrine as it is
most often spelt out. By the same token, if quantum mechanics proves to be
irrelevant, then that will just be the way things turn out; it is hardly a result that
should follow from metaphysics.
Secondly, the very idea that certain branches of physics or science are suffi-
ciently complete to provide metaphysical substance to the notion of body, as
opposed to mind, is dubious. Let us assume with any physicalist worth the name
accepts that that the arrows of explanation go in one direction: from fundamental
physics upwards.15 Assuming that order of explanatory priority, however, appears
to belie the very notion of fixed higher-levels of physics. High-level theories are
indeed ‘complete’ in the sense of being empirically adequate over phenomena
where the primitive concepts apply (e.g., Newton’s laws do hold over phenomena
where the classic concepts of mass and force apply), yet just how we understand
the theories at the end of inquiry, as it were, will be a function of our funda-
mental theory (they will be limits of the final theory, if all goes well). In this light,
what might appear to be quite incompatible with a theory at a particular stage of
inquiry, might not be incompatible once that theory is integrated with lower-level
theories (cf. the resolution of the conflict between electromagnetic theory and
inertial mechanics under special relativity). So, Smart et al. are certainly right that
it is implausible to think that we need to discover a new particle in order to
understand consciousness. Still, just what higher-level theories can explain and
14 There are other problems. Wilson (2006) correctly notes with reference to Melnyk (1997), that our
commitment to current physics cannot be couched in terms of relative probability with respect to
competitors, for, as discussed above, current physics is known to be inconsistent, namely quantum
mechanics contradicts general relativity. Thus, current physics should attract probability 0. If our
commitment is now to be couched in terms of verisimilitude, our real commitment would appear to
be to a future, more correct physics rather than current physics.
15 The assumption of some kind of foundational unity should abet the physicalist. On a disunity view of
science, such as Cartwright’s (1983, 1999), and Dupré’s (1993), it would be difficult to so much as
entertain the kind of defence of physicalism currently being discussed.

what their precise commitments amount to are not questions to be ultimately
settled in advance of their integration into lower-level theories. Of course, we can
simply adopt a theory in a current formulation, but that shouldn’t invite a meta-
physical projection to what is physical as such.
Thirdly, a complaint of a lack of integration of mental phenomena with any
portion of physical theory, completed or not, must, it seems, be predicated on a
reasonably clear theoretical conception of that which remains isolated, namely
mentality. For comparison, consider the explanatory gap between quantum
mechanics and general relativity. The gap is so serious and has given rise to so much
fruitful work precisely because we have excellent theories of both domains and know
precisely the nature of the inconsistency. Also consider the historical case of
chemistry. The in-principle reduction of chemistry to quantum mechanics is one
of the glories of twentieth-century science. The reduction is only in-principle, for it
is not as if chemistry can be done in terms of the field equations of electrodynamics;
rather, we now understand the chemical bond in terms of the field equations and
can explain, in those terms, the stability of some of the most elementary molecules
(not something as complex as, say, DNA). In a sense, then, we know that chemistry
depends upon the physics: chemistry is the way it is because physics is the way it
is. This is the relevant sense of reduction. Such reduction, however, was only
possible given the highly articulated chemical theory of valence and the periodic
grouping of the elements, which in fact inspired the developments in physics.
In this light, at our current level of understanding, talk of a lack of fit between
physics and the theoretically intractable phenomena of consciousness and inten-
tionality should strike us as odd, for it is not so clear if there are any uniform
phenomena in view. For example, ‘intentionality’ describes a veritable hetero-
geneity of states, from the systems of insect navigation studied by Gallistel (1990)
to the visual indexing hypothesized by Pylyshyn (2002, 2007) to one’s everyday
thoughts about Vienna or Zeus. There might be a unity to these phenomena, but
there is surely no naturalistic ground to insist that there is. Likewise, the great
variety of qualitative experience does not, on the face of it, signal a unity to be
discretely explained (compare the difference between hearing a noise and feeling
a pain). In short, the signature properties of the mental might well fragment
under inquiry. Until the phenomena in question are much more sharply deli-
neated, talk of gaps is misleadingly premature.
I should say that I suspect that all Smart et al. wish to claim is that mental
phenomena remain isolated from the kind of integrated explanation one finds
elsewhere in the physical sciences and that quantum mechanics, say, is hardly
likely to be pertinent. Quite so! My present point is merely that formulations of
this thought not only do not require a metaphysical gloss, but are ruined by it, as
they lead to a priori restrictions about the potential relevance of future inquiry.
4.2 Via negativa

The above considerations also critically bear on the formulation of physicalism in
terms of a so-called via negativa. The basic idea here is that we are wrong to
98 John Collins
demand from the physicalist a positive characterization of the physical; instead,
we should abandon the search for definitions, but still seek substance in the doctrine
of physicalism by way of definitely excluding mental phenomena (inter alia) as
basic.16 The evident virtue of this approach is that, on the one hand, it sidesteps
the problems just delineated by prescinding from any ambition to characterize
the physical, while on the other hand not being uninformed by scientific devel-
opment, for it passes a negative judgement on those properties or domains that
natural science has disregarded, made obsolete, or otherwise does not sanction.
A basic problem with this negative view remains: without further ado, it merely
offers two lists, as it were, of the potentially basic and the definitely non-basic.
The pertinent complaint to such enumerations is that, without a positive char-
acterization of the physical, the lists betrays a certain prejudice in favour of
intuition or current physics, which does not relieve us of Hempel’s dilemma for
reasons just elaborated. To see this in more detail, let us consider Levine’s (2001)
version of the via negativa, which is explicitly directed against Chomsky, and usefully
serves as a paradigm of the approach.
Levine proposes, pace Chomsky, that a doctrine of materialism (as he calls it)
can be coherently formulated without appeal to a clear or fixed conception of
body. Following Fodor’s (1987, 97) thought that, no matter the openness of our
notion of body, we know that mental properties are not ultimate parameters,
Levine (2001, 20) avers that ‘we don’t need a clear conception of the physical to
formulate materialism. All we need is a clear conception, or even not-so-clear,
conception of the mental’. In other words, if we can agree that ‘phenomenal
consciousness and intentionality’ are (i) clearish properties of mentality and (ii) are
non-basic properties in the sense that they are realized by the instantiation of
non-mental properties, then we have a mind–body problem, i.e., how is it that
mental properties are instantiated by the basic properties? On this basis, Levine
(ibid., 21) formulates materialism as follows:
(MAT) Only non-mental properties are instantiated in a basic way; all mental
properties are instantiated by being realized by the instantiation of other,
non-mental properties.
Levine’s formulation appears innocent enough, for it enshrines nothing more than
Fodor’s idea that mental properties are not ultimate parameters, i.e., the basic
properties are a subset of the non-mental properties; in other words, mental
properties are not of the kind that might be basic. Chomsky’s target, however, is
not the thought that mentality is not ultimate, but the thought that there is a
general division between the material and the mental, as if such domains were
fixed, even relative to each other. Chomsky (1996, 44; see also Chomsky 1991,
39) does remark that stipulations as to what is and isn’t basic are ‘not very
16 For similar proposals, see Spurrett and Papineau 1999, Montero 2001, Montero and Papineau
2005, Crook and Gillett 2001, Worley 2006, and Wilson 2006.

helpful’, but his point is not that it is remotely likely that intentionality will ulti-
mately be rubbing shoulders with spin and mass. The point is that the stipulations
can only arise from our intuitive take on the phenomena or our all too partial
current understanding, but, qua naturalists/physicalists, we are supposed to be
taking our lead from physics, not imposing our pre-theoretical judgements upon
it, which otherwise offer no constraint on what is acceptable to physics (see Ney
2008, 9). As Chomsky (1996, 45) concludes, ‘custom is no criterion for imposing
any fundamental divide, metaphysical or other, between various aspects of the
one and only world’.
We may, for the purposes of argument, accept that mentality is not ultimate, of
the potentially basic kinds, no more than biology, chemistry, and most of physics
is. Yet there is the problem: one may characterize the physical by way of exclu-
sion of the mental, but to do so does not properly single out the mental, for nigh
on every scientifically sanctioned kind is non-basic; for all we know, the whole of
particle physics is non-basic. So, according to Levine’s formulation of materialism,
for the mental to be singled out to fix the physical, it would, contrary to fact, have
to be the case that all and only non-mental properties are instantiated in a basic
way. In effect, Levine is allowing mentality to pattern with biology, chemistry,
and most of physics, all of which are non-basic, whatever precisely that means.
To see the point, substitute, say, ‘solid-state physical’ for ‘mental’ in Levine’s
(MAT), and the doctrine remains true, I take it. As it stands, therefore, for all we
know, every currently identifiable scientific kind is realized by the instantiation of
properties not of that kind, perhaps superstrings or membranes or something as
yet undreamt of. There remains, as noted, a general problem of integration,
which might as well be formulated as a ‘body/body problem’.
What seems to have gone wrong with the via negativa reasoning in general is
that it takes the apparent theoretical recalcitrance of phenomenal consciousness
and intentionality (lumped together with élan vital and telekinesis for good mea-
sure) to be sufficient for us to be reasonably sure that such properties are of
the non-basic kind and that this fact alone provides us with a coherent formu-
lation of physicalism. Yet, if current physical theory is correct, we actually know
that chemical and biological properties are non-basic, so why fractionate rea-
lity along mental/non-mental lines, as if it were antecedently significant that
the basic properties are all non-mental, as opposed to non-chemical or non-
biological? Indeed, given the inconsistency in basic physics, it would seem that
there is a general micro–macro explanatory gap so much more pressing than the
mind–body one.17
17 These considerations also bear on the idea that the physical is causally closed—to the exclusion of
the mental (Kim 1996; Papineau 1993, 2001). Causal closure, as a characterization of the physical,
amounts to the claim that the physical is non-mental, where the mental is understood to be causally
competing, as it were, with the physical, i.e., if the mental is to be truly real, rather than an
epiphenomenal chimera, then it must possess causal agency, but all such agency is subordinate to a
non-mental agency. Such a position is thus nothing more than a fundamentalism about causal
properties (namely, mental properties are not causally primitive), which offers no account of whether
100 John Collins

4.3 Gaps
What appears to be animating Levine and numerous others in these debates is
not so much the formulation of physicalism, but the apparent ‘explanatory gap’
between mentality and the rest of the natural order. Apart from Levine, it has
seemed to some, for example Wilson (2006) and Ney (2008), that a characteriza-
tion of physicalism must be forthcoming; otherwise, the mind–body problem
would be a chimera; it is a desideratum on the formulation of physicalism that the
problem be properly formulatable. That mentality constitutes a unique gap in the
current intellectual landscape is a matter of judgement. Yet even if the gap is
unique, it is not obvious that it requires a metaphysical gloss for its formulation.
After all, if Chomsky is right, the mind/body problem is a chimera precisely
because no good sense can be made of physicalism as a metaphysical thesis. Surely
we ought not to propound metaphysical doctrines in order to save philosophical
disputes from being forlorn.
That said, mentality does appear to be distinctly troubling. It is thought, for
example, that we understand the relation between hydrogen bonding and water
freezing as one of ‘upward necessitation’. On the other hand, no such model is
even on the horizon of our understanding when it comes to brain chemistry and
consciousness (see Levine 1983, and Rey 1997, 39–40).
Hindsight is always 20–20. The gap, or our inability to imagine how an expla-
nation of mentality in non-mental terms might proceed, is not, it seems, premised
upon any insight into either the physical or the mental; on the contrary, the gap
looks to be a function of our having no stable and uniform explanatory frame-
work in which to understand mental phenomena. Without such a framework, we
are thrown back onto our imagination. Crucially, as far as I can see, such lack of
imagination of how a particular troubling phenomenon can be explained in the
absence of an explanatory framework is a perfectly general characteristic of
inquiry. In this light, the relevant comparison is not the synchronic one favoured
by Rey and Levine between a contemporary explanation of water freezing and
the troubling properties of qualia, say, but a diachronic one of, for example, the
gap between nineteenth-century physics and chemistry and our current under-
standing of the relation between the two domains. It is wildly inaccurate to think
of nineteenth-century scientists being able to imagine the now standard quantum
mechanical understanding, complete with wave–particle duality and entangle-
ment, but just being let down by lack of experimental findings, say. It is, anyway,
somewhat beside the point to wonder what was imaginable in the past. The fact is
that science progresses in unforeseen ways. In this connection, Edward Witten
(1988, 105) has remarked:
these properties are physical in any proprietary sense. Indeed, mental properties might be
fundamental for all the thesis claims, so long as such properties are necessarily co-ordinated with other
ones, and so do not causally compete. Papineau (2001) is certainly right that the exclusion of
competing causes across a range of phenomena is an achievement of science over the last few
centuries, but this achievement does not presuppose or entail a metaphysical view of the real beyond
causal unity, which is a methodological precept.

It’s good to bear in mind that in the nineteenth century physicists didn’t even
have the aspiration to explain why glass is transparent or why grass is green,
why ice melts at the temperature it does, and so on. The progress of physics
has always been such that the level of understanding for which one generation
aims wasn’t even dreamed of a generation or two earlier.
Likewise, one might compare nineteenth-century conceptions of life with the

modern synthesis of genetics and evolutionary theory. Again, it is too much to
think that the relevant ideas were easily imaginable; indeed, Darwin himself was
clued out as regards the mechanism of inheritance. In short, there is an explana-
tory gap all right between mentality and physics, but one that appears to be a
function of our present lack of a systematic conception of the isolated phenomena,
which is not to be dignified by a metaphysical distinction.
Finally, let us consider what Rey (2001) calls Simple Bodily Physicalism (SBP):
(SBP) The overwhelming majority of individual non-mental phenomena

produced by human mental activities do not per se provide explanatory
counterexamples to present physics (ibid., 115).
Rey does not intend this thesis to be controversial. The point of it, rather, is to
highlight that ‘mind over matter’ is quite quotidian and none of it contradicts
known physics. This invites explanation, for that mental states cause non-mental
events remains ‘true and interesting’ regardless of the ultimate characterization of
‘mind’ or ‘body’ (ibid., 116).18
Rey makes the latter judgement intending to contradict Chomsky. I take Rey’s
point to be that the mere consistency of mental causation with known physics is
enough of a physicalism to lend substance to the mind/body problem. The
characterization of the mental SBP supports, however, is too general to frame a
physicalist doctrine, and while a mind/body problem of sorts is generatable from
SBP, in the absence of assumptions I think tendentious, the problem is merely an
instance of a general integration problem.
On the first point, then, SBP claims that psychological phenomena are not
inconsistent with known physics in the sense that while a physical theory might
not explain some given mental phenomenon, its occurrence is not incompatible
with any physical theory; it does not, say, contradict any laws. Patently, though,
some such generalization applies across a whole range of phenomena, apart from
physics itself, of course, which exhibits inconsistency. SBP, therefore, appears to
be nothing other than an instance of the general claim that phenomena are not
known to be explanatorily excluded from some branch of current physics. This is
too weak a doctrine for a metaphysical thesis, not so much because it affords no
18 This doctrine is more modest than the related reasoning that the physical is causally closed, and
given that the mental does not contradict physical causality, then it must be reduced to it, somehow.
Hence, we have a mind–body problem (see Papineau 1993, 2001). This reasoning is a form of via
negativa criticized above.
102 John Collins

substantiation of the notion of the physical, but because no phenomenon is actu-
ally excluded. Pace Rey (2001, 116), SBP does not even rule out parapsychological
‘phenomena’, such as telekinesis or levitation. Of course, if such supposed phe-
nomena are specified so as to contradict physics (energy conservation, gravity,
etc.), then SBP is trivial, but one may use more neutral expressions such as
‘floating’, or ‘moving without touching’, or, indeed, ‘action at a distance’; indeed,
purveyors of the supernatural are perfectly entitled to think that they are talking
about physical phenomena, rather than contradicting conservation laws. The
crucial point is simply that the relevant sense of the physical is not specifiable, just
as it isn’t if one wants to explain mental phenomena. Thus, mere consistency with
known physics is far too easy a condition to meet. SBP would be more substantial
if it allowed for the formulation of a mind/body problem, but it does so only
trivially. This is my second point.
Assuming SBP, we do have a general mind/body problem in trying to figure
out how we go from fundamental physics to psychological explanation. That kind
of problem, though, holds for solid-state physics, chemistry, biology, and even
economics and computer science. In fact, the problem obtains universally on the
assumption of the ‘unity of nature’. Like Levine (2001), Rey selects the mind/
body problem as somehow special or unique on the basis of a condition that
applies universally. As seen above, we can indeed make the mind/body problem
special, not just another body/body problem, by suggesting that we are clued-out
about this problem in particular, there is an ‘explanatory gap’ just here, not else-
where. As already argued, even if this thinking is correct, which it surly isn’t given
inconsistency at the heart of physics, it is difficult to draw a metaphysical conclusion
from it because we lack a clear understanding of either side of the gap. Invariably,
we cannot imagine the answer to large-scale scientific problems until we are given
it, and then we wonder why it took so long to find it, or sometimes we don’t really
understand the answer, but feel it is correct, at least for the moment.
4.4 Twin-physics?
Finally, let us consider the interesting position of Stoljar, who accepts much of the
Hempel–Chomsky position. In particular, Stoljar (2010, 90) does not think that
physicalism can be formulated as a doctrine that is ‘true and deserving of the
name’, i.e., just as Chomsky and Hempel have argued, no clear sense of physics
can be spelt out to make plausible a general science-based metaphysics. He
does, however, think that this claim is not ruinous of the philosophical debates
premised upon physicalism and that Hempel’s dilemma is easily avoided. In
essence, Stoljar suggests that the mind/body problem is properly formulated as a
modal problem, which the Hempel/Chomsky complaint does not touch, for the
complaint is couched in contingent historical terms. I shall first reject Stoljar’s
second claim—the mind/body problem cannot be so cleanly severed from the
fate of physicalism. After that, I shall reject Stoljar’s first claim about the inde-
pendence of physicalism from the philosophical problems that are often couched
in physicalist terms.

Stoljar (ibid., 97) presents the crucial premise of Hempel’s dilemma as follows:
Either it is the case that physical properties are by definition the properties
expressed by predicates of a current physical theory, or it is the case that
physical properties are by definition the properties expressed by predicates of
an ideal physical theory.
Let us grant with Stoljar that past science is out of the running to characterize
physicalism. Thus, as we saw above, if the disjunction between current and ideal
physics exhausts the options, then physicalism is unformulatable as a true doc-
trine, given the falsity of much current physics (one presumes), and the un-
specifiable nature of ‘ideal’ or future physics. Stoljar (2010, 107–108) does
acknowledge that this conclusion has a definite affinity with his own general claim
that physicalism cannot be formulated as true and deserving of the name, but he
also thinks it is mistaken, especially in light of his own position. For Stoljar, the
real problem with physicalism is that it is a modal claim. This poses a dilemma. If
we settle for an ‘actualist’ physicalism as one that is true for the actual world, then
it seems that one can imagine a world where twin-physics is true.19 This is a
world that duplicates all higher-order properties, but has a distinct physics (twin-
spin, twin-mass, twin-charge, etc.). Actualist physicalism is false at this twin-world,
of course, but, argues Stoljar, as we ‘normally understand’ the doctrine, physic-
alism should be true at this world, for the only difference between our world and
the twin-world is the detail of spin, mass, charge, etc., and physicalism is not
supposed to be so wedded to the details of physical theory that it would be falsi-
fied by, say, a slight change in some constant (2010, 78). The alternative to
actualist physicalism, therefore, is a ‘possibilist’ physicalism, which lets the physics
that obtains across possible worlds determine the content of physicalism. The
problem now is that this doctrine is far too liberal, practically admitting anything
one pleases, such as élan vital and emergent chemical properties, so long as they
somehow arise from the interaction of ‘fundamental’ properties.
So, according to Stoljar (2010, 105–107), what is wrong with Hempel’s
dilemma is that it construes the problem of physicalism ‘within a temporal or
historical framework’ rather than a modal one (ibid., 107). In effect, it equates
physicalism with ‘actualist’ physicalism, which renders twin-world with its twin-
physics non-physical, contrary to our ‘normal understanding’ of physicalism.
While I am sympathetic to Stoljar’s approach, the appeal to twin-physics obscures
Hempel’s sound point.
It is certainly true that no physicalist is obliged to tether her doctrine to the fine
detail of any current physical theory, but the doctrine has to be informed by some
actual physics. If not, then physicalism, at best, reduces to the ‘fundamentalist’
view that basic properties explain all other phenomena, which might be logically
19 For Stoljar, this twin-world is another possible world, unlike Twin Earth, which is just an imagined
planet somewhere in the actual universe.
104 John Collins

true, if true at all, but is hardly a particularly physicalist doctrine—a point Stoljar
(2010, 34–36) acknowledges. It is opaque, therefore, what twin-mass, twin-charge,
twin-spin, etc., are supposed to designate that is physical as opposed to merely
‘fundamental’. A possible world of ‘fundamental’ properties is not one a physic-
alist is obliged to reckon to be physical; after all, perhaps twin-mass is ectoplasm.
It is an interesting academic question to ask how much of, or what granularity of,
‘actualist’ physics the physicalist must be committed to, but that looks to be
another imponderable for the physicalist to sort out that is a very aspect of
Hempel’s dilemma. The physicalist cannot blithely accept twin-mass, et al., with-
out it being anchored to the actual content of physics that is known to explain
much of our high-level phenomena. In short, twin-physics threatens to denude
physicalism of its very naturalistic content.
More generally, the modal framework Stoljar favours to understand physical-
ism does, I think, give rise to the dilemma he spells out. The physicalist, however,
may simply reject that framework and take no heed of what we ‘normally
understand’ by ‘physicalism’ and wholly eschew obscurities such as twin-mass and
the bucket concept of possible physics. After all, the physicalist is someone who thinks
that we can and have found out much about our universe, and it is upon that
basis that the characteristic problems of naturalism arise. What, on the other
hand, no self-respecting physicalist can do is eschew actual physics without evac-
uating the doctrine of content. In this light, Hempel’s dilemma remains of crucial
importance, and is not superseded by Stoljar’s obscure dilemma.
The ‘good news’ part of Stoljar’s position is that the failure of physicalism to
have a formulation that is true and deserving of the name is more or less philo-
sophically irrelevant. Thus, according to Stoljar, Hempel and Chomsky might be
right that physicalism cannot be adequately formulated as a naturalistic doctrine
informed by science, but the mind/body problem remains as a modal or logical
problem independent of matters arising in the history of science (Stoljar 2006,
56). Indeed, for Stoljar (2010, 231–232), such independence holds generally; for
physicalism is employed as a unifiying framework in terms of which to understand
philosophical problems, a kind of metaphilosophy that sees traditional problems
as being ones of how to place this or that phenomenon in the natural order of
things. Stoljar argues, though, that (i) none of the typical problems framed in
terms of physicalism actually depend upon a formulation of physicalism and
(ii) that there is no good reason to insist on a unifying metaphilosophy in the first
place: philosophy is heterogeneous—period. I think there is a good deal of sense
to this two-part position. In particular, I can see no good reason to insist that
philosophical problems have an underlying unity, still less one that is best framed
in terms of physicalism. After all, a lot of philosophical problems are of ancient
vintage, and so are not best understood, at least if historical fidelity is relevant,
against the background of contemporary science. On the other hand, I do not
share Stoljar’s view that physicalism is largely irrelevant to philosophical disputes.
By Stoljar’s lights, physicalism is an abstract worldview, somewhat distant from
the detail of particular physical theories. If this were right, then it would not be
surprising that first-order philosophical problems often framed in physicalist terms

are untouched by there being no adequate formulation of physicalism, for phy-
sicalism here would just lend the problems a certain urgency or significance, but
they would remain to be solved or dissolved one way or another. A mere world-
view does not answer any problem. For example, the conundrums associated with
consciousness and intentionality are not dispelled merely by the advocacy of
physicalism, even a properly formulated physicalism that is true. Still, what Stoljar
misses in all of this is that much of contemporary philosophy is concerned with
the possibility of naturalizing this or that class of phenomena as a metaphysical
option. So, if physicalism just is an explanatorily vacuous worldview, or, at any
rate, unformulatable as true and deserving the name, then the naturalization
programmes look profoundly unmotivated, if not empty. Imagine, for instance,
that one could spell out in kosher physicalist terms (whatever that amounts to) the
condition for a brain state being about cows, say. If physicalism is simply unfor-
mulatable, however, then the achievement would be surprisingly empty, for the
imagined conclusion would not, without further ado, (i) tell us how brains actually
do represent cows (or anything else) or (ii) legitimize appeals to intentionality in
science, for the physical reduction would be potentially accidental, there not
being a realm of the physical in which intentionality in general finds its place.
The imagined achievement, though, precisely would be an achievement, not a
gesture towards a worldview. In short, physicalism is not merely an idle view on
things dispensable without loss of philosophical content. On the contrary, the
doctrine has generated philosophical work and analysis, whose significance precisely
depends upon a notion of the physical being properly formulatable. The aim of
this naturalizing work is to show that, in principle, science could be done with this
or that concept. That aim is forlorn, if physicalism is unformulatable, for no in-
principle result will follow. Similar remarks hold for the mind/body problem as
traditionally conceived.
Stoljar (2006) argues at length for an epistemic solution to the mind/body
problem as a modal problem of how experiential truths can ultimately amount to
non-experiential truths. He is right to claim that this problem does not turn on an
adequate formulation of physicalism. Still, Stoljar does little to show that his
problem just is the mind/body problem. In line with Stoljar’s general metaphi-
losophy, it seems reasonable to think that there are a cluster of problems that fall
under ‘mind/body’: in particular, starting with Smart (1959) up to Chalmers
(1996) and beyond, modern discussions of the mind/body problem pose it as, at
least in part, an empirical problem of the integration of distinctively mental
properties into a framework that is supposedly sanctioned by natural science.
Indeed, if we assume that Chomsky is right about the history, then just such a
problem is the one Descartes confronted, i.e., how to square the distinctive cog-
nitive capacities of humans with a mechanical philosophy. The essential point
here is that even if we agree with Stoljar that the mind/body problem is best
pitched in modal terms, the empirical problem appears to remain; after all, it is
one thing to know that ‘matter’ must give rise to ‘mind’, but an entirely different
thing to know how so. From this perspective, an epistemic solution to a modal
problem based on ignorance, as Stoljar proposes, does not constitute an answer.
106 John Collins

For Chomsky, at any rate, we do want an integrated account of mental capacities;
his claim is simply that natural science does not deliver a settled physical scheme
that may render the problem as a metaphysical one.
5 Concluding remarks
I remarked above that, given its potential import, the Chomsky–Hempel com-
plaint against physicalism has been all too rarely discussed, especially in elabora-
tion of the mind/body problem. The reason for this, I think, is that many in the
field hold that the mind/body problem and other so-called ‘placement problems’
must be genuine, so any claim that says physicalism is not properly formulatable
must be mistaken. There is, of course, something right about this thought, for
there remain intractable problems in thinking about mentality and other related
phenomena, and only the most ardent optimist would say that a general and true
theory of cognition and consciousness is at hand. Nothing I have said above sug-
gests otherwise. My claim is only that a naturalistic take on these problems ought
not to view them as metaphysical conundrums that issue from a general physical
conception of everything, for there is no such conception, at least not one that is
true and non-trivial. We should, therefore, remain perfectly open to scientific and
philosophical inquiry into mentality and, indeed, hope for its future success. Such
an attitude, if I am right, neither presupposes nor entails any doctrine about what
is real or what, ultimately, stuff is made up of.
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3 Naturalism without metaphysics

1 See Kitcher 1992 and Stoljar 2010.

The appeal of materialism lies precisely … in its claim to be natural meta-

Naturalism without metaphysics 87

As Loewer explains, physicalism is a less restrictive doctrine than materialism in

[m]aterialism was betrayed by its supposed ally, natural science, and by

Naturalism without metaphysics 89

3 The Chomsky–Hempel problem for physicalism

Naturalism without metaphysics 91

Science as we know it has been anti-metaphysical from the seventeenth cen-

Such a general take on Newton’s achievement, whereby theories are no longer

Naturalism without metaphysics 93

12 Another striking example is the nineteenth-century conflict between a Darwinian evolutionary

Naturalism without metaphysics 95

4.1 Current physics is metaphysics enough

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4.2 Via negativa

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Naturalism without metaphysics 101

Likewise, one might compare nineteenth-century conceptions of life with the

(SBP) The overwhelming majority of individual non-mental phenomena

102 John Collins

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104 John Collins

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