Morris, K. (2025). The Hope and Horror of Physicalism: Comments and Critique. Philosophia. doi:10.1007/s11406-025-00899-6
[Abstract]Christopher Devlin Brown’s The Hope and Horror of Physicalism works through different ways of understanding the content of physicalism, evaluates the “existential consequences” of physicalism so understood, and attempts to defend one form of physicalism – “Russellian physicalism” – from consciousness-based objections. I first raise some minor-but-not-too-minor concerns about Brown’s historical account of physicalism. Second, I discuss one version of physicalism (the “theory-based version”) that Brown works with in assessing physicalism’s existential consequences. Third, I raise some questions about Brown’s preferred way of understanding physicalism, which he labels “Russellian physicalism”, and which is a version of “via negativa physicalism”. My discussions are offered in a constructive spirit.
[Citing Place (1956)]  
Citing Place (1956) in context (citations start with an asterisk *):
Section 2 The Origins of Contemporary Physicalism
* Footnote 5 In stating the “type identity theory”, Brown references Smart, along with Feigl, 1958 and Place, 1956. However, in addition to the issue of the extent to which these thinkers embraced “type identities”, there are important differences between the “identity theory” of Smart and Place on the one hand and the “identity theory” of Feigl on the other hand. Indeed, a case can be made that while the Smart-Place version of the “identity theory” amounts to a kind of eliminativism about phenomenal properties, the Feigl version of the “identity theory” (prefigured in Schlick, 1925) resembles the “Russellian physicalism” (see below) that Brown favors (see Stubenberg, 1997 for discussion).