E-013 SEP Physicalism - Everything Is Physical (Excerpt)

Exact excerpt

# Physicalism
_First published Tue Feb 13, 2001; substantive revision Tue May 25, 2021_
Physicalism is, in slogan form, the thesis that everything is physical. The thesis is usually intended as a metaphysical thesis, parallel to the thesis attributed to the ancient Greek philosopher Thales, that everything is water, or the idealism of the 18th Century philosopher Berkeley, that everything is mental. The general idea is that the nature of the actual world (i.e. the universe and everything in it) conforms to a certain condition, the condition of being physical. Of course, physicalists don’t deny that the world might contain many items that at first glance don’t seem physical — items of a biological, or psychological, or moral, or social, or mathematical nature. But they insist nevertheless that at the end of the day such items are physical, or at least bear an important relation to the physical.
  * [1. Preliminaries](https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/physicalism/#Prelim)
    * [1.1 Terminology](https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/physicalism/#Term)
    * [1.2 Historical Issues](https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/physicalism/#HistIssu)
    * [1.3 A Framework for Discussion](https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/physicalism/#FramForDisc)
  * [2. The Completeness Question](https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/physicalism/#ModaNonModaForm)
    * [2.1 Supervenience and Necessity Physicalism](https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/physicalism/#SupeNecePhys)
    * [2.2 Identity Physicalism](https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/physicalism/#IdenPhys)
      * [2.2.1 Token Physicalism](https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/physicalism/#TokePhys)
      * [2.2.1 Type Physicalism](https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/physicalism/#TypePhys)

Where on the page

Physicalism - opening definition (approx line 42).