Let’s Get ‘Physical’ Clarifying the Concept and its Presuppositions

This paper argues that the current range of competing approaches to what it is to be physical provide only a partial account of the concept. The paper identifies the role that the concept of the physical has to play in discussions of physicalism and the mind/body debates, articulates that concept and explores its presuppositions. The account builds on empirical findings in cognitive development and on the pre-theoretic grasp of things in the world necessarily presupposed by any physical science (and thence by physicalism itself). It draws together the key elements of the existing accounts and presents a new account which meets the requirements for fruitful debate over physicalism and its rivals. This enables a discussion of the presuppositions of discourse around physicalism, with a crucial focus on the notion of the agent, and provides a platform for a future analysis of the necessary conditions of the possibility of both the concept of the physical and of physicalism itself.