Once You Posit the Intentionality of the Mind, You Step Beyond Nature Altogether
Think of your mind at this very moment. Start thinking about your thoughts, hopes, desires, and memories. Everything you think about is directed toward something: a person, place, truth, or even an abstract idea such as justice. Philosophers call this intentionality or the aboutness of the mind. And according to David Bentley Hart, once you admit this, you’ve already stepped beyond nature and into transcendence.
What exactly is intentionality? Let me unpack this a bit further. Intentionality is the mind’s capacity to be about something. When you recall a fond memory you had with a beautiful woman, remember a childhood friend, or contemplate truth, your mind reaches beyond itself to engage with something outside of itself. This seems so utterly obvious when you experience it that it almost feels rather peculiar bringing it to light. Be that as it may, it’s philosophically profound since nothing in nature seems to be about anything. Think about when a neuron fires, a chemical reaction occurs, a rock rolls down a hill, an AI bot says hello, and so forth. These things are understood as structural and causal (i.e., syntax), whereas mental states or consciousness are understood as meaningful and referential (e.g., semantics). Mass, charge, spin, location, and motion are not about anything at all. How, then, can a single thought emerge from such, let alone deep, subjective interiority, capable of reasoning, feeling, desiring, and believing? In other words, clumps of chemicals and electrical currents surging around in your head don’t believe in mercy or think about a fall tree. There must be a mind present to interpret such things insofar as the mind is, again, about things. Intentionality sets consciousness apart from the physical world. It’s an aspect of the mind that can’t be reduced to mere material processes.
Now, when Hart says, “once you posit intentionality, you are already beyond nature,” he is illuminating a deep metaphysical truth. By “nature,” he means the universe understood as a closed, mechanical system, governed by the laws of physics and chemistry, blind and indifferent. In such a system, there is no intrinsic meaning, nor is there aboutness present. Intentionality, by contrast, is referential, soaked in meaning, and goal-directed. It points beyond itself to something deeply real. The very fact that our minds can refer, imagine, and value things means we are not contained entirely within the bounds of natural processes. Consciousness is more like a door to transcendence or a hint that reality is far richer than matter ever could be.
This insight poses a significant challenge, probably even an absolute defeater in my opinion, for materialism, physicalism, and naturalism. If the mind can point beyond the physical, if thoughts are about something rather than the mere firings of neurons and the movement of chemicals, then the universe can’t be fully explained as a closed system of matter in motion. What this ultimately means is that the world is saturated with a deeper and more meaningful, intelligible dimension. So, every time you think of something beyond yourself, you are engaging with something that exceeds the purely physical. In this sense, consciousness is not a mere byproduct of matter. Instead, it’s a glimpse into a reality that is more than material and mechanism. After all, as I’ve written elsewhere, it’s perfectly conceivable that a being like us could exist without any inner experience at all. If everything is nothing more than physical stuff in motion, governed by impersonal forces and laws beyond our control that are either deterministic or totally random, then why should intentionality exist in the first place? If reality is merely matter in motion, then nothing should mean anything at all.
“The mind, once stretched by a new idea, never returns to its original dimensions.”—Ralph Waldo Emerson
While I agree with the importance you give this topic, it never seemed remotely as powerful a refutation of physicalist/naturalism as the simple fact (made very clear in Hart's "The Experience of God") that the only way human beings have knowledge of anything is through (non intentional) Consciousness.
I've so far never come across a physicalist (or naturalist) who has anything approaching a reasonable answer to this:
If all we know is through consciousness, on what basis should I believe in a purely faith based hypothesis regarding some kind of non conscious physical "stuff" that exists independent of any kind of consciousness.
One of the (non) answers I get is, "Well, then, you think this stuff only exists in some kind of universal "consciousness"? We have no "evidence" for that.
I rarely get this from scientists, but on occasion, some scientist who really doesn't understand what science tells us about the universe uses it too.
Here's a simple response for that:
Try to adopt a thoroughly physicalist outlook. Now look at all the science tells us about the universe. Look at all the technology around you.
Now, try to adopt a thoroughly physicalist outlook. Now look at all the science tells us about the universe. Look at all the technology around you.
Do you notice that NOTHING changes? This means science provides no evidence for physicalism, for idealism, for panentheism, for monotheism, for dualism, for non duality, etc.
Eric, can you point out the flaws in my reasoning above? I've not come across any, but there must be something wrong with what I wrote, otherwise, since it so simple, someone would have used it to defeat physicalism.
In fact, this is basically the argument Bernardo Kastrup uses, and so far, I haven't come across anyone (not even Jeffrey Garfield) who has refuted it - at least, not accurately. If you can, please do!!
I think believing that the mind is unique is the wrong conclusion. We see intentionality all through nature, if we don’t dogmatically reject the idea of it.
Neuron’s activity are quite obviously goal directed. AI bots don’t say hello by accident but by design, and are naturally experienced as meaningful. Even rocks rolling down hills and chemical reactions can be understood teleologically, as things seeking thermodynamic equilibrium.
We have to actively indoctrinate children to stop seeing teleology in the world. But we’re not doing this on the basis of any scientific evidence. It’s just a dogma we’ve inherited from the mechanical philosophy.