Havn;t proofread yet. Not done. More to come. last update, 4:47pm

What does it mean to call oneself a physicalist? For the use of this paper, I'm defining physicalism in the following way: "The belief that those objects, and only those objects, exists which are can be explained in terms of (or reduced to) the primitves of modern physics." Most every strict physicalist will agree with this statement with some argument over what it means to "reduce to" and "explain in terms of". There is, however, a fatal flaw in this formulation of physicalism. Physics cannot help philosophy select a primitve ontology because it does not itself have a consistent set of primitves.

While this may seem a radical claim, I think it follows immediately form a complete understanding of the nature and methods of modern physics together with a thorough analysis of the definition. Let us begin by first examining in detail what is said by the definition provided.

Any formal system has at least four of classes of objects: primitives, defined terms, axioms, and theorems. While the last three are easily understood, the notion of a primitve is unusual to those unaccustomed to formal thought. The relation of axiom to theorem is reflected in that of primitive to defined term. Primitives are those terms accepted without a formal definition. Every formal system has primitives. It cannot be that all terms are well-defined (that is, are not circularly defined, but are defined in terms of other terms). In philosophy, the discipline of ontology deals with what there is. We can also think of ontology as the quest for a set of primitves in terms of which to explain the rest of the world. A general ontology is a set of objects which are thought to populate the world. A primitive ontology is the set of objects to which the general ontology can be reduced. This reduction often takes the form of constitution; for example, a table may be constituted out of wood, which is constituted of organic molecules, which are constituted of hydrogen, oxygen, nitrogen, carbon (and some other atoms), which are constituted of electrons, protons, and neutrons, which are constituted out of quarks (and some other particles). If we believe tables to exist, they form a part of out general ontology. If we can offer no explanation of what constitutes a quark (that is, what a quark is made of) then quarks are part of our primitive ontology.

A term may very well be primitive in one system, but not in another. In high-school calculus, the notion of a natural (counting) number is most often primitive. However, in set theory (for example) the natural numbers are very well defined terms developed at a high level of sophistication. Another analogy is the spectrum of colors. When we speak of pigments, red, blue, and yellow are primitive. However, when we deal with optics, cyan, magenta, and yellow are used. (this analogy lacks the arbitrarity of more abstract systems). It is also the case that different formulations (or models) of the same system may use different primitives. Quine spoke of this when (in Word and Object?) he proposed a tribe that spoke not of rabbits as primitive but rather of unseparated rabbit parts. However, he did not follow through with the notion in the context of formal systems. A simpler analogy is perhaps kinship, where we may think of Sara as Ellen's daughter, and Ellen as Nancy's, or without loss of information, we can translate to speak of Sara's mother Ellen, and grandmother Nancy. For a formal example, look at geometry. In a Euclid's system (as per Elements) he took points to be primitive. In the Egyptian system, distances were primitive. They do not define different geometries; they define different models of the same system in terms of different primitives.

A model of a formal system is consists of the primitives, definitions in terms of the primitives, and rules describing the relation of terms (both primitive and defined) to each other). It's important to note that primitives need not be simply "noun-like" objects, but also that "verb-like" relations and operations can be primitive. For example, in set theory, the relation "is an element of" or "belongs to" is primitive. In grade-school, addition and multiplication are primitive, and subtraction and division are defined there from. Different models of the same system may look quite different from the outside. For example, **COME UP WITH EXMAPLE FOR HERE**.

In every day practice, we use many different models of the world around us. The most common one is the "common sense" system, which takes a great deal of primitives. Tables, chairs, people, emotions, owning, wanting, creating are all primitive. We are all quite familiar with this system, and comfortable with its use, so I'll not dwell on it. Similar, but slightly more refined is a Platonic formulation, where there are a large number of noun-like primitives, and only one primitive relation "is the essential form of". All relations between objects are described in terms of the relations of their essential forms. Cartesian dualism is another familiar model. In this, there are two rough classes of primitives, physical and mental. Most popular among modern philosophers, however, are the physicialist models. While these differ in many respects, at their core, they assert that the primitive ontology of the universe is the same as that used in physics.

In philosophy, the criterion for judgement of models is two-fold. First, is the model useable? That is, does the model provde us with enough descriptive power to relate things we feel are important about the world around us, including our "inner lives"? The second criterion for formulation-comparison is Occam's Razor. That is, A model with a smaller number of primitives is better than a larger one, all other things being equal.