PHILOS 1 Lecture Notes - Lecture 17: Billiard Ball, Supervenience, Causal Closure
Document Summary
Physicalism is the thesis that everything is physical. What reason is there for believing that physicalism is true. Physicalism requires fairly low standards of argumentation for its truth: we believe that pretty much every natural phenomenon can be explained by contemporary sciences, which are built on hard science, namely physics. Every event which has a cause, has a physical cause: ex. Ww1 was caused by the assassination of the heir to the throne of austria- A cue striking a billiard ball causes the movement of the billiard ball. Can any natural phenomenon have a non-physical cause. What does it mean that the universe is causally closed. An event that involves the thought "raise my left arm") causes a behavioral event (ex. Jill raises her left arm), then the mental event is a physical event. A fly sitting at the window at t1. 2+2=4: kinds of events or facts that are causally relevant to e1.
