Most physicalists believe that physicalism is a thesis that denies the existence of fundamental mentality either as a substance or as a property. Therefore, since most physicalists also endorse a posteriori physicalism, according to them, if the future physical theory posits fundamental mentality as a fundamental physical concept, then physicalism will be falsified. In contrast, there are those who believe that the core idea of physicalism is an ontological deference to science (especially physics); the idea that is usually called scientism (...) and is closely related to methodological naturalism. According to them, if physicists posit fundamental mentality as an integral part of the future fundamental physical theory, physicalism will not be falsified, and physicalists may (or should) accept fundamental mentality as a genuine physical concept. In this paper, I argue that there is some historical evidence in support of the latter understanding of physicalism. First, I give some historical evidence that seems to suggest that the historical origin of physicalism is the failure of those explanations – or pseudo-explanations – that have appealed to supernatural non-physical entities. Second, I show that in some of the initial reflections on materialism – the predecessor of physicalism – in the first half of the twentieth century, philosophers understood materialism in terms of the very historical origin. (shrink)

Creationists have long argued that evolutionary science is committed to a dogmatic metaphysics of naturalism and materialism, which is based on faith or ideology rather than evidence. The standard response to this has been to insist that science is not committed to any such metaphysical doctrine, but only to a methodological version of naturalism, according to which science may only appeal to natural entities and processes. But this whole debate presupposes that there is a clear distinction between the natural and (...) the supernatural, and thus that naturalism is a meaningful doctrine. I argue that this assumption is false. The concepts of the natural and the supernatural are in fact hopelessly obscure, such that the claim that science is committed to methodological naturalism cannot be made good. This is no victory for anti-naturalists however; explicitly supernaturalist theories, such as Creationism, can be ruled out of scientific consideration as a priori incoherent, given that they presuppose for their intelligibility that there is a meaningful natural-supernatural distinction. This is not the case for standard scientific theories however, as they are not explicitly naturalistic theories; they do not postulate natural or physical entities or processes as such. (shrink)