In Evolution's Hand attempts to deal with these difficulties. The contention is that contemporary science has opened up an avenue of evidence that was unavailable to the classical philosophers. This evidence concerns the evolution of humankind. Clearly the existence of intelligence is unambiguous. This provides us with a starting point at the higher order of things - the conscious intelligence of humankind is a higher order phenomenon in its own right.
Biological evolution causes the higher order of human intelligence to come into being.
Therefore through the mechanics of biological evolution we can trace the broad outlines of the evolutionary emergence of human intelligence back in time. This generates an unbroken chain of causality back to the origin of life itself. At the origin of life I argue that an intelligence factor is required. But this factor has to operate prior to there being life at any stage in the universe.