A Conscious Universe

[bennyboy]

No, that's circular. Physicists study reality, and so in this sense saying that reality is physical is just restating a definition.

You are using a non-standard definition of physics. By your definition metaphysics would count as a branch of physics. I don't see how this definition of physicalism is circular unless you're already defining reality as physical, which is not what idealist define reality as.

Ummm, except that wasn't my definition. I was responding to the idea that whatever physicists happen to be studying constitutes a physical monism. A subject with a name and a philosophical position are not the same thing.

---

What shape is a photon?

It's most likely a point particle.

And yet. . . interference.

---

No, I disagree that the current state of physics actually fits the idea of a geometric space. This is because at least some objects (like the photon) cannot be expressed in geometrical terms, and because mind cannot be directly observed, even though in a physical monist reality, nothing should be unobservable in this way.

I'm confused by your usage of the term physical monist since it seems philosophers use the term physicalism to mean different things. I know one modern usage of physicalism is that [full in the blank] is dependent on or reduces to the things physics is about. Philosophers seem to define physical properties as the things physics is about. Is Rhythm arguing for some weird version of physicalism?

This is not, then, a statement about the nature of reality, which is what this thread is supposedly about. If whatever physisicts study is defined as physical, then an idealistic universe is ALSO physical, and the term really has no meaning.

But this thread isn't about physics. Whatever word you use, my point is that if whatever you take as "real" cannot be expressed unambiguously as a thing, then it isn't one. And a universe which, under the hood, consists of such non-things is better seen as an expression of ideas than things.