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An educated person today could be forgiven for thinking that it’s pretty obvious that humans and other terrestrial creatures are entirely physical. Humans, cats, and bugs are just biophysical organisms. To think otherwise is a sign of weakness: being unable or unwilling to critically evaluate the comforting superstitious tales one is told as a child.
If the educated person is then exposed to some contemporary philosophy, then they will learn of some anti-physicalist arguments. But if they have a good head on their shoulders, and aren’t suckers for fancy-but-strained patterns of philosophical reasoning, then they might conclude that although physicalism for us creatures is true, there’s some counterintuitive stuff about our mental concepts. Fair enough. We already knew that the universe is weird and our concepts need not latch on to it well.
You don’t have to agree with that. But you can see how it’s a reasonable way to go. Let’s call the above kind of physicalism, PHYSICALISM-FOR-US.
You could accept physicalism-for-us but wonder whether there are any nonphysical entities outside of earth. On the face of it, you could insist that science has shown that the familiar stuff on earth—humans, cats, bugs—are just physical, while humbly acknowledging that maybe there are weird nonphysical things elsewhere or elsewhen. Just because the shit around here is entirely physical doesn’t mean the shit over there is entirely physical. Maybe there are no nonphysical aliens on Mars, but hey: maybe there are some in distant galaxies.
When exposed to contemporary philosophy, one will learn of arguments that conclude that physicalism extends way beyond Earth to other galaxies. These arguments have to do with principles about causality, or perhaps the conservation of energy. Or just the successful march of science. Call this more ambitious physicalism, PHYSICALISM-FOR-OUR-CAUSALITY. It says that everything we can interact with, even indirectly (such as the stuff in distant galaxies), is entirely physical. A little more exactly: if we can interact with X1, which can interact with X2, which can interact with X3, and so on, then all the Xs in that series are entirely physical.
You could accept physicalism-for-our-causality but wonder whether there are any nonphysical entities that we can’t interact with at all, even indirectly multiplied by infinity. On the face of it, you could insist that science has shown that the stuff that bears any causal connection to us is just physical, while humbly acknowledging that maybe there are weird nonphysical things existing right here and now in our spacetime but utterly cut off from anything we can ever know about. You might think science is restricted to talking about stuff that interacts in some fashion with at least some of the physical stuff we know about such as atomic particles, light, neutrinos, dark matter, dark energy, and so forth. Perhaps science is right that physicalism is true for all that stuff but not other stuff.
On the other hand, perhaps there are good arguments for physicalism that conclude that anything with any spatiotemporal relations to us has to be entirely physical—and forget about causality. Maybe something essential to spacetime requires all entities occurring here and now (or in our past or future) to be physical—even if they cannot causally interact with us at all, even indirectly. Call that view PHYSICALISM-FOR-OUR-SPACETIME. It says that there are no nonphysical entities zooming around us but totally noninteracting with us; anything bearing any spatiotemporal relations to us is entirely physical.
You could accept physicalism-for-our-spacetime but wonder whether there are any nonphysical entities that we bear no spatiotemporal relations to at all. These entities might be spatiotemporal—because they bear spatiotemporal relations to one another—but not connected to our spacetime. Maybe there are other universes that aren’t located any distance from us, and they don’t occur before, after, or simultaneous with us either. There is spatiotemporal shit going on in them that is no distance from Earth, and isn’t occurring in our past, present, or future. Sure, this is a weird hypothesis. We have no reason to think there are such universes, you might say. Even so, you might think that we haven’t the slightest reason to think they don’t exist. How on earth could we have any such evidence against them, given that they are not only unrelated to us causally but not even spatially or temporally?
If you think that’s wrong, then you endorse PHYSICALISM-FOR-ALL-SPACETIME. For you, there’s nothing on Earth nonphysical. There’s nothing we can interact with that’s nonphysical. There’s nothing in our spacetime that’s nonphysical. There’s nothing in any spacetime that is nonphysical.
Finally, you could endorse physicalism-for-all-spacetime but still hold that there are entities that have no causal or spatiotemporal relations to anything at all. You might think that numbers are a good example, but I’m not restricting the idea to familiar things like numbers. I remember talking with a fully competent philosopher who thought numbers have at least some causal relations to us. Even if he was right about that, how the hell could we have any confidence in the idea that there are no entities that aren’t causal or spatiotemporal at all, even if numbers don’t count?
You might think that’s impossible. Maybe you think there is a connection between the concept of existence and the concepts of causality and spacetime: in order to exist, one simply has to bear causal and/or spatiotemporal relations to other entities. Okay, then you might endorse PHYSICALISM-FOR-ALL-REALITY.
In sum:
PHYSICALISM-FOR-US: we terrestrial creatures are entirely physical
PHYSICALISM-FOR-OUR-CAUSALITY: anything we can interact with is entirely physical
PHYSICALISM-FOR-OUR-SPACETIME: anything we bear spatiotemporal relations to is entirely physical
PHYSICALISM-FOR-ALL-SPACETIME: anything with spatiotemporal relations is entirely physical
PHYSICALISM-FOR-ALL-REALITY: anything that exists at all is entirely physical
You certainly can improve on this list, but I hope that this quick and dirty discussion is suggestive on how to go about it.
For what it’s worth, I am pretty confident in physicalism-for-us, less but still somewhat confident in physicalism-for-our-causality, but have little to no confidence in the others.
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