ABSTRACT
Physicalism is the view that everything that exists is ultimately physical. It is the dominant metaphysics of nature at present despite facing a number of formidable challenges. This chapter examines the reasons for believing in physicalism and it turns out that the undeniable success of physicalism may in fact undercut the claim that physicalism deserves wholesale acceptance. Although physicalism is in a strong antecedent position it has heretofore always provided physical explanations for all the phenomena it has grappled with. The problem of consciousness throws up a roadblock on this path towards physicalism, which then undercuts the grounds people have for endorsing ontological physicalism. The conspicuous lack of even a hint of how consciousness could be reductively epistemologically dependent on the physical is the main target of all the classic anti-physicalist arguments concerning consciousness. Consciousness stands as perhaps the single natural fact on which physicalism cannot get an explanatory grip.
