Hmm …

… Thomas Nagel: Thoughts Are Real : The New Yorker. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)

Since neither physics nor Darwinian biology—the concept of evolution—can account for the emergence of a mental world from a physical one, Nagel contends that the mental side of existence must somehow have been present in creation from the very start. But then he goes further, into strange and visionary territory. He argues that the faculty of reason is different from perception and, in effect, prior to it—“an irreducible faculty.” He suggests that any theory of the universe, any comprehensive mesh of physics and biology, will need to succeed in “showing how the natural order is disposed to generate beings capable of comprehending it.”

 And this, he argues, would be a theory of teleology—a preprogrammed or built-in tendency in the universe toward the particular goal of fulfilling the possibilities of mentality. In a splendid image, Nagel writes, “Each of our lives is a part of the lengthy process of the universe gradually waking up and becoming aware of itself.”

Of course, the preprogrammed  or built-in tendency is where the trouble starts. Preprogrammed or built in by what or whom?