Footnote 1aa

1aa. Carnap explains in Schilpp [see footnote 1b* below] that the Vienna circle came up with a concept he terms physicalism in part as an antidote to the political connotations associated with materialism (and idealism). Physicalism was to supersede the outdated approach to materialism with a focus on a language of science. Originally, Carnap had favored the view of Mach and Russell that the basis for scientific speech should be phenomenalist, in the sense of "there is now a red triangle in my field of vision." Later, he came to believe the emphasis should be on material objects, in the sense of "this thing is black and heavy." Physicalism for Carnap is not about actual truth, but about how to couch scientific questions. He admits that objections were raised that "on a physicalist basis it was impossible to reach the concepts of psychology" though he found the argument unpersuasive.

According to Carnap, physicalism proposes that

1. One scientist can confirm another's introspective thoughts by use of signaling, whether via language or other means.
2. "All laws of nature, including those which hold for organisms, human beings, and human societies, are logical consequences of the physical laws [whether at present known or not], i.e., of those laws which are needed for the explanation of inorganic processes."

Carnap realizes that physicalism's premises -- which include sub-premises not listed here -- are sweeping hypotheses. Yet he counters the emergent vitalism ideas of Bergson and Broad by arguing that evolutionary theory has been validated by discovery of a continuum of processes from the inorganic to the organic worlds (though such claims have been questioned, even by biologists).

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1b** . See The Philosophy of Rudolf Carnap, Paul Arthur Schilpp ed. (Open Court 1963), pp 50, 51.

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1bb** . The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy:

Whitehead's basic thought was that we obtain the abstract idea of a spatial point by considering the limit of a real-life series of volumes extending over each other in much the same way that we might consider a nested series of Russian dolls or a nested series of pots and pans. However, it would be a mistake to think of a spatial point as being anything more than an abstraction; instead, real positions involve the entire series of extended volumes. As Whitehead puts it, “In a certain sense, everything is everywhere at all times. For every location involves an aspect of itself in every other location. Thus every spatio-temporal standpoint mirrors the world” (1925, 114).

Also see Victor Lowe in Carnap, Schilpp.

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