In contrast to what several recent interpreters suggest, Hegel would reject the labels “naturalism,” “essentialist naturalism,” and “naturalist essentialism” for his philosophy. In light of the architecture of his system, the label “essentialist naturalism” would commit him to a variety of physicalism, which he rejects on the grounds of physics’ inability to establish the compatibility of material bodies and physical form. Second, as his critique of nature’s most concrete category “the death of the individual animal” and the sublation of nature into Geist illustrate, Hegel deems nature incapable of reconciling the individuals’ particularity with the genus’ universality, and therefore associates the realm of nature with death and proceeds to sublate nature into the concept of Geist. Finally, pointing out the inability of objectivist essentialist metaphysics to consistently unite the universal with the particular, Hegel also rejects the metaphysics of “naturalist essentialism” and proposes a concept-metaphysical account of the relationship between the logical idea, nature, and Geist. As all of these are variations of the idea, this proves him to be an idealist rather than a naturalist or a spiritualist.

Recognition that people are divided by a common language is typically marked by a search for culprit ambiguities – but rarely so when name philosophers are involved, for whom continued talking past each other may seem the easier option.Whether the case of Carnap and Quine fits this profile is my quarry here. I begin with Quine’s conjecture that it was Neurath’s influence that made Carnap introduce the paragraphs into the Aufbau that promised, without elaboration, a conceptual genealogy on a physical basis. I argue that are good grounds to support Quine here. The analysis will be supplemented with remarks about later disagreements between Carnap and Neurath.

I outline Merleau-Ponty’s critique of first-generation empiricism with its causal account of sensations of determinate qualities, which is rejected in favour of a figure background account that factors in our interests and our biological imperatives. I then show how he rejects a classical account of re-identification through associations based on the projection of memories. We do not associate past and present bundles of sensations, rather past and present configurations. I then run through his positive view of intersensory or intermodal perception, in which our senses work together from the outset because they are structured to do so. Finally I suggest how he would criticise the second-generation objective thought found in the contemporary physicalism that no longer posits unstructured sensations or externally related variables. He would show that our lifeworld, our responses to significant situations and our beliefs in proximate and distant action possibilities for ourselves and others are utterly ineliminable.

Aristotle identifies perception as central to all animals, enabling them to fulfill their ends. His biological works clarify his hylomorphic account of perception as a key activity of the soul by providing detailed overviews of types of perception and perceptual organs. Like other bodily organs, these have complex structures comprised of physical components, often in layers, all ultimately involving the four basic elements. I defend a compromise position on scholarly controversies about whether Aristotle can successfully provide a physicalist account of perception. Briefly, the answer is “yes and no.” His biological works, along with “chemical” works, do give physical accounts of perceptible features like colors and tastes, as well as of the organs (and parts) capable of registering them. However, because of his teleological views about nature, such accounts must be “top-down” and are never purely reductive or translatable into structural accounts like those of the atomists. Finally, we must remember that perception is crucial to the behavioral success of the animal as a whole within its environment. Perceptual “experience” in our modern sense does not occur in any organ but rather in the body as a whole, and more centrally in the heart and blood vessels.

After a brief overview of Christian Platonism in modern philosophy, the chapter has three sections. The first defends a Platonic account of value, in the second the primacy of consciousness is defended over and against physicalist accounts of mind that denigrate or eliminate consciousness, and in a third section objections are raised to Christian materialism, thus the chapter concludes with a defense of a more Platonic Christian account of the soul and body.

In the concluding chapter I review the arguments presented in the book, such as that attention is evidence for a self with its own causal power, that attention is necessary for conscious perception, that consciousness can occur without the benefit of attention, and that action and responsibility do not require attention. I briefly discuss some possible extensions of the work and suggest how one might see this perspective of the mind to fit in with other contemporary accounts.

The resulting picture of mental causation, which is summarized in this chapter, has repercussions for debates about the nature of mind. If virtually all theories about the nature of mind can solve the problems of mental causation, then arguments from mental causation against certain theories become irrelevant in debates between reductive physicalists, non-reductive physicalists, and dualists. Questions about the nature of mind will have to be decided independently of the problems of mental causation.

The introduction describes the main problems of mental causation, their interrelations, and their history. The first problem is the interaction problem, the problem of how the mind and the physical world can interact at all. The second problem is the exclusion problem, the problem of how the mind can have physical effects given that these physical effects already have physical causes. How severe the problems are depends on the nature of the mind. The more intimate the relation between the mental and the physical, the more pressing the problems become. How severe the problems are also depends on the nature of causation. If causation requires the transference of a physical quantity, the problems are much harder to solve than if it suffices for causation if the cause makes a difference to the effect. The introduction outlines the history of the problems from Descartes to the twentieth century.

This chapter relates religious experience to the sciences and naturalism, with special attention to the role of intentional agents.