In any event, the Maritain and Jaspers passages were not so much cited against you as they were used to indicate some points which the dialectically charitable physicalist would want to keep in mind when engaging with those who doubt the adequacy of (especially the most reductive forms of) physicalism. Indeed, with charity it would not matter in the least whether Maritain and Jaspers self-described as dualists. In our context here, Jaspers is likely better considered in terms of a concern with whether strict physicalist modes of expression could ever adequately serve the human condition or human being. Similarly, Maritain’s way of discriminating philosophy and religion, wherein philosophy regards “the relation of intelligence to object” and religion is concerned with “the relation of subject to subject”, also very strongly suggests that ontology would not have to be the primary focus or even the keystone to understanding.

Perspectivalness so thoroughly affects human subjectivity that it is very highly likely that were any human person to attain a significant (even if asymptotic) objectivity, there would still remain a significant semantic component. This, then, recommends remaining always cognizant of the semantic aspects of all thought.

One point: no, I did not argue for my view that there is no unitary and ontologically distinct self. That was my starting point for the rant (inspired by some feelings of back pain and subsequent analgesics), not the conclusion for it. But I wanted to get a debate going, and it seems I did. However, I have argued for this before, and many others have done so for a long time.

When I studied the pre-Hellenic Hebrews, in particular the eighth century prophets, I was shocked to discover that they were largely physicalists; no immaterial souls for them. Just recently I read Isidore of Seville’s Etymologiae and he, too, while he has an immaterial soul, experience and consciousness (mind) is about “deliberation” and memory rather than experiences.

It seems to me that one could be a Christian physicalist about everything except God. Of course, that does not sit well in the Augustinian and Athanasian tradition.