The limits of physicalism

Mark Wilson, in his 1985 paper entitled "What Is This Thing Called 'Pain'?: The Philosophy of Science Behind the Contemporary Debate," proposed an account of physicalism that departs significantly from standard approaches. One of the main points of his paper was to explain the flaws in arguments claiming that psychological properties cannot be shown to be physical because of their functional nature. However, the positive proposal that Wilson makes in this article bears further examination. I argue that it not only resolves many problems that have grown up around the topic of physicalism, but that the proposal itself should make us radically rethink some important philosophical questions, especially those concerning explanation and property identification.