Foundation of the Difference between A priori and A posteriori Physicalisms and Their Implications

Document Type : Professional

Author

Abstract

Physicalism is formed on the assumption that physics is the most perfect science and thus able to explain and predict everything. In this article I try to explain the main idea of physicalism and the methods of determining the physical and then attempt to enumerate both similarities and dissimilarities of a prioi and a posteriori physicalisms. a posteriori physicalism which is but another expression of reductionism is to determine the relation of the mental and the physical with reference to empirical evidence while a priori physicalism, which is another term for non-reductionistic attempts to do the same task in terms of logical inference without referring to any experiment. Having made an examination and comparison between two types of physicalism I  came to   conclusion that the main difference between these two perspectives lies in “mental property”. The concluding part of the article gives a critical analysis of mental property and its implications in contemporary philosophy of mind.

Keywords


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