Markus Gabriel's "Neo-Existentialism" and the New Realism.

What follows is a brief comment on Markus Gabriel's philosophy. 

I have not discussed the exchanges between Professor Gabriel and his interlocutors in connection with the essay on "neo-existentialism" because I wished to develop my reaction to this text independently of the comments of others. 

My next essay to be posted here will examine New Jersey issues including the spreading plague of anti-Semitic attacks, more child molesting incidents, contamination and diseases linked to additional recently discovered and illegally buried chemical waste that is only aggravated by the Covid pandemic. 

These aspects of New Jersey life are made possible by the astonishing corruption and incompetence among lawyers, judges, police and politicians that seems to be in keeping with the Garden State's understanding of legality and ethics.

That essay will be sent with one hundred sources attached documenting New Jersey's quality of life issues and levels of corruption in the legal system that are beyond description to Justice Clarence Thomas of the U.S. Supreme Court; William P. Barr, Esq., U.S. Attorney General; the Cuban Embassy in the U.S. and other international authorities; along with The Dallas Morning Star and other newspapers.  

Primary Sources:

Books:

Markus Gabriel, Neo-Existentialism (Cambridge, UK: Polity, 2018).
Markus Gabriel, I am Not a Brain: Philosophy of Mind for the Twenty-First Century (Cambridge, UK: Polity, 2017).
Markus Gabriel, Transcendental Ontology: Essays in German Idealism (London: Bloomsbury, 2015).
Markus Gabriel, Fields of Sense: A New Realist Ontology (Edinburgh: Edinburgh U. Press, 2015).

Periodicals:

"Markus Gabriel" Retrieved from: http://www.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=markus_gabriel&ocdid28950805.
"Interview of Markus Gabriel by Anja Steinbauer," http://www.philosophynow.org (2018).
"Graham Harman Interview of Markus Gabriel," http://www.edinburghuniversitypress.com/books-fields-of-sense.html.
Markus Gabriel, "Neuroexistentialism: Meaning, Morals, and Purpose in the Age of Neuroscience," http://www.notredamephilosophyreviews.org (November 27, 2018). (Reviewing Gregg D. Caruso & Owen Flanagan, eds., Neuroscientism: Meaning, Morals, and Purpose in the Age of Neuroscience, Oxford University Press, 2018, $34.95, ISBN 978019460730.)
Sebastian Gardner, "Transcendental Ontology: Essays in German Idealism," http://www.notredamephilosophyreviews.org (December 15, 2015). (Reviewing Markus Gabriel, Transcendental Ontology: Essays in German Idealism, Bloomsbury, 2015, $32.95 (pbk), ISBN 97805671808.) 
Tom Sparrow, "Fields of Sense: A New Realist Ontology," http://www.notredamephilosophyreviews.org (October 4, 2015). (Reviewing Markus Gabriel, Fields of Sense: A New Realist Ontology, Edinburgh University Press, 2015, $34.95, ISBN 9780748692880.) 

A list of one hundred or more supplemental sources will accompany this essay.

Introduction: "Philosophy in a New Key."

Philosophy is always in search of renewal. 

In the eighties and nineties of the twentieth-century Richard Rorty announced the end of philosophy or its transformation into literature. ("Richard Rorty's Ethical Skepticism.") 

Michel Foucault and Jacques Derrida made very similar claims in the aftermath of the events of 1968. The post-structuralist "French virus" only struck after Ludwig Wittgenstein's claim decades earlier that he had answered all philosophical questions in the Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus which Wittgenstein then found to be mistaken and repudiated in the posthumous Philosophical Investigations that was intended to be even more lethal for philosophy. ("Michel Foucault and the Authorship Question" and "Jacques Derrida's Philosophy as Jazz" then "A Philosophical Investigation of Ludwig Wittgenstein.")   

At about the same time that Wittgenstein was "ending" philosophy Martin Heidegger contended that philosophy could never be same after his magnum opus Being and Time. 

Friedrich Nietzsche declared philosophy to be ended in the nineteenth century with the "dynamite" of his philosophy that officiated at the "death" of God. ("Friedrich Nietzsche on Self-Realization.")  

Hegel had already argued long before Nietzsche's Zarathustra "appeared" that history had ended with himself as the "last philosopher" who embodied "Spirit" coming to know itself as "Spirit" (Geist). 

Immanuel Kant -- the "all-crushing critic of metaphysics" -- had previously terminated the intellectual project of Western civilization, of course, understood as the quest for "the meaning of reality" by declaring any such grand metaphysical ambition to be utterly hopeless because it could only result in an effort to escape the "bounds of sense" defined as human epistemic limitations. ("Immanuel Kant and the Narrative of Freedom.") 

From antiquity Western philosophers have happily announced the end of philosophy as well as the renewal of grand theory in their own works of "genius." 

This is especially true of German philosophers for some reason who, it must be said, have also made many of the foremost contributions to human knowledge over the past several centuries. 

Markus Gabriel is the latest of these brilliant German thinkers to appear among us in order to explain that we have got things wrong for two thousand years and that he will set things straight at last.

Professor Gabriel has declared himself a "neo-existentialist" and a "new realist." ("Guerrilla Aesthetics and the Lobotomizing of the American Mind.") 

I begin my comment on Professor Gabriel's essay by offering a sense of what these terms are taken to mean with the proviso that "neo-existentialism" is a lot like your grandfather's good-old post-World War II version of Jean-Paul Sartre's existentialism and a further reminder that the last time the phrase "new realism" was bandied about in philosophical circles it designated the writings of Cook Wilson and H.A. Pritchard at Cambridge University along with the "common sense realists" inspired by G.E. Moore early in the Edwardian period of British history.

Philosophy will always be with us. 

Perhaps the ancient Romans were wise to remind us that "there is nothing new under the sun" because of the continuity in human nature which is why philosophy will always be with us.    

Before setting the stage for Professor Gabriel's entrance on a high note I should give readers a "feel" for the leading players and rivals for your affections among philosophers today. 

Markus Gabriel has been called the "Jonas Kaufman of contemporary German philosophy." 

I do not know Mr. Kaufman's views of Kant. 

I doubt that Professor Gabriel can hit a high C, but he is an engaging writer and highly original thinker. 

Aside from the division between analytical and continental philosophical schools that I will delve into later in this essay there are sub-divisions within continental thought among "Speculative Realists," "Object-Oriented Ontologists," Frankfurt School "Critical Theorists," French "Structuralists and Post-Structuralists," "Postmodernists," "Phenomenologists," "Classical Existentialists," "Phenomenological-Hermeneuticists" (my category), "Feminist Theorists," and "Psychoanalytical Schools of Philosophy," "Neo-Marxist thinkers," and others to say nothing of pragmatists in America as well as global philosophy as represented in Asia, Africa, and Latin America. 

It is important to attach the appropriate technical labels to Markus Gabriel's writings and arguments before Professor Gabriel is invited to challenge the same terms, concepts, and categories in his efforts to re-draw the philosophical map. 

In the interest of full disclosure I should explain that I am, like Charles Taylor, highly sympathetic to Professor Gabriel's project and, possibly, even more aware than he is of the harm and evil that may result from the ideology of "scientism" that has taken hold of whole areas of popular culture in America and much of Europe as a result (among other reasons) of widespread philosophical ignorance. ("The Wanderer and His Shadow" and "Drawing Room Comedy: A Philosophical Essay in the Form of a Film Script.") 

I am on the side of Professor Gabriel and Charles Taylor along with many others in this debate (including Thomists), besides the humanistic scholars in areas other than philosophy, struggling to retain the claims of the person to dignity and spiritual as well as aesthetic sides to life that are not subject to "naturalistic materialistic reduction" nor can they be dismissed, as Dr. Phil would say, as mere "denial" of our animal drives:

"To be rational is not the same as to be reasonable."

William Barrett makes this important point in commenting on what must now be called "retro-existentialism":

"In my time I have heard the most hair-raising and crazy things from very rational men [and women] advanced in a perfectly rational way; no insight or feelings had been used to check the reasoning at any point."

It may be significant that we now often use the phrase "reality check" as a limitation on our theoretical flights of fancy:

" ... we accept in our public and political life the most humanly unreasonable behavior, provided it wears a rational mask [selfish genes?] and speaks in officialese ["enhanced interrogations"] which is the rhetoric of rationality itself. Witness the recent announcement that science had been able to perfect a 'clean' hydrogen bomb -- to be sure, not perfectly 'clean' yet, but '95 percent clean' or even '96 percent clean.'"

Cyberwarfare that destroys infrastructure and hospital technology or medical professionals' ability to care for patients has been called "clean warfare" by the Pentagon in 2019:

"Of course the quantitative measurement makes the matter sound so scientific and rational that people no longer bother to ask the human meaning of the whole thing." (Irrational Man, pp. 270-271.)

When scientists, philosophers, journalists, or politicians tell you that your "self is an illusion"; your identity is a "cultural construct without a referent"; your "mind is only your brain"; love is an "illusion created by your evolutionary drives"; life is entirely "meaningless" except for shopping for more possessions; and all religions are nothing but foolish superstitions -- you have a right to be skeptical about these claims even when they are made by persons claiming academic or cultural authority. 

Markus Gabriel's philosophical arguments are helpful in the effort to evaluate and (I hope) dismiss such trendy claims in the age of Twitter and Facebook or something called "feministing."

I. WHAT IS "NEO-EXISTENTIALISM"?  

John Searle is reputed to have said that the difference between analytical and continental philosophers is that the former group answer questions with an argument whereas the latter respond by giving you a name. 

Searle's stereotypical comment is not accurate.

Much continental philosophy is conducted by means of exchanges of rigorous arguments among philosophers adhering to rival schools. 

Analytical philosophers often invoke their own canonical figures, such as Wittgenstein, Carnap, Quine, or Davidson, by way of offering an objection or "coding" an argument in support of a philosophical conclusion. 

There is something to be said for the distinction proposed by Franz Brentano between the scientific and artistic ways of practicing philosophy. 

These "styles" often overlap, even in the writings of the same philosophers, but there is (or has been) a greater affiliation among continental thinkers with the arts or artists while analytic(al) philosophers have attempted to align themselves with science and scientists.

Markus Gabriel has been clear in his views of this regrettable division in Western philosophy:

"I believe that philosophy is primarily the attempt to work out an overall vision of how our human thought fits into the strange place that we call 'the world.'"

I am not sure how this will be possible at all if, as Professor Gabriel insists, "the world does not exist." In any case further clarification is offered:

"Philosophy, for me, means being responsible for the fact that we have no clue what this show into which we are thrown is or means. [If it means anything.] For this means we first work out a vision of how things hang together, [emphasis added] which is a central part of our work." ("Graham Harman Interview of Markus Gabriel," pp. 3-5.)

To speak of "how things hang together" (if they do), or to suggest that there is no single way that things make sense, may well be to offer exactly the kind of metaphysical picture of the philosopher's "world" (or reality) which Professor Gabriel says elsewhere is impossible because the world as such a construct does not exist. ("The Return of Metaphysics.")  

Similarly, to say that one is a "new materialist" is difficult to reconcile with the additional claim that one believes in some "immaterial entities." 

To say both of these things amounts to claiming that one is a vegetarian who sometimes eat meat:

"I thus contend that there are immaterial entities which I consider essential for any possible insight of sound human understanding." (Gabriel, I am not a brain, p. 6.) 

A materialist is generally held to believe that ALL that exists is material or reducible to the material object that gives rise to other alleged existents (if any). 

Professor Gabriel contends:

" ... there are no coherent world pictures, and that religion is no more identical to superstition than science is to Enlightenment." (Gabriel, I am not a brain, p. 8.)

In his neo-existentialism essay Professor Gabriel states in defining this concept: 

"Neo-existentialism is the view that there is no single phenomenon or reality corresponding to the ultimately very messy umbrella term 'the mind.' Rather the phenomena typically grouped together under this heading are located on a spectrum ranging from the obviously physical to the non-existing." (Gabriel, Neo-existentialism, pp. 8-9.) 

Professor Gabriel elsewhere offers the familiar distinction between mind or the mental (pour soi) and the natural (en soi) central to his philosophy thereby re-arranging Jean-Paul Sartre's ontology. 

Belief in immaterial entities is combined with acceptance of "many" realities while Markus Gabriel distinguishes "world" from "universe" (Gabriel, Neo-existentialism, pp. 10-11.), then conflates or blends the two concepts one of which he claims does not exist (Gabriel, I am not a brain, p. 14.), concluding, finally, that "neither nature or [sic.] the universe is the sole domain there is" defining the "new realism as the view that we can actually grasp reality as it is in itself by way of our mental faculties." (Gabriel, I am not a brain, p. 13, emphasis added.)   

As previously noted Professor Gabriel has also argued, repeatedly, that "there is no way reality is in itself" because he "believes in many realities." (Gabriel, Neo-existentialism, p. 45.) 

It is puzzling that Professor Gabriel contends that there is no single thing called "reality [the world] of which all things are proper parts." (Ibid.) 

It is a strange form of "new realism" that is compatible with "many realities" and/or kinds of reality but no more unusual for a "new materialist" to accept immaterial things as real. 

This logic leads to the conclusion that 1). there is no single reality or "world" that exists; 2). nevertheless, we can grasp "reality as it is in itself" with the power of the human mind. 

These statements, I fear, will cause Professor Gabriel to experience difficulties in his encounters with analytical philosophers, such as Daniel Dennett, who are fond of logic-chopping critiques of philosophical writings.

The semantic and logical difficulties are not very important in assessing Professor Gabriel's philosophy, in my view, because he is correct about a central and most important philosophical dilemma that we face in the scientific age in which we live whether we like it or not.   

Every philosopher chooses his ancestors and affiliations. Professor Gabriel has aligned himself with classical German idealism and contributed to the development of that tradition by way of reinterpreting phenomenology and other recent schools of thought thus placing his writings squarely within the continental tradition:

"I here side with the German idealists" -- Gabriel's mediated "new" realism is not far from (and may overlap with) recent anti-realist approaches to metaphysics as I suggest -- "who all pointed out that we can not replace a vision by a more geometric style argument for the simple reason that we can never overcome the vagueness of philosophical expression (and language as such). Notoriously, early analytic philosophy (like many other movements before) failed in providing us with a clear criterion of what counts as a clear analysis of a concept or a clear presentation of an argument." ("Graham Harman Interview of Markus Gabriel," pp. 3-5.) 

Like Sartre, whose entire body of work is a reaction to the modern philosophy he inherited that included the analytical tradition and its German roots, the terms and concepts "deployed" in recent new realism and neo-existentialism are derived from Kant, Hegel, Husserl, Heidegger by way of opposition to the extreme deformations of the "discourse of postmodernity" at the end of the twentieth century.

Continental thought today is reacting against the "wasteland" that was late modern thought in the works of major recent philosophers proclaiming the death of philosophy and end of man without moving beyond the inherited language of the German-French tradition of the past two centuries which makes it likely that history is about to repeat itself with all forms of new realism encountering a revival of anti-realism, on one side, and, on the other, novel rejections of humanism as well as the concept of truth combined with a dangerous embrace of nihilism as in the work of Ray Brassier. 

"The existentialist tradition contains thinkers such as Kant, Hegel, Nietzsche, Kierkegaard, Heidegger, and Sartre. What they all have in common as a minimal assumption is the belief that Geist, the specifically human mind, brings with it a capacity to create institutions in light of our socially mediated gap of how our actions and explanations fit into a larger context." ("Neo-existentialism," p. 40.)

Any work of philosophy is a contribution to the history of the subject in the minimal sense at least that it must offer a creative interpretation (or "hermeneutic") of our contemporary situation in thought, the status of our vocabulary and conceptual resources or language in general, at a time when entertainment and advertising as well as far more cynical forces are constantly at work to contaminate all modes of thought, especially scientific language or philosophy that seeks to rise above the ephemeral or political terms which cannot be avoided. 

Philosophers from now on must be obsessively self-aware, in the continental tradition in particular where charges of vagueness and obscurity have done damage for years, concerning their time-bound and conditioned discourse and regarding "thinkers-who-are-their-thoughts" to paraphrase Hans-Georg Gadamer. ("Why philosophy is for everyone.") 

Neo-existentialism is a welcome protest against dehumanization resulting among other things from scientists' and their admirers' claims that "mindedness" is reducible to neurons firing in the brain and that the whole cosmic drama of creation along with the total adventure of the human species on our planet in all of the world's civilizations may be reduced to "selfish genes" seeking their perpetuation at "our" expense. ("Richard Dawkins and the Atheist Delusion.") 

Professor Gabriel is surely correct to suggest that this deflationary interpretation of the meaning of current scientific learning is only another mythology or, worse, an ideology (scientism more than any form of naturalism) that is false to the complexity of human experience to say nothing of our needs for meaning and purpose which we are certainly not required to accept on rational grounds or because of overwhelming empirical evidence outside the selective use of scientific tools and claims by the anti-humanists themselves. ("Has science made philosophy obsolete?") 

Stalking through the pages of Professor Gabriel's essay is a sinister villain -- the "Darth Vader" in neo-existentialism's version of "Star Wars" -- which may be described as something called "naturalism" defined in very particular and tendentious terms and occasionally confused with "scientism" which does indeed pose a threat to Western metaphysics as well as ontology and also an ethical dilemma. ("The Naked Ape.")  

Leading scholarly reference works differ substantially in how these terms and related concepts are defined: 

"Most generally, ["naturalism"] is a sympathy with the view that ultimately nothing resists explanation by the methods characteristic of natural science." (Blackburn, Dictionary of Philosophy, p. 235.) 

Please compare Ted Honderich's Oxford Companion to Philosophy, pp. 604-605 with Robert Audi's more religion-friendly definition in The Cambridge Dictionary of Philosophy, pp. 517-518. 

To speak of "nothing" resisting the scientific method of explanation (or of being "sympathetic" to such a view) while covertly aligning the concept of "naturalism" in philosophy with the study of empirical phenomena is to sneak into the discussion absolutist assumptions for science in the realm not only of so-called "nature" (what is not natural?) but also with regard to ethics and metaphysics or ontology. 

This is to predetermine the issue of what furniture the universe contains by deciding that anything which science cannot understand or make amenable to its methods does not exist which would exclude the validity of this absolutist claim for science as non-existent since no scientific experiment can establish the universality of scientific method itself. 

All of this is reminiscent of logical positivist claims for the "principle of verification" which could not be verified and, hence, succumbed to its own weapon of choice in favor of Karl Popper's "falsification criterion" of scientific validity. 

The spiritual or aesthetic and moral lives of persons are as "natural" to human beings as breathing, eating, or dying. 

Science plays a limited role or none at all in trying to understand the totality of what these aspects of persons' lives contain (or mean to them or us) as "beings-in-the-world." 

To ask whether Charles Dickens or Jane Austen is the better novelist is not to pose a question that science can answer, although this inquiry is far from "unnatural" (or trivial), nor must we accept that this question is merely about subjective preferences and therefore not subject to rational argumentation or analysis.  

The concern with judgments about values (and laws) together with their applications and interpretations of different aspects of reality is simply not and never will be amenable to resolution through experimentation or the "testing" of empirical "events." 

No experiment will tell us whether Charles Dickens is a better novelist than Jane Austen.

The question of whether Harvey Weinstein is "guilty" of the charges against him cannot simply be referred to a laboratory. 

Objective criteria may be formulated, nevertheless, to sharpen our intuitions about the ways in which one of these writers may be "better" than the other concerning some aspects of novel writing and not others. ("Master and Commander.")

There are also (we hope) rational methods to determine whether Mr. Weinstein committed the crimes with which he is charged, or to what degree he may be responsible for his reprehensible behavior, or, perhaps, even innocent of all charges assuming that he is paying his defense lawyers' fees. ("Ronald Dworkin on Law as Interpretation.")  

The issue concerning the relative merits of the two British authors of the nineteenth century is not merely a question about language (or what we mean by "better"). 

Aesthetic values underlying the analysis of the works of these writers will creep into any effort at greater precision in terminology or assessments of relative merits in their texts. 

Analysis will not be enough to obscure the difficult value choice, decision, and/or discovery that must be made to answer our authentic question as to the merits of Dickens versus Austen.

Ethical and jurisprudential values will be a part of whatever societal choices are made concerning how we assess Mr. Weinstein's guilt or innocence. ("What is Law?")  

Amazingly, as we will see, it appears that rather than science offering answers to such aesthetic or jurisprudential inquiries, aesthetics and hermeneutic methods similar to those used by lawyers or critics of art have been borrowed by leading scientists in their most recent efforts to understand a universe as puzzling and protean as well as beautiful as the novels of Dickens and Austen. 

Naturalistic methods since the seventeenth century were aligned with materialism, especially prior to the twentieth century, but the opposite seems to be true these days. 

As a result of this historical fact simplistic and reductive forms of naturalism have often been "hitched" to realism like railway boxcars on a train as though all of "reality" were necessarily "material" (and nothing more) even as "matter" was assumed to be easier to "grasp" or understand than the non-material "something" out there (if anything may be so described) which is certainly no longer true. 

Scientists now understand matter as essentially "energy" which is far from fundamental in a universe subject to basic laws (fields and forces) constitutive of material reality. 

Idealists and anti-realists have reduced "reality" in the opposite direction from "naturalistic materialists" towards ideas or concepts (hence, scientific "conceptualism") in a move that makes materialism of the classical variety obsolete or superfluous. 

The greatest difficulty today is not simply that science has rendered philosophical options dating from the seventeenth century archaic but that new models of physical reality have unified the concepts or what was described by those concepts that was formerly thought to be very far apart. ("John Searle and David Chalmers on Consciousness.")   

Physicalism may be opposed to materialism today; a naturalist may be required to accept or argue that fundamental laws describable mathematically giving rise to all material entities support new forms of rationalism and even anti-realism as distinct from old-style empiricism in epistemology and traditional versions of materialism in metaphysics.

It should come as no surprise that, as valuable as the work of "new realist" Markus Gabriel may be, it is no more important or exciting than the scholarly writings of anti-realist, idealist, and Christian priest Keith Ward who is also an opponent of materialism in More Than Matter.  

Scientific findings may be interpreted to support new realism and sophisticated or "pluralist" ontologies, such as (I believe) Professor Gabriel advocates, that are necessarily non-reductive postulating multiple "real" aspects of the universe or what Professor Gabriel calls "realities."  

This is true both within analytical and continental schools as well as among scientists as much as philosophers and literary intellectuals.

"Naturalism [of a conventional sort] in my view boils down to an avoidance strategy. The reason for its existence and widespread acceptance among philosophers and scientists alike in many parts of the world is ideological." ("Neo-existentialism," p. 13.)

II. IS "SCIENTIFIC NATURALISTIC MATERIALISM" STILL SCIENTIFIC?

The critique of naturalism by Professor Gabriel is really directed at an outdated form of naturalistic materialism and scientism. 

Many leading scientists in physics departments, but also biologists and neurochemists today have attacked materialism as a deeply flawed metaphysical "assumption" that is no longer warranted because it is actually grounded in the Newtonian physics of the seventeenth century culminating in the positivism of the nineteenth which is no longer tenable.

The Institute for Noetic Sciences in California is only one of the so-called "think-tanks" devoted to undermining "naturalistic scientific materialism" as an archaic as well as harmful ideology that has little to do with science.

Rupert Sheldrake, a foremost biologist affiliated with Cambridge University and one of the spokespersons for the Institute of Noetic Sciences, explains why materialism has been rejected:

"In biology and psychology the credibility rating of materialism is falling."

Dr. Sheldrake goes on to say:

"Can physics ride to the rescue? Some materialists prefer to call themselves physicalists, to emphasize that their hopes depend on modern physics, not 19th century theories of matter. But physicalism's own credibility rating has been reduced by physics itself for four reasons: 

First, some physicists insist that quantum mechanics cannot be formulated without taking into account the minds [Geist] of observers. They argue that physics [today] presupposes the minds of physicists.

Second, the most ambitious unified theories of physical reality, string and M-theories with 10 and 11 dimensions, respectively, take science into completely new territory."

This "new territory" is incompatible with any traditional version of materialism. 

The relevant mathematical "dimensions" may be thought of as "aspects" of the single complex and protean reality that we inhabit in the universe:

"Third, since the beginning of the 21st century, it has become apparent that the known kinds of matter and [or "as"] energy make up only about 4% of the universe. The rest consists of 'dark matter' and 'dark energy.' The nature of 96% of physical reality is literally obscure." (R. Sheldrake, "Setting Science Free From Materialism," EXPLORE, July/August, 2013, Vol. 9, No. 4., p. 3 available online at http://www.dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.explore.2013.04.004 updated 2019, and see also Professor Sheldrake's book The Science Delusion.) 

Roger Penrose, Amit Goswami, Brian Greene and many more scientists have discussed these developments and issues that may also be traced to the theoretical works of leading philosophers of science from Alfred North Whitehead to Hilary Putnam. 

All of these scientists and many more leading thinkers continue to agree that traditional forms of materialism are no longer a viable option in thinking about the ultimate nature of reality. 

Professor Gabriel's "Darth Vader" is now safely dead, except for some philosophers who may wish to revive him, but we certainly no longer have to fear a bleak materialist interpretation of life that enjoys the sanction of science. 

Daniel Dennett and analytical philosophers who take themselves to be advocates for highly disillusioned or skeptical and "realistic"  as well as utterly scientifically respectable positions while adhering to conventional materialistic monism are in fact arguing for an outdated ideology that may best be classified as a form of "scientism." ("Is Daniel Dennett an Unhelpful Samaritan?")  

Unfortunately, given some of Professor Gabriel's foundational ambiguities and the overlap in his categories or conceptual logic there is a real possibility that his important objections to crude naturalism and reductive or eliminative materialism will be overlooked in the Anglo-American philosophical community. 

Markus Gabriel has important things to teach us concerning the usable heritage of the classical German philosophical tradition which is now universal and (I suggest) he also displays a humanistic concern to retain a sense of the importance of the person and moral priorities in our ontologies leading to a possible future ethical philosophy.

Professor Gabriel has not yet published a systematic ethics or political theory nor has he expressed opinions that I am aware of concerning the philosophy of religion. ("Is it rational to believe in God?")  

Much of what Professor Gabriel has written is compatible either with a religious life-perspective or the opposite. 

Analytical philosophy seems determined to make itself irrelevant to the most important public discussions of our times. 

Analytically-minded philosophers in the English-speaking world have succeeded in earning the lack of attention they currently enjoy from the global intellectual community by failing to recognize the centrality of scientifically-based rejections of materialism while, nevertheless, claiming close affiliation with the sciences in their methodology and defense of materialism. ("Is clarity enough?") 

There has been an awful tendency to turn what analytical philosophers call "science" into a religion even as values are relegated to the realm of literary studies or statements of value are dismissed entirely as a matter for "linguistic therapy." ("Why I am not an ethical relativist" and "John Finnis and Ethical Cognitivism.")

It is possible today for a person to be an analytical philosopher and an anti-realist as well as anti-materialist as in the case not only of Keith Ward but also of such leading figures as John Foster and T.L.S. Sprigge. 

What is called for now is a reconsideration of the key terms and concepts in this discussion of ontology and, despite Professor Gabriel's protests, metaphysics: 

What is meant by philosophers using the terms "physicalism," "materialism," and the "new naturalism" are desperately in need of clarification. 

Professor Gabriel's philosophical work is a contribution to the clarification of these concepts for a new generation of philosophers transcending the continental versus analytical divide that will leave us at best with a sharpened assessment of the remaining options for students of the theory of reality today. 

Professor Gabriel will be horrified to learn that he is a kind of linguistic philosopher after all. 

A philosopher who defies conventional categories and labels to the same extent as Markus Gabriel points out that:

"You can go on refining the physicalist position, so as to accommodate all that Mary Shelly tried to teach us. As the position gains in sophistication it begins to awaken us to an enormous gulf in the world of organisms: the gulf between us and the rest. We have capacities that we do not attribute to animals, and which utterly transform all the ways in which we superficially resemble them. Two in particular deserve commentary: rationality and self-consciousness." (R. Scruton, Modern Philosophy, p. 223.) 

If physicalism now amounts merely to holding that what "is" must not violate the "laws" of nature that in turn must be abstract and not themselves "material" (as opposed to explaining the material world) if not the thoughts and dreams of those strange material beings with an inner life and "natural" tendency to imagine "what may be which never was" in order to make it real -- well, then, we can all be "physicalists" even as we reject old fashioned "materialism" in an entirely "naturalistic" way.

Philosophers rarely wish to be called "old realists." 

Perhaps it is no surprise that Professor Gabriel quotes Roger Scruton on more than one occasion:

"But what of the terms of our [scientific] theories? To what do they refer? This question has proved troublesome to empiricists. For in speaking of fields, waves and sub-atomic particles" -- to say nothing of "selfish genes" -- "we are not referring to anything that is directly observable."

We may observe "genes" but not the "selfishness" we choose to attribute to them. 

"Of course we observe the effects of these things; that is precisely what the theory says. But we do not observe the things themselves." (R. Scruton, Modern Philosophy, p. 190.)  

Perhaps we merely create a language of scientific concepts to explain what we observe or what may help us to organize our experience of what we are then pleased to call "reality." 

Is there such a thing as "reality as it exists in itself" beyond our categories and concepts or perceptual capacities fully knowable by us? Does such a reality in any meaningful sense "exist" so as to be "apprehended by the human mind" in a pristine fashion? If so, if we make such claims and speak in confident terms of "reality as it is in itself," are we not creating a "world" in a metaphysical sense which is precisely what Markus Gabriel claims is not possible because no such world does or can "exist"?

"Sometimes theoretical entities seem inherently paradoxical, like the entities studied in quantum mechanics, which are both waves and particles, and concerning which there may sometimes be no categorical truths, only probabilities." (Scruton, Modern Philosophy, p. 190, emphasis added.)

Roger Scruton acknowledges that the final sentence in this paragraph contains a truth-claim. 

Professor Gabriel often quotes Erwin Schrodinger to make a similar point concerning the limits of the epistemology of science. 

I will refer to John Wheeler, Einstein's colleague and successor in Princeton's Institute for Advanced Study, who created the "participatory universe" model that has become so influential among cosmologists: 

"Participation is the incontrovertible new concept given by quantum mechanics. It strikes down the term 'observer' of classical theory, the man who stands safely behind the glass wall and watches what goes on without taking part. It can't be done quantum mechanics says." (J. Wheeler, Gravitation, p. 1275.) ("Drawing Room Comedy: A Philosophical Essay in the Form of a Film Script.")  

The arguments supporting these claims resemble hermeneutic theories concerning the "fusion of horizons" in all encounters between creators and recipients of art works within the "space" created by aesthetic experience. 

"Space-creation" is in fact a feature of the multiverse models only beginning to be studied, mathematically, of course, but also philosophically. ("The Algorithms Are Primary.") 

The universe in a paradoxical and annoying way invites us to participate in creating the very reality in which we also find ourselves "placed." 

This metaphor of "space-creation" that is also "placement" is appreciated, for example, by Thomas Nagel in Mind and Cosmos with a profundity that is, perhaps, not fully recognized by Markus Gabriel in his dismissal of the work. 

To be sure "new realism" is one option these days, but equally attractive and popular is the "new anti-realism" of so many philosophers within both continental and analytical traditions. 

Professor Gabriel's philosophy faces a "new" challenge concerning the issue of whether he is (or is not) a "dualist." 

Gabriel's ambiguity on this matter is consistent with a larger pattern of challenging the traditional categories in metaphysics while seeking to escape all of the labels that would assign him a clear "location" on the philosophical map. 

III. IS MARKUS GABRIEL A "DUALIST" AS DANIEL DENNETT CONTENDS?  

In referring to Markus Gabriel's concept of mind (Geist) and "mindfulness" as real aspects of human beings and their social lives Daniel Dennett raises the specter of "dualism" to accuse Professor Gabriel of being a dualist and, thereby, discrediting his philosophy for allegedly scientifically-based thinkers:

"The idea of the mind as distinct in this way from the brain, composed not of ordinary matter but of some other, special kind of stuff, is dualism, and it is deservedly in disrepute today." (Gabriel, "Neo-existentialism," p. 36, quoting Daneil Dennett with emphasis in original.)

"Monism" in metaphysics is the view that there is only one kind of "stuff" in the universe. 

It may be that this one kind of stuff is "matter" and, thus, for the materialist the only form of explanation that will usually be held to be valid when it comes to the understanding of empirical phenomena -- or all the transformations of matter -- will be science. 

"Idealism" is also a form of monism that says everything is ultimately abstract ideas or reducible to abstract ideas, concepts, or laws, and/or "spiritual" reality (or consciousness) requiring multiple forms of explanation in addition to science, or that what exists must be related to mind(s). 

"Dualism" says against monism that mind or consciousness and matter or bodies have different "essences" or are different "kinds" of things and that both are real requiring different forms of explanation or understanding.

"Pluralism" holds that the universe or reality contains any number of "kinds" of things or entities that are "real" such as God and/or gods or spirits and possibly other beings as well as material objects and "selves." 

Professor Gabriel's response to Daniel Dennett's accusation (a lethal charge for analytical philosophers today is the accusation of "dualism") seems to be to ADMIT the dire charge of "dualism" by apparently accepting the label for his philosophy. 

This was not Professor Gabriel's intention, I believe, and this may have something to do with the translation of his text or other linguistic difficulties. 

Whatever the reason, however, the language used by Professor Gabriel on this issue is unfortunate and may undermine his entire argument: 

"Sure, if Geist was some kind of extraordinary matter, it would deserve to be in disrepute today and should have been in disrepute at least since the dawn of philosophy." (Gabriel, "Neo-existentialism," p. 37.) 

Dualism in the context of this debate within ontology and metaphysics (philosophy of mind) dates from the Cartesian revolution in the seventeenth century, not from Plato's work in antiquity:

"But my warranted assumption that you are awake, that the University of Bonn is an institution supported by the German taxpayer, etc., are not even candidates for things composed of any kind of matter, be it regular or special kind of stuff." (Gabriel, "Neo-existentialism," p. 37.) 

Professor Dennett would respond here that these claims by Markus Gabriel establish the validity of the criticism because Geist or mind is and must be (like everything else) either reducible to a material base or non-existent as a mere fiction. 

Radical materialism, as I have suggested, assumes an understanding of what is "matter" as well as concerning the options on these issues today that is exactly what has been discredited by recent science, much more than by what continental philosophers have said, although many phenomenologists and others have rejected materialism for their own independent reasons. 

Materialism has traditionally formed a natural alliance with realism in metaphysics.

The realist of all varieties insists that what is not a material "object" must be deemed epiphenomenal (at best) or "unreal" because existence or reality is necessarily independent of the mind whereas the anti-realist questions whether anything is either knowable or existent independently of the mind of the knowing agent ("there is no knowledge without a knower" according to Berkeley) in some form whether human or divine. (S. Blackburn, Oxford Dictionary of Philosophy, pp. 319-320.)   

In the aftermath of the scientific revolutions of the twentieth- and twenty-first centuries the Daniel Dennett brigade in philosophy has been disconcerted to discover that their realist and materialist philosophy has found opposition not only among philosophical adversaries, who have always been around to annoy them with their idealist objections, but, again, even more by colleagues in the so-called hard sciences who were once believed to be allies of what has been called  "naturalistic scientific materialism" that has recently been discarded by many scientists.  

As the poets and artists and Donald J. Trump have always known, in the words of Wallace Stevens, "I am what is around me." ("Is truth dead?")

This is a conclusion that is antithetical to realism and materialism of all varieties. 

Baruch Spinoza added to our difficulties (as great philosophers usually do) by offering yet another option in metaphysics called "dual or double aspect theory" as a version of monism:  

Professor Gabriel's philosophy, properly understood (ideally by himself), belongs in this bizarre additional category as, indeed, does my philosophical school that includes a number of Germans such as Hans-Georg Gadamer and, if I read him correctly, Sebastian Rodl. 

Dual aspect theories postulate a conception of reality as unitary within diversity because of reality's "diversity of features" or complexity and protean nature there are many variant or "real" aspects that are non-reducible to one another yet equally valid simultaneously in the single "reality" we inhabit. 

Accordingly, both material and mental aspects of human "being-in-the-world" are quite real for dual aspect theorists. 

Professor Gabriel comes up with something similar but more confused that he calls: "conditionalism." 

Regrettably, by seeming to accept and then offering a critique of dualism which Markus Gabriel claims is riddled with contradictions Professor Gabriel unknowingly discredits his own version of "neo-existentialism" within his philosophy of mind: 

"One of the many mistakes which underlie substance dualism and its ilk is precisely the thought that reality consists of two halves: the mental and the material. The question of how the two halves are related is as ill-posed as a metaphysics which divides the universe into two parts." (Gabriel, "Neo-existentialism," p. 77.) 

A reader will be compelled to conclude that: 1). Gabriel admits to being a "dualist"; then 2). Gabriel claims that dualism is incoherent; and 3). Gabriel's philosophy must therefore, according to his own reasoning, be incoherent and we need not bother to read his books.  

This is the result of terminology that is unfortunate and not accurate to Professor Gabriel's intended argument or to his genuine achievement. 

Professor Gabriel may be classified most accurately and charitably as a "dual aspect theorist" and his so-called "new realism," as we will see, is perhaps best understood as a form of anti-realism close to the Kantian-Hegelian idealism which he admires that is fully compatible with current scientific views, as I suggest, based on Professor Gabriel's exact words:

"At the heart of this anti-naturalism is a version of an indispensability thesis: our non-naturalistic knowledge of the human being is an indispensable starting point for any investigation of the universe. We simply cannot eliminate the human being from our view of what there is." (Gabriel, "Neo-existentialism," p. 102, emphasis added.)

This is a perhaps unconscious paraphrase of Immanuel Kant's famous "transcendental idealism":

"Obviously, this alone does not have metaphysical anthropic consequences precisely because the universe is the domain of objects that cannot comprise the human being. [But these objects may only be known by, or exist for, minds.] We leave traces in the universe that are only visible from the standpoint of the human being, invisible otherwise." (Gabriel, "Neo-existentialism," p. 102.)

Presumably the "invisible" cannot be known or exist for those who do not know or "see" it very much like the "noumenal" in relation to the "phenomenal." 

Professor Gabriel's statement quoted above is incompatible with any form of realism that I am aware of or can imagine. This is indeed such a "new" form of realism that it becomes the old "anti-realism."  

Professor Gabriel's idealism will always make him an opponent of materialism, but given current scientific understandings Professor Gabriel may well remain nevertheless (as I believe him to be) a naturalistic thinker who is respectful of science. 

Conclusion: Professor Gabriel's philosophy is still evolving. 

As I was studying Professor Gabriel's writings I also read Mary Midgley's What is Philosophy For?

Ms. Midgley's life-work was devoted to defending the role of philosophy in the intellectual conversation of Western civilization in a scientific age and at a time when this discipline and all of the arts and humanities for that matter have been under attack.

Professor Midgley carefully distinguishes philosophical method in the non-analytic tradition as an old-style existentialist from the techniques of the sciences explaining the many limitations inherent to any and all academic subjects or ways of apprehending reality and understanding ourselves:

"People occasionally ask me on what topic I am doing research," Ms. Midgley writes, "and I say that I don't do any, because I'm certainly not organizing any static mining operation of this kind. I suppose that instead I try to follow the argument (as Plato said) wherever it runs, and I may finally catch it in a territory quite far from where it started. In fact, arguments [dialectics] are altogether much more like rabbits than they are like lumps of gold. They can never be depended on to stay still." (Mary Midgley, What is Philosophy For?, pp. 16-17.)

I have followed Markus Gabriel's arguments down some very peculiar rabbit holes where they seem to turn into their opposites.

Far from being a weakness this elusive quality to Gabriel's arguments is a sign of something vital and alive in his philosophical work that is connected to the dynamic aspects of our intellectual lives today -- lives that seem to change and shift as we formulate and seek to respond to the issues that plague our lives in days of great moral and metaphysical confusion and strife that is often caused by the same sciences and technologies that we are forced to turn to for solutions even if we have few answers so far.

Religion has lost its hold on young persons especially and the humanities have been sidelined as luxuries or distractions from the "serious business" of life while politics is often a depressing spectacle of corruption, incompetence, confusion, and ignorance where bewildered politicians grasp for personal power and money at the expense of the people they govern.

The courts are even worse. Judges are for sale in one way or another. Prisons are places to keep the most violent members of the urban underclass, especially when they are members of despised minority groups, so that we can forget about them along with ignoring the social forces that make them criminals. 

Philosophy recalls us to our humanity through the use of simple intelligence by reminding us of all the ways in which we are not only members of the natural order but also something more as creators of meanings.

I agree with Professor Gabriel and Mary Midgley that there is and must continue to be an important place for philosophical arguments in our intellectual conversation and that this place cannot and will never be filled by the sciences.

I also agree that humanity matters. 

It pleases me greatly that, after the events of the twentieth century, a German philosopher (only one of many) is among the world's leading thinkers on these issues. 

Sadly, America is one of the nations most in need of restoring the humanistic tradition despite the country's philosophical richness and, I believe, also recognizing, once again, respect for the reality of ethical values in public life and within legal institutions as the impeachment process demonstrates on a daily basis. 

My strongest reservations concerning Professor Gabriel's ambitious project have to do with serious ambiguities and confusions in the foundations of his formal arguments and other troubles in the unfolding conceptual logic of his philosophy as a whole. 

These difficulties are not fatal because any confusions or ambiguities can be cleaned up by himself or others in future editions of his writings mostly at the footnote level. 

I certainly urge readers to continue to study Professor Gabriel's writings with the hope that all of us may bring philosophical methods to bear on the controversies in the public squares (whether electronic and/or "real world" versions of these social spaces) of our troubled societies. 

We now confront catastrophes that threaten the literal survival of the human species and that are, partly, the result of philosophical confusions structural to our scientific and political modes of discourse which will never be remedied without theoretical attention. 

We will not "survive" if we cannot say what it means for our humanity to endure the horrors we live with or the ways in which science may help or hinder our efforts at reform. 

Markus Gabriel is one of the few philosophers who may help humanity to meet this awesome challenge of achieving not only physical but also moral survival. 

"Philosophy, in fact, is all about how to think in different cases -- how to imagine, how to visualize and conceive and describe this confusing world, which is partly visible to us, partly tangible and partly known by report, in a way that will make it more intelligible as a whole."

Mary Midgley wrote the following words in her mid-nineties summarizing a lifetime of professional achievement as a philosopher in her final book:

"[Philosophy] is a set of practical arts, skills far more like skills involved in exploring an unknown forest than they are like the search for a single buried treasure of Truth. And because of this it is far more concerned with the kind of questions that we should ask than with how, at any particular time, we should answer them." (Mary Midgley, What is Philosophy For?, p. 50.)   

Supplemental Sources:

Amir D. Aczel, Entanglement (London: Plume, 2001), pp. 83-94 ("Wheeler's Cat"). (See the quote from John Wheeler in my text.)

Stanley Aronowitz, Science as Power: Discourse and Ideology in Modern Society (Minn.: U. Minn. Press, 1988), pp. 301-316 ("Scientism or Critical Science: The Debate in Biology").

Robert Audi, ed., The Cambridge Dictionary of Philosophy (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge U. Press, 1995), pp. 517-518 ("materialism") and pp. 488-489 ("metaphysical realism") then pp. 599-602 ("materialism in the philosophy of mind") and pp. 617-618 ("physicalism").

Bruce Aune, Metaphysics: The Elements (London & Minneapolis: U. Minn. Press, 1985), pp. 161-186 ("Appearance and Reality"). 

William Barrett, Irrational Man: A Study of Existential Philosophy (New York: Anchor Books 1990, 1st ed., 1962), pp. 3-41 ("The Advent of Existentialism").

William Barrett, Death of the Soul: From Descartes to the Computer (New York: Anchor-Doubleday, 1986), pp. 143-161 ("Analytic Philosophy and the Computer"). 

John D. Barrow, The Artful Universe Expanded (Oxford: Oxford U. Press, 2011, 1st Ed., 1995), pp. 243-254 ("Player Piano: Hearing by the Numbers"). (What follows is my highlighted passage: " ... higher mathematical operations are not genetically programmed into the human brain -- and what possible evolutionary reason could there be for lavishing valuable resources upon such a luxury? They are more likely to be byproducts of multi-purpose pattern-recognition abilities [emphasis added] But simple counting, because it is so closely allied to linguistic operations and the logic of the brain's own programming for language[,] is effectively programmed in." Please compare with this text Markus Gabriel's discussion of Geist and Geistig phenomena.)

Morris Berman, Coming to Our Senses: Body and Spirit in the Hidden History of the West (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1990), pp. 297-344 ("The Two Faces of Creativity").  

Richard J. Bernstein, The New Constellation: The Ethical Political Horizons of Modernity/Postmodernity (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1992, 1st ed., 1991), pp. 31-56 ("The Rage Against Reason").

Simon Blackburn, ed., The Oxford Dictionary of Philosophy (Oxford: Oxford U. Press, 1994), p. 225 ("naturalism") and p. 233 ("materialism") then p. 287 ("physicalism").

Larry Lee Blackman, ed., Classics of Analytical Metaphysics (Boston: U. Press of America, 1984), pp. 3-38 ("Philosophical Background"). (Can there be a properly "analytical" metaphysics?) 

Andrew Bowie, Introduction to German Philosophy: From Kant to Habermas (London: Polity, 2003), PP; 58-78 ("German Idealism"). (It may be necessary to add a chapter on Markus Gabriel to the next edition of this book.) 

Andrew Bowie, Schelling and Modern European Philosophy: An Introduction (London & New York: Routledge, 2006, 1st Ed., 1994), pp. 91-126 ("Freedom, Ontology and Language"). 

Ray Brassier, Nihil Unbound: Enlightenment and Extinction (New York: Palgrave & McMillan, 2007). (Please see the author's "Introduction" and defense of the "new" nihilism.) 

John P. Briggs & F. David Peat, Looking Glass Universe: The Emerging Science at the Edge of Order and Chaos (New York & London: Fontana, 1985, 1st Ed., 1984), pp. 225-253 ("Rupert Sheldrake Seeks Hidden Forms"). 

Harry Brighouse, "Why is an Argument Clinic Less Silly Than an Abuse Clinic or a Contradiction Clinic?," Gary A. Hadcastle & George A. Reisch, eds., Monty Python and Philosophy: Nudge, Nudge, Think, Think (Chicago: Open Court, 2006), pp. 53-65. (This collection of essays includes perceptive critiques of analytic-style philosophy and the limitations of all forms of logic-based philosophy by capitalizing on the Python troupe's skits.)

Rudiger Bubner, The Innovations of Idealism (Cambridge, MA: Cambridge U. Press, 2011), pp. 3-43 ("Schelling's Discovery and Schleiermacher's Appropriation of Plato"). (Translation from the German by Nicolas Waller.)

David Chalmers, The Conscious Mind: In Search of a Fundamental Theory (Oxford: Clarendon Press/Oxford U. Press, 1996), pp. 333-357 ("The Interpretation of Quantum Mechanics").

David Christensen, Putting Logic in its Place: Formal Constraints on Rational Belief (Oxford: Oxford U. Press, 2007, 1st ed., 2004), pp. 33-68 ("Deductive Constraints: Problem Cases, Possible Solutions"). (Please see my citation to Monty Python and Philosophy.)

David E. Cooper, Existentialism: A Reconstruction (Oxford & Cambridge, UK: Blackwell, 1992, 1st Ed., 1990), pp. 57-78 ("Being-in-the-World") and pp. 79-94 ("Dualisms Dissolved"). 

Francis Crick, "Thinking About the Brain," Scientific American, Sept., 1978, pp. 219-238. (Arguing that the brain/mind is an interactive "process" or unfolding narrative that overcomes the mind/body distinction.) 

Daniel Dennett, Elbow Room: The Varieties of Free Will Worth Wanting (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1985), pp. 131-152 ("Could have done otherwise?").

David Deutsch, The Fabric of Reality (London: Penguin, 1997), pp. 222-257 ("The Nature of Mathematics"). (My highlighted passage and emphasis: "Abstract entities -- including multi-dimensional objects -- that are complex and autonomous exist objectively and are part of the fabric of reality.") 

William Earle, James M. Edie, John Wild, eds., Christianity and Existentialism (Evanston: Northwestern U. Press, 1963), pp. 40-65 ("Christian Rationalism") and pp. 88-112 ("Sartre: Man as the Impossibility of God") then pp. 113-148 ("Heidegger & Tillich: The Absence of God"). 

Dorothy M. Emmett, The Nature of Metaphysical Thinking (London: McMillan, 1953), pp. 68-95 ("Realism, Idealism and Analogy in the Interpretation of Scientific Thought"). 

Bernard D'Espagnat, In Search of Reality (New York, Berlin, London: Springer-Verlag, 1983). (Please see the substantive Introduction to the main argument by a leading proponent of the consciousness-based interpretation of quantum mechanics.) 

Raymond Flood & Michael Lockwood, eds., The Nature of Time (Oxford: Blackwell, 1986), pp. 99-124 (Paul Davies's essay: "Time Asymmetry and Quantum Mechanics"). 

Erckart Foster, The Twenty-Five Years of Philosophy: A Systematic Reconstruction (Cambridge, MA: Harvard U. Press, 2012), pp. 179-372 ("The Premises Are Still Missing").

Hans-Georg Gadamer, Hegel's Dialectic: Five Hermeneutical Studies (New Haven & London: Yale U. Press, 1971), pp. 52-53 ("Hegel's Inverted World"). (My highlighted passage in this text is relevant to my review essay: " ... however far modern philosophy might go in unlocking the secret of organic life, in knowing what lives [are] we will never cease to make a turnabout in our thinking of that which, as the play of forces, lawfully determines organic nature: we will think of it, conversely, as the behavior of the organism [emphasis added] and understand the organism as living. [Freely.] Though a Newton of the blade of grass may one day appear, in a deeper sense Kant will prove to be right. Our understanding of the world will not cease to judge 'teleologically.' ..." This must also be true for scientists. The translation of this text is by P. Christopher Smith.)

Hans-Georg Gadamer, Philosophical Hermeneutics (Los Angeles: U. Cal. Press, 1977), pp. 182-197 ("The Science of the Life-World"). 

Sebastian Gardner, Kant and the Critique of Pure Reason (London: Routledge, 1999), pp. 87-113 ("Transcendental Idealism"). ("Routlege" is sometimes spelled "Routledge." I will do my best to write the publisher's name as listed in the title page of each work cited.)   

Amit Goswami, Ph.D., The Self-Aware Universe: How Consciousness Creates the Material World (New York & London: Penguin, 1995, 1st Ed., 1993), pp. 63-145 ("Idealism and the Resolution of the Quantum Paradoxes") and pp. 147-211 ("Self-Reference: How the One Becomes Many"). (My highlighted paragraphs appearing at page 162 are relevant to the discussion in this critique and even more to Professor Gabriel's argument: "The brain-mind is an interactive system with both classical and quantum components. These components interact [dialectically] within a basic idealist framework in which consciousness is primary.") 

Peter Gratton, Speculative Realism: Problems and Prospects (London: Bloomsbury, 2014), pp. 85-107 ("Object-Oriented Ontology"). 

Brian Greene, The Elegant Universe: Superstrings, Hidden Dimensions, and the Quest for the Ultimate Reality (New York : Vintage, 2000), pp. 231-262 ("Quantum Geometry"). 

Jurgen Habermas, The Philosophical Discourse of Modernity: Twelve Lectures (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1991), pp. 1-23 ("Modernity's Consciousness of Time and Its Need for Reassurance"). (Translation is by Frederick Lawrence.) 

H.F. Hallett, "Substance and its Modes," Marjorie Grene, ed., Spinoza: A Collection of Critical Essays (Bloomington: Notre Dame U. Press, 1973), pp. 131-163 ("Substance and Its Modes"). (See Professor Hallett's discussion of "double aspect theory.")

D.W. Hamlyn, Metaphysics (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge U. Press, 1985, 1st Ed., 1981 and 1984), pp. 34-59 ("Ontology") and pp. 105-126 ("Simple Substances: Monism and Pluralism").

Michael Hammond, Jane Howard, & Russell Keat, eds., Understanding Phenomenology (Oxford: Blackwell, 1992, 1st Ed., 1991), pp. 71-95 ("Phenomenology and Transcendental Idealism").

Graham Harman, Towards Speculative Realism: Essays and Lectures (Winchester, UK: Zero Books, 2009), pp. 140-169 ("Space, Time, and Essence: An Object-Oriented Approach"). 

Karsten Harris, The Making of Modern Art (Evanston: Northwestern U. Press, 1968), pp. 131-143 ("The New Realism").

G.W.F. Hegel, The Phenomenology of Mind (New York: Dover, 2003, 1st Ed., 1910 J.B. Ballie Translation of 1807 original), pp. 54-130 ("Consciousness").   

Nick Herbert, Quantum Reality: Beyond the New Physics (New York: Anchor, 1985), pp. 157-175 ("Four Quantum Realities") and pp. 211-231 ("Bell's Theorem"). 

William Ernest Hocking, "Whitehead on Mind and Nature," Paul Arthur Schilpp, ed., The Library of Living Philosophers: Alfred North Whitehead (New York: Tudor, 1951, 1st Ed., 1941), pp. 381-404. 

Richard Holmes, "Is Husserl Committed to Idealism?," The Monist, LIX (1975), pp. 94-114. (An entire school of philosophy is now devoted to "transcendental phenomenology." Please see my reference to James Richard Mensch and Thomistic phenomenology.) 

Ted Honderich, ed., The Oxford Companion to Philosophy (Oxford: Oxford U. Press, 1995), pp. 604-605 ("naturalism") and pp. 530-532 ("materialism") then pp. 679-680 ("physicalism"). 

Edmund Husserl, The Crisis of the European Sciences and Transcendental Phenomenology (Evanston: Northwestern U. Press, 1970, 1st Ed., 1938), pp. 3-18 ("The Crisis of the Sciences as Expression of the Radical Life-Crisis of European Humanity"). 

Don Ihde, Hermeneutic Phenomenology: The Philosophy of Paul Ricoeur (Evanston: Northwestern U. Press, 1971), pp. 59-80 ("Phenomenology Within Kantian Limits").

Hans Jonas, The Phenomenon of Life: Towards a Philosophical Biology (New York: Dell Books, 1966), pp. 64-91 ("Is God a Mathematician?").

Menos Kafatos & Robert Nadeau, The Conscious Universe: Part and Whole in Modern Physical Theory (New York, Berlin, Heidelberg, London, & Paris: Springer-Verlag, 1990), pp. 111-125 ("Science and the Quest for a New Metaphysics"). (Announcing the "death" of materialism. Please see the writings of  scientist Fred Alan Wolf whose books have always been ahead of their times.)

Immanuel Kant, Critique of Pure Reason (New York: Anchor-Doubleday, 1966, 1st Ed., 1781, 2nd ed., 1787), pp. 221-457 ("Transcendental Dialectic") (This is the revised F. Max Mueller Translation with commentary that features the text of Kant's second edition italicized as compared with the first edition text. Kant's revisions from the first to the second edition are very helpful for students of his philosophy.) 

Walter Kaufman, Hegel: A Reinterpretation (Bloomington: Notre Dame U. Press, 1965), pp. 87-111 (See especially in terms of Markus Gabriel's philosophy pages 102-to-110: "Kant-Fichte-Schelling-Hegel.")   

Richard Kearney, Leading Movements in Modern Philosophy: Phenomenology, Critical Theory, Structuralism (New York & Manchester: U. Manchester Press, 1986, 1st ed., 1984), pp. 12-27 ("Edmund Husserl"). 

Lawrence M. Krauss, Hiding in the Mirror: The Quest for Alternate Realities, From Plato to String Theory (by way of Alice in Wonderland, Einstein, and The Twilight Zone), pp. 130-139 ("Out of Chaos"). 

Majit Kumar, Quantum: Einstein, Bohr, and the Great Debate About the Nature of Reality (New York & London: W.W. Norton, 2008), pp. 301-327 ("Quantum Reality"). (One of my highlights in this book emphasizes a crucial point: " ... having interacted, instead of two one-particle systems, there was just a single two-particle system and therefore any change to one particle would affect the other, despite the distance [temporal and/or geographic] that separated them." Please refer again to the discussion of Spinoza's ethics and see my essay: "Dialectics, Entanglement, and Special Relativity.")  

David Lewis, Counterfactuals (Oxford: Blackwell, 1973). (The classic exposition of ideas and paradoxes from the theory of "counterfactuals" and a key chapter in the history of "modal logic.")

Peter J. Lewis, Quantum Ontology: A Guide to the Metaphysics of Quantum Mechanics (Oxford: Oxford U. Press, 2016), pp. 151-164 ("Dimensions").  

Michael J. Loux, Metaphysics: A Contemporary Introduction (New York & London: Routlege, 1988), pp. 21-50 ("The Problem of Universals: Realism"). 

E.J. Lowe, The Possibility of Metaphysics: Substance, Identity, and Time (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2004, 1st Ed., 1994), pp. 190-209 ("Matter and Form").  

Bryan Magee, Ultimate Questions (Oxford & Princeton: Princeton U. Press, 2016), pp. 66-67 ("Can experience be understood without a subject of experience?").

Bryan Magee, Making the Most of It (London: Studio 28, 2018), pp. 5-165 ("My Oxford").

W. Marx, The Philosophy of F.W.J. Schelling: History, System, Freedom (Bloomington: Indiana U. Press, 1984). (Markus Gabriel is strongly influenced by Schelling's idealism and theory of freedom.) 

Thomas McCarthy, "Rationality and Relativism: Habermas's 'Overcoming' of Hermeneutics," Habermas: Critical Debates (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1983), pp. 57-78 (Please note Professor Habermas's response to critics at pages 219-283.)

John McDowell, Mind and World (Cambridge, MA: Harvard U. Press, 1996, 1st Ed., 1994), pp. 87-107 ("Action, Meaning, and the Self").  

James Richard Mensch, Intersubjectivity and Transcendental Idealism (New York: SUNY Press, 1988), pp. 176-203 ("A First Solution to the Problem of Intersubjectivity"). 

Mary Midgley, What is Philosophy For? (London: Bloomsbury, 2018), pp. 15-34 ("What is Research?"). (See also the critique of materialism in the final chapters of this book.)

A.W. Moore, The Evolution of Modern Metaphysics: Making Sense of Things (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge U. Press, 2012), pp. 371-580 ("Metaphysics in the Modern Continental Tradition"). 

Thomas Nagel, The Possibility of Altruism (Princeton: Princeton U. Press, 1970), pp. 57-76 ("The Interpretation of Prudential Reasons: Identity Over Time").

Thomas Nagel, The Last Word (Oxford: Oxford U. Press, 1997), pp. 77-91 ("Science").

Thomas Nagel, Mortal Questions (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge U. Press, 1979), pp. 165-180 ("What is it like to be a bat?") and pp. 181-195 ("Panpsychism").

Thomas Nagel, Mind and Cosmos: Why the Naturalist Neo-Darwinian Conception of Nature is Almost Certainly False (Oxford: Oxford U. Press, 2012), pp. 71-95 ("Cognition"). (This is a short book that may best be read in a single sitting.) 

Philip J. Neuhjar, Kant's Idealism (Georgia: Mercer U. Press, 1995), pp. 5-10 ("Idealism, Transcendental and Otherwise").

Frederick Neuhouser, Fichte's Theory of Subjectivity (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge U. Press, 1990), pp. 11-31 ("Origins of Fichte's Theory"). 

Christopher Norris, Minding the Gap: Epistemology and Philosophy of Science in the Two Traditions (Amherst: U. Ma. Press, 2000), pp. 197-230 ("The Limits of Naturalism and McDowell's Mind and World"). 

Christopher Norris, Quantum Theory and the Flight From Realism: Philosophical Responses to Quantum Mechanics (London & New York: Routledge, 2000), pp. 106-131 ("Quantum World Without End"). 

Christopher Norris, Fiction, Philosophy and Literary Theory: Will the Real Saul Kripke Please Stand Up? (London: Continuum, 2007), pp. 212-254 ("Free Will, Creativity and Structural Constraints: Linguistics as a Guide to Metaphysics").

William Outhwaite, Habermas: A Critical Inquiry (Stanford: Stanford U. Press, 1994), pp. 20-37 ("Scientism in Theory and Practice"). (I am not aware of a dialogue -- if there is one -- between Markus Gabriel and Professor Habermas.)  

Tim Parks, Out of My Head: On the Trail of Consciousness (New York: NYRB, 2019), pp. 28-49 ("Inside Out").

Roger Penrose, The Road to Reality: A Complete Guide to the Laws of the Universe (New York: Vintage Books, 2004), pp. 1024-1027 ("Where lies the road to reality?"). (Please note the comments at page 1031: "In fact, almost all the 'conventional' interpretations of quantum mechanics ultimately depend upon the presence of a 'perceiving being' and therefore seem to require that we know what a perceiving being actually is." Refer once again to the "conscious universe" models in cosmology and then see: "Is it rational to believe in God?")

Michael Polanyi, Science, Faith and Society: A Searching Examination of the Meaning and Nature of Scientific Inquiry (Chicago & London: U. Chicago Press, 1964), pp. 21-41 ("Science and Reality"). 

Michael Polanyi, Knowing and Being (Chicago: U. Chicago Press, 1969), pp. 138-158 ("The Logic of Tacit Inference"). (These essays were edited by Marjorie Grene who may have contributed entire sections of the text without credit as co-author.) 

John F. Post, Metaphysics: A Contemporary Introduction (St. Paul: Paragon House, 1991), pp. 30-31. 

Steven Priest, Theories of the Mind (New York: Houghton-Mifflin, 1991), pp. 150-182 ("Double Aspect Theory").

Hilary Putnam, Realism and Reason: Philosophical Papers, Vol. 3 (New York & Cambridge, UK: Cambridge U. Press, 1983). (See my essay: "Hilary Putnam is Keeping it Real.") 

Paul Ricoeur, The Conflict of Interpretations (Evanston: Northwestern U. Press, 1974), pp. 211-266 ("Hermeneutics and Phenomenology").

Nathan Salman, Philosophical Papers Volume I: Metaphysics, Mathematics, and Meaning (Oxford: Oxford U. Press, 2005), pp. 111-118 ("Modal Logic Kalish-and-Montague Style"). 

Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness: A Phenomenological Essay on Ontology (New York: Washington Square Press, 1956, 1st ed., 1943), pp. ix-lii (Translator Hazel E. Barnes's Introduction and commentary on the text) and pp. 3-30 (Sartre's foundations: "The Pursuit of Being"). 

Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness: An Essay on Phenomenological Ontology (London & New York: Routlege, 2003, 1st Ed., 1943), pp. xi-xxi (Mary Warnock's Introduction and commentary to a revised translation of this classic work.)  

F.W.J. Schelling, Abyss of Freedom (Ann Arbor: U. Mich. Press, 1997). (Compare Schelling's famous essay on freedom with Markus Gabriel's discussion of "Freedom" in I am not a brain.) 

Rupert Sheldrake, The Science Delusion: Freeing the Spirit of Inquiry (London: Coronet, 2012), pp. 212-250 ("Are Minds Confined to Brains?"). 

Charles Taylor, Hegel (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge U. Press, 1975), pp. 127-147 ("The Dialectic of Consciousness").  

Charles Taylor, "Philosophy and Its History," R. Rorty, J.B. Schneewind, eds., Philosophy in History (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge U. Press, 1984), pp. 17-30.

Charles Taylor, Philosophical Arguments (Cambridge, MA: Harvard U. Press, 1995), pp. 61-78 ("Lichstung or Lebensform: Parallels Between Heidegger and Wittgenstein"). 

Mark C. Taylor, The Moment of Complexity: Emerging Network Culture (Chicago: U. Chicago press, 2003, 1st Ed., 2001), pp. 157-232 ("Evolving Complexity"). 

Mark C. Taylor, "Infinite Restlessness," S. Zizek, C. Crokett, Creston Davis, eds., Hegel and the Infinite: Religion, Politics, and Dialectic (New York: Columbia U. Press, 2011), pp. 91-113.

Roger Trigg, Beyond Matter: Why Science Needs Metaphysics (Pennsylvania: Templeton Press, 2015), pp. 49-71 ("World and Mind"). (Please see page 57: "Perhaps Kant was right, and what we think we know may simply reflect the categories of the human mind.") 

Palle Yourgrau, Godel Meets Einstein: Time Travel in the Godel Universe (Chicago: Open Court, 1999), pp. 17-36 ("Godel's Idealism"). 

M. Mitchell Waldrop, Complexity: The Emerging Science at the Edge of Order and Chaos (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1992), pp. 198-240 ("Life at the Edge of Chaos").

John Wheeler, "The Computer and the Universe," International Journal of Theoretical Physics, Vol., 21, pp. 557-572 (1982). (Quantum principles undermine the distinction between mind and world.) 

John Wheeler, Gravitation (San Francisco: Freeman, 1973), p. 1273.

Fred Alan Wolf, Taking the Quantum Leap: The New Physics for Non-Scientists (New York: Harper & Row, 1986, 1st Ed., 1981), pp. 127-208 ("Is There an 'Out There' Out There?").

Richard Wolin, Heidegger's Children: Hannah Arendt, Karl Lowith, Hans Jonas, and Herbert Marcuse (Princeton & Oxford: Princeton U. Press, 2001), pp. 101-135 ("Hans Jonas: The Philosopher of Life"). 

Dan Zahari, Husserl's Phenomenology: Cultural Memory in the Present (Sanford: Stanford U. Press, 2003), pp. 79-140 ("The Later Husserl: Time, Body, Intersubjectivity, and Lifeworld").