Where Explanation Stops: What Physicalism and Idealism Actually Disagree About

Abstract: Contemporary debates between physicalism and idealism often generate more heat than light—critics charge idealism with denying science while defenders of physicalism insist emergence handles everything. This essay argues that the core disagreement is not about mechanisms, complexity, or scientific legitimacy, but about something more fundamental: where explanation is allowed to stop. Every explanatory framework must terminate somewhere; these terminal points are brute facts. Emergentist physicalism places its brute fact at the existence of organization-enabling laws and structures. Analytic idealism places its brute fact at the existence of mind, treating organization as intrinsic to the primitive rather than as an emergent anomaly. Both frameworks accept the same science; they differ on what grounds the reality that science describes. This essay is diagnostic, not advocative. Naming where explanations stop is not metaphysical excess; it is philosophical responsibility. Part of the Return to Consciousness research program—18 philosophical essays exploring consciousness-first metaphysics. Full project: https://brunoton.github.io/return-to-consciousness/