Physicalism, Not Scientism

Abstract

Although physicalism has been a received view in the philosophical community over the past half-century, scientism is by contrast a much more maligned position. And yet standard formulations of physicalism, as the view that the world is in totality the way physics says it is, can make physicalism look as if it is simply a reductionistic form of scientism. This chapter argues that attention to more subtle formulations of physicalism reveals the difference between these attitudes.