Understanding the Philosophy of Physicalism

Understanding the Philosophy of Physicalism Student’s Name University Affiliation Understanding the Philosophy of Physicalism Have you ever imagined how it is like to be in the Moon or how it looks like? Well, if the answer is yes then how similar or different could you compare your imagination with the experience or knowledge of Neil Armstrong who had actual or physical interaction with the moon when he landed on it in 1969? The outright answer is that while yours is imagination, Armstrong’s is a factual experience of the moon. What the astronaut knows about the moon is knowledge borne out of physical experience. His knowledge is a factual acquired through physical interaction with the moon. This hypothesis is what is called physicalism; the argument that the entire world is physical and that one is said to know something if they know every physical thing about it for the world itself is not largely but entirely physical. Still using the moon hypothesis, physicality's hold that even if someone gets lectures about the moon, like the case of Mary in Frank Jackson’s “What Mary Didn’t Know” they cannot be said to know all there is to know about the moon until they are let out. Therefore, in this response paper, I will argue that even though the world is entirely physical, knowledge about some things that is devoid of every physical thing about them is substantial knowledge. A strict scrutiny of the physicalist’ argument leads to the conclusion that knowledge is not knowledge unless it has in its composition every physical thing about the subject. Frank Jackson in “What Mary Didn’t Know” says that physicalism is not the noncontroversial thesis that the actual world is largely physical but the challenging thesis that it is entirely physical. This begs the question, is knowledge by acquaintance substantial knowledge? The obvious answer is yes though contrary to the physicalists’ view. Arguably, one’s knowledge though subject to criticism cannot be discredited merely on the ground that it lacks in it every physical thing about the subject. If physicalism is true then knowledge about everything expressed or expressible in explicitly is substantial language physical language. Even though one should as a matter of necessity know every physical element of whatever they chose to study, their knowledge need not to have physical interaction. There is a correlation between imagination and knowledge about something. The relevance of the two can be deduced from the above hypothesis on how it is like to be in the moon and or how it looks like. It is important to state from the onset that both imagination and physical experience of something are knowledge, important knowledge fo...