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Naturalism, Human Persons and Rationality

Admitting the Problem

Scientific naturalism does not have the resources to account for the origin and nature of human persons. Thus, Berkeley philosopher John Searle recently observed:

There is exactly one overriding question in contemporary philosophy … How do we fit in? … How can we square this self-conception of ourselves as mindful, meaning-creating, free, rational, etc., agents with a universe that consists entirely of mindless, meaningless, unfree, nonrational, brute physical particles?¹

For the scientific naturalist, the answer is "not very well."

Scientific naturalism cannot readily account for the commonsense features of human beings, and people have taken notice. In fact, the nature of human persons has lead some to embrace theism. In the seismic book, There is a God, which recounts Anthony Flew's shift from atheism to theism, Roy Abraham Varghese notes:

[T]he rationality that we unmistakably experience — ranging from the laws of nature to our capacity for rational thought — cannot be explained if it does not have an ultimate ground, which can be nothing less than an infinite mind.²

According to Christianity, the Fundamental Being is rational and He created His image-bearers with the cognitive equipment to exhibit rationality and be apt for truth gathering in their cognitive environment. But rationality is an odd entity in a scientific naturalist world. Christian philosopher Victor Reppert agrees: "… the necessary conditions for rationality cannot exist in a naturalistic universe."³

And Reppert goes on to argue that the ontology of human rationality provides evidence for theism as its best explanation. But as I mentioned above, it is not simply theists who acknowledge that human rationality is a problem for naturalism and can be explained by theism. According to naturalist Thomas Nagel:

The problem then will be not how, if we engage in it, reason can be valid, but how, if it is universally valid, we can engage in it. There are not many candidates to this question. Probably the most popular nonsubjectivist answer nowadays is an evolutionary naturalism: We can reason in these ways because it is a consequence of a more primitive capacity of belief formation that had survival value during the period when the human brain was evolving. This explanation has always seemed to me to be laughably inadequate. … The other well-known answer is the religious one. The universe is intelligible to us because it and our minds were made for each other.⁴

Naturalist Daniel Dennett queries: "How could reason ever find a foothold in a material, mechanical universe? In the beginning, there were no reasons; there were only causes. Nothing had a purpose, nothing had so much as a function; there was no teleology in the world at all."⁵

Two Reasons Why Rationality is Inconsistent with Naturalism

There are at least two reasons why human persons can't be rational agents in a scientific naturalist worldview, but are predicted to be precisely such in a biblical worldview:

1. The necessity of the enduring, rational self
2. The need for room for teleological factors to play a role in thought processes

Let's consider these in order.

If human beings are to function as rational thinkers who can engage in rational deliberation, then they must be unified, enduring selves. The thinking "I" must be the very same one that initiates the process of deliberation, carries it out to its concluding end, and stands at the end of the process as the intellectually responsible deliberative self.

If the conclusion of a syllogism is to be grasped as a conclusion, it must be drawn from the experiences of each premise singularly and, then, together. As Ewing notes, a successive series of "I-stages" cannot engage in such acts; only an enduring "I" can.

Moreover, if the rational agent who embraces the conclusion is to be held intellectually responsible for his reasoning, it must be the same self throughout the entire process. One is not responsible for the acts of others or of other person-stages. So intellectual responsibility seems to presuppose an enduring "I." The naturalist view, however, suggests that each person is a collection of parts. If I gain or lose parts, I am literally a different aggregate from one moment to the next. On the naturalist view, there is no such enduring "I" that serves as the unifier of rational thought.

Here's the second reason why naturalism cannot account for rationality but theism can.

Consider the following argument:

(1) If naturalism is true, there is no irreducible teleology.

(2) Rational deliberation exhibits irreducible teleology.

(3) Therefore, naturalism is false.

Teleology is the notion that some things happen as means to a final end, goal or purpose. Scientific naturalism completely eschews irreducible teleology, and replaces it with mere material and efficient causes.

However, explanations that cite reasons (otherwise known as "reasons explanations") are irreducibly teleological, and various inductive or deductive thought processes reason through a series of steps in order to or for the sake of reaching a sound, true, rational conclusion. Teleology is essential to reasons explanations. To see this, look at these two sentences:

(4) The glass broke because the rock hit it.

(5) I raised my hand because I wanted to vote.

(5) offers a reasons explanation and (4) does not. (4) cites an efficient cause after "because" (the rock hitting the glass). But (5) is very different. It cites a teleological goal or end (to satisfy the desire to vote, to make difference in the culture, and so on) for the sake of which the person raised his/her hand.

Besides the analysis of reasons explanations, when a person attends to their own endeavoring, it becomes clear that the various steps in the process are in place for the sake of drawing a particular conclusion. If one pays attention to fairly simple mental states in second-order awarenesses of first-order states (i.e., when one fixes one's attention on one's own conscious life and, thus, becomes aware of his/her own states of awareness), then it seems reasonable to say that unless there are substantial, non-question-begging, overriding defeaters, then one should believe that things are as they seem. For example, a pain is as it seems to be in such acts. Similarly, one's own teleological endeavorings are as they seem.

Additionally, when one attends to the different states containing propositional, mental contents in rational sequences that constitute the inductive or deductive premises of the sequence, it becomes evident that these states are means — rational means — to the end of drawing the conclusion. And when one attends to both the drawing of the conclusion and the conclusion so drawn, it becomes evident that the conclusion is the end for the sake of which the process was undergone. In fact, when reasoning to a conclusion, a certain line of reasoning can be seen to be (or not to be!) epistemically useful for drawing that conclusion. Through introspection, we can become aware of this and then adopt an alternative line of reasoning — this becomes a subsequent means to the conclusive end.

Rationality and Theism

Rational action and deliberation are not consistent with an evolutionary naturalist depiction of human persons. But they are predicted by Christian theism, since God Himself exhibits rationality and He created His image-bearers to do so as well.

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How do you think we can explain rationality?

Join the discussion!

In the final analysis, you either start with the Logos or with particles. If the former, then Reason is fundamental to reality and it is not hard to see how it could appear in finite creatures. If the latter, all things are simply the arrangement of brute, mechanical, unconscious, non-rational parts. In this way, naturalism is self-defeating and theism is seen as superior in explanatory power.