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Contemporary debates in philosophy of mind‐between reductionists, dualists, nonreductive materialists, and eliminativists‐have been based upon the perception that mental phenomena like consciousness and intentionality are uniquely irreducible. The “explanatory gap” between mind and body seems to be an urgent and fascinating problem if one assumes that intertheoretic reductions are the rule in the special sciences, with the mind as the lone exception. While this debate was going on in philosophy of mind, however, philosophers of science were rejecting this very sort of reductionism: intertheoretic reductions are not ubiquitous but rare. This book argues that post‐reductionist philosophy of science poses problems for all the familiar positions in philosophy of mind and calls for a deep rethinking of the problematic. To this end, a new perspective, Cognitive Pluralism, is urged.

This book comprises three main chapters on Descartes, Spinoza and Leibniz, with extensive responses. It explores the common ground of the great early-modern rationalist theories, and provides an examination of the ways in which the mainstream Platonic tradition permeates these theories. One chapter identifies characteristically Platonic themes in Descartes’s cosmology and metaphysics, finding them associated with two distinct, even opposed attitudes to nature and the human condition, one ancient and ‘contemplative’, the other modern and ‘controlling’. It finds the same tension in Descartes’s moral theory, and believes that it remains unresolved in present-day ethics. Was Spinoza a Neoplatonist theist, critical Cartesian, or naturalistic materialist? The second chapter argues that he was all of these. Analysis of his system reveals how Spinoza employed Neoplatonist monism against Descartes’s Platonist pluralism. Yet the terminology — like the physics — is Cartesian. And within this Platonic-Cartesian shell Spinoza developed a rigorously naturalistic metaphysics and even, Ayers claims, an effectually empiricist epistemology. The final chapter focuses on the Rationalists’ arguments for the Platonist, anti-Empiricist principle of ‘the priority of the perfect’, i.e. the principle that finite attributes are to be understood through corresponding perfections of God, rather than the reverse. It finds the given arguments unsatisfactory but stimulating, and offers a development of one of Leibniz’s for consideration. These chapters receive informed and constructive criticism and development at the hands of, respectively, Douglas Hedley, Sarah Hutton and Maria Rosa Antognazza.

Does God want us to be wealthy? Many people believe that God offers not only eternal joy in the hereafter but also material blessings in the here and now. Other Christians see this “prosperity theology”, as nothing more than vulgar materialism, incompatible with orthodox Christianity. This book examines the Word of Faith movement, an independent, non-denominational Christian movement that preaches the so-called “health and wealth gospel”. Drawing on the author's personal experiences as a former insider and in-depth interviews with members, this book takes the reader inside the movement, revealing what it is like to belong, and how people accept, reject, and reshape Word of Faith doctrines to fit their own lives. Analyzing the movement's appeal to African Americans, the book argues that because of their history of oppression and discrimination, African American religious institutions have always had to address the material ' as well as spiritual ' concerns of their members.

This book is a speculative philosophical theology based on three themes: that a version of materialism is a help, not a hindrance, in philosophical theology; that God develops; and that this development is kenotic, an abandonment of power. The materialism considered in this work is non-reductive: of metaphysical necessity, the mental supervenes on the physical. Materialism leads to the thesis that the primordial God is metaphysically necessary, the limiting case of supervenience. It is speculated that the brain-analogue of the primordial God consists of all the possibilities for creation. It is also speculated that God changes. In the beginning there was a God which loved no one and which was not lovable, but was all-powerful and all-knowing. A sequence of acts resulted in a community of divine love, the Holy Trinity, and a world with many creatures who were autonomous agents. God loved us so much that one Divine Person became fully human and was willing to suffer to show us divine love. This is the kenotic development of God from Pure Will to Unbounded Love. In addition, kenosis provides a new resource for understanding evil. The Primordial God is good but in an inhuman way; why should anyone expect otherwise? But as a result of God's kenotic development, God is now like a loving parent, as the great monotheistic religions teach.

This book takes a bold new look at ways of exploring the nature, origins, and potentials of consciousness within the context of science and religion. It draws careful distinctions between four elements of the scientific tradition: science itself, scientific realism, scientific materialism, and scientism. Arguing that the metaphysical doctrine of scientific materialism has taken on the role of ersatz-religion for its adherents, it traces its development from its Greek and Judeo-Christian origins, focusing on the interrelation between the Protestant Reformation and the Scientific Revolution. It also looks at scientists' long term resistance to the firsthand study of consciousness and details the ways in which subjectivity has been deemed taboo within the scientific community. In conclusion, the book draws on William James's idea for a “science of religion” that would study the nature of religious and, in particular, contemplative experience.

What place does consciousness have in the natural world? If we reject materialism, could there even be a credible alternative? In this book, the author addresses the causal role of consciousness in the world from an anti-physicalist perspective. Introducing a new paradigm called Liberal Naturalism, he offers a profound framework that proposes a deep link between consciousness and causation. Using this framework, he undercuts the logic of the historical debate and deflates the question of causality that physicalists have long been posing to anti-physicalists. Ultimately, he gives consciousness a causally important role without supposing either that it is physical or that it interacts with the physical.

Elaborates a materialist view of consciousness. The central thesis of the book is that while conscious states are material, we humans have two quite different ways of thinking about them. We can think about them materially, as normal parts of the material world, but we can also think about them phenomenally, as states that feel a certain way. These two modes of thought refer to the same items in reality, but at a conceptual level they are distinct. By focusing on the special structure of phenomenal concepts, David Papineau is able to expose the flaws in the standard arguments against materialism, while at the same time explaining why dualism can seem so intuitively compelling. The book also considers the prospects for scientific research into consciousness, and argues that such research often promises more than it can deliver. Once phenomenal concepts are recognized for what they are, many of the questions posed by consciousness research turn out to be irredeemably vague.

Consciousness presents a problem. There are excellent reasons for believing that materialism, or physicalism, is the correct metaphysical view of our world, yet it is extremely difficult to see how conscious experiences, or qualia, can be incorporated into the materialist framework. Both aspects of the problem are defended. First, a positive argument for materialism is given, with responses to dualist objections. Second, objections are presented to most materialist attempts to explain consciousness – in particular, higher‐order theories, representationalism, and eliminativism. Finally, it is argued that to make genuine progress on this problem we need to delve deeper into the question of our cognitive access to our own experience. Thus the problems of intentionality and consciousness are not as separable as has often been thought.