physicalism

Physicalism is the philosophical tenet that everything can be explained by physical processes. This isthe domonant view in modern philosophy and physics. This is closely associated with views that all intelligence and even consciousness can be explained by neurones in the brain acting as a form of information processing engine, and one of the arguments for strong AI, Physicalism is also losely related to the physical symbol system hypothesis, although the latter is often not taken to include {[sub-symbolic}} processing. Within philosophy, physicalism and materialism may be used interchangably, but the latter may sometimes be taken in a slightly more restricted sense of describing things interms of matter not including other aspects of the physical world such as energy fields.

Used on page 552

Also known as materialism