Philosophy 1010
Class 4/30/12
Title:
Instructor:
E-mail Address:
Introduction to Philosophy
Paul Dickey
pdickey2@mccneb.edu
Tonight: Turn in your Essay Argument Summary
Next Week Assignment:
Velasquez, Philosophy: A Text With Readings
Chapter 6, Sections 6.1 & 6.2.
By next week, you must have confirmed with the instructor your
final essay topic. I’ll answer any final questions in regard to the
essay requirements. You should have a solid idea what your
essay’s argument will be. Don’t procrastinate.
Last Drop Date 05/07/2012
Chapter 3
Reality and Being
(a Metaphysical Study)
Discussion
“Being Practical” vs. Pragmatism
A Thought Experiment:
How was Benjamin Franklin
interested in lightning? For its
usefulness or for its potential beauty?
Thus, was he practical? So, was he
a philosophical pragmatist? What if
ol’ Ben suggests to us that lightning is
beautiful because it can be
harnessed as electricity?
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Video:
What is Real?
The Problem of Free Will
The Prima Facie (or Self-evident)
Case for Free Will
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From common sense:
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I have a direct consciousness of being able to
do otherwise.
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I have a direct consciousness of causing my
own behavior.
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I accept responsibility for my decisions.
The Prima Facie (or Self-evident)
Case for Determinism
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From common sense:
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Everything appears to have a scientific
cause.
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It is not understood by what mechanism a
mental state such as a will or an intention
can cause behavior in the physical world.
•
We seem to be think it quite appropriate to
explain the behavior of others (and they us)
simply in terms of behavior or reasons that
they are unaware of, even when the person
themselves would have said they chose to
do so.
Determinism
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Determinists argue that previous events and the
laws of nature cause all human acts.
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Human acts are predictable theoretically if we knew
all prior conditions and the laws governing those
conditions on the model of physics.
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Sir Isaac Newton (1642 – 1727) argued that
all bodies in the universe both the smallest
atoms and the largest planets act in
accordance with the universal laws of nature.
Determinism
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The Marquis de LaPlace (1749-1827) applied the
Newtonian conception and argued that humanity
is part of a causal chain, as is all phenomena.
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For LaPlace, free will is an illusion that we have
since we are ignorant of the appropriate laws of
human nature.
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John Hospers (1918 - ) argues that the
unconscious motivations for behaviors discovered
by Sigmund Freud determine all human action.
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Subsequently in the view of hard line
determinists, humans are not responsible for their
acts.
Libertarianism
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Libertarianism is the view that our choices are not
determined by the laws of nature. It is often referred
to as indeterminism.
•
One prevalent view of libertarianism is John Paul
Sartre’s existentialism. Sartre claims that humans can
be motivated by a future state, not a past state.
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Thus, we can conceive and choose “what is not,” i.e.
negativity or non-being. (that is, what does not yet
exist). To be determined would mean that what is past
or present could determine the future (what does not
exist.)
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Although man is radically free, most forms of
existentialism allow that man can also choose to sell
out his freedom and act as if he is determined by
desires and emotions. Yet, man is always responsible
for his actions.
Compatibilism
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Compatibilism argues that free will can be made
compatible with determinism.
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The general strategy of compatibilism is typically
to re-define freedom.
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Thomas Hobbes said that freedom was only the
absence of physical restraints and causal
determinants do not act as physical restraints.
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Although classical compatibilist views such as
Hobbes’ appeal to our need to explain the paradox
of free will and determinism, most philosophers
find it unconvincing and ignores the real issue that
cannot be “defined away.”
Compatibilism
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Immanuel Kant (1724-1804) gives us a compatibilist
proposal that does not merely redefine freedom. It
suggests that whether we have free will or not is not
absolute, but contextual.
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Kant says that when we act, we have to assume we
are free and when we try to explain our acts
scientifically we have to assume that those same acts
are causally determined.
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Even as determinists, when we go to a
restaurant we still must take upon ourselves to
order from the menu. We cannot sit back and
just let our desires and tastes take care of it for
us.
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.
•
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?
Is it Possible to Talk About Something
that Does Not Exist?
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We generally believe that only things that exist can have
properties. Thus, by referring to God with properties, I.e.
omnipotent, do we “prove” that God exists?
•
Probably not of course. We refer to Santa Claus as
“having a white beard” and “living at the North Pole.”
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Bertrand Russell proposed a Theory of Descriptions to
account for how we refer to things that may or may not
exist.
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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 Something
that Does Not Exist?
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Thus, presumably for Russell to say “God does not exist”
would be 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…”.
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This seems reasonable enough, but Omahan and
renowned logicist Saul Kripke has a major problem with
Russell’s view.
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Kripke counters: But if Santa did 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.
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And now we are back to Square One!
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.
•
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.
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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?
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The “Big Bang” theory seems potentially to counter this
objection. The universe (along with space and time) does
appear to have had a beginning.
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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.
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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.
The Traditional “Proofs”
The Argument From Design
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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 strongest argument for the existence of God.
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The best known early formulation of this argument was given
by the theologian William Paley (1743-1805).
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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
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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,
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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.
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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
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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.
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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.
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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
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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.
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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.
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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. William Dembski
(1960- ) argues for an empirical theory of intellectual
design and specified complexity.
Other Issues ….
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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.
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Thus, they still may only be an argument for a form of
pantheism, not Theism.
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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).
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Panentheism is an alternate view that all is in God. God
is unchanging but also is a unity of all diversity, being and
becoming. This is the view of the Pragmatist Charles
Peirce (1839-1914).