MIND,

REASON, AND REALITY An Introduction to Philosophy - 2

NB. These lecture notes are designed to be read in conjunction with my lectures. They are in places very compressed; you may find it easier to read the appropriate lecture notes after, rather than before the lecture.

--_-_. ...

---

------------

Department of Social Sciences and Humanities. BA (Hons) Interdisciplinary Human Studies.

MIND, REASON AND REALITY: An Introduction to Philosophy - 2.

In this semester we consider further topics in philosophy drawn from the areas of Metaphysics, and the Philosophy of Religion. As in the first semester, the set text is An Introduction to Philosophical Analysis by John Hospers supplemented by handouts and other reading. Course Outline We start by looking at the Aristotelian Conception of Nature and Explanation. Aristotle's conception of physical reality was accepted as dogma for sixty generations. The guiding principle of Aristotle's view of nature is teleology: the axiom that everything that happens in the world is done for a certain end. Aristotle's world - view was destroyed in the seventeenth century. The
attack was spearheaded by Galileo Galilei (1565 - 1641), one of the founders of modem science and the mechanical world - view. The chief features of the

philosophy of mechanism are the quantification of nature; the atomic conception of matter; the distinction between primary and secondary properties; and the thesis of determinism. Determinism is the thesis that the past history of the world and the laws of nature together determine a unique future. Now, two models compete for employment in our efforts to understand ourselves. One is based upon the idea of men and women as autonomous and goal-seeking creatures, a view in accord with Aristotle's ideas, whereas the other is based upon the scientific conception of human beings as cogs in the machinery of the world.

Now, if materialism is true - that what I am is solely a body composed of atoms - then it seems to follow that I lack the power to act otherwise than the ways in which I do in fact act (because the past together with the laws of nature entail my present behaviour). Yet we are aware of ourselves as agents unlike (as we think) inert sticks and stones in motion. The problem of freewill is, at its most general, the problem of reconciling human agency with universal causation. We discuss the three main responses to the problem, which are: Hard Determinism, Soft Determinism, and Libertarianism. We next turn our attention to the chief metaphysical arguments for the existence of God. There are three. The Ontological Argument attempts to show that the existence of God is a necessary consequence of an adequate conception of God; God's existence can be established by reason alone without recourse to observation or experiment. The Cosmological Argument claims that God's existence may be established by working backwards from the observation that all events have causes; and the Argument from Design seeks to show that the existence of order in the world entails the existence of a designer. Lastly we look at the Logical Positivist critique of metaphysics. Members of this school hold quite generally that statements about the super-sensible (such as 'God is the supreme being') are literally senseless.
Roger Fellows

G:\RFELLOWS\HANDOUTS\NOTES ON THE PHILOSOPHY OF ARISTOTLE

- IHO1O1M.doc

NOTES ON THE PHILOSOPHY OF ARISTOTLE

1. Aristotle pictures the universe as a series of concentric spheres. The earth is spherical and is at rest at the centre. The heavenly bodies revolve around the earth. The moon, the sun and the planets - Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter and Saturn - are each embedded in their own sphere, * and the outermost sphere contains the fixed stars. 2. The sub-lunary domain consists of 4 elements, earth, water, air and fire. There is a fifth element, Ether which Aristotle assumes fills space beyond the orbit of the moon in which the sun, planets and fixed stars revolve. So Aristotle pictures the natural arrangement of elements thus:

"

The element earth is absolutely heavy; and the element fire is absolutely light. A stone (made of the element earth) falls because it naturally belongs at the centre.

This is an oversimplification, but nothing hangs upon it, for our present purposes.

If a stone is thrown upwards then its upward motion is unnatural, but its fall to earth again is natural:

Aristotle thought that since downward motion is natural for a body of weight w, then if we double the weight w, we should double the speed at which the body falls to earth. (This is a good example of one false belief reinforcing another). 3. The cosmos of Aristotle is a very homely place to live in: it fits many of the observational facts of our experience. 4. What exists in the sublunary domain? Aristotle answers that what exists are primary substances. A primary substance is an individual object such as a human being, a tree or a cow (sometimes Aristotle includes artefact kinds as well as natural kinds). The following things are true, according to Aristotle, of primary substances: A. A substance is one we can point to as a 'this'. B. Substances can change (many) properties without: loss of identity. C. A linguistic term for a substance cannot be a predicate. (Mary is a primary substance. We can say of Mary that she is happy, but we cannot say of a substance that it is a Mary). D. Only primary substances exist in the sense that if they did not exist then no properties would exist. (There have to be green things in order for the property of greenness to exist). E. Substances must exist in order for change to be possible. (If I change from being happy to being depressed, then there must be a something which was at first happy and then depressed.

5. Aristotle allows the category of secondary substance (=universal). A universal term is one, which can be predicated of primary substances. (Example: we can predicate anger of Mary, John, etc). According to Aristotle, some universals are denoted by natural kind terms (cow'
and'animal') whereas others are qualities ('white', 'heavy') and yet others are relations ('greater than', 'loves').

6. The existence of natural kind universals enables us to set up a system of relationships between primary substances:
For Aristotle, scientific knowledge consists in understanding the way primary substances are related in tree diagrams such as the one above. Aristotle thinks, incidentally, that just as the system of spheres moves around the earth eternally, so although individual substances go out of existence, the species go on forever.

7. Next we can ask what makes a primary substance a cow rather than a human being. In other words, (d. our example above of a tree diagram) why does the tree branch? This brings in the distinction between ESSENTIAL and ACCIDENTAL PREDICATION.
If some individual members of a species S are F, whereas others are not, then F is an accidental predicate of S. Again, if some predicate G applies to members of different species S and S1, then G cannot be a property, which essentially picks out members of S from members of S from members of S1. According to Aristotle, 'A human being is a rational animal' expresses the fact that 'rational' is the essential property of the species human, in the genus animal: the predicate 'is rational' applies to every human being, and to no other species.

8. The individual substance is a composition of matter and form. When we speak, for instance, of the individual copper bowl, then the shape is the form and the copper is the
matter. [What about an arbitrarily chosen lump of copper? Here we might say that the lump of copper is matter and that the form consists in the principles, which make copper copper. These principles would consist in the laws of combination of the 4 elements, but Aristotle does not have anything illuminating to say about these supposed laws]. 9. If every existing substance is a composite of matter and form, then we can ask: Is form separate from matter? Form apart from matter would be insubstantial, and matter devoid of form would be featureless. Aristotle's view is that form and matter are not separable. (I can't divorce the shape of my house from the actual material of which my house is composed). However, he does apparently make an exception in the case of God. We have already seen that rationality is the essential property of humanity: that is, it constitutes the form of the individual substance of the species human beings. (Or perhaps: those principles, which constitute human rationality, e.g. Knowledge of logic, are the form). But Aristotle also thinks that animals and plants have souls. His view can be set out thus:

Finally, we come to A's doctrine of the 4 causes. We can set it out as follows:

Material (the bricks) Formal (plans of the architect) Efficient (the workers) Final Cause (a shelter from the weather)

Aristotle regarded the final cause as the most important. Thus, the reason the 4 elements are mixed up, rather than being separate (See Note 2 above) is that the spheres, which make up the universe, rotate eternally. This mixes up the elements. But God, being pure form, cannot move the world as efficient cause: God can only be the final cause. The world moves because God is 'the object of the world's desire'. It is fair to say that this is very unclear, but the biological domain provides many apparent examples of final causation. Suggested Readinq 1. Aristotle, J. Barnes 2. Part of the article on Aristotle in The Encvclopaedia of Philosophy, Vol. I., pp. 156-161.

Roger Fellows

..

10.......

IHS Semester 2. Mind, Reason and Reality

- 2.

The Mechanical World Picture [1] Aristotle's philosophy of nature was finally destroyed in the 17th century. This was due (cutting lots of corners) to the birth of a new physics based upon systematic observation and experiment, which led, in turn, to the search for exact, simple, general mathematical relationships between measurable quantities. [2] It should be noted that the attempt to formulate a mathematical theory of nature is not identical with the Mechanical World Picture. (MWP) The latter is a philosophical theory embracing the new physics, but which contains speculative assumptions difficult to state with exactness. In general the MWP is characterised by two things. The fist is the primacy of efficient causation: all changes in the world are brought about by the impact of bodies. The second is the quantification of nature. What is real can be measured. [3] The MWP entails a radical divide between how things appear and how they actually are. For Aristotle this divide is not present. For him, the Earth seems to be stationary and it is. The stars and the planets appear to revolve around the stationary Earth and they do. Heavy bodies appear to fall faster than lighter ones and they do. Colour appears to be a continuous property of bodies and it is, etc. The MWP insists that the senses seriously mislead us about the truth: perception is a wholly unreliable guide to reading the book of nature. [4] Why does the MWP have this shocking consequence? First the quantification of nature leads to laws (e.g. of motion) formulated in terms of numbers associated with the primary properties of nature (Distance, Time, Weight Speed, Area, etc). Since these laws make no references to secondary properties such as colour, tastes or smells, we may conclude that these properties are unreal, particularly since the assumption that they are real (which is what Aristotle assumed) leads to no interesting predictions about the future course of the world. Also, since the laws of nature are deterministic - they uniquely specify future states of the world - it follows

that human behaviour must also be as predictable as the behaviour of other bodies in motion, given the truth of the assumption that everything .which exists is composed of material particles (Atomism). [5] Historical aside. The downfall of Aristotle's doctrines did not entail a loss of religious belief (Isaac Newton, the greatest scientist who ever lived, was keen on doing nasty things to atheists), but it did mean that the relationship between God and the world had to be redrawn. This redrawing is depicted on the next page.

Department of

Social Sciences and Humanities.

Mind Reason and Reality: An Introduction to Philosophy - 2.

FREEDOM AND DETERMINISM [1] We seem to distinguish between actions (which are bodily movements made intentionally), and unintentional bodily movements. We hold persons morally responsible for their conduct only if they intended to do whatever it is they did. Suppose Mary says: 'It was immoral of Smith to set fire to the University'. This statement seems to suggest that at least two logically necessary conditions are involved in Mary's judgement about Smith. Cl: Smith was confronted with a set of alternative courses of action {a, b, c...} at time t such that at least some one member of the set was immoral (setting fire to the University). C2: Although Smith chose an immoral course of action from the set of alternatives, he could have chosen some other alternative instead. Cl and C2 attribute to Smith freedom of choice, or so it would appear. [2] Human beings are capable of attitudes such as resentment, gratitude, remorse, regret and forgiveness. Philosophers term such attitudes reactive attitudes. These attitudes seem to assume that the persons who are the object of them could have chosen to act in ways other than the ways in which they did act. [3] The first metaphysical theory we outline is called HARD DETERMINISM. The theory arises naturally from the rise of modern science - the rise of what we term 'the mechanical world view'. The theory maintains that, quite generally, human freedom is an illusion - perhaps one which we cannot rid ourselves of, but an illusion all the same. The doctrine can be set out follows:

(1) Every event has a cause. (2) All human actions are events. (3) So all human actions have causes. (4) If every event has a cause, then no event could happen otherwise than it does happen. (5) Therefore no human action can happen otherwise that it does happen. (6) A necessary condition for moral responsibility is the existence of alternative actions. (7) So no one is ever morally responsible. (Reactive attitudes are irrational). [4] There are a variety of responses to the hard determinist. INDETERMINISM claims that free will involves chance. SOFT DETERMINISM maintains that free will and universal causality are consistent with one another: free actions are those that stem from causes of a particular kind. Lastly, there are philosophers who think that Freedom requires a different kind of causation from event causation - AGENT
CAUSATION.

[5] Indeterminists are fond of citing that, at the micro-level (the domain of sub-atomic goings on), nature is non - deterministic: events happen in accord with statistical laws and not with deterministic ones. It seems to me that Indeterminism cannot possibly be an answer to Hard Determinism, because, if my free actions are those which are predicated upon there being random or chance events, then surely I am absolved in any particular situation from moral responsibility on the grounds that on that occasion my action was simply a random event! [6] In general, I think that it is quite hopeless to sever human agency from the causal nexus. The Soft Determinist agrees. This theory can be set out as follows:

Premises (1 - 4) are the same as those of the Hard Determinist. (5) In the natural world, 'x caused y' never means' x compelled y to occur'; although in the social world it can mean that. (6) An agent freely performs some action a if and only if (i) he or she is not compelled to do a by coercion, and (ii) the agent does a because he or she wants or desires to do a. (7) Wants and desires are causes of behaviour so causation and freedom are compatible. An agent may be morally judged for their conduct provided that it was not coerced and that the agent was not a victim of some set of unusual physical conditions (e.g. illness or hypnotism). The thesis of Soft Determinism is easily the most philosophically attractive option to philosophers of an empiricist persuasion. But the obvious objection is that, since we do not choose those beliefs, wants, and desires that rationalise, or give point to, our actions, this doctrine is no advance on Hard Determinism. A possible reply is as follows. The objection seems to have the form: my wants and desires have a certain property, namely the property of not having been chosen by me; now, since my wants and desires cause my actions, it follows that my actions have the property of not having been chosen by me. But there is a fallacy in moving from 'if something A has a property, and A causes B' to 'therefore B has the property'. Consider the inference from the premises that I dislike drinking nasty medicine, and that nasty medicine causes me to get well, to the conclusion that I dislike getting well. [7] The Agency view (often termed 'Libertarianism') agrees that every event has a cause, and that, in the natural world, the cause of every event is some other event. In the natural world, the causal relation is defined over event pairs. But, in the social world, the causes of some events are agents. Agents are not themselves events but creatures with a self - causing power to act in the world. The idea of self-causation is basic and unanalysable, so it is not

amenable to empirical refutation. But the same could be said of any metaphysical idea, including Hard Determinism.
Roger Fellows

Department of Social Sciences and Humanities. Interdisciplinary Human Studies year I. Mind Reason and Reality 2.

Is Soft-Determinism a plausible alternative to Hard Determinism? [1] Soft Determinists challenge the claim that if H-D is true then no one could have acted otherwise. S-D maintains that universal causation and freedom are compatible, because categorical statements such as: (a) Mary can raise her arm, Are really disguised hypothetical statements of the form: (b) If Mary chooses to raise her arm then she will do so. Being free just consists in doing what one wants to do in contexts devoid of external constraint. The proponent of H - D argues that this analysis fails because any given context in which Mary failed to raise her arm is a context in which Mary was unable to choose to raise her arm, and hence a context in which Mary was unable to raise her arm, so the hypothetical analysis fails: if every event has a cause, then no person could have performed any action other than the action they in fact performed on a given occasion. [2] The American philosopher Peter van Inwagen has argued that freedom and determinism are indeed inconsistent with one another as H-D claims. The argument purports to show that if H-D is true, then the laws of nature and the condition of the Universe before my birth jointly entail every true statement about my physical movements and actions throughout my life: therefore, I could have refrained from performing those actions which I did in fact perform, only if I could have falsified the laws of nature or altered the conditions of the universe prior to my birth. Clearly it would be delusional to suppose that I could do either of these things. Here is one of van Inwagen's arguments.

Suppose Mary failed to raise her arm at a certain time t.

Let:

t* denote some instant of time before Mary was born. W be the proposition that expresses the state of the world at t*. L denote the conjunction of all the laws of physics. D be the proposition that expresses the state of the world at t.

(1) If H-D is true then (W & L) D.

(2) If Mary had raised her hand at t, then D would be false. (3) If Mary could have raised her hand at t, Mary could have rendered D false.
(4) If Mary could have rendered D false, and (W & L) D, then Mary could have rendered (W & L) false.

(5) If Mary could have rendered (W & L) false then Mary could have rendered L false (since it is impossible for her to render W false). (6) Mary could not have rendered L false. (7) Therefore if H-D is true Mary could not have raised her arm at t. H-D is a metaphysical doctrine that does not entail the predictability either of the behaviour of individuals or of group behaviour. H-D does not support the idea that psychology and sociology are or will become sciences like e.g. physics where prediction is the name of the game. But this is a vast topic.

Department of Social Sciences and Humanities BA (Interdisciplinary Human Studies Year 1) Mind Reason and Reality Semester 2.

The Cosmological Argument.

[1] In these notes we consider two versions of the Cosmological argument for the existence of God given by St Thomas Aquinas (1225 - 1274). The Moslem philosopher AI-Farabi who worked in Baghdad in the first half of the tenth century also put the second of these versions forward. [2] Aquinas (a Christian Aristotelian) and AI-Farabi (a Moslem Aristotelian) conceived of philosophy as an aid to religious belief and not as a rival to it. Thus Logic is looked upon by AI-Farabi as an aid in the development of the intelligence that is Allah's greatest gift to humanity. [3] Both Aquinas and AI-Farabi believed that metaphysical argumentation can establish the existence of God, although it cannot establish articles of religious faith. For instance, Aquinas believed that reason can demonstrate the existence of God, but not that God is a unity of three persons: religious faith is required for this. [4] Aquinas gave five arguments for the existence of God, known as the 'Five Ways': we consider only two of these.

The Second Way: The Argument from Efficient Causality. (1) Everything has a cause. [A] (2) Anything, which is caused, is caused by another. [From 1] (3) Therefore, there is an infinitely regressive chain of causes. [From 1 & 2] (4) There is no first cause. [From 3] (5) If there were no first cause then there would be no subsequent effects (since to remove the cause is to remove the effect). [A] (6) But there are innumerable causes and effects in the world today. [A] (7) Therefore it is false that there is no first cause. [1, 4, 5 & 6] (8) There is a first cause [Re-statement of 7].

Remark. The argument does not show that God = the First Cause.

The Third Way: The Argument from Contingency. (1) A contingent being is a being which could not-be at some time. [Df] (2) That which is such that it could not-be, at some time is not. [A] (3) Suppose everything is contingent (i.e. is such that it could not-be at some time). [A] (4) Then everything is such that it does not exist at some time [2 & 3] (5) At some time everything is not. [A] (But Aquinas thinks that (5) follows from (4), which it does not, and so I have flagged (5) as another Assumption). (6) If there were a time at which everything was not, there would be nothing now. [ A] (7) Something exists now [A] (8) It cannot be that everything is contingent: there must be a necessary being. [From 2, 3, 5, 6, & 7].

Remark. Even if the argument were sound, it would not follow, as in the case of the Second Way, that the necessary being was God. Reading: Hospers, pp 290- 295.
Roger Fellows

Mind, Reason and Reality: An Introduction to Philosophy

- 2.

The Ontological Argument for the existence of God.

[1] An analysis of Descartes' Ontological Argument (DOA). The argument seems to have the form:

[2] But if in DOA we construe the proper name 'God' as referring to God, then the argument is question-begging. For, of course, if 'God' names God then God exists. But how do we know that the name 'God' refers to anything? [3] To avoid this difficulty we may paraphrase 'God has every P' as: 'If there is anything which is God-like, then it has every P'. Since this is a conditional, it does not beg the question by assuming at the outset that anything is God-like. [4] Descartes assumes that existence is a perfection, i.e. that 'exists' is a predicate like 'is red' or 'is wise', which may be true or false of things. So premise (b) may be paraphrased, as 'Anything which has all perfections exists'. The trouble is that we cannot draw the conclusion that God exists from these premises. What can we conclude? Only that if anything is God-like then it exists. Obviously! - if anything is God-like, then it exists. The argument consists of three conditional statements:

(a*) If anything is God-like then it has all perfections.

(b*) Anything which has all perfections exists. (c*) Therefore if anything is God-like then it exists. [5] The argument fails to establish the existence of God even if we treat 'exists' as a predicate. But should we treat 'exists' as a predicate? Kant famously argued that (i) all existential sentences - sentences which claim that such-and-such exists - are contingent i.e. their denial is never logically contradictory; and (ii) statements of the form 'x exists' add no information to the concept of x. But (i) is false: consider 'There exists a prime number between 3 and 7'; and (ii) is vague and not obviously true. Consider 'I have just discovered that unicorns exist'. [6] 1 suppose that a majority of philosophers who work in the analYtic tradition would agree that there is a vitally important difference between e.g. 'x is brown' and 'x exists', but that Kant failed to capture it. The philosopher-mathematician Frege successfully undertook this task, and I'll sketch a (partial) version of his solution. Frege on Existence. (1) There is a fundamental distinction to be drawn between objects and concepts. Objects are denoted by singular terms and concepts denote properties. Objects fall under concepts. For example the sentence 'Bradford is a city' is true just because the object Bradford has the property of being a city, and thus falls under the concept of cityhood. Similarly, 'Skipton is a city' is false because the object Skipton fails to fall under the concept because it lacks the property. (2) How about the sentence 'Bradford exists'? Can we analyse this as meaning that the object Bradford falls under the concept of existence because Bradford has the property of existence? No. For consider 'Bradford does not exist'. This cannot mean that the object Bradford fails to fall under the concept of existence, because in this case there would be no such object!

(3) Frege arrives at his account of existence, by his analysis of number terms like 'zero' and 'five'. To say that the Earth has one moon cannot mean that the earth's moon has the property of oneness otherwise we should be driven to say that the statement 'Venus has no moons' means that the (nonexistent) moons of Venus possess the property of nothing! (4) Frege's solution. We must distinguish between concepts that denote properties of objects such as 'red' and 'tall' and concepts that denote properties of properties. To say that the Earth has one moon is to assert that the concept 'moon of Earth' has the property of including at least one thing under it. To say that Venus has no moons is to say that the concept 'moon of Venus' has the property of including nothing under it. To affirm that an object 0 exists is to deny that the concept of 0 has the property of zero. So, for Frege, the sentence 'God has all perfections' cannot entail that God exists, since what it means is: 'the concept of God has the property of including one thing, with all perfections, under it'. And this statement is not known to be true by analysis. [7] ANSELM'S ONTOLOGICAL ARGUMENT. Anselm's version of the argument is, I think, subtler that that offered by Descartes. It has the following form: (1) A BNGC (= God, a being no greater than which can be conceived) exists in the understanding. (A) (2) To exist in reality for a BNGC would be greater than to exist in the understanding alone. (A) (3) Suppose the BNGC exists in the understanding alone. (A) (1,2,3 ) (4) Contradiction: the BNGC would not be a BNGC (5) Therefore it is not the case that a BNGC exists in the
understanding alone, it exists in reality. (1 ,2 )

[8] Many philosophers have thought that this argument fails because it treats existence as a predicate. I think however it has a subtle flaw, which is independent of Frege's analysis of existence. The argument tries to deduce a contradiction from the assumptions (1) (3). The contradiction in question is that the BNGC is not a BNGC.

It is true that if this contradiction did follow from (1) - (3), then one
could logically conclude that it is false that the BNGC exists in the understanding alone. But I don't think that it does follow. What follows from the assumptions (1) - (3) is not (4) but (4 *):
(It is conceived that there exists an x such that x is a BNGC) & ( There is an x such that x is conceived to be a BNG).

This conjunction is consistent: both conjuncts may be true. Reading: Hospers pages 288- 290.
Roger Fellows

....

The Ontological Argument for the existence of God st. Anselm (1033-1109) Truly there is a God. although the fool hath said in his heart. There is

no God.

And so, Lord, do thou, who dost give understanding to faith, give me, so far as thou knowest it to be profitable, to understand that thou art as we believe; and that thou art that which we believe. And, indeed, we believe that thou art a being than which nothing greater can be conceived. Or is there no such nature, since the fool hath said in his heart, there is no God? (Psalm xiv. I). But, at any rate, this very fool when he hears of this being of which I speak - a being than which nothing greater can be conceived - understands what he hears, and what he understands is in his understanding; although he does not understand it to exist. For, it is one thing for an object to be in the understanding, and another to understand that the object exists. When a painter first conceives of what he will afterwards perform, he has it in his understanding, but he does not yet understand it to be, because he has not yet performed it. But after he has made the painting, he both has it in his understanding, and he understands that it exists, because he has made it. Hence, even the fool is convinced that something exists in the understanding, at least, than which nothing greater can be conceived. For when he hears of this he understands it. And whatever is understood it exists in the understanding. And assuredly that than which nothing greater can be conceived, cannot exist in the understanding alone. For, suppose it exists in the understanding alone: then it can be conceived to exist in reality which is greater. Therefore, if that, than which nothing greater can be conceived, exists in the understanding alone, the very being, than which nothing greater can be conceived, is one, than which a greater can be conceived. But obviously this is impossible. Hence, there is no doubt that there exists a being, than which nothing greater can be conceived and it exists both in the understanding and in reality. God cannot be conceived not to exist - God is that, than which nothing greater can be conceived - that which can be conceived not to exist is not God. And it assuredly exists so truly, that it cannot be conceived not to exist. For, it is possible to conceive of a being which cannot be conceived not to exist and this is greater than one which can be conceived not to exist. Hence, if that, than which nothing greater can be conceived, can be conceived not to exist, it is not that, than which nothing greater can be conceived. But this is an irreconcilable contradiction. There is, then, so truly a being than which nothing greater can be conceived to exist, that it cannot even be conceived not to exist: and this being thou art: 0 Lord, our God.

liliiii Department of Social Sciences and Humanities. Interdisciplinary Human Studies - I Mind Reason and Reality Semester 2.

The Argument from Design. The Argument from Design for the existence of God has gone through four distinct historical stages.
Stage 1. The Primitive Stage.

In the primitive stage the argument is not explicitly formulated; but it arises as a consequence of a thoroughly animistic view of nature. For example, the Greek philosopher Thales (640 548 BC) thought that the magnetic stone possesses soul because it is able to move iron. Thales also said that 'all things are full of gods', and this assertion may well imply that the world as a whole manifests a power of change and motion which is certainly not predominately human and must be regarded as due to the influence of some immortal force. The primitive stage had a long history. For instance, when in 1686, Newton published his theory of gravitation according to which comets were celestial bodies some of which move in ordinary ellipses, and others move in hyperbolas or parabolas, never to return, there was another more popular theory according to which comets are a sign from an angry God warning that he will strike and bring disaster.
Stage 2. The Teleological Stage.

For Aristotle, the most important form of explanation was teleological explanation, which postulates that everything that happens in the cosmos is done for a purpose. The logical form of teleological explanation is that x happens in order to bring about y. The demand that explanations of natural phenomena have this form provides the basis of Aquinas' 5th argument for the existence of God, the argument from final causation.

'We observe that things without consciousness, such as physical bodies, operate with a purpose, as appears from their cooperating invariably, or almost so, in the same way in order to obtain the best result. Clearly then they reach this end by intention and not by chance. Things lacking knowledge move towards an end only when directed by someone who knows and understands, as an arrow by an archer. There is consequently an intelligent being who directs all natural things to their ends; and this being we call God.' [Summa Theologica Ia.ii3.]
Stage 3. The Clockwork Stage.

In summary form it runs as follows: (a) Nature everywhere exhibits orderly structures and processes. (b) Orderly structures and processes are always the work of intelligent design. (c) Therefore Nature is the work of an intelligent designer. This argument is an induction from factual evidence and even if (c) followed from (a) and (b) it would not prove monotheism as against polytheism. Nor does it establish creation out of nothing. Now the notion of orderliness, although crucial to the argument is unclear. It may mean the orderliness of a machine, as opposed to a non-artefact, e.g., a stone or a cloud of water vapour. On the other hand, it may mean the sort of orderliness discovered beneath the surface of things by the scientist, a sort that is present in artefacts and non-artefacts equally. This ambiguity is important, since although it is a truism to say that the first kind of order is the result of intelligent agency, it is part of the conclusion of the argument that the second sort is also. On this ground alone it is hard to see any plausibility in this version of the design argument, since the truth of the

truism depends on a contrast between the two kinds of case, when the conclusion rests upon asserting their similarity.
Stage 4. The Probability Stage.

The classic versions of the argument from design appeal to the appearance of purposive adaptation in nature. These versions have been undercut by Darwin's theory of evolution. It's not that animals and plants have been fashioned by a divine designer; it's just that over long periods of time new kinds of living thing have come into existence as a result of random genetic variations, and those new variants which had the luck to be better adapted to their environment survived. The probability version of the argument (or family of arguments) is one that is advocated by some scientists. They regard these versions of the argument as supported by modem scientific theories rather than being undermined by them. Here is one version of the probability argument: (1) The world is governed by natural laws. (2) There are many different ways in which these laws might have been set. (3) Only a small percentage allow for a stable universe that could produce and sustain human beings. For instance, if the gravitational force had been slightly stronger, then the universe could not have existed for more than a few seconds. (4) It is very improbable that the laws of physics should just happen to be set so as to allow human beings to develop. It is much more plausible to suppose that there exists a divine intelligence who 'fine-tuned' the laws because he wanted Homo sapiens to flourish. This argument is sometimes called the Anthropic Principle. Patrick Glynn puts it as follows: '...the Anthropic Principle says that the seemingly arbitrary and unrelated constants in physics have one strange thing in common--these are precisely the values you need if you want to have a universe capable of producing life.'

But suppose I buy a ticket in the National Lottery. If I am rational I don't believe I am going to win since the odds against my doing so are about thirteen million to one. But suppose I do win. My winning is highly unlikely but that does not give me any reason to believe that the lottery was rigged in my favour, it is just that I have had fantastic luck. Now even if it is true that it is very unlikely that the Universe should have been up in such a way as to allow beings like us it does not seem to follow that the laws were 'fine-tuned' its just that we have been very lucky. But can we make sense of assigning probabilities to Universes that are alternatives to our own? Cosmologists believe that the Universe came into existence a finite time ago in a so-called 'Big Bang'. Let's operate with this crude picture: Wt to WK represent the set of possible universes that are alternatives to our
own which is W1000.

The only way I can think of assigning probabilities to members of the set of possible universes is to appeal to the Principle of Indifference, which says that if there are n possible alternatives and our knowledge rules out none of them, then assign the probability l/n to each of them. So for instance in the case of the National Lottery there are thirteen million outcomes so each ticket gets assigned a probability of winning of 1/13,000,000. Hence, in the case of n possible universes the probability of W1000 being the actual universe is l/n and this is presumably highly improbable. (Question: what if there are an infinite number of alternative universes to our own?) I end by making two points. The first is, that the indifference principle works fine. when we dealing with playing cards, dice, and lotteries, but it is not, in general, a reliable guide to assigning probabilities to outcomes. For instance I know of no reason why the star Tau Ceti does or does not have one planet orbiting around it. Therefore the probability that Tau Ceti has one planet is 1/2. But

equally, I know of no reason why the star should or should not have twenty planets. Therefore the probability the star has twenty planets is the same as the probability it has one! How would we calculate the probability that the star has one planet? We need the concept of relative frequency in the long run. The probability that the star has one planet is equal to the number of stars in a significantly large random sample of stars, which have at least one planet, divided by the total number of stars in the sample. We have no present way of making this calculation.
The second point follows from the first. We cannot rely upon the Indifference Principle to conclude that the existence of the Universe is highly improbable. And I can think of no other way of assigning probabilities to non-existent universes.
Roger Fellows. Intellectual honesty compels me to admit that scientific upholders of the Anthropic Principle must be aware of the lottery fallacy. I recommend for further reading Universes by John Leslie, Routledge 1989 that received excellent reviews. I have not read this book myself, although I own a copy. Interdisciplinary Human Studies Year 1 Mind, Reason and Reality Semester 2

The Problem of Evil.

[1] Sceptics claim that the belief that a God who is omnipotent, omniscient and wholly good created the world clashes with the belief that the world contains natural evils such as earthquakes, floods and famines, and moral evils such as the bad acts done by human beings to one another. [2] The problem is one of internal consistency. It is not a problem about belief which does not square with the evidence, unless of course the theist denies that there is evil in the world. But he or she is unlikely to do that because in believing in God, the theist believes both that God created the world and that much in the world is defined by the very standards that God created. To say that the problem is one of internal consistency is to ask whether all of the above beliefs about God can come out true together. [3] Some theists try to solve the problem by attempting to figure out a divine policy in which the evils of this world can be seen as a necessary

part of some good purpose. If someone does claim this he or she is usually said to be propounding a theodicy. One of the most famous of all theodicies is that of the philosopher Leibniz who claimed that this world is the best of all possible worlds, a view savagely parodied by Voltaire in Candide. There is a strong temptation to argue in this way, since if God is supremely good and all knowing, then surely he will be able to judge which of the infinite number of possible worlds that he could create would be the best one, and create it rather than another. If we go along with this line of thought we are committed to showing that the evils in this world are necessary for the existence of the best world possible. We might perhaps appeal to scientific orderliness or the multiplicity of natural kinds. [4] One unattractive solution to the problem of consistency is to water down the proposition the God is omnipotent, omniscient and wholly good. But it then becomes unclear that God is a suitable subject of worship. Also we ought to be very careful before deploying the evasive device that denies what we mean by 'good' is the same as what God means by 'good'. [5] We need to stress the distinction between causal and logical possibility. This distinction enables us to brush aside any theodicy that seems to make evil a merely causal necessity for good. To say, for instance, that pain is a danger signal is do nothing to justify the fact of pain. God's allowing pain must have a deeper reason than this for an omnipotent being could have created a world for sentient creatures who would not have felt pain yet still be aware of danger. It might though be argued that some evils are necessary for certain good things to occur. If this could be demonstrated, it would show that an omnipotent being could not have created the best of all possible worlds without creating evil. For if the best possible world is one in which human beings are compassionate, then it is logically impossible for me to be compassionate if there is no suffering to engage my sympathies. [6] The most famous defence of the consistency of God's omnipotence, omniscience and supreme goodness is the so-called free-will defence. The free-will defence roughly argues that since God wanted us to be responsible for our actions, he gave us freedom to choose and thus we can choose to do

evil. It is not obvious that this view can be squared with the existence of natural evils although we are undoubtedly responsible for much moral evil. The freewill defence is sometimes extended to cover natural evils by arguing that there have to be some natural evils in the world for us freely choosing beings to react to. [7] Lastly, the free-will defence invites us to ask what conception of human freedom is pre-supposed in the argument? For instance a soft determinist would argue that since freedom and causality are compatible, and since God is omnipotent, he could have created a world with different natural laws that precluded both the occurrence of earthquakes and our being the kind of beings who act wickedly towards one another without endangering freedom just because there is no inconsistency between the assertion that human behaviour is governed by causal laws and the assertion that human beings are free agents. Naturally a libertarian would disagree with this analysis.
Roger Fellows