Transcript Class #8 - 4/29/13

Philosophy 1010
Class 4/29/13
Title:
Instructor:
E-mail Address:
Introduction to Philosophy
Paul Dickey
[email protected]
Tonight: Everyone discuss your flashcards.
Next Week Assignment:
Velasquez, Philosophy: A Text With Readings
Chapter 6, Sections 6.1 & 6.2.
One to Two paragraph summary of your strategy for
your class essay. Identify your two philosophers and
the issue you are addressing. Try as best you can to
state you argument.
COURSE EVALUATION
Electronic/Online Course/Instructor
Feedback
13/SP Availability until 5/16/13
Instruction Sheet will be on Quia site.
Discuss
Class Essay
Requirements for Class Essay
You are writing a short 3-5-page essay (computer-printed or typed,
double-spaced, 1” margins, Times Romans 12-point font).
1)
The paper must demonstrate your understanding of a topic
we discussed -- for example, the mind/body problem.
2)
You will need to identify two philosophers to discuss in your
essay in regard to your topic.
3)
Your paper will show specific and detailed understanding of
the two points of view on the issue by the two philosophers
which raises an apparent conflict.
4)
The student will discuss this conflict and propose in his or
her paper an argument to resolve the conflict. In doing
this, you will rely on your own independent thinking.
5)
You will need to explicitly identify a narrow sub-topic on the
issue that you choose that appropriately allows you to make
an interesting claim of your own where the philosophers
disagree on the issue.
Requirements for Class Essay
5)
You are free to select from a broad availability of sources
(but not Wikipedia). If you have a question about the
appropriateness of a source you wish to use, please
discuss this with instructor before you turn in your essay.
6)
You must use at least three sources, but not more than
five (otherwise your research could get unwieldy).
7)
Topic to be selected with instructor approval by next
week. By then, you should have a good idea what your
general argument will be.
8)
Essay are due when you come to final exam on the last
day of class. No essays will be accepted after that
time!!!
9)
The essay will be 15% of your course grade.
Any questions?
Requirements for Class Essay
Choosing a Topic:
1. Hopefully, something we have talked about in class has
interested you. For example, when you read Chapter four,
perhaps you will be intrigued, by the third “proof” for the
existence of God: the Argument from Design.
2. Pick two philosophers who addressed the question, say
William Paley and David Hume.
3. Focus your attention on one point where they disagreed.
For example, Paley and Hume disagreed about the strength
of the watchmaker analogy.
4. Decide what you think about this particular disagreement
and make a statement (a claim!) that summarizes your own
view on it. For example, a claim might be: Paley based the
watchmaker analogy on strong scientific evidence that
David Hume did not recognize. Notice that simply saying
“Paley was right and Hume was wrong” is not a good claim
because it is excessively vague. Now, have fun and let’s
hear your argument for that conclusion !!!
Requirements for Class Essay
Your essay will be graded as an sum of five scores:
a)
How correctly do you represent the view of the
1st philosopher? NO STRAW MEN ALLOWED!
b)
How correctly do you represent the view of the
2st philosopher? NO STRAW MEN ALLOWED!
c)
Is your claim reasonable and clearly stated?
d)
Do you give a good argument for your claim?,
and
e)
Technical areas such as grammar, spelling.
Did you follow the specified requirements?,
did you provide a bibliography of your sources,
etc.
Online Philosophy Sources that you
might wish to use in your term paper:
http://www.utm.edu/research/iep/
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/gpi/philo.htm
http://philosophy.hku.hk/psearch/
http://www.uni-giessen.de/~gk1415/philosophy.htm
http://plato.stanford.edu/
Chapter 4
Philosophy and God
(a Metaphysical Study)
Disk from “The Examined Life”
Video Series
Does God Exist?
•
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.
•
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.
•
Atheism is the denial of Theism. (Metaphysical
View) It states that there is no God of the sort
the Theist believes.
•
Agnosticism is the view that it cannot be known
whether God exists or not. (Epistemological
View)
•
According to Logical Positivism, the question
Does God Exist? is meaningless.
First, Can We Even Make Sense
of the Question?
•
•
Surely before trying to answer the question, one
needs to ask the following questions:
•
What does one mean by the word or
concept of “God?”
•
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?”
•
If we say that God is the “creator of the universe,” do we
mean:
•
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
•
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.
•
Note that if we mean the first, we have still not said who
(or what) God is, apart from what he has done.
•
If we mean the second, of course given the inherent
assumptions, then God exists. But have we committed
the logical fallacy of “begging the question?”
What is the Meaning of Existence that is
Being Used to Say that God Exists?
•
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?
•
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?
•
If not, then what is this form of existence (or reality)
for God that we are asserting?
So, is Logical Positivism right after all?
•
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
•
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.
•
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.
•
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:
•
First of all, Anselm argues, God is that Being for
which “none greater can be conceived.”
•
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
•
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.
•
Nonexistence was an imperfection, thus God
could not have that property since he by definition
is perfect.
•
And thus, Anselm is begging the question.
•
Few philosophers or theologians today accept
Anselm’s Ontological Argument.
The Traditional “Proofs”
The Cosmological Argument
•
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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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
•
After Newton, it is necessary to refine Aquinas’ first argument
to refer to acceleration rather than motion.
•
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
•
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.
•
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.
The Traditional “Proofs”
The Argument From Design
•
The Argument From Design, also known as the teleological
argument (thus being traced back to Aristotle) states that the
order and purpose manifest in the working of nature, and
particularly, human nature require that there be a logical
designer or God.
•
This argument is very popular today and is probably the most
prevalent and popular argument for the existence of God.
•
The best known early formulation of this argument was given
by the theologian William Paley (1743-1805).
•
Paley compared natural organisms to the mechanism of a
watch and by analogy argued that as the design of the watch
demonstrates the existence of a watchmaker, natural design
shows the work of a “Divine Agency.”
The Argument From Design
•
Relying on a multitude of examples including the
migration of birds, the adaptability of species, and the
human eye, Paley seemed to make a pretty convincing
argument given the science of the day,
•
David Hume did object however on the basis that as an
argument from analogy, the argument was weak.
Arguments from analogy are only as strong as our
knowledge of the relevant similarities. In this one, we do
not know how nature and living things are made and
thus that it is at all “like” a watch being made.
•
Hume was arguing against Paley’s assumption that
complex order can be produced only by an intelligent
being. That may or may not be the case, Hume would
say. Anticipating Darwin, he suggested that perhaps a
finite amount of particles in random motion might
achieve order.
The Argument from Design & Darwinism
•
Charles Darwin (1809-1882) filled in the missing
pieces of Hume’s argument by producing scientific
evidence for just what the mechanism could be in
nature to produce the order and appearance of design
that Hume was suggesting.
•
Darwin suggested that the process was one he called
natural selection. Over millions of years, Darwin
argued, random mechanical processes could produce
organisms that seemed perfectly designed.
•
Darwin contended that life forms exhibit inherited
“variations” that were gradually selected in a “struggle
for survival” to produce new characteristics of species
and even new species.
The Argument from Design & Darwinism
•
Others continue to defend the Argument From Design
while granting the possibility of natural selection
processes, rationalizing that it is then just the process by
which God produces living things.
•
But this later posture gives up a lot of theological
ground. It allows for God to act randomly and that He
allows harmful consequences to exist in his creation.
•
For many others, the Darwinian theory of evolution was
taken as a “threat” to the Argument From Design which
seemed to be the last bastion of a ultimate support for
the existence of God. Thus many theists to this day
resist the Darwinian view which meanwhile has become
the dominant scientific theory within Biology and has
also developed extended applications in other sciences
and our entire intellectual culture.
Do We “Prove” God Exists Because We
Can Talk Meaningfully about HIM?
•
We generally believe that only things that exist can have
properties. Thus, by referring to God with properties, I.e.
omnipotent, do we not “prove” that God exists?
•
•
Probably not of course. We refer to Santa Claus as
“having a white beard” and “living at the North Pole.”
Bertrand Russell proposed a Theory of Descriptions to
account for how we refer to things that may or may not exist.
•
•
Russell’s solution is to take names to be shorthand
for descriptions. For example, “Santa Claus” is a
person who goes by the description that he lives on
North Pole, and delivers toys to kids for Christmas”,
and the sentence “Santa doesn’t exist” should be
understood as “There is no X, such that X is a person
that lives on North Pole, etc., etc…”.
How is it Possible to Talk About God
without Affirming that He Exists?
•
For Russell to say “God does not exist” is to say
“There is no Being, such that the Being “existed” prior
to the creation of the universe, and then created the
universe, etc., etc…”.
•
Thus, Russell (as we mentioned last week) in using
philosophical analysis of language to clarify misguided
metaphysical constructions of supposed “reality.”
•
This seems reasonable enough, but Omaha native
and renowned philosopher of logic Saul Kripke has a
problem with Russell’s view. (Kripke graduated from
Central High.)
How is it Possible to Talk About God if We
are Not Asserting He Exists?
•
Kripke counters: But if Santa does exist, wouldn’t we
be able to imagine Santa not living on the North Pole?
Or wouldn’t we be able to imagine him not delivering
presents for Christmas? If that is so, then Santa can’t
be a shortened description of the type we presented,
because it would fail to refer to Santa in these cases.
•
And now we are back to Square One! Or are we?
•
Has what Kripke shown is that there are still difficulties
in Russell’s analysis, but NOT that the approach of
using language analysis by logic will not work!
•
Thus, as we discussed before, Russell’s theory though
technically perhaps in error has furthered the
clarification of the issue and has advanced our
knowledge, as has Kripke’s criticism of Russell.
Wrapping it up (perhaps) ….
•
If any of these arguments were successful, they still do
not demonstrate that God is necessarily personally
engaged in the affairs of you or I today.
•
Thus, they still may only be an argument for a form of
pantheism or panentheism, not Theism.
•
Baruch Spinoza (1632-1677) argued that if God is
omniscient (all knowing), omnipotent (all powerful), and
omnipresent (always present), then God must be
everything. There can be no world outside God (even
one he created).
•
Panentheism is an alternate view that all of the universe
is in God, but God is GREATER than the universe. God
is unchanging but also among all that HE is, HE is a unity
of all diversity, being and becoming. This is the view of
the Pragmatist Charles Peirce (1839-1914).
Atheism
•
Atheists such as Richard Dawkins (1941-) state
unequivocally that there is no God.
•
In taking a metaphysical position on the issue, Atheism
assumes the same burden in regard to all the issues of
meaning and evidence that Theism does.
•
Atheism must assert reasons that God does not exist
just as we expected the Theist to provide “proofs” for the
existence of God.
•
Many would argue that Atheism requires just as much
faith as does Theism, but is it really a matter of faith or
the strength of your argument?
•
The primary argument given by Atheists that God does
not exist is the problem of evil.
The Problem of Evil
•
The Problem of Evil in its simplest form argues that
since evil exists in the world, then God is either not all
powerful or all good. David Hume subscribed to this
view.
•
St. Augustine took a position against this view,
arguing that God created the universe and all the
good in the world but the universe he created is not
itself God and is imperfect, finite, and limited. In this
way, it allows the existence of evil as incomplete
goodness.
•
Many argue that St. Augustine does not resolve the
issue. Why would not God who is all good ensure
that there was no evil in His universe?
The Problem of Evil
•
A popular theological argument is that evil is necessary
for the Good to exist. But then is God not omnipotent if
he cannot create Good without Evil?
•
Another argument the Theist gives is that God allows
Evil in order to give man Free Will. But how does this
account for natural disasters such as hurricanes?
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Or maybe, they think, we are confused about what is
Good? What we think is Evil is Good in the mind of
God?
•
John Hick (1922- ) argues that the presence of evil is
necessary for Man to be made into the likeness of God.
Experiencing evil gives meaning to virtue for Man and
allows him to develop into virtuous beings.
Immanuel Kant
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That injustice exists in the world should not lead us to
reject God. Rather it should compel us pursue a
perfectly just world. It is a moral obligation.
•
To believe that such a world is possible with evil fully
punished and good rewarded would require a belief in
God and an afterlife.
•
And since all moral obligations must be possible, then
God must exist.
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According to Kant’s argument, we must believe in God
although perhaps we cannot know that God exists.
Agnosticism
•
Thomas Huxley (1825-1895) argued that it is
incorrect to say that one is certain of the truth of a
proposition unless he can produce evidence that
logically justifies that certainty.
•
Sigmund Freud suggested that our belief in God is
an “illusion” and had its origins in infantile needs
for a “father.”
•
Freud’s view was influential throughout the 20th
century but is considered by most today as an
insufficient explanation. Further, even if it were
true as a psychological explanation, that does not
make the claim that the belief is an “illusion” and
that God does not exist true. Such an argument
commits what is known logically as the Genetic
Fallacy.
“The Will to Believe”
•
William James (1842-1910 ) proposed that in the
absence of irrefutable evidence for the existence of
God, there still is justifiable reason to believe.
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James suggests that in this condition, we have the
option to choose what we believe. We do not have an
option not to choose, as perhaps an agnostic might
suggest. To choose not to make a decision is, for
James, to decide.
•
James discusses three fundamental characteristics of
such options:
•
1) “living or dead”
2) forced or avoidable
3) momentous or trivial
An Option is a person's decision among a set of hypotheses. A
genuine option is living, forced, and momentous.
1. A living option in one in hypotheses are live, i.e., they
are real possibilities for someone. Since I grew up
attending a Christian church and was raised to believe
that way, it may not be a real option for me to become a
Buddhist, but it is a real option for me to become a
Presbyterian.
2. A forced option is a dilemma— the hypothesis cannot
be avoided. I.e., for someone enrolled in this class to
come to class or not is forced. Deciding whether or not
God exists and/or we will conduct ourselves according to
that may be forced in this sense.
3. A momentous option is one that is unique and may
well be one's only opportunity. The choice is not trivial,
but significant, because one only has one chance to do it.
“The Will to Believe”
•
James then argues when an option is genuine
(that is, living, forced and momentous) and cannot
be decided on intellectual grounds, it is justifiable
to choose on the basis of our passional nature. In
fact, James would argue one should so choose.
•
For James, our “passional nature” consists of all
nonintellectual interests, emotions, desires, hopes,
fears, commitments, our deepest personal needs,
etc.
•
James would hold that when an option is not
genuine, it makes the best sense to decide to
withhold judgment until “the evidence is in.”
In Conclusion
•
W. K. Clifford, 1845-1879, argued against James (as did
Thomas Huxley), asserting that it is absolutely and always
wrong to make any judgment without sufficient evidence. By
doing so, you make yourself vulnerable to logical and factual
error.
•
To the contrary, James pointed out that this was one option
that could be chosen and one that would have the advantage
that it might protect us from believing what was false.
•
On the other hand, another option is to try to protect
ourselves from missing out on the truth and the truth that
would be the one that is ultimately significant to ourselves.
•
James would choose this option, while recognizing that it
itself must be chosen not on rational grounds, but on
passional grounds.