Deconditioning Naturalism: Rational Responsibility, Normativity, and the Soul

A Note to the Reader

What follows are my original speaking notes from a panel discussion at the Evangelical Philosophical Society (EPS) regional meeting in Georgia (March, 2026). I had the privilege of joining Joshua Ryan Farris and Chad McIntosh to engage Farris’s work in Deconditioning Naturalism, especially his arguments regarding consciousness, the soul, and the limits of a purely naturalistic framework.

In my portion of the panel, I zeroed in on a specific pressure point—one that I believe exposes a serious problem for robust naturalism—and connected it directly to my work on the Free-Thinking Argument.

This is not a polished essay. These are my actual speaking notes. That means you’ll see bullet points, incomplete sentences, and strategically emphasized words (and no footnotes). Those emphases were intentional—they were cues to slow down, lean in, and drive the point home in real time.

I’ve kept everything intact on purpose so that you can read it in my voice and imagine yourself being in the crowd. This is the structure, the flow, and the pressure as it was applied live.

For those who want the fully developed version, these ideas are explored in greater depth in my published work on the Free-Thinking Argument. But what you have below is the argument in motion—where the rubber meets the road.

Stay reasonable (Isaiah 1:18),

— Dr. Tim Stratton

---

Thank you for the invitation to participate in this panel. I want to focus on one pressure point within Dr. Farris’s broader project — a pressure point that, I believe, reveals why the question of the soul is not optional but metaphysically urgent.

We live in an age in which naturalism is rarely defended explicitly; it’s often simply assumed. It functions not merely as a hypothesis, but as a default interpretive framework. It conditions how we think about mind, freedom, normativity, and even what counts as evidence.

My aim today is not to critique every form of naturalism. Rather, I will focus on what J. P. Moreland and I have referred to as robust naturalism — the view that reality consists exclusively of entities and properties that fall within the domain of scientific investigation and, as Alvin Plantinga describes it, “the idea that God or anything like God does not exist.” On this view, whatever exists must ultimately be describable in physical terms.

Importantly, this is compatible with methodological naturalism, which many theists affirm in scientific practice. One may believe in God, souls, and abstract objects while still adopting methodological naturalism within the laboratory. That’s not the problem.

The issue is metaphysical naturalism — the claim that scientifically discoverable entities exhaust reality.

If robust naturalism is true, then all facts about human cognition must, in principle, be exhaustively explainable in non-rational physical terms. If that claim is correct, several metaphysical commitments follow:

• Matter is fundamental.

• Consciousness, if real at all, must emerge from matter.

• Agency becomes mechanistic.

• Normativity must ultimately reduce to physical processes.

And this raises the question I want to press today: What becomes of rational and epistemic responsibility under such a framework?

I. The Rational Responsibility Problem

We regularly engage in practices of epistemic evaluation. We praise careful reasoning.We criticize sloppy thinking.We urge one another to follow the evidence.

These practices presuppose something about what a rational agent is.

So let me ask: What must be true about a person for epistemic praise or blame to be meaningful?

If robust naturalism is true — and if all facts about human cognition are, in principle, exhaustively explainable in non-rational physical terms — then every belief is ultimately the product of impersonal processes operating under mindless forces of nature, whether deterministic or indeterministic.

On such a view, beliefs would be:

• the necessary or probabilistic output of prior non-rational physical conditions

• produced by causal mechanisms that operate independently of propositional content

• not grounded in irreducible agent-causal sourcehood

If that’s the case, then what we call rational evaluation becomes deeply puzzling. For if our beliefs arise entirely from non-rational physical processes, they are not affirmed by us as first-person thinking subjects because they’re true. Rather, they arise as the causal consequences of prior mindless physical states.

But being causally produced by non-rational antecedent conditions is not the same thing as being rationally justified.

And if that’s the case — if our beliefs are generated entirely by mindless processes — then what becomes of epistemic responsibility? What becomes of intellectual obligation? What becomes of rational accountability?

II. Normativity Versus Causation

At this point we must distinguish carefully between causes and reasons.

In ordinary language we sometimes conflate the two. We might ask, “What was the reason the domino fell?” But what we really mean is: what caused the domino to fall?

Causes are descriptive. Reasons are normative.

Causes explain why something happened. Reasons justify why something ought to be believed.

Normativity concerns standards of correctness — truth, logic, justification, and intellectual responsibility.

Under robust naturalism, however, reasons must ultimately reduce to brain states, brain states reduce to physical processes . . . and physical processes are entirely descriptive rather than prescriptive.

Physics describes what happens. Normativity concerns what ought to be believed.

If beliefs are exhaustively explainable in terms of non-rational physical processes — processes that lack intentionality, truth-aimedness, and normative authority — then rational evaluation becomes difficult to ground (to put it lightly).

On such a view, the first-person subject does not affirm propositions because they’re true. Rather, beliefs arise as the causal consequences of prior physical states.

But causal production is not the same thing as rational justification.

If belief formation is exhaustively explained by non-rational processes, whether deterministic or indeterministic, then normativity risks becoming epiphenomenal. The experience of evaluating reasons may accompany neural activity, but it does no explanatory work.

The agent, in that case, is not a source of rational endorsement but merely the location at which causal chains terminate.

This brings us to the most important issue: metaphysical knowledge.

Suppose, for the sake of argument, that our cognitive faculties are generally reliable in navigating survival-relevant physical environments — pulling out into traffic, avoiding tigers, and so forth. Now consider beliefs about ultimate reality: beliefs about mind, consciousness, freedom, God, soul, causation, time, or naturalism itself. If such metaphysical beliefs are exhaustively produced by non-rational physical processes that are indifferent to metaphysical truth . . . then those beliefs are not formed because they track truth or metaphysical reality. They are simply the outputs of prior physical states.

If that’s the case, then your metaphysical beliefs are determined by mindless stuff that knows nothing about metaphysics and doesn’t care if you do either. 

That generates an undercutting defeater for metaphysical justification.

That is to say, if robust naturalism is true, then you do not stand in an epistemic position to know anything about metaphysical reality. 

If robust naturalism entails that all facts about human cognition are exhaustively explainable in non-rational physical terms, then we lack a principled basis for trusting any metaphysical belief — including naturalism itself.

As J. P. Moreland observes, libertarian agency appears quite natural within a theistic worldview but deeply unnatural within a naturalist one. The relevant question is not merely logical consistency . . . but explanatory fit: which worldview better accounts for rational agency?

A theistic framework provides a far more natural home for irreducible rational agency.

On the Christian view, human beings are created in the image of a rational and truthful source (Genesis 1:26), and are therefore the kinds of creatures capable of reasoning about ultimate reality. If Christianity is true, we would expect that God not only grounds truth itself (John 14:6), but also desires human beings to know that truth (1 Timothy 2:4). Accordingly, Scripture portrays humans as rational agents capable of actively disciplining their thinking—invited to “reason together” with God (Isaiah 1:18), called to “take every thought captive” (2 Corinthians 10:5), and warned not to be taken captive by shallow or deceptive philosophies (Colossians 2:8). On such a view, it is not surprising that human beings possess the capacity to evaluate reasons, weigh evidence, and pursue knowledge about ultimate reality.

By contrast, if robust naturalism is true—if mind is ultimately reducible to impersonal physical processes—then our beliefs about ultimate reality would arise from mindless mechanisms—mindless stuff that knows nothing about metaphysical reality and doesn’t care if you do either.  

Indeed, the skeptical position generated by robust naturalism is self-defeating.

To claim “no one possesses metaphysical knowledge” is itself a metaphysical claim of knowledge. The denial of metaphysical knowledge presupposes . . . metaphysical knowledge.

Thus, if anyone in this room possesses even a tiny amount of justified metaphysical belief, it cannot be the case that all such beliefs are exhaustively produced by non-rational physical processes.

That’s the pressure point.

III. The Free-Thinking Argument and the Apologetic Bridge

At this stage, what has been argued informally may now be stated in a more disciplined form. The pressure placed upon robust naturalism through considerations of normativity, sourcehood, epistemic responsibility, and the metaphysical knowledge defeater can be condensed into a structured argument.

Consider an “apologetic bridge”—a version of the Free-Thinking Argument:

1. If robust naturalism is true, human cognition is exhaustively reducible to non-rational physical processes.

2. If human cognition is exhaustively reducible to non-rational physical processes, libertarian rational agency does not exist.

3. If libertarian rational agency does not exist, humans cannot be epistemically responsible for their metaphysical beliefs and thus cannot possess genuine metaphysical knowledge.

4. Humans are epistemically responsible for their metaphysical beliefs and do possess metaphysical knowledge.

5. Therefore, robust naturalism is false.

This deductive argument makes explicit what my earlier analysis implies: If epistemic responsibility is real — if we genuinely and actively evaluate reasons as reasons rather than merely passively experiencing sensations from the effects of prior mindless causes — then irreducible libertarian rational agency must be real. And if such agency exists, human cognition cannot be exhaustively reducible to non-rational physical processes.

Robust naturalism is therefore not merely incomplete; it’s explanatorily inadequate.

But we need not stop there . . .

If irreducible libertarian rational agency exists, then reality includes irreducible mind.

The remaining question is explanatory: is mind fundamental, or derivative?

Which worldview better predicts the existence of rational agents capable of evaluating reasons about ultimate reality?

• A worldview in which mind is accidental and reducible to blind and mindless processes?

• Or one in which rationality is grounded in ultimate reality itself?

If robust naturalism were true, it would be deeply surprising that we are the kinds of beings capable of freely evaluating reasons about ultimate reality leading to metaphysical knowledge. On such a view, rationality emerges from processes that are themselves indifferent to metaphysical truth and normativity.

By contrast, if reality is ultimately grounded in irreducible mind — if rationality reflects what is fundamental — then the existence of rational agents is exactly what we should expect.

This allows us to extend the argument:

1. If irreducible libertarian rational agency exists, then reality includes irreducible mind.

2. A worldview in which irreducible mind is ontologically fundamental provides a better explanation of libertarian rational agency than one in which mind is derivative.

3. A theistic framework posits irreducible mind as fundamental to reality.

4. Therefore, a theistic framework provides a better explanation of libertarian rational agency than robust naturalism.

Libertarian rational agency therefore functions not merely as a defeater for robust naturalism but as positive evidence in favor of a worldview in which irreducible mind is basic.

The capacity to reason about ultimate reality is not merely a feature of our experience — it’s a clue about the structure of reality itself.

This apologetic bridge does not precede the philosophy; it follows from it. Once irreducible mind enters the explanatory landscape, theism becomes a serious metaphysical contender (to put it lightly).

To see this more clearly, we return now to the nature of rational agency itself.

IV. Rational Agency and Libertarian Sourcehood

What, then, must be true for epistemic and rational responsibility regarding our metaphysical beliefs to be coherent?

At minimum:

• The agent must possess intentional states of consciousness — the capacity to think about propositions.

• The agent must be capable of evaluating reasons as reasons.

• The agent must be the originator or source of belief-affirmation in a robust sense.

This final point requires clarification.

When I speak of belief-affirmation, I’m appealing to what philosophers call indirect doxastic voluntarism. While we cannot simply choose to believe a proposition at will in a given moment, we do exercise control over the processes that shape our beliefs.

We can attend carefully, reflect critically, seek counter-evidence, suspend judgment, or negligently ignore these intellectual responsibilities. Over time, our beliefs are shaped by how responsibly we exercise these rational powers.

Indirect doxastic voluntarism therefore implies genuine agent-level participation in belief formation. The agent is not merely the passive recipient of cognitive outputs but an active participant in endorsing, rejecting, or suspending judgment regarding propositions.

This requires what is often called libertarian sourcehood: the idea that an agent’s affirmation of a belief is not exhaustively determined by prior conditions external to the agent.

The agent must not merely be the location where physical processes occur; the agent must be the source of rational endorsement.

As Jim Slagle observes,

if the determining factors of belief lie entirely outside the agent, it becomes difficult to see how the resulting state could genuinely count as my belief.

Belief is not merely a causal state but a normative stance.

It involves assent, endorsement, and ownership.

If the determining factors of belief lie wholly outside the agent, the resulting cognitive state may be a psychological occurrence, but it’s difficult to see how it qualifies as belief in the full epistemic sense.

This suggests several metaphysical implications:

• agent causation rather than mere event causation

• an irreducible subject of experience

• a unified center of consciousness capable of self-origination

Such features are far more at home within substance dualism, or at least a metaphysics in which irreducible mind is fundamental, than within strict physicalism or robust naturalism.

Here we can echo a central insight in Dr. Farris’s project: the soul is not a ghostly appendage to the body. It’s the irreducible subject of consciousness — the “I” who evaluates reasons, takes thoughts captive (2 Cor 10:5), slows down, and exercises rational discipline.

Without such a subject, normativity lacks a locus. Rational obligation requires someone who stands under that obligation.

Rational agency therefore does not emerge automatically from increasing physical complexity. It represents a qualitative shift from mechanism to normativity — from causal process to rational sourcehood.

V. The Implications for Artificial Intelligence

This distinction between mechanism and rational agency becomes especially illuminating in contemporary discussions of artificial intelligence.

Machines can simulate inference. They can generate language and process vast amounts of data.

But the simulation of reasoning does not entail the possession of intentional states.

Alan Turing famously proposed a behavioral test for machine intelligence. Yet the Turing Test measures behavioral indistinguishability, not ontological equivalence. Passing as rational is not the same as being rational.

A system may simulate reasoning without standing under epistemic duty. It may generate arguments without being responsible for them. Computation is not rational obligation.

A machine processes according to programming, architecture, and input structure. Its outputs follow from prior physical and algorithmic conditions. It does not affirm propositions because they’re true, suspend judgment, or weigh competing explanations.

It does not believe. It does not know.

The difference between mechanism and agency, therefore, is not merely one of degree . . . but of kind.

Agency involves normativity, ownership, and sourcehood. And that’s precisely what’s at issue in the debate over robust naturalism.

If human cognition were reducible to mechanistic processes in the same way artificial systems are reducible to their programming and hardware, then the distinction between simulation and genuine rationality would collapse.

But our lived experience of rational responsibility suggests otherwise. We experience ourselves not merely as processing inputs but as evaluating reasons — not merely as conduits of causation but as sources of endorsement.

This reinforces the broader theme of Farris's project: deconditioning.

We are culturally conditioned to mistake functional complexity for subjectivity and sophisticated output for consciousness. But behavior alone cannot ground normativity.

The presence of genuine rational obligation — the capacity to evaluate reasons as reasons and to stand under epistemic duty — points beyond mechanism to something irreducible: a subject of consciousness whose rational activity cannot be exhaustively captured in non-rational physical terms.

And that’s precisely the kind of entity robust naturalism struggles to accommodate.

VI. Deconditioning and Metaphysical Humility

Let me close with a metaphor I got from my friend Eric Hernandez.

Imagine someone who owns a metal detector. It’s an excellent instrument for discovering metal. But suppose that person concludes: “Metal is all that exists — because my detector only finds metal.”

The problem is not with the instrument. The problem is with the metaphysical inference.

Science is a powerful tool for investigating physical reality. It excels at discovering patterns, mechanisms, and measurable properties. But methodological success does not entail metaphysical completeness.

If robust naturalism were true — if all facts about human cognition were reducible to non-rational physical processes — then none of us would be here today because we followed the evidence. We would only be here because prior physical states pushed us into these conclusions.

But the very act of philosophical inquiry presupposes something deeper: that we are not merely passive conduits of causation but agents who actively evaluate reasons, weigh evidence, and stand under epistemic obligation.

Consciousness, rational agency, and moral responsibility are not awkward leftovers in a closed physical system. They are explanatory clues.

Deconditioning the mind does not require rejecting science. It requires rejecting scientism — the assumption that science is the only avenue to knowledge and that whatever cannot be captured in purely physical terms does not exist.

If rational responsibility is real — denying it is self-defeating — then our metaphysical account of reality must include irreducible mind.

And once that door is opened, the soul is no longer a relic of pre-scientific thought.

It becomes a live explanatory candidate.

It becomes a metaphysical necessity.

Thank you.