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Realistic Monism - Strawson
One thing we know about physical stuff, given that (real) physicalism is true, is
that when you put it together in the way in which it is put together in brains like
ours, it regularly constitutes—is, literally is—experience like ours. Another thing
we know about it, let us grant, is everything (true) that physics tells us. But what is
this second kind of knowledge like? Well, there is a fundamental sense in which it is
‘abstract’, ‘purely formal’, merely a matter of ‘structure’, in Russell’s words.¹⁸ This is a
well established but often overlooked point.¹⁹ ‘Physics is mathematical’, Russell says,
‘not because we know so much about the physical world’—and here he means the
non-mental, non-experiential world, in my terms, because he is using ‘mental’ and
‘physical’ conventionally as opposed terms—
but because we know so little: it is only its mathematical properties that we can discover. For
the rest, our knowledge is negative . . . . The physical world is only known as regards certain
abstract features of its space-time structure—features which, because of their abstractness, do not suffice to show whether the physical world is, or is not, different in intrinsic character from the world of mind.²⁰
¹⁷ I came upon Eddington’s book The Nature of the Physical World in a holiday house in Scotland
in 1999.
¹⁸ 1927a: 392, 382; 1956: 153; 1927b: 125.
¹⁹ It takes time to assimilate it fully. It cannot be simply read off the page.
²⁰ 1948: 240; see also 247. Russell’s overall view is that ‘we know nothing about the intrinsic
quality of physical events except when these are mental events that we directly experience’ (1956:153), and that ‘as regards the world in general, both physical and mental, everything that we know of its intrinsic character is derived from the mental side’ (1927a: 402). See Lockwood 1981, 1989, and Essay 1.
One thing we know about physical stuff, given that (real) physicalism is true, is
that when you put it together in the way in which it is put together in brains like
ours, it regularly constitutes—is, literally is—experience like ours. Another thing
we know about it, let us grant, is everything (true) that physics tells us. But what is
this second kind of knowledge like? Well, there is a fundamental sense in which it is
‘abstract’, ‘purely formal’, merely a matter of ‘structure’, in Russell’s words.¹⁸ This is a
well established but often overlooked point.¹⁹ ‘Physics is mathematical’, Russell says,
‘not because we know so much about the physical world’—and here he means the
non-mental, non-experiential world, in my terms, because he is using ‘mental’ and
‘physical’ conventionally as opposed terms—
but because we know so little: it is only its mathematical properties that we can discover. For
the rest, our knowledge is negative . . . . The physical world is only known as regards certain
abstract features of its space-time structure—features which, because of their abstractness, do not suffice to show whether the physical world is, or is not, different in intrinsic character from the world of mind.²⁰
¹⁷ I came upon Eddington’s book The Nature of the Physical World in a holiday house in Scotland
in 1999.
¹⁸ 1927a: 392, 382; 1956: 153; 1927b: 125.
¹⁹ It takes time to assimilate it fully. It cannot be simply read off the page.
²⁰ 1948: 240; see also 247. Russell’s overall view is that ‘we know nothing about the intrinsic
quality of physical events except when these are mental events that we directly experience’ (1956:153), and that ‘as regards the world in general, both physical and mental, everything that we know of its intrinsic character is derived from the mental side’ (1927a: 402). See Lockwood 1981, 1989, and Essay 1.
