RATIO, Vol. XVII no 1 (March 04)
LOAR’S DEFENCE OF PHYSICALISM
Stephen Law
Abstract
Brian Loar
believes he has refuted all those antiphysicalist arguments that take as their
point of departure observations about what is or isn’t conceivable. I argue
that there remains an important, popular and plausible-looking form of
conceivability argument that Loar has entirely overlooked. Though he may not
have realized it, Saul Kripke presents, or comes close to presenting, two
fundamentally different forms of conceivability argument. I distinguish the two
arguments and point out that while Loar has succeeded in refuting one of
Kripke’s arguments he has not refuted the other. Loar is mistaken: physicalism
still faces an apparently insurmountable conceptual obstacle.
