You’re right to push on the consciousness point—I didn’t mean to suggest that evolutionary accounts of cognition or consciousness are settled. What I take to be the deeper issue (and I think this is where Hart is really operating) isn’t whether evolution can produce reliable or even intentional states, but whether it can account for normativity as such.

To my knowledge, Hart does not present his argument as a single, formal “anti-naturalism proof.” His case is cumulative, transcendental, and often embedded in polemics. Probably the clearest presentation of his reasoning can be found in the early chapters of "The Experience of God".

That said, Hart’s argument isn’t a knock-down proof that intentionality cannot arise via natural processes. I understand it to be a transcendental claim: any explanation that treats truth, validity, and correctness as derivative byproducts of non-normative processes already presupposes those norms in the act of explanation itself. Scientific explanation depends on truth-apt judgments, valid inference, and reasons that count as better or worse.

The conclusion Hart draws is not that science fails, but that intelligibility cannot be ontologically secondary or merely instrumental. It has to belong to reality itself in some fundamental way. That’s where the metaphysical move comes in.

Premise 1: Naturalism explains everything in terms of physical causes and effects.
Premise 2: Physical causes and effects, by themselves, have no meaning or “aboutness.”
Premise 3: Human thoughts, beliefs, and concepts are intentional—they are about things and can be true or false.
Premise 4: Intentionality (aboutness, meaning, truth) cannot be reduced to or derived from purely physical processes.
Conclusion: Therefore, naturalism cannot fully explain intentionality; the intelligibility of thought points beyond purely naturalistic causes.

Premise 4 would be the most controversial one. It's actually this premise I want elaboration on. It’s interesting because, instead of obsessing over consciousness, this argument treats a single attribute as foundational to a rather complex argument. — Tom Storm

Premise 1 is the one I think is flawed. Natural and physical are not synonyms. Anything in this universe is natural. It can't be otherwise. If there is something non-physical in this universe, then it is natural, and can be part of the explanation of some things.

Premise 1: Naturalism explains everything in terms of physical causes and effects.
Premise 2: Physical causes and effects, by themselves, have no meaning or “aboutness.”
Premise 3: Human thoughts, beliefs, and concepts are intentional—they are about things and can be true or false.
Premise 4: Intentionality (aboutness, meaning, truth) cannot be reduced to or derived from purely physical processes.
Conclusion: Therefore, naturalism cannot fully explain intentionality; the intelligibility of thought points beyond purely naturalistic causes. — Tom Storm

Some further thoughts for your consideration:

I think this is a helpful way of isolating the issue, and you’re right that premise (4) is doing all the real work. One small critique I have, though, is that the way the argument is framed makes Hart sound like he’s offering a genetic or causal claim about whether intentionality can “arise” from physical processes. I don’t think that’s quite his target.

Hart’s point, as I read him, isn’t that natural processes couldn’t in principle produce intentional states, but that any attempt to explain reason, truth, or meaning already presupposes intelligibility and normativity. Scientific explanation itself depends on distinctions between true and false, valid and invalid, better and worse reasons. Those norms aren’t themselves causal properties, and so can’t coherently be treated as merely derivative features of otherwise non-intelligible processes.

So, on my reading of Hart, the pressure point isn’t really consciousness or even intentionality as a psychological phenomenon, but the status of normativity as such. The claim is that intelligibility has to belong to being itself, not merely to our ways of coping with it, otherwise explanation undermines the very standards it relies on.

That said, Hart’s argument isn’t a knock-down proof that intentionality cannot arise via natural processes. I understand it to be a transcendental claim: any explanation that treats truth, validity, and correctness as derivative byproducts of non-normative processes already presupposes those norms in the act of explanation itself. Scientific explanation depends on truth-apt judgments, valid inference, and reasons that count as better or worse.

The conclusion Hart draws is not that science fails, but that intelligibility cannot be ontologically secondary or merely instrumental. It has to belong to reality itself in some fundamental way. That’s where the metaphysical move comes in. — Esse Quam Videri

Nice. Yes, that's pretty close to my understanding of Hart.

Premise 1 is the one I think is flawed. Natural and physical are not synonyms. Anything in this universe is natural. It can't be otherwise. If there is something non-physical in this universe, then it is natural, and can be part of the explanation of some things. — Patterner

Hmm... I've generally thought that naturalism and physicalism were more or less interchangeable, both having superseded materialism. I suppose Hart might say that God is supernatural. But I can see how what is natural may not be physical. Does science have a view about the existence of non‑physical objects? How would you change that premise to retain the thrust of the argument? It's my approximation of Hart’s argument.

Hart’s point, as I read him, isn’t that natural processes couldn’t in principle produce intentional states, but that any attempt to explain reason, truth, or meaning already presupposes intelligibility and normativity. Scientific explanation itself depends on distinctions between true and false, valid and invalid, better and worse reasons. Those norms aren’t themselves causal properties, and so can’t coherently be treated as merely derivative features of otherwise non-intelligible processes.

So, on my reading of Hart, the pressure point isn’t really consciousness or even intentionality as a psychological phenomenon, but the status of normativity as such. The claim is that intelligibility has to belong to being itself, not merely to our ways of coping with it, otherwise explanation undermines the very standards it relies on. — Esse Quam Videri

Interesting points, let me think on this. :up:

That story can explain why certain representations work, but it doesn’t obviously explain aboutness—why representations are of the world rather than merely correlated with stimuli in ways that happen to be useful. After all, reptiles and birds of prey have survived for millions of years without any concern for whether their perceptions or internal representations are true. That preoccupation seems uniquely human, and it is not clear that evolutionary biology, as such, is equipped to explain it. — Wayfarer

What is this supplementary "aboutness" which supposedly demands explanation? For a perception to be correlated to stimulli in a way that happens to be useful, it must disclose something about the world. Whether or not the organism consciously considers the stimulli as "true" or not, a signal derived from the world cannot be useful if it does not inform. A bird of prey does not consider the metacognitive question "are my perceptions true?" Yet, it is critically important that it's perceptions are accurate in the ways that are relevant to it.



We and only we are able to ask the metacognitive questions "are perceptions true? are they real? how can they be about the world?" Such questions can only be posed by language. Only language can carve out concepts like perception, and then that these concepts themselves as objects of consideration. If you believe naturalism can explain language use, then it can explain such questions.

If minds and meanings arise from purely blind physical processes aimed at survival rather than truth, then the fact that our thoughts reliably refer to the world and track its structure appears contingent or unexplained. — Tom Storm

This seems to be the meat of the issue. I don't see anything in your OP that seems to suggest its validity. In a hypothetical near-infinite Universe (such as the one we live in consisting of millions of light years) where basically any and every possible physical or non-physical interaction can and will occur, it becomes a simple matter of taking "a shot in the dark" only with a weapon that has not only an infinite capacity of ammo but a complete and total range of motion. Ergo, eventually you're going to hit something. That something being what can be described as a rational and coherent intelligence that seemingly defies anything and everything around it. At least, that's a plausible explanation your OP fails to place in a skeptical light, let alone disprove.

By default, a theist starts off with:
There is God.
God created man.
Man has the characteristics and abilities as given to him by God.
Naturalism is wrong because God exists and man is created in the image of God.
— baker

No that’s a reductionist account, Hart arrives there via philosophical arguments not dogma. He is a Neoplatonist. — Tom Storm

It's short, but it's not reductionist. A monotheist has the above as a starting point, as the ground from which he makes his "philosophical" arguments.

It's short, but it's not reductionist. A monotheist has the above as a starting point, as the ground from which he makes his "philosophical" arguments. — baker

The point of Hart’s discourse on these matters is that he starts from reasoning and arrives at theism. Isn’t this why reason has been so assiduously employed by the Church over the centuries, to demonstrate the logical necessity of God?

Now, I happen to believe that, for the most part, behind all this, the atheist’s and the theist’s reasons for believing are much the same. Their accounts make sense to them for reasons informed by emotion and aesthetics. The reasoning is often post hoc.

Only language can carve out concepts like perception, and then that these concepts themselves as objects of consideration. If you believe naturalism can explain language use, then it can explain such questions. — hypericin

Excellent question. I agree that minimal, functional aboutness—I’ll use intentionality—poses no special problem for naturalism. For a signal to be useful, it must in some sense inform the organism about the world, and evolutionary biology explains this very well. A bird of prey does not ask whether its perceptions are true, yet it obviously matters that they are accurate in ways relevant to its form of life. An early bird must indeed catch a worm.

The philosophical problem arises with the emergence of language and symbolic reason, where representation becomes normative rather than merely functional. Once we can make claims, give reasons, and distinguish truth from mere success, intentionality is no longer just a matter of reliable correlation with stimuli. It involves answerability to how things are in a much broader sense, including domains—logic, mathematics, counterfactual reasoning—where there may be no immediate adaptive payoff. That is the sense of intentionality that invites explanation.

Stephen Talbott, in a great series of essays, argues that biological explanation already operates with two distinct kinds of “because”: because of physical law, and because of reason or meaning. Physical causes are law-like and invariant; reasons are context-sensitive and intelligible only in relation to the organised whole of the organism. Biology cannot dispense with the latter without distorting its subject matter. On Talbott’s view, this marks the core limitation of naturalism as it is usually conceived: it attempts to reduce context-driven, interpretive behaviour to physical causation alone. That is the conflict in a nutshell.

If this distinction between physical causation and meaning already applies at the level of basic biological organisation, then it becomes unavoidable in the case of what Terrence Deacon famously describes as the symbolic species (in the book of that name): beings whose cognition is organised around language, norms, and counterfactual structures that outrun immediate adaptive utility.

In a review of one of Daniel Dennett's books, the reviewer asks 'if reason is a product of natural selection, then how much confidence can we have in a rational argument for natural selection? The power of reason is owed to the independence of reason, and to nothing else.' So I would suggest that the attempt to explain reason in biological terms of tends to be reductionist, for the above reasons. Not that more extended forms of naturalism, such as those Deacon and Talbott are attempting, can be described as reductionist.

The philosophical problem arises with the emergence of language and symbolic reason, where representation becomes normative rather than merely functional. Once we can make claims, give reasons, and distinguish truth from mere success, intentionality is no longer just a matter of reliable correlation with stimuli. It involves answerability to how things are in a much broader sense, including domains—logic, mathematics, counterfactual reasoning—where there may be no immediate adaptive payoff. That is the sense of intentionality that invites explanation. — Wayfarer

This is the nub of it, from what I can tell.

And I suppose one orthodox physicalist response is that intentionality emerges from a certain kind of organised complexity in the brain. When neural systems are arranged so that they can model the environment, correct their errors, and coordinate behaviour over time and across individuals, their internal states can function as representations. Intentionality, on this view, is not a basic feature of the world but a higher-level property that arises from the structure and dynamics of complex physical systems.

Would you say this summarises it?

Intentionality, on this view, is not a basic feature of the world but a higher-level property that arises from the structure and dynamics of complex physical systems. — Tom Storm

A lot of people will say that, but you never see intentionality in the data. It is always only imputed - and by whom? For what reason?

Do you believe in God, or is that a software glitch?

Hart’s point, as I read him, isn’t that natural processes couldn’t in principle produce intentional states, but that any attempt to explain reason, truth, or meaning already presupposes intelligibility and normativity. Scientific explanation itself depends on distinctions between true and false, valid and invalid, better and worse reasons. Those norms aren’t themselves causal properties, and so can’t coherently be treated as merely derivative features of otherwise non-intelligible processes. — Esse Quam Videri

Excellently put! I would also add another implicit conclusion: if intelligibility is real, then necessarily it follows that there must be at least the potential of an intellect that can understand it.
So, if one tries to derive reason from an intelligible world one is already assuming reason in two ways: the way you're describe here and the potential existence of a reason that can understand the intelligibility.

In a naturalist framework, however, reason should be explained in terms of natural processes. In order to avoid circularity, naturalist view have to deny intelligibility. If however we deny intelligibility we deny the possibility to make explanations.

Anything in this universe is natural. It can't be otherwise. If there is something non-physical in this universe, then it is natural, and can be part of the explanation of some things. — Patterner

That, for me, is the critical issue. If one does not accept the Cartesian view of creation constantly being refreshed by God, thinking must find itself in the stuff made without being called just stuff.

Naturalism says we need to explain who is explaining in terms of what is being explained. :roll:

Me, I'm still partial to 'God breathing life into clay'.

I think everything is just stuff. I think everything has a non-physical property. An experiential property. Which doesn't mean everything is thinking. But everything is experiencing.

Premise 2: Physical causes and effects, by themselves, have no meaning or “aboutness.” — Tom Storm

Actually, I disagree with this one, also. :grin: But, iirc, you disagree with my reason. I think DNA means something it is not. I think the codons mean amino acids, and the strings of codons mean proteins. And teams of molecules use that information to assemble the amino acids and proteins. Meaning without thinking or intelligence.

Which means I disagree with Premise 4.

But I like 3!

How would you change that premise to retain the thrust of the argument? — Tom Storm

I can't imagine. I think three of his four premises are wrong, so they cannot lead to his conclusion. I think he needs another argument entirely to come to that conclusion.

Actually, I disagree with this one, also. :grin: But, iirc, you disagree with my reason. I think DNA means something it is not. I think the codons mean amino acids, and the strings of codons mean proteins. And teams of molecules use that information to assemble the amino acids and proteins. Meaning without thinking or intelligence. — Patterner

Not sure what that means. I have no useful science expertise.

I can't imagine. I think three of his four premises are wrong, so they cannot lead to his conclusion. I think he needs another argument entirely to come to that conclusion. — Patterner

Ok. Philosophers also disagree. Remember it’s my probably inadequate arrangement of the argument which I am trying to fully understand. Whether it’s right or not, I couldn’t say.

How do you generally react to @Wayfarer contributions on this subject, which seems to lean towards Neoplatonism. He may have been the better candidate to run this OP. But I do find it fascinating stuff.

Would you, for instance, accept that physicalism is unable to account for consciousness?

I think, following Talbott, the real nub of the issue is the relationship between the because of physical law and the because of meaning (with reason as a subset or application of meaning). That, I suspect, is why there’s been a renewed interest in Aristotle’s idea of final causation in biology. Modern science quite rightly abandoned Aristotelian physics, but in doing so it also dropped purposiveness from its explanatory vocabulary. Yet life itself — right down to microbes and cells — is saturated with goal-directedness. You can acknowledge that without smuggling in an intelligent designer or a vital force.

The sticking point then becomes: how do we get from physical causation to logic? The standard naturalist move is something like:

It arises with the experience from physical processes in the brain. — jkop

That sounds plausible, but it glosses over an important distinction. You can examine brain processes all day long and you’ll find electrochemical activity but not implication, validity, or contradiction. Those aren’t things you can point to in neural tissue.

And there’s a deeper issue lurking: even describing brain processes as "giving rise to logic" already requires using logic — rules of inference, standards of explanation, judgments about what follows from what. In that sense, the explanation quietly presupposes what it’s trying to account for. So there's an unstated recursion operating here. That’s not a refutation of neuroscience, but it does point to the philosophical issues involved in presuming that 'brain activity' can be made to account for rational inference: it's a category mistake.

You can examine brain processes all day long and you’ll find electrochemical activity but not implication, validity, or contradiction. Those aren’t things you can point to in neural tissue — Wayfarer

Why would you expect that a relation between two brain events would have to be a third brain event?

Trees make a forest, but we don't expect the forest to be a tree, do we?