Transcript God Exists?

Philosophy 1010
Class #8
Title:
Introduction to Philosophy
Instructor:
Paul Dickey
E-mail Address: [email protected]
Today
Discuss Mid-term Exam.
Finish Discussion of Chapter 3 – Reality & Being
Discussion of Chapter 4, Sections 4.1 thru 4.5.
10/30/03
.
Discuss Velasquez, Philosophy: A Text With
Readings, Chapter 6, Sections 6.1-6.3, pp. 394-428.
– Make class discussion assignments.
Midterm Exam
Chapter 3
Reality and Being,
Cont.
(a Metaphysical Study)
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The Metaphysical View:
Idealism & Plato’s Theory of
Forms
(a refutation of Materialism)
Idealism &
Plato’s Theory of Forms
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The view that reality is primarily composed of
ideas or thought rather than a material world is
the doctrine known as Idealism. That is, an
Idealist would say that a world of material
objects containing no thought either could not
exist or at the least would not be fully "real."
•
The earliest formulation of this view is given to
us by Plato.
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In Plato’s Allegory of the Cave, the world of
shadows is representative of the material world
and is not fully real.
Plato’s Theory of Forms
•
What is the problem with which Plato is faced?
•
How can one live a happy and satisfying life in
a contingent, changing world without there
being some permanence on which one can
rely? (The Ethical Problem)
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Indeed, how can the world appear to be both
permanent and changing all the time. (The
Metaphysical Problem)
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Plato observed that the world of the mind, the world
of ideas, seems relatively unchanging. Justice, for
example, does not seem to change from day to day,
year to year.
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On the other hand, the world of our perceptions
change continuously. One rock is small, the next
large, the next…?
Plato’s Theory of Forms
•
To resolve this problem, Plato formalized the classic view
of idealism in his doctrine of Forms.
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In everyday language, a form is how we recognize what
something is and unify our knowledge of objects. (e.g How
do we say two objects of different size, color, etc. are both
cars?)
•
Permanence comes from the world of forms or ideas with
which we have access through reason.
•
In Plato’s view, all the particular entities we see as
material objects are shadows of that reality. Behind each
entity is a perfect form or ideal. Ideal forms are eternal
and everlasting. Individual beings are imperfect.
•
e.g. Roundness is an ideal or form existing in a
world different from physical basketballs. Individual
basketballs participate or copy the form.
Plato’s Theory of Forms
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Forms are transcendent, that is they do not
exist in space and time. That is why they
are unchanging.
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Forms are pure. They only represent a
single character and are the perfect model
of that property.
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Material objects are a complex
conglomeration of copies of multiple forms
located in space and time.
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Forms are the cause of all that exists in the
world.
What is the Essence of
the Form of the Good?
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Forms are the cause of all that exists in the world.
Forms exist in a hierarchy with the Form of The
Good being the highest form and thus is the first
cause of all that exists.
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Forms are the ultimate reality because they are
more objective than material things which are
subjective and vary in our perception of them.
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For Socrates and Plato, the question “What is a
thing?” is the question what is the essence of the
thing? That is, the attempt is to identify what
(presumably one) characteristic or property makes
that thing what it is.
What is the Essence of
the Form of the Good?
•
Further, Plato compares the power of the Good to the
power of the sun. The sun illuminates things and makes
them visible to the eye. The absolute or perfect Good
illuminates the things of the mind (forms) and makes
them intelligible.
•
The Good sheds light on ideas but, the vision of the idea
of the Good is, according to Plato, too much for human
minds.
•
When Plato emphasizes The Good as the cause (I.e. an
active agent) of essences, structures, and forms, as well
as of knowledge, he seems to be invoking the idea of the
Good as God. The Good as absolute order makes all
intermediate forms or structures possible.
Towards A Modern View:
Cartesian Dualism
Descartes & Modern Philosophy
René Descartes (1596–1650) was a creative
mathematician of the first order, an important
scientific thinker, and an original metaphysician.
He offered a new vision of the natural world that
continues to shape our thought today: a world of
matter possessing a few fundamental properties
and interacting according to a few universal
laws. This natural world included an
immaterial mind that, in human beings, was
directly related to the brain.
In many ways, Descartes established
Philosophy as a modern endeavor and saw
science and philosophy as intricately linked in
their pursuit of knowledge.
Yet, Descartes embraced the Scientific Revolution
fundamentally differently that Galileo. Descartes
claimed to possess a special method, which was
variously exhibited in mathematics, natural
philosophy, and metaphysics, and which, in the
latter part of his life, included, or was supplemented
by, a method of doubt. He was still fundamentally
too much of a Rationalist in the traditions of Plato.
This method of conducting science is quite contrary
to the approach that was gaining sway with Galileo.
Galileo proposed a methodology which did not first
engage in a metaphysical search for first principles
on which to base his science.
Rationalism:
Similarities Between Plato and Descartes
Plato
Justification is by reason rather than by the
senses, not the world of the cave, which we find
out about by sensory experience, and toward to
world outside the cave, the world of Forms,
which we discover by means of reason)
The objects of knowledge, namely the
Forms, are eternal, necessary, and
unchanging (we want to find the
permanent order that underlies the flux)
The most important and basic knowledge
is a priori (that is, not based on sensory
information): this is true of knowledge of
mathematics, of goodness, of justice, etc.
Mathematics is a kind of model for the rest
of knowledge. (Think of the perfect circle.)
Descartes
Ditto. The skeptical arguments of the first
meditation show that the senses cannot be
trusted. Later meditations suggest that a
scientific picture of the world will not appeal to
sensory properties but to (primarily)
mathematical ones.
We can have knowledge of the physical world.
But the most basic objects of knowledge are
general principles (e.g. the basic laws of physics),
so the goal is still to penetrate behind the veil of
appearance.
We can gain some knowledge by means of
the senses, but only after establishing a
priori that they are more or less
trustworthy; the most basic knowledge is
a priori.
Ditto: the metaphor of building knowledge
up on firm foundations relies on a
mathematical model.
For Descartes, Galileo erred by
“without having considered the first
causes of nature, [he] has merely
looked for the explanations of a few
particular effects, and he has thereby
built without foundations”
But ultimately, it was Galileo (not
Descartes) that pushed the Scientific
Revolution forward.
Galileo & The Scientific Revolution
Galileo Galilei (1564 – 1642), was an Italian physicist,
mathematician, astronomer, and philosopher who
played a major role in the Scientific Revolution. Galileo
has been called the "father of modern observational
astronomy", the "father of modern physics", the "father
of science", and "the Father of Modern Science“
Galileo proposes that physics should be a “new
science” based on methods of observation not just on
the methods of reason.
Thus, Galileo discovered many things: with his
telescope, he first saw the moons of Jupiter and the
mountains on the Moon; he determined the parabolic
path of projectiles and calculated the law of free fall
on the basis of experiment.
Galileo & The Scientific Revolution
He is known for defending and making popular the
Copernican system, using the telescope to examine the
heavens, inventing the microscope, dropping stones
from towers and masts, playing with pendula and
clocks, being the first ‘real’ experimental scientist,
advocating the relativity of motion, and creating a
mathematical physics. His major claim to fame
probably comes from his trial by the Catholic
Inquisition and his purported role as heroic rational,
modern man in the subsequent history of the ‘warfare’
between science and religion.
In 1636, a Hobbes travels to Italy where he may
have met with Galileo. With the influence of Galileo,
Hobbes develops his social philosophy on principles
of geometry and natural science.
Materialism
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Thomas Hobbes (1588-1679) rejects
Cartesian dualism claiming that Descartes
Mind/Body problem itself refutes dualism.
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Since mind and body cannot interact, they
cannot both exist within human nature.
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There can only be one realm of human nature
and that is the material world.
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All human activities, including the mental, can
be explained on the paradigm of a machine.
Modern Idealism
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The founder of modern Idealism is Bishop George
Berkeley (1685-1753).
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Berkeley argued against Hobbes’ Materialism that
the conscious mind and its ideas and perceptions are
the basic reality.
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Berkeley believed that the world we perceive does
exist. However that world is not external to and
independent of the mind.
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The external world is derived from the mind.
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However, there is a further reality beyond our own
minds. Since we have ordered perceptions of the
world which are not controlled by an individual’s
mind, they must be produced by God’s divine mind.
(9:00)
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Pragmatism
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The major pragmatist philosophers are Charles S.
Pierce (1839-1914) and William James (1842-1910).
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To the American Pragmatists, the debate between
materialism and idealism had become a pointless
philosophical exercise.
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They wanted philosophy to “get real” (as we might say
today.)
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The Pragmatists argued that philosophy loses its way
when it loses sight of the social problems of its day.
Thus, the Pragmatists focused on issues of practical
consequence. For them, asking even what is real in
the complete sense is not an abstract matter.
Pragmatism
•
In terms of Metaphysics, James argued against both
sense observation and scientific method and reason
as the determinants of reality.
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Reality is determined by its relation to our “emotional
and active life.” In that sense, a man determines his
own reality. What is real is what “works” for us.
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Pragmatism was refreshing and offered new insights
to various disciplines, particularly psychology as a
developing science.
•
Ultimately to most philosophers, pragmatism failed to
give a systematic response to the traditional
philosophical issues that Materialism and Idealism
were struggling with.
Logical Positivism
•
Similar somewhat to the American Pragmatists, the
Logical Positivists also viewed the debate between
materialism and idealism as a pointless philosophical
exercise.
•
Unlike the Pragmatists however, they identified the
problem with the metaphysical debate as a problem in
understanding language and meaning.
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The Logical Positivists proclaimed that Metaphysics
was meaningless and both Materialists and Idealists
were making claims that amounted to nonsense. They
might be proposing theories that seemed to be
different but had no consequences to our
understanding of the world.
•
A.J. Ayer (1910 – 1989) proposed a criterion by which
it could be determined what was a meaningful
statement to make about reality.
The Logical Positivist Criteria
of Meaning
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Metaphysical statements such as “God exists” or
“Man has a mind and body” or ethical statements
such as “Lying is wrong” are meaningless for Ayer.
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Such statements do not make assertions about
the world, but in fact only express emotions and
feelings like poetry.
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A statement can only be meaningful if it is
verifiable by means of shared experience.
Anti-Realism
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Anti-realism rejects the notion that there is a
single reality. Rather, there is multiple realities that
are dependent upon how they are described,
perceived, or thought about.
•
Notice that whereas Berkeley emphasized
consciousness as the basis of the world, the
modern anti-realists focus on the pervasiveness of
language.
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Is “Realism” a condition of sanity? Can it
be challenged?
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How can you even know about “reality” without
language? Thus, what sense does it make to say
reality exists “beyond” language?
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Is reality dependent on our “contextualization” of
things. Does this mean “reality” is just whatever
you think it is? Is this different than “subjectivity?”
Or is it an objective, shareable cultural phenomena?
Chapter 4
Philosophy and God
(a Metaphysical Study)
Does God Exist?
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Theism is the belief in a personal God who is
creator of the world and present in its processes
and who is actively engaged in the affairs of
humans.
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Pantheism is the belief that God is the universe
and its phenomena (taken or conceived of as a
whole). God exists but is not personally involved in
the lives of men.
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Atheism is the denial of Theism. (Metaphysical
View) It states that there is no God.
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Agnosticism is the view that it cannot be known
whether God exists or not. (Epistemological View)
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According to Logical Positivism, the question
Does God Exist? is meaningless.
First, Can We Even Make Sense
of the Question?
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Surely before trying to answer the question, one
needs to ask the following questions:
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What does one mean by the word or concept
of “God?”
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What is the sense of existence that is being
asserted when one says God exists.
Without being clear about these issues, the
argument often becomes mostly subjective.
What Do We Mean by “God?”
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If we say that God is the “creator of the universe,” do we
mean:
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1) that there is a Being that is God that could or
could not be the one who created the universe,
but as a matter of fact is the creator of the
universe? Or
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2) that by definition that God is the Being that
created the universe such that it would be a
logical error to say that God did not create the
universe.
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Note that if we mean the first, we have still not said who
(or what) God is, apart from what he has done.
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If we mean the second, of course given the inherent
assumptions, then God exists. But we have committed
the logical fallacy of “begging the question.”
What is the Meaning of Existence that is
Being Used to Say that God Exists?
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Is existence a property of an entity? I say “This chair is
black.” Blackness is a property of the chair. So that I
would say that this chair has the property of “existing”
and thus there could be chairs some of which have the
property and some don’t. Then would I say that some
chairs exist and some do not like I would say some
chairs are black and some are not?
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Or is existence of the chair identified in terms of its
relationship to a real world, say Hobbes’ material world
or Berkeley’s mental world? But then what sense does it
make to say that God’s existence is dependent upon a
world that He created and itself came into “existence”
after Him?
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If not, then what is this form of existence for God that we
are asserting?
So, is Logical Positivism right after all?
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Theism is so confused and the sentences in which 'God'
appears so incoherent and so incapable of verifiability or
falsifiability that to speak of belief or unbelief, faith or unfaith,
is logically impossible.
A. J. Ayer, Language, Truth, and Logic
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Wikipedia suggests A. J. Ayer (1910-1989) was an atheist.
Ayer’s position on the existence of God should not be
confused with atheism. Of course, claiming that God does
not exist also lacks analytic or empirical verifiability and is
thus also meaningless.
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Many (perhaps most?) mid to late 20th century philosophers
who abandoned strict logical positivism (including Russell
and Wittgenstein) still found Ayer’s response to this issue
quite credible.
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On the other hand, maybe the question is too obvious and
important to give up on, so let’s stumble on ….
The Traditional “Proofs”
The Ontological Argument
1.
Saint Anselm (c. 1033-1109) provided the classical
ontological argument (”proof”) for the existence of God:
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First of all, Anselm argues, God is that Being for
which “none greater can be conceived.”
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But if God did not exist, then we could conceive a
greater Being, namely a God that does exist.
•
Thus, God must exist.
Note: This argument does not give evidence of God’s
existence. It attempts to prove it.
2.
Unfortunately, the argument seems to suppose that
1.
Existence is a property of a thing, and
2.
Non-existence is an imperfection.
The Ontological Argument:
Kant’s Objection
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Immanuel Kant argued against Anselm’s
Ontological Argument that it defines God into
existence, that is, Anselm has formed a concept of
God that itself requires existence as a property.
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Nonexistence was an imperfection, thus God
could not have that property since he by definition
is perfect.
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And thus, Anselm is begging the question.
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Few philosophers or theologians today accept
Anselm’s Ontological Argument.
The Traditional “Proofs”
The Cosmological Argument
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Saint Thomas Aquinas (1225-1274) provided several
cosmological arguments (”proofs”) for the existence of
God that were of the following form:
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•
•
•
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First of all, Aquinas argues, “Some things
move.”
What moves must be moved (caused) by
something prior.
This movement (causation) can not have an
infinite regression for it must have an origin.
The origin of the movement (the cause) cannot
itself move (or be caused).
Thus, God (the original mover or first cause)
must exist.
The Traditional “Proofs”
The Cosmological Argument
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After Newton, it is necessary to refine Aquinas’ first argument
to refer to acceleration rather than motion.
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More damaging to his argument however is an objection that
questions the assumption that there can be no infinite regress
in the causal sequences of the universe. How do we know
that the universe is not infinite?
•
The “Big Bang” theory seems potentially to counter this
objection. The universe (along with space and time) does
appear to have had a beginning.
•
But the argument still does not preclude alternatives. Could
our universe have come into existence from events in another
universe and thus we could still have an infinity of events in
multiple universes?
The Traditional “Proofs”
The Cosmological Argument
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Aquinas believed that even if the universe existed
forever, then there would still need to be a First Cause
which would be God.
•
David Hume (1711-1776) disagreed. He claimed that
if one had an explanation for all the parts of a thing (in
particular, all individual causal links in the universe), it
did not require an additional explanation for the
whole.
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Many analysts, most notably Arthur Schopenhauer
(1788-1860), have argued that the argument’s
premise that every event must have a cause is
actually inconsistent with his conclusion that God
does not have a cause.