There’s been considerable debate in philosophy about what the heck physicalism (the belief that everything is physical) really amounts to, and I (as a physicalist) have tended to think that the real issues may be best described negatively rather than positively; it’s not an endorsement of things which sufficiently fit the paradigm of the physical, but rather rejection of what I usually call the spooky. One of the common characteristics of the phenomena I class as spooky is that belief in them is encouraged by well-documented cognitive biases, one of the biggest being the human tendency to see agency everywhere. Overdeveloped agency-detection is no doubt involved in belief in God, ghosts, and alien-piloted UFOs. Ball lightning, on the other hand, seems to have nothing to do with agency, and not to be particularly spooky. And, returning to the original topic, big ocean waves don’t seem particularly spooky either. So I’m going to suggest that “non-spooky” may be a helpful translation of her “physically possible” (and indeed of many uses of the phrase in general).
So I’m going to suggest that “non-spooky” may be a helpful translation of her “physically possible” (and indeed of many uses of the phrase in general).
And non-spooky really means “doesn’t require the prior-probability-equivalent of a Boltzmann Brain suddenly materializing to cause the action attributed to agency”.
Alien UFOs are physically possible, while ball lightning was long thought physically impossible, according to my understanding.
There’s been considerable debate in philosophy about what the heck physicalism (the belief that everything is physical) really amounts to, and I (as a physicalist) have tended to think that the real issues may be best described negatively rather than positively; it’s not an endorsement of things which sufficiently fit the paradigm of the physical, but rather rejection of what I usually call the spooky. One of the common characteristics of the phenomena I class as spooky is that belief in them is encouraged by well-documented cognitive biases, one of the biggest being the human tendency to see agency everywhere. Overdeveloped agency-detection is no doubt involved in belief in God, ghosts, and alien-piloted UFOs. Ball lightning, on the other hand, seems to have nothing to do with agency, and not to be particularly spooky. And, returning to the original topic, big ocean waves don’t seem particularly spooky either. So I’m going to suggest that “non-spooky” may be a helpful translation of her “physically possible” (and indeed of many uses of the phrase in general).
And non-spooky really means “doesn’t require the prior-probability-equivalent of a Boltzmann Brain suddenly materializing to cause the action attributed to agency”.