Say I define physicalism as:
1.) The physical is non-mental
2.) The physical causes the mental.
Left at this, the scholastic division between ens naturale and ens intentionale is physicalist, since the physical causes the mental in the sense that the forms we know are received from things; and yet, per (1), it is not the same thing for a form to exist naturally as intentionally.
I object: I meant “the physical causes the mental” in the same way that, a la Scrooge’s hypothesis, a bit of undigested beef causes Marley’s ghost, i.e. mental being is only apparent being. OK, but intentional being is also apparent as opposed to real being. It is form not as in matter but in cognition. Intentional being doesn’t add to the number of things existing naturally, but is only a different manner in which natural form exists. Intentional being is only another natural being in the way that the word “cat” is another cat. Sometimes intentional forms might be mistaken for the real forms that they arose from – we might mistake the effects of beef for a ghost – but for Scrooge to know he is mistaken is to get an intentional form right, since the ghost is beef as known or intentional.
Just Thomism 