The universe has order, regularities, patterns. If it did not, it would not exist. If protons sometimes stuck to each other when they were pressed close enough together, but not other times; or if opposite charges sometimes attracted each other, but not always; or if light sometimes traveled at c, but not always; or if 1+1 sometimes equaled 2 bit not always... What would such a reality look like?

But in this reality, things are consistent. And our brains - as well as everything else in the universe - came to be, and are founded, in those consistent principles. Why would our brains not recognize them?

The universe has order, regularities, patterns. If it did not, it would not exist. — Patterner

Certainly our experience of the world suggests patterns, but it’s unclear to me how these reflect the universe itself versus how we function as observers, our cognitive apparatus. That, however, may be a separate matter.

Hart seems to argue that the problem with naturalism is that even if the universe produces conscious beings, it doesn’t explain why they can understand the world. Physical processes create neurons and behavior, but not meaning, truth, or reference. That our minds can grasp concepts and form true beliefs points, Hart argues, beyond mere material causes.

I was hoping someone could unpack this and elaborate.

I can't help you with Hart. But it's not just our experience of the world that suggests those patterns, it's everything about our physical construction. We are living, thinking expressions of the principles of the universe. I think it wouldn't make sense if an entity with whatever minimal degree of mental ability that tried to understand the principles of the universe from which it grew couldn't recognize them. We evolved to recognize patterns. If there is consistency, and we can't recognize it, we die. How could we develop a mathematical system in which 2+2=17?

Hart seems to argue that the problem with naturalism is that even if the universe produces conscious beings, it doesn’t explain why they can understand the world. Physical processes create neurons and behavior, but not meaning, truth, or reference. That our minds can grasp concepts and form true beliefs points, Hart argues, beyond mere material causes.

I was hoping someone could unpack this and elaborate. — Tom Storm

Hart is a metaphysical realist of a classical persuasion. That means that he thinks reality is objectively real, intrinsically intelligible, value-laden, purposive, and metaphysically grounded in God. Human reason isn’t a matter of trial and error representations we place over things, reason is formed by the world’s own intelligible structures acting directly on the mind. In other words, the mind is inclined naturally to grasp the truth of the world. This is a very different from Kant, who argued that categories of human reason are purely subjective in origin, not given to us directly by way by the truths of a divinely ordered purposeful world. Postmodernists
believe that reality originates neither in the world as already ordered in itself, nor from subjectively given categories of reason imposing themselves on the world, but from an inseparable interaction between us and the world.

Patterner’s approach is pre-Kantian but post-Hart. He allows for a direct apprehension of the real through empirical investigation, which ignores Kant’s argument that empirical causality is not a direct property of the world but is already built into our reasoning about the world as a subjective condition of possibility. But Patterner’s view also requires humans to figure out what is true about the world through total and error, which Hart believes is not necessary because we are naturally inclined to directly see such divine truths.

Naturalism can describe how cognition functions, but it seems less able to explain why cognition should be about reality at all, rather than merely useful for navigating experience. — Tom Storm

Cognition enables us to successfully navigate reality, and that's why (or how) we know it's about reality.

In case we'd never navigate reality, only experience, then we'd be blind, and our navigation would certainly fail.

I’d like to better understand the argument that intelligibility cannot arise through purely naturalistic processes. Some naturalists will react to this idea, and I fear the discussion may end up in the somewhat tedious “how is consciousness related to a physical world?” type of threads. — Tom Storm

What is the argument? What are the premises?

Naturalism does not assume that we never navigate reality, only experience. On the contrary! The experience is the navigation of reality. That should dissolve the argument (if there ever was one).

Hart is a metaphysical realist of a classical persuasion. That means that he thinks reality is objectively real, intrinsically intelligible, value-laden, purposive, and metaphysically grounded in God. Human reason isn’t a matter of trial and error representations we place over things, reason is formed by the world’s own intelligible structures acting directly on the mind. In other words, the mind is inclined naturally to grasp the truth of the world. This is a very different from Kant, who argued that categories of human reason are purely subjective in origin, not given to us directly by way by the truths of a divinely ordered purposeful world. Postmodernists
believe that reality originates neither in the world as already ordered in itself, nor from subjectively given categories of reason imposing themselves on the world, but from an inseparable interaction between us and the world. — Joshs

Yes, that seems to be right. My sympathies these days are with the latter.

Can you sketch out the argument being suggested that naturalism can't explain intelligibility and intentionality? How are they (Hart) arriving there?

Naturalism does not assume that we never navigate reality, only experience. On the contrary! The experience is the navigation of reality. That should dissolve the argument (if there ever was one). — jkop

I’m not sure I follow this. The claim that experience constitutes reality is what Hart is arguing, but he sees no reason why naturalism can support this. I don’t have the premises laid out; I’m hoping someone familiar with the argument can supply them. All I can find is Hart stating what I’ve already summarized earlier.

We are living, thinking expressions of the principles of the universe. I think it wouldn't make sense if an entity with whatever minimal degree of mental ability that tried to understand the principles of the universe from which it grew couldn't recognize them. We evolved to recognize patterns — Patterner

I’m certainly aware that this is a commonly held view. I don’t know whether it’s correct.

I think the argument is meant to be something like this:

P 1: Naturalism explains everything solely in terms of physical causes, laws of nature, and emergent phenomena.

P 2: Intelligibility (the fact that the universe can be understood or grasped conceptually) cannot be reduced to physical causes or emergent processes.

P 3: Any naturalistic account that relies only on physical mechanisms cannot explain the conceptual, law-directed, and rational features that make understanding possible.

P 4: If a phenomenon cannot be fully explained by physical/natural mechanisms, naturalism is inadequate to account for it.

Conclusion: Therefore, naturalism cannot fully explain the intelligibility of the universe.

Someone with better philosophical insight and who agrees or better understands with this argument could improve on this account.

We are living, thinking expressions of the principles of the universe. I think it wouldn't make sense if an entity with whatever minimal degree of mental ability that tried to understand the principles of the universe from which it grew couldn't recognize them. We evolved to recognize patterns
— Patterner

I’m certainly aware that this is a commonly held view. I don’t know whether it’s correct. — Tom Storm

Which part do you question? That there are consistent principles at work in the universe? That our evolution took place within those principles, and we operate within them and they operate within us? That success for a living thing means continued life, and we would not continue to live if we didn't recognize the consistencies?

By that last one, I mean an archae would not survive if its archaellum (flagellum) didn't act consistently to the signals it receives, or it receives inconsistent signals. On another level, we would not survive if we did not react consistently to the visual stimulus of approaching cars, or the signals from our retinas regarding approaching cars was inconsistent.

Which part do you question? — Patterner

I have no expertise in metaphysics or ontology, but my sympathies have led me toward simple-minded anti-foundationalism. Exploring this is for another thread. What I really want here is a clear account of this argument at its most articulate. I’m not interested in debunking it or making a counter-argument; I'm just hoping to understand it better.

I'd say the argument misrepresents naturalism. There are varieties, and here's a quote from the Wiki page on Naturalism.

"Naturalism is not so much a special system as a point of view or tendency common to a number of philosophical and religious systems; not so much a well-defined set of positive and negative doctrines as an attitude or spirit pervading and influencing many doctrines. As the name implies, this tendency consists essentially in looking upon nature as the one original and fundamental source of all that exists, and in attempting to explain everything in terms of nature. Either the limits of nature are also the limits of existing reality, or at least the first cause, if its existence is found necessary, has nothing to do with the working of natural agencies. All events, therefore, find their adequate explanation within nature itself. But, as the terms nature and natural are themselves used in more than one sense, the term naturalism is also far from having one fixed meaning".

— Dubray 1911
— Wikipedia

The claim that experience constitutes reality is what Hart is arguing, but he sees no reason why naturalism can support this. — Tom Storm

Hm, doesn't seem right. How could experience constitute reality? I don't see how any philosophy could support such absurdity. For example, my visual experience won't constitute these words, I don't have such magic powers, I had to type them with my computer and click the post-button.

Back to your OP on Hart:

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

We survive by aiming at truth, and our success in survival shows that our thoughts reliably refer to the world.

One might ask the guy whether the supernatural explains something, anything?

Thanks. As I said, I’m not trying to debunk the argument. I’m trying to get a better account of it. What you’re doing is reading over my very elementary summary of the argument, and I’m not surprised that my version is wonky.

What I'm hoping is for someone to restate the argument properly and then supply some further reasoning in support of it. I’m looking for a clearer philosophical account of why some philosophers reason that intelligibility and intentionality cannot be accounted for under naturalism. I don’t want to have to buy Hart’s book. :wink:

Postmodernists believe that reality originates neither in the world as already ordered in itself, nor from subjectively given categories of reason imposing themselves on the world, but from an inseparable interaction between us and the world. — Joshs

Naturalistic replies (e.g. jkop) often emphasize evolutionary utility: cognition tracks what matters for survival, not truth. 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.

This is where the classical argument bites. If cognition is fundamentally geared toward fitness rather than truth, then the remarkable reach of human reason—abstract mathematics, cosmology, modal reasoning, counterfactuals—looks explanatorily extravagant. Every other species gets along perfectly well without them. One can always say “it just turned out that way,” but that response functions more as a dismissal than an explanation. The question isn’t whether evolution can produce brains that adapt successfully, but why beings like us can uncover deep, non-local, non-obvious structures of reality at all—necessary truths, in fact. And such truths are not contingent in the way sensory experience necessarily is.

But notice that in even posing this question, you’re already stepping beyond the explanatory limits of naturalism. Naturalistic explanation ultimately trades in empirically tractable causal relations, whereas the issue at hand—how thought can be about reality, or why reason should have normative authority—cannot be captured in purely causal terms. Whenever you start to ask what must be the case, and why it must be so, I say you’re already appealing to facts which are strictly speaking beyond the remit of naturalism (and which I and others say points to a deep contradiction in naturalism.)

You might object that science itself makes constant use of such modal notions—and that’s true. But science does not explain logical or mathematical necessity; it presupposes it. In securing its proofs and models, science relies on principles that stand to reason: inference, consistency, implication, and mathematical structure. Although science introduces new mathematical formalisms, these are not confirmed or disconfirmed empirically in the same sense as empirical claims. Yet they are among the constituents of scientific discovery.

So the question simply reappears at a deeper level: where, exactly, is this necessity to be found? Not as a contingent feature of the empirical world, and not as a causal product of it either. Yet without it, the enterprise of science would not even get off the ground. I agree in some ways that these arise as constituents of our experience-of-the-world, as some postmodernists would put it, but this was already anticipated in the participatory dimension of classical metaphysics.

Nice. I guess one could go onto argue that language already presupposes access to logical form, universals, truth, and intentionality. You can’t build those out of non-rational processes without bringing them in.

I note that Hart's position has a relationship to Plantinga’s Evolutionary Argument Against Naturalism (EAAN).

I don't have enough expertise to thoroughly assess this but I find it an engaging idea. One can see how one might go on to argue that reality is intelligible only because it is already configured in terms of mind and language, which are inseparable from one another.

I guess one could go onto argue that language already presupposes access to logical form, universals, truth, and intentionality. — Tom Storm

I always thought that is what Nietzsche meant when he said we hadn’t got rid of God because we can’t get rid of grammar, although I’m not much of a Nietzsche fanboy. But I agree with the way you put it in your last sentence.

Nietzsche meant when he said we hadn’t got rid of God because we can’t get rid of grammar, — Wayfarer

Ha! This is exactly what I was saying about this to a friend yesterday. I always paraphrase it as, “If you believe in grammar, you’re a theist.”

Mind you a lot of people will definitely take that the wrong way (God bless ‘em).

why some philosophers reason that intelligibility and intentionality cannot be accounted for under naturalism. — Tom Storm

Imagine the sense of privilege that can be evoked by the mere speculation that human cognition might have an element of something that is supernatural or connected to god or spirits or anything but the natural world. It serves the interest of theists, mystics or the like. Hence their recurring misrepresentations of naturalism as explanation of survival rather than truth.

They omit the better explanation, that in order to survive you've gotta see what there is to see, and analyse what you see, not only what you need or wish to see. How else could you navigate, test, analyse, make the decicions and act in the ways that increase your fitness?

Truth enables survival and fitness, and as the ability evolved, we gained access to platonic realities such as math, music etc. Their structures are not human constructs, they're natural, or what shapes the natural world, but we can access them and use them in our own constructions.

I’d like to better understand the argument that intelligibility cannot arise through purely naturalistic processes. Some naturalists will react to this idea, and I fear the discussion may end up in the somewhat tedious “how is consciousness related to a physical world?” type of threads. — Tom Storm

Intelligibility is not just knowing things, but also understanding and solving the problems in practicality of life. There is limit of human knowledge on the world and even human mind, and knowing the boundary of intelligibility is also an intelligibility.

We must admit that not only there is clear boundary of our knowledge, but also there exists large part of the unknown universe. The limitation is due to lack of data on the type of abstract existence such as space and time, the origin of the universe, and God rather than human intelligence itself or naturalism.

The post-liberal politics of Victor Orban, J.D. Vance and Marco Rubio draw from the classical metaphysical thinking of John Millbank and David Bentley Hart, which completely rejects Kantianism and all of the subsequent developments of philosophy which have flowed from it, including the phenomenological work of Bitbol and the Hegelian-Piagetian ideas of Vervaeke. If Kant was a correction of the limitations of Enlightenment thinkers from Descartes and Spinoza to Hume, the post liberalism of Hart turns its back on this whole era and retreats to pre-Enlightenment theological sources. If phenomenology opens up to the postmodern, Hart’s approach is decidedly pre-modern.

I am confident your thinking does not ally in any substantive way with this radically conservative turn. But I wonder if you have sympathies with the pre-Kantian mathematical neo platonism of figures like Michael Levin, Kastrup or Tegmark. I say this because you write:

science does not explain logical or mathematical necessity; it presupposes it. In securing its proofs and models, science relies on principles that stand to reason: inference, consistency, implication, and mathematical structure. Although science introduces new mathematical formalisms, these are not confirmed or disconfirmed empirically in the same sense as empirical claims. Yet they are among the constituents of scientific discovery. — Wayfarer

For the mathematical plaronists, mathematics isnt merely a language science happens to use; it is the deep structure of reality itself. When science relies on logical implication or mathematical necessity, it is latching onto features that exist independently of human cognition, culture, or conceptual schemes. On this view, the fact that mathematical principles are not empirically confirmed is not a weakness but a clue to their status: they are discovered, not invented, and they constrain reality precisely because they are reality’s form. Science presupposes logic and mathematics because logic and mathematics are more fundamental than empirical facts. They are part of the furniture of reality, not merely the rules of our engagement with it.

By contrast, Kantian and post-Kantian thinkers read the same situation in almost the opposite direction. Kant fully agrees that science cannot explain logical or mathematical necessity empirically, but he denies that this licenses Platonism. The reason science presupposes these necessities is that they arise from the conditions under which objects can be experienced at all. Mathematics and logic are not discovered features of a mind-independent realm; they are expressions of the a priori forms of intuition (space and time) and the categories of the understanding. Their necessity is transcendental, not ontological in the Platonist sense. They bind all possible experience because they are the rules by which experience is constituted.

On Kant’s view, mathematical formalisms are indeed constituents of scientific discovery, but not because nature is secretly mathematical in itself. Rather, nature as an object of possible science is necessarily mathematizable because our cognition imposes spatiotemporal and logical structure on whatever appears to us. Science presupposes mathematics because without those forms, there would be no objects, no laws, no empirical regularities to investigate in the first place.

Post-Kantian thinkers deepen and fracture this picture in different ways, but they retain the basic reversal of Platonism. Hegel internalizes necessity still further: logical and mathematical structures are not static abstract truths but moments in the self-unfolding of rationality itself. Scientific concepts presuppose logical necessity because they are expressions of reason coming to know itself in nature, not because they mirror an external mathematical realm. Neo-Kantians recast mathematics as a regulative framework internal to scientific practice.

For Bitbol, mathematics and logic are indispensable not because they are universally binding in all possible worlds, but because abandoning them would amount to abandoning the very project of sense-making we currently inhabit. Their necessity is pragmatic-transcendental rather than apodictic.

Husserl locates mathematical logic in acts of idealization, abstraction, and meaning-bestowal. Mathematical objects are neither empirical nor merely subjective; they are ideal objects, constituted through conscious acts but valid independently of any particular act once constituted.

Where Kant treats logic as a fixed formal framework and mathematics as grounded in space and time, Husserl insists that both emerge from pre-theoretical, intuitive practice such as counting, collecting, comparing and iterating, which are then progressively purified into exact, ideal structures. Logical and mathematical necessity is not imposed by an innate cognitive grid but arises from the eidetic invariants of these acts.

For Vervaeke, mathematics and formal logic emerge from ongoing processes of sense-making and relevance realization in embodied, situated agents. They are not grounded in pure intuition, transcendental structures, or ideal acts, but in adaptive cognitive dynamics that stabilize over time into normative constraints. Logic and mathematics are late achievements of a self-correcting ecology of practices aimed at reducing error, increasing coherence, and enhancing problem-solving power.

From this vantage, necessity is not metaphysical or transcendental but ecological and functional. Mathematical and logical norms bind us because they have proven indispensable for navigating complex problem spaces, not because they legislate the form of all possible experience. Vervaeke would say that Kant over-intellectualizes the origin of necessity: what really grounds it is the way certain patterns of inference and formalization reliably track affordances and constraints in the agent–world coupling. Mathematics is powerful because it sharpens relevance realization to an extreme degree, not because it reflects a priori forms of intuition.

I’d like to better understand the argument that intelligibility cannot arise through purely naturalistic processes. Some naturalists will react to this idea, and I fear the discussion may end up in the somewhat tedious “how is consciousness related to a physical world?” type of threads. — Tom Storm

I think that the deepest difficulty for strict naturalism is not whether evolution can produce reliable cognition—it clearly can—but whether it can account for normativity. Evolutionary explanations trade in causal success, whereas inquiry operates under standards of correctness. Science itself presupposes distinctions between true and false, better and worse explanations, and valid and invalid inferences. These are not empirical discoveries; they are conditions under which empirical discoveries can count as knowledge at all. As emphasizes, science presupposes logical and mathematical necessity—it does not explain it.

In that sense, I agree with the spirit of Hart’s argument: intelligibility cannot be treated as an accidental byproduct of blind processes without undermining the authority of reason itself. Where I would differ is methodologically. I think the argument is strongest when it proceeds from the structure of inquiry—error, correction, and judgment—rather than from a thick metaphysical or theological picture at the outset.

With regard to the concerns raised by ’s , I think his reconstruction of Hart is directionally right but overstated in ways that muddy the waters a bit. I wouldn't agree with the characterization of Hart as a naïve pre-critical thinker who believes we simply “see” divine truths without mediation, error, or inquiry. He rejects constructivism and representationalism, but that does not commit him to an infallibilist or anti-discursive epistemology. Portraying him that way makes it too easy to dismiss his position as a retreat to pre-Enlightenment dogmatism.

In my opinion, framing the options as pre-Kantian realism versus Kantian/post-Kantian constructivism versus postmodern correlationism forces a false dilemma. There is a post-critical position that preserves what is valuable in the classical tradition—the claim that intelligibility belongs to reality itself—without lapsing into naïve realism or reducing intelligibility to historically contingent sense-making practices.

So from my perspective, the core issue can be stated simply:

• What must reality be like for beings like us to be normatively bound by truth, necessity, and correctness at all?

Once that question is in view, the debate is no longer about science versus theology per se, or about evolutionary psychology, but about whether intelligibility is intrinsic to being or merely a contingent feature of how certain organisms cope with their environments.

There is a post-critical position that preserves what is valuable in the classical tradition—the claim that intelligibility belongs to reality itself—without lapsing into naïve realism or reducing intelligibility to historically contingent sense-making practices.

So from my perspective, the core issue can be stated simply:

What must reality be like for beings like us to be normatively bound by truth, necessity, and correctness at all?

Once that question is in view, the debate is no longer about science versus theology per se, or about evolutionary psychology, but about whether intelligibility is intrinsic to being or merely a contingent feature of how certain organisms cope with their environments. — Esse Quam Videri

Did you have Schelling in mind here, or is there another group of philosophers you can point us to who expound this post-critical position?

If Schelling , then the gap between Schelling and Hart should be mentioned. From a post-Kantian perspective, Schelling shows how intelligibility emerges from being’s own inner dynamics, rather than presupposing a fully luminous order guaranteed by divine intellect. He accepts the Kantian critique of dogmatism but tries to move through it, not around it. Hart, by contrast, largely refuses the transcendental demand altogether, treating it as a historical detour rather than a philosophical necessity.
For Hart, intelligibility is grounded theologically and metaphysically in actus purus: being is intelligible because it proceeds from divine intellect and goodness. Participation explains how finite minds can know truth, but the structure of intelligibility itself is already complete and perfect in God. Mediation occurs, but it occurs within a fully determinate metaphysical order.

Hart and Schelling both reject Kant’s subjectivization of intelligibility, but Schelling does so by internalizing critique into ontology, whereas Hart largely bypasses it by appeal to classical metaphysics. Hart is a theological Platonist retrieving classical participation, Schelling is a speculative post-Kantian rethinking intelligibility as dynamic and self-grounding.

Can you sketch out the argument being suggested that naturalism can't explain intelligibility and intentionality?

How are they (Hart) arriving there? — Tom Storm

By being theists.

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.



Nicely put here:

Hart is a metaphysical realist of a classical persuasion. That means that he thinks reality is objectively real, intrinsically intelligible, value-laden, purposive, and metaphysically grounded in God.

Human reason isn’t a matter of trial and error representations we place over things, reason is formed by the world’s own intelligible structures acting directly on the mind.

In other words, the mind is inclined naturally to grasp the truth of the world. — Joshs

Hart is a theological Platonist retrieving classical participation, Schelling is a speculative post-Kantian rethinking intelligibility as dynamic and self-grounding. — Joshs

Yes, he identifies as a neoplatonist.

The post-liberal politics of Victor Orban, J.D. Vance and Marco Rubio draw from the classical metaphysical thinking of John Millbank and David Bentley Hart, — Joshs

Interesting. Although Hart identifies as a socialist, he mocks MAGA and openly disparages evangelicals which he calls a heretical. He writes amusingly about how much he dislikes all forms of conservative politics (even if he supports a form of Christian nostalgia). He can be quite a bitch.

Imagine the sense of privilege that can be evoked by the mere speculation that human cognition might have an element of something that is supernatural or connected to god or spirits or anything but the natural world. It serves the interest of theists, mystics or the like. Hence their recurring misrepresentations of naturalism as explanation of survival rather than truth. — jkop

This is an entirely different subject. Again, I'm not much interested in how the argument might be used by some, nor in refutations of it. Hart would openly mock idea that evolution or complexity produces consciousness. He is a trenchant critic of emergence and is deeply read in neuroscience and the philosophy of mind.

I’m still trying to understand his specific argument, but I fear I may need to buy his book and attempt to negotiate his baroque prose. Life is too short.

I think that the deepest difficulty for strict naturalism is not whether evolution can produce reliable cognition—it clearly can—but whether it can account for normativity. — Esse Quam Videri

Do we know this? Isn’t the question of consciousness still a contested space? But yes on the normativity issue.

So from my perspective, the core issue can be stated simply:

What must reality be like for beings like us to be normatively bound by truth, necessity, and correctness at all?

Once that question is in view, the debate is no longer about science versus theology per se, or about evolutionary psychology, but about whether intelligibility is intrinsic to being or merely a contingent feature of how certain organisms cope with their environments. — Esse Quam Videri

Nice work. Yes, I think this touches on some key points.

But I’m still looking for a statement of Hart’s reasoning I can follow. Some of CS Lewis’ essays seem to come close but that old polemicist irritates me.

Is there a substantive argument that attempts to demonstrate why intentionality and subjectivity can’t originate via naturalism?

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.

Hart arrives there via philosophical arguments — Tom Storm

Can you post them here?

You tell me.

I'm finding your pre-Kant, Kant, post-Kant descriptions spot on and very clear and concise. Nice.

I think the argument goes something like this. Care to criticise how it's laid out?

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.