ABSTRACT
This chapter begins with the debate between Descartes and the French materialist Pierre Gassendi on the nature of mind. It examines the novelty of the view by comparing it to the following major doctrines: materialism, substance dualism, and property dualism. Physicalism is the doctrine that all things that exist are entities recognized by the science of physics, or systems aggregated out of such entities. The foregoing challenge to the monistic, constitutional doctrine of physicalism, however, hardly gives support to Cartesian dualism, but is instead a critical reflection, emerging within physicalism, on the true nature of reality. In the face of the body-problem, physicalists might try to defend their thesis that everything that exists is physically constituted by appealing to the causal argument for physicalism. Increasing sensitivity to the depth issue has generated some critical reflections on the ontological doctrine of physicalism and the body-problem, even among present-day physicalists.
