Arguments Based on Observation Flashcards
What did Aquinas observe?
Aquinas observed that natural objects/beings do not behave randomly, but moved towards a certain goal or purpose (end/telos).
What proves that natural objects are goal orientated?
Flowers can move in alignment with the sun throughout the day to get more sunlight. An acorn can grow into an oak tree. Water falls as rain and then evaporates as part of the water-cycle. The planets orbit the Sun.
Why can objects not direct themselves and must be redirected by a greater intelligence?
This is because they are either non-intelligent or insufficiently intelligent. Such things cannot move towards an end unless directed by a being which does have intelligence. A thing cannot reliably move with a purpose unless an intelligent being had that purpose in mind and directed it
How does God direct objects?
This is because they are either non-intelligent or insufficiently intelligent. Such things cannot move towards an end unless directed by a being which does have intelligence. A thing cannot reliably move with a purpose unless an intelligent being had that purpose in mind and directed it
What is Paley’s design argument referred to as?
Paley’s design qua Purpose
What is a summary of Paley’s design argument?
Paley’s argument that the combination of complexity and purpose, which we observe in natural objects/beings, is best explained by a designer.
What is the analogy of the watch?
If you were walking on a heath and come across a rock, you could easily think that it had always been lying there. However, the situation is quite different if instead we came across a watch. It is composed of parts which are intricately formed so as to produce a motion which is so meticulously regulated as to point out the hour and minute of the day, being it’s purpose. Thewatch could not have come about by chance nor been there forever because it has Complexity & Purpose. This must mean it had a designer – a watch maker.
How is the human eye similar to a watch?
The human eye is arranged to fulfil the purpose of enabling us to see.
How is Paley similar to Aquinas’ argument if a designer/God?
This designer must have a mind, because design requires a designer who has a purpose in mind and know how a certain arrangement of particular parts will bring about that purpose.
Why is analogy a strength within design arguments?
When we cannot directly observe the cause of something, it is empirically valid to turn to analogy. If we can explain something similar, it is reasonable to expect the unobservable but analogous thing to have an analogous explanation.
How does Hume criticise design arguments?
Even if we could claim an analogy between natural things and man-made things, for all we know there may be no analogy between their origin. Hume is pointing to how radically disanalogous the creation of the universe could be to anything else we know of.
What is an advantage of both Aquinas and Paley’s argument of design?
They both accept that the design argument at most shows there is some designer of great power, but it doesn’t prove the Christian God in particular.
What does McGrath say about Aquinas’ argument?
“A posteriori demonstration of the coherence of faith and observation” which shows the “inner consistency of belief in God”. The design argument shows that it is reasonable to believe in a designer.
What is Humes “committee of Gods” objection?
Even if we had evidence of design in the universe, that would not support the claim that it was designed by the God of classical theism. There could be multiple designers – ‘a committee of Gods’. So, the design argument doesn’t justify monotheism.
How does Swinburne’s use of ockhams razor object to the “committee of Gods”?
One God being responsible for the design of the universe is a simpler explanation than multiple. Swinburne also points to the uniformity of the laws of physics as suggesting a single designer.
Why is Swinburne’s use of ockham’s razor insufficient?
Simply showing the logical consistency of God with observation is insufficient. If that strengthens faith, then that shows that faith is irrational.
How does design arguments attempt to use empirical knowledge to counter arguments raised by scholars such as Dawkins?
Design arguments directly targets that position by attempting an inductive proof of God. They use a posteriori evidence as premises to inductively support the conclusion that God exists.
How does Humes evidential problem of evil counter to design arguments?
A posteriori observation of the world cannot provide a basis to conclude that a perfect God exists because the world contains imperfections like evil. The use of the problem of evil against the design argument tends to focus on cases of natural evil
What is Hume trying to prove about a designer?
A posteriori evidence cannot be used to show that the designer must be the God of classical theism.
How does Darwin’s argument of evolution counter to the design argument?
By the process of natural selection showed that order in nature was not necessarily evidence of purpose and design but could instead be explained by natural scientific means.
What is Richard Dawkins’ “the blind watchmaker”?
This is a reference to Paley. Dawkins is accepting that yes there is a watchmaker of the universe, but it is blind, meaning the mechanical forces of nature. What Aquinas and Paley called purpose, modern science can explain to merely be the result of blind evolution.
What is Tennent’s aesthetic principle?
Suggests that evolution could not have produced humans without God’s interference with evolution. How can Darwinian evolution explain our perception of beauty? It doesn’t give us a survival advantage, yet it evolved. Only God controlling evolution can explain this.
How can Tennent’s aesthetic principle be criticised?
Perception of beauty might serve some evolutionary function that we just don’t understand. Or it might be the biproduct of something which does provide survival, such as mate-attraction.
What is Tennent’s anthropic principle?
Our universe has to be orderly and the order must be of a particular kind for evolution to have been possible and thus for us to exist. This suggests that our planet has been specially designed for human life to be possible.
How did Swinburne and Tennant develop Aquinas’ theory through?
The strength of Aquinas’ approach, developed by Tennant & Swinburne, is the focus on temporal order.
What does Paley rely too heavily on?
Paley’s problem was relying on spatial order, which is the order of objects in space. The human eye is an example of spatial order because it involves the complex arrangement of things in physical space. Spatial order cannot justify belief in God because it can be explained by evolution or Hume’s arguments that it could result from chance (spatial disorder).
What is temporal order?
Refers to the orderliness of a thing’s behaviour over time due to physical laws. Temporal order is maintained by natural laws
What is Hume’s Epicurean Hypothesis?
Hume pointed out that if Epicurus was correct, then a chaotic random universe, given an infinite amount of time, will by complete chance occasionally assemble itself into an orderly one.
Why does Hume object to design arguments?
So, we ultimately have no basis on which to infer the existence of a creator from our universe. Hume concludes that the origin of the universe, “exceeds all human reason and enquiry.” The only rational thing to do is suspend judgement and admit that we do not know why the world exists as it does.
what is the cosmological argument?
The typical version of the argument is a posteriori, beginning with observations of the world and then concluding that some first cause or necessary being is the only explanation of their origin.
What is Aquinas’ first way of motion?
Following Aristotle, by motion Aquinas means any kind of change. Something can only change if it has the potential to change. So, we can understand change as the actualisation of a potential to change in a certain way.
What is Aquinas’ 1st way?
The unmoved mover, Inspired by Aristotle, Aquinas noticed that the ways in which things move or change must mean that something has made that motion take place.
What is Aquinas’ 2nd way?
The uncaused causer, everything we observe is caused by something. Using Aristotle’s idea of an ‘efficient cause’, Aquinas is talking about matters of objects.
What is Aquinas’ 3rd way?
Contingency and necessity, everything in the universe is contingent, it relies on something to have bought it into existence and also things to continue to let it exist.
What is Aquinas’ 5th way
The teleological argument.
What is motion?
There can’t be an infinite regress of motion. It cannot be that there is just an infinite chain of movers going back in time forever. There has to have been a first mover – a start to the motion we observe.
What is causation?
There can’t be an infinite regress of causation – there can’t be an infinite chain of cause and effect going back in time forever.
What is contingency?
We are contingent (dependent) on others, but there must be something which prevents the infinite regress on contingency.
Why is Aristotles prime mover a better explanation to the cosmological argument?
Aristotle’s prime mover avoids the criticism that Aquinas’ argument doesn’t reach the conclusion that it is a particular God/ sentient God.
What is a further criticism to Aquinas’ 5th way?
It argues the question of why infinite mustn’t exist, if it does not exist the first 2 ways collapse.
Similarly, why is God exempt from the rules of contingency and causation?
What is the possibility of infinite regress?
There could be an infinite regress and therefore no first cause. The universe could simply have always existed in some form. God’s existence cannot be appealed to as the explanation of the origin of what exists if there was no origin.
What is logical positivity?
Hume thinks an infinite regress cannot be ruled out a priori, since a finite regress can be denied without contradiction. The concept of ‘time’ does not seem contradicted by ‘infinite’, there is no obvious logical contradiction in it.
What is the principle of sufficient reason?
Leibniz takes a similar approach to the infinite regress to Aquinas. He accepts it is possible, but still says a God would be required to explain any series of contingent beings, even an infinite one.
What is the fallacy of composition?
The assumption that what’s true of a thing’s parts is also true of the whole. Experience shows that parts of the universe have an explanation (because they are contingent or have a cause/mover/explanation). To infer that means the universe as a whole must have an explanation commits the fallacy of composition.
Why does Hume object to infinite regression?
Hume questions why motion needs to have a starting point - in other words why infinite regression is impossible. Surely if there can be an understanding of a prime mover there can be an understanding of perpetual motion?
What is Ex nihilo nihil fit referring to?
‘Nothing comes from nothing’.
What does Leibniz try to prove?
This is because an infinite series without a necessary being would have no sufficient reason for its existence. Each being’s reason for existence would consist something for which its reason for existence also consists in something else.
How does Leibniz’s analogy of a geometry book correspond to the natural world?
Even if the world had always existed, we can still ask why it has always existed. There must be a sufficient explanation for every true fact, such as a universe existing, even if it’s infinite. That reason cannot be found in any of the contingent beings themselves. This is because since they are contingent, they require an explanation.
What does Russel conclude with?
The universe is “just there, and that’s all”. It is neither necessary nor contingent. We have no basis for thinking the concept of explanation is even applicable to it, whether causal explanation or otherwise. An infinite regress of explanation may be impossible, but we don’t have a reason for applying the notion of explanation to the universe.
Why does Hume reject a necessary being?
Arguably Hume isn’t technically saying a necessary being is impossible, just that it is impossible for us to conceive of or therefore know that such a being exists. The imagination is our only tool for knowledge of what is possible. This means the limits of our imagination are the limits of our ability to think about what is possible or necessary.
What is metaphysical necessity?
Saul Kripke introduced the concept. This occurs when it’s not possible that the world could have been otherwise regarding a thing existing due to the kind of thing it is. Cosmological arguments only need to claim God’s existence is metaphysically necessary, not logically necessary.
What does Aquinas state in ‘Summa Theologica’?
‘Therefore some intelligent being exists by whom all natural things are directed to their end; and this being we call God’.
What is Paley’s argument of regularity?
Paley observed that complex objects in the world with regularity. The seasons of the year happen with order, the planets rotate with order, gravity works with order. This order seems to be the result of the work of a designer who has put this regularity and order into place deliberately.
What is Paley’s argument of purpose?
The way things work seem to have been put together deliberately, with a purpose. The wings of a bird operate with such intricacy and with the purpose to aid flight that there seems to be a designer behind them. Paley uses the science of his day to show that on both large and small scales there is evidence of a designer.
What is Aquinas’ ‘necessary being’?
Something that does not rely on anything else for its existence.
What is the Epicurean Hypothesis?
Hume used the Epicurean Hypothesis, which says that, given an amount of time, all the particles in the universe would eventually combine in every possible combination. Eventually, a stable universe would be created and that could be the world in which we live. Thus randomness explains the universe, not a designer.
What is stated by Dawkins, ‘The Blind Watchmaker’?
‘In the case of living machinery, the designer is unconscious natural selection, the blind watchmaker’.
What does Aquinas state within ‘Summa Theologica’?
“Therefore some intelligent being exists by whom all natural things are directed to their end; and this being we call God”.
What is suggested by Leibniz?
“Why is there something, rather than nothing?” There must be a sufficient explanation for the existence of the universe, everything must happen for a reason.
What does Hume state within ‘Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion’?
“The world plainly resembles more an animal or vegetable than it does a watch”.
What influences Paley to reach his conclusion?
Paley’s argument uses the understanding of his day about machinery to conclude that, by analogy, the world must be a machine with a designer and creator. Paley uses regularity, order, intricacy, purpose and design to make his points.
What is the Fallacy of Composition?
It is an error to look for an explanation of the whole composition of a group, as well as the individual explanations for the members of the group.
How is it argued arguments from observation are baseless assumptions?
The assumption that all things are moved or have a cause or are contingent or have a purpose can be argued to be a logical fallacy because it is just that, an assumption.
What is the criticism of arguments from observation jumping to a transcendent creator?
Hume does not accept that we can move from the observations in the world to the idea of a creator who is the God of religious faith. The conclusions of each of Aquinas’ ways seem to move from a very narrow observation to a declaration that the uncaused causer is the Christian God. It could be argued that this is an error in logic because the jump is too far.
What is the criticism of the cosmological argument suggesting there must be a ‘special case’?
A special case who is an unmoved mover, uncaused caused or necessary being is a logical fallacy as it is not clear why God has to be this special case. There is nothing like the universe in existence, so why can the universe not be the special case? However the universe is still a ‘thing’, made up of matter, this point doesn’t fully explain where matter comes from.
Why is it a fallacy to say arguments from observation don’t fully explain God?
As the arguments don’t fully explain the existence of the God of religious faith, it means that God cannot exist. Hume himself was not able to prove the non-existence of God.
What does the recent discovery of the Higgs-Boson particle suggest?
The Higgs-Boson is self-causing, but does not explain why the particle was there in the first place.
