Hey, I just wrote this to a friend. I thought it was fun - you might enjoy it:

I know some folks get annoyed when I talk about problems with physicalism (I'll use that word alone).

I heard Bernardo Kastrup talking with Swami Sarvapriyananda the other day and he made a fantastic point about how people get confused about this.

There's two VERY different uses of the word "physical" and if you don't realize this it can be very confusing.

COLLOQUIAL USE OF THE WORD "PHYSICAL" -

I find no matter how many times I make the distinction, people still think when you're criticizing physicalism, or say something like "nothing physical can possibly exist" they think you're batshit crazy.

"Oh yeah," they say - "go stand in front of the train and tell me nothing physical exists."So the colloquial use of the word physical refers to the train and the impact on your very physical body that results.

Physical, in this sense, refers to the very obvious hard stuff you're sitting on, walking on, that makes up the trees, rocks, earth, etc. Anyone who denies that physical stuff exists is obviously nuts and not to be taken seriously as a philosopher.

PHILOSOPHIC MEANING OF "PHYSICAL"

But that's not what philosophers who believe in physicalism mean. "Physical" in this sense means "Whatever the mysterious stuff is that underlies all that we perceive and conceive. if you TOOK AWAY the "FEELING" of hardness, roughness, solidity, etc and analyzed away all the qualities of experience - color, sound, sensations, etc - and all the conceptual quantities we measure in science - mass, spin, force, etc - what's left is "physical."

There's an easy solution.

Use "physical" the way everyone uses it, to refer to the hard stuff of our bodies and everything around us.

Replace the philosophic term "physicalism" with "abstractism."

Now you have a clear sense of what the fuss is all about.

Somewhere in the late 19th century, some people incapable of even the most basic processes of logical thinking got this bright idea that the utterly and purely blank conceptual abstractions that are of irreplaceable value in calculating the various equations used in physics to create such astonishing technologies - that that abstraction is the fundamental thing in the universe.

When you put it that way you realize it's really not going too far to say that

Abstractism is utterly delusional. Imagine. All this you experience, all that you could ever conceive of - it has its roots in abstract concepts used by physicists.

That's what philosophic "physicalism" amounts to, and it's insane.Insane.

Crazy.

MEGA-nuts.

(or maybe MAGA nuts!!!)