Re: Briefly

"Physicalism is "falsifiable," but not in the Kuhnian/scientistic sense of the terms. It is a metaphysical claim, not a physical claim, and it is falsifiable more in the way that a mathematical speculation might be." This was sort of what I was saying in my reply to Pharmakon. (Though I don't think it is "falsifiable" even on the conceptual or metaphysical level - or "verifiable" for that matter - but whatever reasons we have for or against it are philosophical, not "scientific".) Looking back over my OP, I see that there was something I wrote that may have caused Pharmakon to think I was proposing physicalism as an empirical claim, namely, when I wrote at the end, specifically on the issue of consciousness, "I hold that qualia and neural events are identical and that this identity is established empirically." This suggests that if an identity cannot be established through conceptual analysis of terms, then the only alternative is that it is being proposed as an empirical hypothesis, on the same level as any other hypothesis in science. This was a misleading and incorrect statement, and I wish to withdraw it as written. It was also clumsily expressed, because my point was not that qualia (which are directly grasped properties) are identical with neural events (whatever that would mean), but that the events that qualia characterise are the very same events that are also characterised by physical (neural) descriptions (in the same way as "the morning star" and "the evening star" denote the same planet). The point I meant to make was that the identity of mental events with physical events cannot be established through any amount of conceptual or semantic analysis of propositions, so that the identity is a contingent one, to be posited on other grounds. "Physicalism is not only falsifiable but provably false. I'll probably never prove it..." Physicalism is "provably false" - you just don't know how! :) Oh well, never mind. I personally don't think physicalism is "provably true" or that its rivals are "provably false" - not all of them, anyway. I adumbrated my reasons for believing physicalism true in the last portion of my OP; but my reasons were very far indeed from constituting a proof. Either one finds my grounds for physicalism persuasive, or one does not; and perhaps there's not much more one can say. I am not sure how the truth or falsity of physicalism impinges on "boy lovers everywhere" one way or another. I don't believe the current prejudice against boylovers has anything to do with abstruse philosophical issues that have only ever been of interest to the tiniest minority of intellectuals. Still, be that as it may, I look forward to further discussion of these issues. Thanks for your post!