Argument 2: The Argument from Intelligibility — Esse Quam Videri

Nice. Yes I think that’s a detailed account, which goes further - to Mr God - than we need to.

The other arguments may have been made by CS Lewis too I seem to recall.

I found this from a rather well written and somewhat intractable essay by Hart on the matter.

Or, more simply, the whole issue is intentionality, which stands at the very heart of the phenomenological project, but which phenomenologists in the vein of Marion—which might just mean Marion—tend to treat not as determinative of our understanding of being, or even of our understanding of our capacity to seek and find, but principally as the limitation of what we receive in any phenomenon, defined every bit as strictly as the Kantian rule of representation. This is very odd indeed, since such limits by definition would be unsurpassable and for that very reason unrecognizable; any awareness of a givenness in excess of our intentional capacity—any ‘saturated phenomenon’, to borrow a phrase—would be impossible not only to perceive, but to intuit. That, however, is a secondary consideration. That there is such a thing as intentionality at all invites a certain set of metaphysical conjectures, and those of an almost inescapably idealist kind (as Husserl, for all the restraint he exercised in making large pronouncements, understood). There is, of course, no such thing as an ‘analytic’ idealism, since every metaphysical picture requires a synthetic judgement pronounced upon certain phenomenologically specified structures of experience. But there is a certain inevitability in the sort of questions our experience of intentionality prompts, and a limited range of intelligible answers.

There is no great mystery, of course, as to why the idea of intrinsic intentionality is abhorrent to a consistent naturalist, or why a ‘scientistic reductionist’ such as Alex Rosenberg (that is his description of himself) should feel obliged to deny its very existence. It simply cannot be reconciled with the mechanical narrative of emergence. There is no avenue strictly upward from mere behavior, understood in terms of stimulus and response, to intentional agency, except (and this is the preposterous alternative favored by Rosenberg and others) as an epiphenomenal illusion. Along even the most gradualist of evolutionary paths, the slow, cumulative, agonizing ascent from entropy to homeostasis to metabolism to interiority to intentionality is impossibly fantastic; such a sequence of developments would never reach that point of inflection where actual intention toward an end arose from the sheer momentum of life out of the primordial night. The horizons of intention would have to be pushed ever further back into the past and ever further ahead into the future without cessation in order to tell the tale, because both horizons are necessarily presumed within the very structure of persistence, and must be present (as so much current biological thinking powerfully suggests) at every systemic level, from the highest to the lowest. So, if intentionality is real, it must—contrary to the mechanical narrative—mean that the future and the purposive and the final, on the one hand, coexist with the past and the energetic and original, on the other, in every present act of a real agent. This requires that there is always already a noetic realm in which chronos is wholly present in a replete aeon, a notional order in which the end is always already accomplished—even if that end is never realized here below, in the land of unlikeness. And yet this too cannot intelligibly be understood as a composite order, in which diverse extrinsic causes collaborate to produce a mere totality. It must be a true intrinsic unity, and so must be subordinate to and contingent upon a yet higher realm of unity as such. If there is intentionality, simply enough, a metaphysics of participation is always proposing itself for consideration, and with considerable persuasive force.

Perhaps, however, I should lay out the sequence of investigations I would think necessary to determine whether my understanding of, say, Plotinus’s hierarchy of emanations could be regarded as a ‘phenomenological’ deduction—or even, to employ the terminology of the guild, a phenomenological reduction.

The very first question I would pose is whether the pre-Kantian or pre-critical assumption that metaphysics can be directly deduced by reflection on the conditions of experience, without any prior methodological rationale, actually concealed certain rigorous principles tacitly at work in Platonic, Aristotelian, and Neoplatonic thought. The next is whether the modern critical project, in identifying the necessity of a proper distinction between epistemological investigation of the categories of understanding and metaphysical speculation on ‘essences’ or forms, at once revealed what most premodern philosophy had failed to discriminate and yet also, paradoxically, served further to conceal those governing principles mentioned above. In that sense, perhaps, Kant’s first Critique might be regarded not so much as a barrier erected between the confident metaphysics of the premodern world and modern thought so much as a prism that can separate the formerly blended light of the metaphysical, empirical, phenomenological, practical, and culturally contingent into their distinct colors. Chiefly, my concern is whether, rather than constituting merely an illicit leap from the temporal into the eternal, the attempt in Platonic and Aristotelian tradition to understand the structure of reality according to rational categories derived from mental agency (such as idea, form, and finality) might more properly be understood, in a great many cases, as an ontology of time, naïvely but in many respects consistently based upon what we now might describe as a phenomenology of all agency, mental and otherwise. Again, I am not persuaded that the partition that contemporary continental phenomenology erects between its method and ‘metaphysics’ tout court can possibly remain impermeable in the way it is so often asserted to be. I think a particularly fruitful way of framing the issue might be to ask, for instance, whether Heidegger’s project of the ‘temporalization of ontology’ was not, in a manner that he did not recognize, an accidental inversion of an ancient project of the ‘ontologization of time’, whose beginning we can vaguely locate in the dictum from the Timaeus that “Chronos is the moving image of Aeon” (which, misleadingly to our modern ears, is usually rendered as “Time is the moving image of Eternity”) and whose first culmination might be found in that aforementioned Plotinian hierarchy of hypostases. My aim would be not some elevation of either ‘the ancients’ over ‘the moderns’ or the reverse, but rather a partial erasure of a hard distinction of method between them and a reconciliation of certain ancient and certain modern philosophical impulses at a more original level of reasoning. There is a point at which the boundaries enforced by phenomenological ‘bracketing’ might profitably be encouraged to dissolve, if only to reveal the ‘phenomenological’ method implicit in what has been defined historically as mere metaphysics.

So I would begin from Heidegger’s example of the differing ways in which a hammer is understood—or, better, grasped—by the one who is wielding it. The image is emblematic of both an agent’s inescapable pragmatic engagement in the disclosure of being and also the temporality of Dasein; but what tends to disappear in his account of the ecstatic openness of Dasein to the future, as determined toward the horizon of death, is any sufficiently precise analysis of the element of specific intentionality in the agent’s use of a hammer, and of the way that finite intention always arises within the context of a more original orientation toward certain more absolute ends. In one sense, Heidegger’s project of enclosing ontology within a pragmatic and hermeneutical horizon arrived very late in the day within the larger modern project inaugurated by Descartes’s rational reconstruction of reality from the original position of the subject, which reached its most epochal expression in Kant’s transcendental deduction; but, in another sense, Heidegger was also resuming the earlier Protestant resistance against the ‘Athenian captivity’ of the schoolmen. Ever since the critical threshold was crossed, there has been a great deal of philosophical ferment around the possibility of retrieving the premodern faith in the unity of being and thought, now purged of its naïveté by critical scruple. In a broad sense, this is the guiding pathos in much modern continental thought, Romantic, Idealist, Phenomenological, and so on. Needless to say, this ambition has been hindered by the triumph not only of the critical vantage, but of the mechanical view of nature as well. The latter may be hospitable to substance dualism, materialist emergentism, or physicalist reductionism (even eliminativism), but not to any genuine rapprochement between our pictures of mental agency and of the intrinsic structure of reality. Absolute Idealism constituted the most daring attempt at overcoming the breach, and Hegel’s logic the most monumentally systematic.

Be that as it may, I wish to cast a glance back toward the earlier syntheses, before the threshold of the critical was reached, but to do so without retreating back across that threshold. In brief, if intrinsic intentionality truly exists, it already from the first forbids a complete mechanization of our picture of reality simply by virtue of the actual efficacy of rationales, purposes, and meanings. If mental agency requires the real existence of an antecedent finality as a rational relation within all intentional acts, then this naturally suggests that there must be a distinct ‘noetic’ space in which every act enjoys at least a notional existence as a complete totality; and, so Plotinus and others assumed, this ‘aeonian’ totality, which is meted out in a fluent succession of episodes in the sublunary world of chronos, must be sustained more originally by a principle of unity prior to all distinctions of states. And, if nature is hospitable to efficacious intentionality, it is perhaps not irrational to suppose that it is configured intrinsically upon this model of agency, especially if intentionality can be discerned within even its most elementary functions. The Critique of Judgement tells us that teleology can at most be assumed to be a necessary aspect of our rational perception of totality, and nothing more; but (as Hegel noted) this too is a metaphysical supposition, and an arbitrary imposition of limits upon reason’s grasp of the real. So, if as I say I were to begin with Heidegger’s hammer in hand, the first line of inquiry would be to ask what the absolutely indispensable features of any complete account of my intentional engagement with it must be. The next would be to ask, with some caution but real application, what the actual structure of intentional acts suggests about causality in regard to time, and so about the ontology of those causal relations. And, at the end of that train of reflections, it might be possible to ask whether there must be an ultimate point of indistinction in the structure of reality between the mind as knower and being as the known.

Thoughts? It's a little too difficult for me.

It should be possible to make sense of any clear and consistent argument. The claim seems to be that because physicalism cannot make sense of intentionality, and intentionality is obviously real, then physicalism is refuted.

The problem is that any physicalism which claims that there can be no real intentionality is always already refuted, since the claim that there is no real intentionality is itself a claim about something and hence is itself and example of intentionality.

It doesn't follow that, for example, electro-chemical signalling, which amounts to semiosis ...that is amounts to information about some conditions or other being apprehended, would be impossible if it were nothing more than a physical process, just because we cannot explain how it works in the terms of physics.

It is already obvious that those kinds of biological processes cannot be explained in terms of physics. It is simply the wrong toolkit.

That there might be (current at least but even no possible future) physical explanation does not prove that something more than physical processes are involved, even if it might reasonably serve as a motivator for the faith-based intuition that something mysterious and perhaps inexplicable is going on. Claiming that the something mysterious is logical or empirical proof of a spiritual realm or god or whatever is a step too far and does not provide any missing explanation in any case.

I think this is a genuinely distinct argument from the other two, though it shares deep roots with both of them.

The first two arguments were essentially negative — they aimed to show that physicalism cannot account for normativity and intelligibility. This passage is doing something more constructive: it’s trying to show that the very structure of intentionality, properly analyzed, naturally points toward something like a participatory metaphysics — a hierarchy of being in roughly the Neoplatonic sense.

The key move, as I read it, runs like this:

Every intentional act — even something as mundane as using a hammer — is directed toward an end that is not yet realized but is already operative as the organizing principle of the act. When I swing a hammer, the completed action (the nail driven in) is not yet actual, but it is already functioning as the rational cause of my present movements. The future end is operative in the present as a final cause.

Hart then argues that this temporal structure — where the end is “always already” governing the act even as it is being worked out in time — requires more than a merely mechanical succession of efficient causes. Time (chronos) is the unfolding, in sequence, of what is graspable only as a unified whole (aeon). This is the Platonic dictum from the Timaeus: chronos is the moving image of aeon.

And then the crucial further step: this order of intelligible purposive wholes cannot itself be understood as a mere aggregate of interacting parts. It must involve genuine intrinsic unity. But any determinate unity, Hart suggests, is intelligible only as a participation in unity as such — which points beyond itself to a higher principle of unity. This yields the Plotinian hierarchy: temporal becoming, noetic wholeness, and ultimately the One beyond all distinction.

So the argument’s skeleton might be formalized roughly as follows:

The Argument from Intentionality to Participation
P1. Intentional action is real — our acts are genuinely directed toward ends, and this directedness is not epiphenomenal.
P2. Every intentional act is structured by a meaning — an end or purpose — that is not reducible to any present physical configuration. The act of hammering is organized by the completed goal (nail driven in), which does not yet exist physically but is already operative as the rational principle governing the agent’s present movements.
P3. This directedness toward what is not-yet (and even toward what may never be) cannot be captured in purely immanent mechanical terms. No arrangement of present matter, however complex, constitutes aboutness — orientation toward an absent end — without presupposing an irreducible intentional structure that already exceeds efficient causality.
P4. Therefore, in every intentional act, the temporal sequence of physical events is governed by an intelligible wholeness that is prior to and not derivable from the sequence itself. The parts of the act only make sense in light of the whole, but the whole is not yet physically actual. Temporal sequence presupposes intelligible wholeness.
P5. This intelligible wholeness — the order in which intentional acts exist as complete purposive unities rather than as mere successions of physical states — constitutes what the tradition calls a "noetic order". This is not a “separate place” or a Platonic warehouse, but a claim about ontological priority: intelligible form is more fundamental than material sequence.
P6. The noetic order, as a realm of determinate intelligible unities, cannot be self-grounding. Any determinate unity — any "this" rather than "that" — is a limited participation in unity as such, and so points beyond itself to a principle of unity that is not itself one determinate thing among others.
P7. If intentionality is not unique to human minds but can be discerned at systemic levels of nature — if biological organization, persistence, and function exhibit genuine directedness toward ends — then this structure (temporal unfolding governed by intelligible wholeness, grounded in a principle of unity) characterizes reality as such, not merely human psychology.
C. Therefore, if intentionality is real, reality cannot be fundamentally mechanical. The present is always already governed by a meaning that transcends the present, and this pushes metaphysics toward a participatory ontology — a hierarchy from temporal becoming, through noetic wholeness, to an absolute principle of unity ("the One").

Basically Hart is arguing that if you take intentionality seriously and follow out its internal structure, you are led — almost by phenomenological necessity — toward a participatory ontology. It’s not primarily attacking physicalism (though it does that in passing, with the point about the “mechanical narrative of emergence”). It’s constructing a positive metaphysical picture “from the inside,” showing that it arises naturally from reflection on what intentional action actually involves.

Hart is also doing something methodologically distinctive here. He’s suggesting that ancient Neoplatonic metaphysics — which modern philosophy often treats as naïve pre-critical speculation — was in fact operating with something like a proto-phenomenological method: deriving ontological structure from the analysis of agency and experience. So the argument is simultaneously philosophical and historiographical: Plotinus is not separated from Husserl/Heidegger by a Kantian abyss, but is engaged in a continuous project of making explicit what is implicit in experience.

Where is it most vulnerable? Probably around P3 and P6. A naturalist will say: the “end” that organizes present action is just a neural representation — a predictive model of a future state that causally shapes present behavior. No need for a "noetic order".

Hart’s reply will be that this simply relocates the problem: a “representation” is itself already an intentional phenomenon. The question is not whether the brain can generate models, but how matter can be about something absent, future, or merely possible at all. Invoking neural representations is not an explanation of intentionality; it is intentionality redescribed in mechanistic vocabulary.

So the real issue, for Hart, is whether intentionality is eliminable or irreducible — and if it's irreducible, whether it forces us beyond the mechanical narrative toward a metaphysics in which finality, form, and unity are basic features of reality rather than emergent accidents.

Where is it most vulnerable? Probably around P3 and P6. A naturalist will say: the “end” that organizes present action is just a neural representation — a predictive model of a future state that causally shapes present behavior. — Esse Quam Videri

For me I found myself saying "But..." at his depictions of naturalism. I find phenomenology -- even participatory metaphysics -- as compatible with a kind of naturalism. A naturalist doesn't need to believe in the singular present moment as the only existing physical reality, and the mechanistic picture is more of a reductive move than a naturalists move.

My thought where he says "this is impossible" is to ask "Why's that?" -- in some sense, if we're good naturalists, we'd say we may not know how something arises and so need not "sit on both sides" to point to a limitation. Rather that seems to me that Hart believes reality is intrinsically structured with intelligibility and it's a rather handy explanation for a problem he sees in naturalism.

I agree with your rendition that he's using Heidegger as a sort of continuum between Neoplatonic metaphysics and modern philosophy to attempt to deny the critical turn. But then I'm critical of Heidegger too so I wouldn't say modern philosophy stops at Heidegger. :D

You're raising something I think is genuinely important — the question of what "naturalism" actually commits you to. Hart is at his strongest when he's targeting the Rosenberg/Churchland end of things, where intentionality really is denied or explained away. But you're right that there are much more capacious naturalisms that would happily accept real intentionality and even something like teleology.

The interesting question is whether those generous naturalisms are still naturalism in any meaningful sense, or whether they've quietly conceded the ground Hart is fighting over. If one's naturalism includes irreducible intentionality, real directedness toward ends, and the genuine ontological priority of meaning over mechanism — at what point has one just become a fellow traveler with Hart who prefers different vocabulary? That's not intended as a "gotcha" — just an interesting question about where the boundaries of the dispute actually lie.

And your point about Hart sometimes asserting impossibility where he should be arguing for it is well taken. He has a tendency to treat certain metaphysical intuitions as self-evident that aren't self-evident to everyone. The "impossibly fantastic" line about emergence is a case in point — it expresses a conviction rather than demonstrating a conclusion.

Nice work and thank you for the effort. It's all a bit too deep, too complex for me.

So the real issue, for Hart, is whether intentionality is eliminable or irreducible — and if it's irreducible, whether it forces us beyond the mechanical narrative toward a metaphysics in which finality, form, and unity are basic features of reality rather than emergent accidents. — Esse Quam Videri

Yes. What do you make of the argument? Given the potential problems in premises 3 and 6?

P3. This directedness toward what is not-yet (and even toward what may never be) cannot be captured in purely immanent mechanical terms. No arrangement of present matter, however complex, constitutes aboutness — orientation toward an absent end — without presupposing an irreducible intentional structure that already exceeds efficient causality. — Esse Quam Videri

I'm not sure how one would demonstrate this is necessarily the case.

The noetic order, as a realm of determinate intelligible unities, cannot be self-grounding. Any determinate unity — any "this" rather than "that" — is a limited participation in unity as such, and so points beyond itself to a principle of unity that is not itself one determinate thing among others. — Esse Quam Videri

What does this mean? It seems to be saying that a specific idea is one thing rather than another, but it can’t explain why it is one at all; that unity must come from something more basic than the idea itself.

Hart is at his strongest when he's targeting the Rosenberg/Churchland end of things, where intentionality really is denied or explained away. But you're right that there are much more capacious naturalisms that would happily accept real intentionality and even something like teleology. — Esse Quam Videri

Yes, I would have thought that this is low hanging fruit.

My thought where he says "this is impossible" is to ask "Why's that?" -- in some sense, if we're good naturalists, we'd say we may not know how something arises and so need not "sit on both sides" to point to a limitation. Rather that seems to me that Hart believes reality is intrinsically structured with intelligibility and it's a rather handy explanation for a problem he sees in naturalism. — Moliere

I think this seems to be a good summary of the matter along with the tension for naturalists.

He has a tendency to treat certain metaphysical intuitions as self-evident that aren't self-evident to everyone. — Esse Quam Videri

I think he would agree with this, but he would say he can’t help it if others are too dull or intellectually captive to understand the point properly.

That’s a totally fair reaction — Hart tends to get very “high altitude” very quickly, which can make his prose rather opaque (being charitable) for the "uninitiated".

If we strip away the technical metaphysics, Hart's basically saying that when we act intentionally, we aren’t just pushed around by physical causes like billiard balls. We are guided by meanings — by “what we are trying to do” (e.g. desires, goals, plans, etc.). When I hammer a nail, what explains my movements isn’t only the physics of muscles and neurons, but the goal I am aiming toward: driving the nail in. That goal isn’t physically present yet, but it’s already shaping what I do right now.

So Hart thinks the world contains something that physics has banished: purpose (or “end-directedness”). That’s the intuitive starting point.

Regarding your comments on P3 — you're right to press this. The claim is basically: when you reach for your coffee cup, your action is organized by something that doesn't physically exist yet (the coffee being drunk). The whole movement only makes sense in light of where it's going. Hart says no purely mechanical account — billiard balls hitting billiard balls, so to speak — can capture that forward-directedness, because mechanism only allows the past to push the present, never the future to pull it.

Can this be demonstrated beyond all doubt? I doubt it. But Hart would say: every attempt to explain intentionality mechanically ends up either smuggling intentionality back in through the back door (your "neural representation of a future state" is itself about something — so you haven't eliminated aboutness, you've just relocated it), or else giving up on intentionality altogether and saying it's an illusion — which is the Rosenberg move, and which most people find absurd.

So as with all philosophical arguments, it's less a proof and more a challenge. Hart is saying: show me how mechanism gets you aboutness without presupposing it. He thinks no one has ever met that challenge. Whether that constitutes a demonstration or just a very confident bet is a fair question.

Regarding P6 — your reading is essentially right. A specific intelligible unity — say, "the act of hammering this nail" as a purposive whole — it is one thing rather than another. But it doesn't contain within itself the reason why it's a unity at all. Its being-one is something it has, not something it is. So it participates in unity without being the source of unity. And that means there must be something more fundamental that grounds the possibility of things being unified wholes in the first place.

This is the most Neoplatonic step in the argument and frankly the one that asks the most of the reader. If you find it natural to ask "but why is anything a unity rather than merely an aggregate?" then the argument has some purchase. If that question strikes you as confused or unanswerable, you'll get off the train here. Hart thinks it's the most important question in philosophy. Many people think it's not really a question at all.

On the "low-hanging fruit" point — yes and no. Hart is targeting eliminativists, and that's the "easy" win. But his deeper claim is that any naturalism that accepts real intentionality has already conceded something that sits very uncomfortably within a naturalist framework, even a generous one. Real aboutness, real directedness toward ends — these look a lot like the formal and final causality that the scientific revolution was supposed to have banished. So the generous naturalist may have a harder position to maintain than it first appears: you've let the camel's nose into the tent, so-to-speak.

On Hart's confidence — your last line made me laugh, and you're probably right that he'd say exactly that. It's both his greatest strength and his most exasperating quality. He writes as though the Neoplatonic hierarchy is just obvious once you've cleared away modern confusions, and for some readers that's electrifying and for others it's maddening.

I really appreciate your responses here.

But his deeper claim is that any naturalism that accepts real intentionality has already conceded something that sits very uncomfortably within a naturalist framework, even a generous one. Real aboutness, real directedness toward ends — these look a lot like the formal and final causality that the scientific revolution was supposed to have banished. So the generous naturalist may have a harder position to maintain than it first appears: you've let the camel's nose into the tent. — Esse Quam Videri

Yes, good. What's your reaction to this point?

So as with all philosophical arguments, it's less a proof and more a challenge. Hart is saying: show me how mechanism gets you aboutness without presupposing it. He thinks no one has ever met that challenge. Whether that constitutes a demonstration or just a very confident bet is a fair question. — Esse Quam Videri

And I think this may be the best distillation of what it all means.

I would be interested to learn more about what a post-modern response would would be or what someone like Richard Rorty might say. One possible approach might be to argue that Hart assumes that purely physical processes should be able to fully account for aboutness, but this expectation may misrepresent what explanation can do. The fact that any account of intentionality already presupposes meaning shows that some aspects of our engagement with the world are not reducible to lower-level processes, highlighting the limits of explanation rather than pointing to something beyond the physical. Does that make sense?

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

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

Come to think of it, science is generally one massive attempt to disprove religion. Billions are poured into space exploration, evolutionary topics, etc. -- and for what? To show that life and everything in the universe can come about and function without God.



- - -

If people claim that physics can explain everything, then they are obviously wrong. I haven't heard many, or even any, claims to that effect on this site. — Janus

Sure. But IRL, scientism seems to be one of the main streams of thought. And many religious arguments are geared against scientism.

The physicalist/naturalist can fairly say "why should we posit entities for which we have no evidence, and maybe even no possibility of evidence?". — Janus

In order to win the argument, of course.

The point of Hart’s discourse on these matters is that he starts from reasoning and arrives at theism. — Tom Storm

But like Moliere has been saying:

The argument is going to sound plausible to those who reject naturalism as an adequate metaphysics and not plausible to naturalists.

The naturalist is content with it being a capacity of our species that was selected for through a chaotic process. When Thomas Nagel talks about consciousness as a metaphysical problem for naturalism the naturalist simply shrugs. I'm criticizing the persuasive power of the argument. Hart can make a conceptual division, and of course the argument can be rendered independent of theism, but the appeal of the argument will be heavily determined by the beliefs of a listener. — Moliere

Yes, and this is really the area I’m interested in: understanding the argument, not refuting it or trying to sidestep it. — Tom Storm

But arguments don't somehow "speak for themselves", don't somehow stand in a vacuum, don't "stand on their own". They depend on unstated premises that are simply taken for granted -- just not necessarily always and by everyone.

Isn’t this why reason has been so assiduously employed by the Church over the centuries, to demonstrate the logical necessity of God?

No ...
"Reason has been so assiduously employed by the Church" ... no. They sure like to talk a lot, yes, but that's not the same as "reason assiduously employed".
There's a reason why philosophy and religion are two different areas of expertise.

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.

Of course. And this is something to bear in mind when approaching your OP.

In my own life (I agree with you) I am content with not having explanations for things, like life or consciousness. My favourite three words are 'I don't know' and I wish more people would employ them. But that's a separate matter to trying to understand this argument. — Tom Storm

What should we do when we disagree?
When can we afford to "agree to disagree"?

So much of politics and religion is about addressing these questions; obviously, with an eye on winning.

Hart rejects naive naturalism in favor of an even more naive divine naturalism.
/.../ — Joshs

This explains a lot about the often absolutely vicious authoritarian attitude of theists in interpersonal relationships.
It explains why one's experience (as a non-theist) with theists can be as demoralizing and exhausting as with narcissists and sociopaths, even though theists are not necessarily either.

This explains a lot about the often absolutely vicious authoritarian attitude of theists in interpersonal relationships — baker

You might get in trouble for that claim, but I can’t say I disagree.

But like Moliere has been saying:
The argument is going to sound plausible to those who reject naturalism as an adequate metaphysics and not plausible to naturalists. — baker

I think that’s a superficial description, which I’ve already addressed. The point is: can naturalism account for intentionality? Forget God: what can naturalism explain? Surely that’s the nub of it, as I’ve said before. It's possibel to answer “no, naturalism doesn’t account for this” and still not arrive at Mr. God.

But arguments don't somehow "speak for themselves", don't somehow stand in a vacuum, don't "stand on their own". They depend on unstated premises that are simply taken for granted -- just not necessarily always and by everyone. — baker

I don't think you're understanding at the point I am pursuing.

Follow the reasoning, not what you think about theism or theists, or what you think I, or others, think about theism.

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.
Of course. And this is something to bear in mind when approaching your OP. — baker

I always incorporate this point. But you are not engaging with the point of this OP. I am asking: what is Hart’s argument? You seem to be focusing on the argument based on implicit assumptions of theism. I don’t care what the implicit assumptions might be - such assumptions are surely obvious. I am trying to understand his reasoning, which seems complex.

Fortunately has arrived somewhere with this.

I really appreciate your responses here. — Tom Storm

Cheers! :up:

Yes, good. What's your reaction to this point? — Tom Storm

My reaction is: I actually think Hart has a real point here.

If you grant that intentionality is real — that thoughts are genuinely about things, and that actions are genuinely directed toward ends — then you've already moved beyond the picture of nature that came out of early modern mechanism (matter in motion, efficient causation, nothing else).

A generous naturalist can certainly allow intentionality, but Hart's challenge is: what is it, ontologically? Is it just a convenient way of talking? An illusion? Or a real feature of reality? If it's real, then it starts looking a lot like what older traditions called formal and final causality — forms, purposes, directedness. And Hart's suspicion is that once you let those back in, you've already conceded that the mechanistic story is incomplete in principle.

That said, I'm less convinced that Neoplatonism is the only viable landing place. While I am sympathetic to irreducible intentionality and teleology, I'm more inclined toward a neo-Aristotelian metaphysical picture where nature is simply richer than pure mechanism allows — without taking on a Neoplatonic metaphysical hierarchy. At a certain point the labels start mattering less than the substance. The real question isn't "are you a naturalist?" but "what do you think reality actually contains?" And if your answer includes irreducible aboutness, directedness, intelligible structure — you've already left behind the worldview Hart is primarily attacking, regardless of what you call yourself.

So I'd put it like this: Hart is right about the inadequacy of mechanism, but the positive metaphysical conclusion is underdetermined by his argument.

I would be interested to learn more about what a post-modern response would would be or what someone like Richard Rorty might say. — Tom Storm

Rorty is interesting here because I don't think he would try to answer Hart on Hart's terms at all. He wouldn't say "intentionality is reducible to physics." He'd say something closer to: "Hart assumes that if aboutness can't be reduced, it must correspond to some deep metaphysical structure. But why? Maybe aboutness is just part of how we talk — a feature of our vocabulary and practices, not a window into the architecture of being. It doesn't need metaphysical grounding any more than humor needs a metaphysical theory of funniness."

Hart's counter would be sharp: even to describe vocabularies and practices, you're relying on meanings, norms, and directedness — you're relying on intentionality while refusing to account for it. The "it's just how we talk" move is parasitic on the very thing it waves away. I don't think Hart decisively refutes Rorty, but he does expose the cost of the Rortyan move. Rorty will avoid Hart's metaphysics, by treating "what is intentionality?" as a pseudo-problem — and Hart will insist it isn't.

To summarize: I think Hart's challenge is serious. I'm sympathetic to the claim that intentionality and normativity are irreducible, but I'm less convinced that irreducibility forces you all the way to Plotinus or even to classical theism, rather than to a richer-than-mechanistic view of nature. Hart's argument doesn't force you to become a theist — but it does force you to decide whether you really believe that nature is exhausted by efficient causation.

To summarize: I think Hart's challenge is serious. I'm sympathetic to the claim that intentionality and
normativity are irreducible, but I'm less convinced that irreducibility forces you all the way to Plotinus or classical theism, rather than to a richer-than-mechanistic view of nature. Hart's argument doesn't force you to become a theist — but it does force you to decide whether you really believe nature is exhausted by efficient causes. — Esse Quam Videri

Nice - that's also a point I made earlier. We can set aside the Neoplatonism and admire the construction of his argument.

Rorty is interesting here because I don't think he would try to answer Hart on Hart's terms at all. He wouldn't say "intentionality is reducible to physics." He'd say something closer to: "Hart assumes that if aboutness can't be reduced, it must correspond to some deep metaphysical structure. But why? Maybe aboutness is just part of how we talk — a feature of our vocabulary and practices, not a window into the architecture of being. It doesn't need metaphysical grounding any more than humor needs a metaphysical theory of funniness." — Esse Quam Videri

Indeed. And sometimes it seems to me that philosphy is about sidestepping problems rather than answering them: dissolving not resolving. Not sure where I sit on this. A case by case basis, I guess.

Hart's counter would be sharp: even to describe vocabularies and practices, you're relying on meanings, norms, and directedness — you're relying on intentionality while refusing to account for it. The "it's just how we talk" move is parasitic on the very thing it waves away. I don't think Hart decisively refutes Rorty, but he does expose the cost of the Rortyan move. Rorty will avoid Hart's metaphysics, by treating "what is intentionality?" as a pseudo-problem — and Hart will insist it isn't. — Esse Quam Videri

That's a keen insight. I was thinking similarly but I'm no expert or Rorty. Meanings, norms and directness are unavoidable. I love the idea of waving away the thing you are resting on. Perhaps it can be done.

The interesting question is whether those generous naturalisms are still naturalism in any meaningful sense, or whether they've quietly conceded the ground Hart is fighting over. If one's naturalism includes irreducible intentionality, real directedness toward ends, and the genuine ontological priority of meaning over mechanism — at what point has one just become a fellow traveler with Hart who prefers different vocabulary? That's not intended as a "gotcha" — just an interesting question about where the boundaries of the dispute actually lie. — Esse Quam Videri

That's a fair question.

To summarize: I think Hart's challenge is serious. I'm sympathetic to the claim that intentionality and normativity are irreducible, but I'm less convinced that irreducibility forces you all the way to Plotinus or even to classical theism, rather than to a richer-than-mechanistic view of nature. Hart's argument doesn't force you to become a theist — but it does force you to decide whether you really believe that nature is exhausted by efficient causation. — Esse Quam Videri

I think I've thought "no" to this question so long, while being sympathetic to naturalism and pondering it, that I find the argument hard to process.

Billiard-Ball causation, I thought, has long been left behind -- insofar that this is the only target of his criticism then, yes, I'm a fellow traveller. But I suspect that I'm not at the same time.

Sartre comes to mind to me as a counter-part to Heidegger. Rather than a misreading I think of him as a materialist reading of Heidegger: and in those terms that consciousness is nothingness seems to fit a post-critical materialism (that would at least be on par with an updated NeoPlatonism or Neo-Aristotelianism).

I think this seems to be a good summary of the matter along with the tension for naturalists. — Tom Storm

Heh, thanks. I suppose I can't help myself but to be critical because it's a question I've often wondered about this sort of argument. I tend to skew skeptical with respect to metaphysics while claiming my prejudices are naturalistic, of a sort, so it's just where I come from.

sometimes it seems to me that philosphy is about sidestepping problems rather than answering them: dissolving not resolving — Tom Storm

Dewey says this somewhere, that there are philosophical problems that are just no longer "live" for a new generation, in new circumstances. He endorses that move, and offers his ideas as suited to the times.

Something besides sidestepping or dissolving is possible, then: ignoring. Which will sound a bit un-philosophical, but among working scientists, you'll find some (and some famously) openly hostile to philosophy, some intrigued because they're curious and like puzzles, and a considerable amount of indifference. I can't imagine you'll find many, of any predisposition, willing to take marching orders from David Bentley Hart—"Pack it up boys! Hart says it's not gonna work."

So who are these arguments for?

The "naturalism" he's talking about, after all, is found in philosophy departments, not in science labs. Is he holding naturalist philosophers to account? To what end? The way this actually plays out is just classic arms race stuff: pointing out a flaw in a philosopher's position only forces someone to fix it and strengthen the position. Very rarely, there is a critique generally considered strong enough to discredit a whole approach, but even that's usually no more permanent than the death of a superhero. Another generation or two and someone will get the old wine into a new bottle. It's fashion conducted by means of argument, but still fashion. (I suppose we could throw in philosophers who fight back basically for the sport of it.)

So who are these arguments for?

The only answer that makes sense to me—one where there would be genuine consequences for the success of the argument—is believers who have somehow become "natural science curious". Here, Hart's arguments could find real purchase, and keep that little sheep from straying, or, rather, bring the sheep that has already strayed back into the fold.

I can't think of anyone else who would be interested and would take seriously what he has to say.

Something besides sidestepping or dissolving is possible, then: ignoring. Which will sound a bit un-philosophical, but among working scientists, you'll find some (and some famously) openly hostile to philosophy, some intrigued because they're curious and like puzzles, and a considerable amount of indifference. I can't imagine you'll find many, of any predisposition, willing to take marching orders from David Bentley Hart—"Pack it up boys! Hart says it's not gonna work." — Srap Tasmaner

Indeed, "Shut up and calculate". Although it seems to me that Hart isn’t saying "it's not going to work", he is identifying that a particular presupposition may be less secure than many dogmatically assume. If accurate that seems to me a reasonable piece of work, and there is certainly an enthusiastic audience for Hart's many books on these sorts of matters. Personally I find his prose close to unreadable.

The only answer that makes sense to me—one where there would be genuine consequences for the success of the argument—is believers who have somehow become "natural science curious". Here, Hart's arguments could find real purchase, and keep that little sheep from straying, or, rather, bring the sheep that has already strayed back into the fold.

I can't think of anyone else who would be interested and would take seriously what he has to say. — Srap Tasmaner

Well, I'm someone who has ignored philosophy for most of his life, so I should be biased in your favour.

But isn’t it sometimes the case that the subjects people are least interested in turn out to be among the most important?

I’m interested in what Hart has to say, up to a point. It should also be said that Hart may appeal to agnostics/atheists who are “classical-theism curious” and wondering about alternatives to what might strike them as the scientistic dogma of the present era. Either way, since this is a philosophy site which frequently examines precisely these kinds of recondite issues, I figure it's probably legitimate try to understand his argument.