http://thewarfareismental.wordpress.com ... aningless/
The same goes for the doctrine of physicalism. To date, all definitions of physicalism I’ve seen lead to meaningless philosophical gibberish. There is nothing, even in principle, that could reliably differentiate between a physical and non-physical cause.
That's because it is "meaningless philosophical gibberish," but the man who championed "falsification" exempted "metaphysical theories" from falsification, so there you have it.
If the warfare author doesn't like that, then he should explain how in principle one could differentiate a falsifiable theory from a non-falsifiable theory (the unquoted title had the word "falsifiable" in it). Bear in mind, per the authors strong implication here, meaningfulness turns on falsifiability. Popper didn't argue that a theory had to be falsifiable in order to be meaningful, it had to be falsifiable in order to fall in the domain of science. The warfare author's sentiments force him to "verify the verification principle."
But even if he were to grant permission to use philosophy to make the distinction, he's loaded his question with phyiscalists talking about "non-physical causality." I'm curious, what are the definitions of physicalism he's acquainted with?"