@labreuer - Physicalism is a little stronger than that. It's an assertion that those sorts of things that we don't know are of the same general kind (imprecisely-defined) as those we do. So we might come up with a Glorious Synthesis Model, but it will be build off ideas of states and mathematical relations and all those sorts of things.

It will not, in contrast, be built off of analogies and inferences of the preferences of the Flying Spaghetti Monster, or off of the mass wishes of the totality of conscious human minds, living and dead, or anything like that.

So it is something of a statement of ignorance but also a statement limiting the bounds of our ignorance: yes, there's lots of stuff we don't know, but the explanations are going to look like the kinds of things we already know.

@RexKerr, yep, and there is a question as to whether this is a justified claim to knowledge, or merely an admitting to what is currently within our kenotic grasp, or something else. If you sweep the ocean with a 4x4"-holed net, then you won't find really small things. Do those small things exist? You ought to say that you do not know.

@labreuer - If you sweep the ocean with a 4x4"-holed net, but you never find anything new when you sweep the same area twice, and no matter how much you bash the stuff you find before tossing it back in, you always get it back out again, you are justified in doubting that small things exist.

That's a much better analogy to the position physicalism is in now.

Of course some degree of uncertainty is warranted about everything (hi, evil demon!). And physicalism isn't as sound as e.g. that Newton's third law holds. But calling it a statement of ignorance is like calling the non-existence of unicorns a "statement of ignorance".

It's quite justified to believe in a (very probable) lack of unicorns: if they were around we should have found them by now.

@RexKerr, what do you do with the indeterminacies that show up, for which we cannot trace causal chains? Do you just declare that the causal chain terminates somewhere, because you cannot conceive of what might have caused the termination point?

It seems that we should also pay attention to what kinds of violations of causal closure would also introduce kenotic blindspots. Would all such violations cause kenotic blindspots? If so, this is concerning and ought to be investigated. For we usually assume that reality is rational. At least, that assumption seems required for further research of any kind.

@labreuer - Can you give a specific example of the kind of indeterminacy you're thinking of?