In the case of the physical, that is typically defined as something that does not act for reasons. If I am caught in an avalanche, the rocks have no interest in either clobbering me or not clobbering me. They just move in accordance with the laws of physics.Yet in our universe we have things called scientists (and other rational agents as well) who respond to evidence and have purposes for what they do. This suggests a whole different mode of causation than what atoms in the unverse are supposed to do according to physicalism. If a reason is the cause of my actions, but my brain is physical (meaning that the particles in it do not act for reasons), then acting for reasons is an emergent property. But what that involves isn't just saying something about the whole that you don't say about the parts, it is attributing a fundamentally different kind of causation to the whole that is not found in the parts. And that seems to me to be self-contradictory. If physicalism is true, then all causation is physical (non-rational) causation. If you want to introduce purpose into physics be my guest, but then how do you keep God out of physics?
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