Philosophy
Higher
Metaphysics
NQ Support Material
2006
Scottish Further Education Unit
Philosophy: Metaphysics (Higher)
Acknowledgements
SFEU (Scottish Further Education Unit) gratefully acknowledges the contribution made to
this publication by Learning and Teaching Scotland who have granted permission to use
material previously produced by HSDU.
SFEU also thanks SQA for permission to reproduce parts of the Arrangement documents.
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Contents
Introduction
3
National Unit Specification
5
Guide on Learning and Teaching Approaches
7
Tutor Support Section
Debate One: Is there a rational basis for belief in God?
– The Cosmological Argument
– The Teleological Argument
– Agnosticism
– Guide to Resources
– OHTs
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27
Debate Two: Do we have free will?
– The Principle of Free Will
– The Principle of Determinism
– Psychological Basis for Free Will
– Compatibilism
– Guide to Resources
– OHTs
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45
Student Support Section
Debate One: Is there a rational basis for belief in God?
– The Cosmological Argument
– The Teleological Argument
– Pascal’s Wager
Debate Two: Do we have free will?
– The Principle of Free Will
– The Principle of Determinism
– Psychological Basis for Free Will
– Compatibilism
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Sample Activities
– Cosmological Argument Exercises
– Teleological Arguments Exercises
– Pascal’s Wager Exercises
– The Problem of Free Will Exercises
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Introduction
Scotland has long been recognised as providing educational opportunities to its citizens
that encompass both breadth and depth. The need to educate the whole person, and not
simply concentrate on immediately obvious practical skills, is also firmly embedded in all
Scottish educational philosophy. As a result education focuses on the dual objectives of
providing citizens with practical skills and knowledge related to employment, and broader
intellectual and social skills which enable them to participate fully in society and lead rich,
fulfilling lives. It is also recognised that these broader skills are increasingly important as
societies become more complex and ideologically diverse. Scottish society today has
been influenced by a wide variety of cultures and traditions, and it is therefore important
that all its citizens are able to develop and express their own values and perspectives in a
reasoned way. In addition, it is important that they are able to discuss and reflect upon
perspectives and values which may be different from their own. This can only be
accomplished through a process of reasoned debate and discussion which acknowledges
shared human experiences and also the validity of alternative views. Developing a
reasoned and structured approach to all forms of discourse will contribute to this process.
The opportunity for individuals to develop and discuss their own values and perspectives,
and learn to appreciate alternative values and perspectives, is an important aspect of
Scottish Primary and Secondary Education. For this reason the process of discussion,
debate and reflection features in many areas of the curriculum from P1-S4. The Higher
Philosophy Course provides the opportunity for candidates to continue to develop the
concepts and skills needed for productive social discourse and offers certificated
progression in S5 and S6. The Course is also suitable for delivery in further education
colleges and is appropriate for adult students who have an interest in philosophical
issues.
Candidates who gain a Course award will be in a good position to continue their studies
of philosophical issues in further education colleges or higher education institutions.
Those who choose to progress to study alternative subjects will also benefit: developing
critical thinking skills and the ability to reason effectively is an important part of the Higher
Philosophy Course and these skills are of relevance in all subject areas. This will enable
candidates to develop as members of society who can express their own opinions and
values confidently but also appreciate the opinions and values of others.
The Course consists of four mandatory Units. The Critical Thinking in Philosophy Unit
helps candidates to develop an understanding of good and bad arguments and the skills
necessary to reason in an effective manner. In the Metaphysics Unit candidates
investigate a perennial philosophical debate and the different positions adopted in relation
to that debate. The Epistemology Unit focuses on questions surrounding the nature,
sources and possibilities of knowledge. Moral Philosophy involves the study of issues and
positions concerning moral judgements and their nature.
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Aims
The Course aims to allow candidates to:
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•
•
•
•
•
develop critical thinking skills which are of importance in all areas of human life and
discourse
develop knowledge and understanding of philosophical techniques, issues, positions
and concepts which are relevant in many areas of human life and discourse
develop analytical and evaluative skills which will allow them to examine the
reasoning and assumptions on which the positions and theories they study are based
present their own ideas and opinions in a reasoned and structured manner
gain insight from the ideas and opinions of others which may conflict with their own
engage personally with a range of important questions and issues in order to inform
their own ideas and opinions in a way which contributes to personal and social
development.
The Course consists of four mandatory Units (Critical Thinking in Philosophy,
Metaphysics, Epistemology and Moral Philosophy). Although the content of each Unit
does not presuppose knowledge acquired in the other Units, there are significant
opportunities to integrate both knowledge and skills while studying the Course. In
particular, the knowledge and skills acquired in the Critical Thinking in Philosophy Unit
are directly relevant to the remaining three Units in the Course. Whenever an opportunity
to integrate knowledge and skills across the Units arises, candidates should be made
aware of this and be encouraged to maximise this potential.
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National Unit Specification: Statement of Standards
Unit: Metaphysics (Higher)
Acceptable performance in this Unit will be the satisfactory achievement of the standards
set out in this part of the Unit Specification. All sections of the statement of standards are
mandatory and cannot be altered without reference to the Scottish Qualifications
Authority.
Outcome 1
Critically analyse a metaphysical debate.
Performance Criteria
(a) Describe why a specific metaphysical debate arises.
(b) Describe specific positions which are adopted in relation to this debate.
(c) Explain the reasoning and assumptions on which these positions are based.
Outcome 2
Critically evaluate positions adopted in relation to a metaphysical debate.
Performance Criteria
(a) Explain the strengths and weaknesses of specific positions in relation to a specific
metaphysical debate.
(b) Present a conclusion on the relative merits of these positions.
(c) State reasons, based on aspects already discussed, in support of this conclusion.
Evidence Requirements for the Unit
To demonstrate satisfactory attainment of all the Outcomes and Performance Criteria
candidates must produce written and/or recorded oral evidence which samples across the
mandatory content of the Unit. The evidence should be produced in response to a closed
book, supervised test with a time limit of 30 minutes. It should be gathered on a single
occasion.
The mandatory content for this Unit should be assessed by restricted and extended
response questions. The questions should sample across the mandatory content. The
questions should allow candidates to generate answers which demonstrate competence
in all Outcomes and Performance Criteria. Sixty per cent of the marks available should be
awarded for understanding in line with Outcome 1. The remaining 40 per cent of the
marks available should be awarded for critical analysis and evaluation in line with
Outcomes 1 and 2.
If re-assessment is required, it should sample across a different range of mandatory
content. The use of a cut-off score is appropriate for this assessment. Unit assessment is
holistic in nature. When reassessment is required individual candidates should therefore
attempt a new assessment in its entirety to ensure that a different range of mandatory
content is sampled. The standard to be applied, cut-off score and the breadth of
coverage are illustrated in the National Assessment Bank items available for this Unit.
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If a centre wishes to design its own assessments for this unit these should be of a
comparable standard.
Please refer to the SQA website for the complete arrangements documents:
http://www.sqa.org.uk/files_ccc/NQ_Philosophy_Higher_10012006.pdf
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Guidance on Learning and Teaching Approaches
While the exact time allocated to this Unit is at the discretion of the centre, the notional
design length is 20 hours.
Candidates study one metaphysical debate from a choice of two. The relevant
metaphysical debates are:
•
•
Debate 1: Is there a rational basis for belief in God?
Debate 2: Do we have free will?
Candidates investigate specific positions which are adopted in relation to the chosen
debate. They also study objections to these positions and replies to these objections.
Candidates must study all content in relation to their chosen debate.
Throughout their study of this Unit, candidates will encounter philosophical terms which
are relevant to the study of their chosen debate. Examples of such terms would be
‘cosmological’, ‘teleological’, ‘determinism’, ‘free will/indeterminism’, ‘soft
determinism/compatibilism’ and related concepts such as infinite regress, reasoning
by analogy, causation and self-determination. Candidates should be encouraged to
become familiar with and use relevant philosophical terms appropriately when discussing
the issues involved and completing written tasks.
Candidates gain an understanding of specific positions which are adopted in relation to a
particular metaphysical debate. The positions are prescribed. However, particular
philosophers who represent each position are not prescribed. This is a matter for the
professional judgement of the teacher or lecturer. For example, in relation to Arguments
for Agnosticism, a centre may choose to examine the ideas of Thomas Huxley or
Bertrand Russell, or indeed both. Similarly, when studying determinist views, a centre
may choose to examine the ideas of Thomas Hobbes or David Hume, or both.
Care must be taken to ensure that candidates do not simply learn to describe these
positions but also learn to critically analyse and evaluate them in a meaningful way. For
this reason it is essential that candidates are taught how to recognise and explain the
reasoning and assumptions on which each position is based. It is also essential that
candidates study objections to these positions and appropriate replies. This will allow
candidates to appreciate fully the nature of philosophical debate and enhance their skills
of critical analysis and evaluation. In the Course assessment, questions will refer to the
positions and not to specific philosophers.
Specific objections to each position, and replies to these objections, are not prescribed.
These are a matter for the professional judgement of teachers and lecturers in light of the
resources available and their knowledge of the prior experience of candidates. However,
care must be taken to avoid distorting candidates’ understanding of these perennial
philosophical debates by selecting obscure or trivial objections while ignoring those which
are more common or substantial.
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Some of the content of this Unit can also be studied in the Intermediate 2 Metaphysics
Unit. If a centre makes the judgement that the Intermediate 2 Unit would be more
appropriate for a particular candidate, the candidate can be assessed at that level without
difficulty. However, it should be noted that there are differences in the skills assessed at
that level. If candidates have already studied the Intermediate 2 Metaphysics Unit there
will be significant opportunities to build on and develop the knowledge and skills they
have already acquired.
For candidates who study this Unit as part of the Higher Course, there are significant
opportunities to integrate knowledge and/or skills across the Course. The knowledge and
skills which are developed in the Critical Thinking in Philosophy Unit are relevant and
should be applied when examining the debates and positions in this Unit. The skills of
critical analysis and evaluation are relevant to all Units in the Course.
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Tutor Support Section
Debate One: Is there a rational basis for belief in God?
It is possible to teach the mandatory content of the intermediate metaphysics for debate
one in any order. Each element of this debate is self contained so there is no real need to
teach the cosmological argument before the teleological argument (or vice versa), it is
purely a matter of teacher’s preference. However, it is advisable to teach the material on
agnosticism after the arguments for God’s existence.
Teaching Outline:
a) The Universe Requires An Ultimate Explanation (The Cosmological
Argument)
The Cosmological Argument can be expressed in many ways, but there is no need to
discuss the many variants of the cosmological argument. The version outlined here tries
to explain God’s existence as being a first cause in a chain of cause of effect leading from
the beginning of the universe to the way things are at present. The general structure
followed here, and recommended for teaching, is as follows:
•
•
•
First, are some recommendations for motivating the general idea that an argument for
God might find a place in thought and talk about the origin and explanation of the
Universe. (After all, the contemporary propensity for relativism that is supposed to
allow room for God and religion often makes questions of God seem like a
personal/spiritual thing, it may not, therefore, be readily apparent to students why talk
of the universe and origins leaves argumentative space for debate about God’s
existence).
Second, comes the argument itself. This is presented in both semi-formal premise
conclusion form, and also with a general explanation of how the argument is
supposed to work, and provide an answer to the thoughts and questions motivated in
section one.
Third, comes three objections and (where appropriate) potential replies deemed
appropriate for the higher level.
Motivating The Cosmological Argument
To understand the point of cosmological argument it is helpful to begin with some general
thoughts about the nature, scale, etc., of the universe. (It should not really be a worry that
we are making use of astronomy or physics that students may find remote or difficult to
understand. The kinds of facts that are introduced here in order to motivate the
cosmological argument are available in a range of material directed at many different age
groups, including popular magazines aimed at children much younger than those dealing
with the material here).
One possible way of using the nature and scale of the universe to motivate the
cosmological argument is as follows: we live on the earth, which in itself a very complex
and amazing place. The earth is one of nine equally complex planets that orbit the sun.
The sun is our nearest star, of millions in our galaxy. Our galaxy is part of a cluster of
nearer galaxies, and there are millions of such galaxies and galaxy-clusters strewn
across hundreds of millions of light years of space. The distances between are great,
unfathomable, and reveal the vastness of the physical system of which we occupy a
minuscule part at best. This is the Universe: a vast, intricate, amazing thing.
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Now, if we look at any particular part of this vast intricate thing, it seems that we can ask
of it, ‘what caused this thing?’. And when we have an answer, it looks as though we can
ask the same question again. So, if we know that Y caused X, we can ask, ‘what caused
Y?’. And if we discover that the answer is Z, we can ask what caused Z. And so on.
Indeed, it looks as though we can keep on asking these questions for what looks like an
infinity.
An interesting thought, though, is this. If we keep asking those questions, eventually, we
may find ourselves looking at a cause that existed a long time ago in the past. Indeed,
since astronomers have discovered that the universe very likely began with the big bang
some 13.7 billion years ago, we might find ourselves looking at the big bang as a cause.
But then what? Can we ask what caused the big bang? Do we need a cause that came
from before the universe and time began? This all starts to look worrying, and
complicated. If we continue asking ‘what caused this?’, even after we reach the beginning
of the universe and time, not only it is hard to see how we can find an answer, but it looks
as though whatever answer we do find will face the very same question. If we aren’t going
to keep on pursuing an infinite chain of causes, we need something that can be a cause
for something else, but of which we need not ask the question ‘what caused this?’:
perhaps this is where God comes in useful.
The Cosmological Argument
The kinds of thoughts and arguments that we have just outlined about the universe and
how all things in it are caused by something else leading to a potential infinity of causes,
reflect, broadly, the thoughts of Thomas Aquinas. Aquinas thought that the universe must
have been caused by something that was uncaused, something he called ‘the first cause’.
More importantly, though, Aquinas thought a cause which does not itself require a further
cause was just a description of God. That is, Aquinas thought that the only thing that
could be a first cause was God.
Put formally, the cosmologial argument runs roughly as follows:
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
Everything has a cause.
Nothing is its own cause.
A chain of causes cannot be infinite.
There must be a ‘first cause’.
God is the ‘first cause’.
It is worth looking at some of the premises in this argument is slightly more detail. In
particular, Premise 3, the relationship between Premise 1 and Premise 4, and the
conclusion and line 5.
Premise 3
To begin with, let’s look at Premise 3. Why should we think that a chain of causes cannot
be infinite? First of all, there are the conceptual difficulties hinted at above. If we know
that the universe has a beginning, then it seems hard to see how chains of causes could
stretch back beyond that beginning; infinite chains seem out of place in a universe which
began at finite point. However, Aquinas’s original argument for 3 did not need us to
assume that the universe had a beginning, and gives other reasons for thinking that
chains of causes cannot be infinite. Aquinas argues that if we were to remove a cause
from a chain of causes and effects, then all the effects of that follow the removed cause
will also cease to be. (We can think of this as something like removing a domino from a
chain of dominoes, all those dominoes that follow will not fall over.)
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But, argues Aquinas, to deny that there exists a first cause is to remove a cause from the
chain of causes and effects. But if that cause were removed, then everything that follows
it ought not to be here. But the world is here, just look out the window. So there cannot be
an infinite regress of causes.
One final, and interesting, reason for thinking that there cannot be a chain of infinite
causes comes from Kant. Kant argues that an infinite chain of causes is something that,
by definition, could never be completed. Now if the causes that lead up to the existence of
us and the world really stretched off into an infinite past, then there would have to be an
infinity of causes occurring before the world could come to be. But if there were an infinity
of causes stretching off into the past, they could never be completed. In which case, the
present state of things could never come to be. But, the present state of things has come
to be. So, there cannot be an infinite chain of causes.
The Relationship between Premises 1 and 4
At first glance, it looks as though Premises 1 and 4 contradict each other. Premise 1
states that everything has a cause. Premise 4 on the other hand states that there must be
a first cause, that is, a cause which does not itself require a further cause. If Premise 4 is
correct and there must be a cause without a cause, then it is wrong to also claim that
everything has a cause. And on the other hand, if Premise 1 is correct and everything has
a cause, then it is wrong to also claim that there must be a cause without a cause. This
has lead many to suggest that the cosmological argument is obviously wrong. However,
the contradiction is only apparent.
If you look at the argument closely, it takes the rough form of a reductio ad absurdum.
That is, on the basis of the first three lines, it creates a problem which means we must
reject one of those premises and accept an alternative in its place. In this argument, the
problem that arises on the basis of assuming, from Premises 1 and 2, that there is a
infinite chain of causes, is that there cannot be an infinite chain of causes (for the reasons
we mentioned above). What this means is that we must reject one of the premises (in this
case Premise 1), and accept an alternative (Premise 4) that allows that there is at least
one thing that is not caused. If you look at the argument this way, you can see that the
tension between Premises 1 and 4 is just part of the way the argument works, and that
we have only assumed 4, because we have derived a problem from assuming 1.
The Conclusion at Line 5
Although we have said that the cosmological argument in general, and Aquinas’ version
in particular, treats God as the first cause, it is worth saying a little more about this.
Although Aquinas simply suggests that ‘the uncaused cause’ is a good definition of God,
we might want some other reasons for thinking that God has to be the cause of the
universe. What kind of arguments can we give? One argument comes from Hume:
Whatever exists must have a cause or reason for its existence, it being
absolutely impossible for nay thing to produce itself or be the cause of its
own existence. In mounting up, therefore, from effects to causes, we
must either go on in tracing an infinite succession, without any ultimate
cause at all, or must at last have recourse to some ultimate cause, that is
necessarily existent: Now, that the first supposition is absurd, may be
thus proved. In the infinite chain or succession of causes and effects,
each single effect is determined to exist by the power and efficacy of that
cause which immediately preceded; but the eternal chain or succession,
taken together, is not determined or caused by anything:
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And yet it is evident that it requires a cause or reason, as much as any
particular object which begins to exist in time. The question is still
reasonable why this particular succession, or no succession at all. If there
be no necessarily existent being, any supposition which can be formed is
equally possible; nor is there any more absurdity in nothing’s having
existed from eternity, than there is in that succession of cause which
constitute the universe. What was it, then, which determined something
to exist rather than nothing, and bestowed being on a particular
possibility, exclusive of the rest? External causes, there are supposed to
be none. Chance is a word without meaning. Was it nothing? But that can
produce anything. We must, therefore, have recourse to a necessarily
existent Being, who carries the reason of his existence in himself; and
who cannot be supposed not to exist, without an express contradiction.
There is, consequently, such a Being – that is, there is a Deity.
(David Hume, Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion)
What does this mean? Well, what Hume is getting at is that the only kind of thing that
could be the cause of the universe, the first cause as it were, is a being that relies upon
nothing for the cause of its existence, and God is the only obvious candidate for being
such a cause. The point is that Premise 1 above says that everything must have a cause,
and, as we have asserted, this means that the universe must have a cause. But of
course, anything that is the cause of something is itself something that requires a cause,
and whatever the cause of that may be, itself will require a cause, and so on, potentially
ad infinitum. Now, if the beginning of the universe, as it seems to, marks the beginning of
all events and times, etc., then we need the cause of the universe to be special in that it
cannot itself require a further preceding cause, otherwise there exists something which
precedes the beginning of things, and this is plainly odd. The suggestion is that the only
way we can find something that could be the first cause is to postulate that this first cause
does not itself rely on anything else for its cause. And as we have seen, this would have
to be a very special kind of cause; it would need, as Hume says, to carry the reason for
itself with itself. The obvious candidate for this first cause is a being which has the special
characteristics required for being a cause of itself, in short God.
Objections and Replies
What should we make of the cosmological argument for God’s existence? There are two
standard and straightforward objections which students benefit from exploring; the first
because it helps to make the reasoning behind describing God as a ‘first cause’ clearer,
and the second because it allows students to see a common fallacy under discussion in a
metaphysical debate.
Objection 1: ‘If God created the Universe, who created God?’
The most obvious objection to the idea that God is the first cause that leads to the
existence of the universe and everything in it, is to claim that it simply relocates the
question. Instead of asking what caused the universe and everything in it, the pertinent
question now is ‘what is the cause of God?’. And of course, assuming we can offer an
answer to that question, we are still likely to need to answer the new question, ‘what is
the cause of the cause of God?’. This makes it seem as though God is an unsatisfactory
answer in the first place and the power of the cosmological argument seems to be lost.
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Of course, this is not a good objection, but exploring precisely why it is a poor objection is
especially useful for driving home why the cosmological argument posits God as the first
cause. The crucial thing to point out about with this objection is that, by and large, it
misses the point of taking God as the first cause. The universe and everything in it relies
on something else for its existence, that is to say, it is contingent, and if we took
something contingent to be the cause of the universe then this objection would, indeed,
be relevant; it makes perfect sense to ask the cause of something that relies on
something else for its existence. However, the point of introducing God to explain the
existence of a contingent Universe is that God is not a contingent thing, but rather, a
necessary thing, ie. something that relies on itself for its existence. So, if someone
caused or created God, then God would be contingent (like the universe) and not
necessary (like God) and so wouldn’t be God at all. In which case, this objection is not
relevant; it does not make sense to ask the cause of something that does not require a
cause.
Objection 2: Isn’t there a fallacy of composition in the argument?
It seems that much of what underlies our reasoning in the cosmological argument is the
thought that the universe requires a cause for its beginning. This is what led to us to
decide that we must have a first cause. But why are we supposing this? It seems that
because those things that make up the universe come into existence and require a cause
for their beginning, we are supposing that the universe as a whole requires a cause for its
coming to begin. However, this seems to take the form of the fallacy of composition.
The fallacy of composition is to mistakenly treat the characteristics of the parts of
something as though they were also the characteristics of the whole thing. For example, it
is plainly wrong to argue that because every member of the Celtic football team has two
legs it follows that Celtic FC has two legs. The claim here is that by arguing from the fact
that all things require a cause for existence to the conclusion that the universe requires a
cause for its existence, we are performing a similarly fallacious piece of reasoning; all of
the things that have come to exist are parts of the universe, the universe is the whole
composed of these parts, and we have no reason to assume that what is true of these
parts is also true of the whole. And of course, if we have no reason to believe that it is
true of the universe that it requires a cause to its existence, then we have no reason to
infer that God is that cause. If no cause is required, then no God is needed.
What should we make of this objection? Well one potential reply is to admit that we are,
indeed, assuming that what is true of the parts that make up the universe is also true of
the whole, but this is not always wrong, there are some characteristics shared by the
parts and the whole, and in this case, the characteristic of requiring a cause for existing is
one of them. To see this reply more clearly, think for example, of a jigsaw. It is plainly
wrong to claiming that if all the pieces are less than an inch square, then the Jigsaw is
also less than an inch square. But it seems to make sense to claim that if all of the pieces
exist, then so too does the jigsaw. In which case, couldn’t the idea of requiring that the
universe have a cause for its existence perhaps be more like the latter claim than the
former?
This is a slightly more sophisticated objection than objection 1 and leaves some
considerable scope for students to discuss matters and to differ in their answers to the
question raised here. Indeed, there need be no prescribed answer to this objection and
students should be encouraged to show as much support for their opinions as possible.
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Objection 3: Hume and the characteristics of necessary beings
One serious objection to the cosmological argument comes from Hume. For Hume, by
treating God as the first cause, we are postulating a necessary being, that is, a being that
is capable of being the cause of the universe but without itself requiring a cause. For
Hume, however, the nature of such a being will be remote and difficult for us to
understand. This leads Hume to conclude that postulating such a being in the
cosmological argument may be problematic. Hume puts it like this:
It is pretended that the Deity is a necessarily existent being; and this
necessity of his existence is attempted to be explained by asserting,
that if we knew his whole essence or nature, we should perceive it to
be as impossible for him not to exist, as for twice two not to be four.
But it is evident that this can never happen, while our faculties
remain the same as at present. It will still be possible for us, at any
time, to conceive the non-existence of what we formerly conceived to
exist; nor can the mind ever lie under a necessity of supposing any
object to remain always in being; in the same manner as we lie under
a necessity of always conceiving twice two to be four. The words,
therefore, ‘necessary existence’, have no meaning; or, which is the
same thing, none that is consistent.
(Hume, Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion)
What Hume is saying here is that whatever it is that a necessary being must be like,
whatever characteristics make it necessary, we cannot know what those qualities are;
they are beyond our conception. And if they are beyond our conception, then we have no
reason to assume that it is only God that must have them. It is possible (given that we
have no idea what those qualities are) that something other than God could be the cause;
perhaps even the universe itself could be the necessarily existent thing. So, just knowing
that some non-contingent thing, that is a thing which requires no preceding cause, is
required to explain the universe is not enough for us to say that that thing has to be God.
Hume’s point seems to be well made: what we are doing with the cosmological argument
is pointing out that something extra special, something which can act as a cause without
itself requiring a cause, is required in order to explain the universe. However, assuming
that this is the case, we have no reason to infer that the only thing that could be that extra
special something is God. All we have done is note that something is needed; it is a
bigger, and possibly unwarranted, inference to claim that that something is God.
One possible reply to this is that it is hard to see what else could function as the extra
special something needed to explain the universe. In many ways, God not only fits the bill
perfectly, but is also the only game in town. Some philosophers, notably Richard
Swinburne, argue precisely along these lines and say that although Hume may be right
and we can’t say that God is the only candidate for necessary being, we can say that God
is the most obvious cause of the universe, that is He may not be the only explanation, but
He is the best explanation.
A more important reply though is that although Hume may be right that we may have no
idea about the characteristics of a necessary being, the cosmological argument is merely
intended to show that God is required, not what He is like. The point of describing God as
a ‘first cause’, as with Aquinas’s original argument, is to identify an argumentative space
in which God can exist. If it can be shown that a necessary being is required to explain
the existence of the universe, then the cosmological argument has achieved its aim.
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b) Apparent Order and Purpose in the Universe requires an explanation
(The Teleological Argument)
The teleological argument for God’s existence is both old and persistent. The ancient
Greeks discussed it, it forms part of Aquinas’ proofs of God’s existence, and it is still a live
debate today, especially in the USA where Intelligent Design theorists have argued for
their own theories to be taught alongside evolution in American schools. The uniting
structure behind teleological arguments of any form are that they take certain
characteristics from the objects we find around us in the world, or even the world and the
universe itself, and argue that we cannot make sense of these characteristics unless
there exits an intelligent designer, namely God.
The precise characteristics drawn upon vary from version to version, but generally, the
claim is that such features as complexity, structure, goal-directedness, and fitness for
purpose are found with such frequency in the natural objects that surround us that they
point towards the presence of an intelligent designer. Some of the ideas behind the
teleological argument are also familiar or intuitive to most students. However, the
familiarity of the thought that the world might show the hallmark of intelligent design is not
equivalent to the well worked out teleological argument that is found in deeper
philosophical discussion. It is generally advisable, then, to work from the kind of informal
versions of the argument that students do know to the more formal, philosophical
expression.
The general structure followed here, and recommended for teaching, is as follows:
•
•
•
•
•
First, are some general recommendations about moving from the less formal versions
of teleological arguments already intuitive or familiar to students to the more formal
expression of the argument.
Second, comes more formal expression of the simplest teleological argument to be
discussed here, namely the argument from analogy, along with a less formal
explanation of how the argument is supposed to work.
Third, comes objections to this argument, and where appropriate, replies to those
objections.
Fourth, comes a discussion of a more complex teleological argument: Paley’s
argument from design.
Fifth, comes objections to this argument, and where appropriate, replies to those
objections.
Motivating The Teleological Argument
The clearest way into philosophical discussion of the teleological argument is from more
everyday thoughts about the presence of complexity, or apparent structure in the world
around us, and the idea that nothing so complex could be the result of an accident. We
might think of very complex things like eco-systems and the interrelations that take place
between different elements, or we might even think of something simpler, like an egg.
Consider the following quote as an example:
An atheist called al-Deysani said to Imam Ja’far al-Saadiq ‘Give me
an evidence for God!’ The Imam said to him to sit down for a minute.
A young boy passed by who had an egg in his hand . . . Imam Ja’far
al-Saadiq asked the boy for the egg, and the boy gave the Imam the
egg. Imam al-Saadiq said to al-Deysani ‘This is a complete system
which has a hard shell on the outside and soft shell on the inside.
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Inside that there is silver-like fluid and a gold-like fluid . . . it is not
known whether it is created to produce a male or a female; it hatches
to produce such colours as those of peacock feathers . . . do you think
it has a maker?’
(Imam Muhammad Shirazi)
The thinking here is quite clear; an egg is a small compact thing that contains many
things necessary to create the kind of thing that can grow from two fluids in a hard shell
into a beautiful peacock. How can something so complex not have been made?
Further, we can get other motivation for the thought that God is required to explain the
complexity in the world from religious scripture, for example:
The heavens declare the glory of God; and the firmament sheweth his
handiwork.
(Psalms 19:1)
or
And one of His signs is the creation of heaven and earth and diversity
of your languages and colours; surely there are signs in this for
learned.
(Qur’an 30:22)
The point of these quotes is clear; like many ordinary thinkers, the religious scriptures of
the world also suggest that complexity, structure, purpose, etc., provide an argument for
God existence.
However, despite the obvious point of these quotes we have yet to generate well-formed
arguments for the existence of God. So far, the best we have is to say that the world (or
many natural things in it) displays complexity and purpose, and so God must have
created them; obviously there are many steps missing. The job that we have now is to
turn the thoughts that we have started with into better, more well-formed arguments for
the existence of God. This is what we shall do now.
A Teleological Argument: The Argument from Analogy
The most straightforward rigorous teleological argument, then, is the argument from
analogy. Generally, the argument is that complex natural phenomena like the eye, the
heart, etc. display marks of intelligent design, in much the same way that the artefacts
made by humans display the marks of intelligent design. Further, the artefacts made by
humans display these marks of intelligent design because they are designed by an
intelligent being. Clearly, then, the mark of intelligent design displayed by natural
phenomena must be the result of being designed by an intelligent being. The only
candidate for that intelligent being is God. David Hume describes the argument as
follows:
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Look round the world: contemplate the whole and every part of it: you
will find it to be nothing but one great machine, subdivided into an
infinite number of lesser machines, which again admit of subdivisions
to a degree beyond what human senses and faculties can trace and
explain. All these various machines, and even their most minute
parts, are adjusted to each other with an accuracy which ravishes
into admiration all men who have ever contemplated them. The
curious adapting of means to ends, throughout all nature, resembles
exactly, though it much exceeds, the productions of human
contrivance: of human designs, thought, wisdom, and intelligence.
Since, therefore, the effects resemble each other, we are led to infer,
by all the rules of analogy, that the causes also resemble; and that
the Author of Nature is somewhat similar to the mind of man, though
possessed of much larger faculties, proportioned to the grandeur of
the work which he has executed. By this argument a posteriori, and
by this argument alone, do we prove at once the existence of a Deity,
and his similarity to human mind and intelligence.
(Hume, Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion)
The structure of this argument is something like this:
1. The world around us resembles the artefacts of human creation in that they both
display complexity.
2. The complexity of human artefacts comes from having been designed and made by
intelligent beings (humans).
3. We have no reason to assume that what holds for human artefacts should not hold for
the world around us.
4. Therefore, the complexity in the world around us comes from having been designed
and made by an intelligent being (God).
Claim 1 is simply a more concise statement of the thoughts we started out with; that
natural objects, like human artefacts, display complexity. Claim 2 is also the
straightforward point that human artefacts show this complexity because they are
designed. Claim 3 is the crucial claim of this argument from analogy. Put most succinctly,
it is the claim that like effects have like causes. The idea is that if we see two cases
where the effect is the same, we are entitled to assume that in both cases, the cause is
the same. There are numerous examples that we might suggest that make this seem
uncontentious; if we have two similar marks on a cloth, one of which we know is caused
by scorching, we can, with some justification, assume that the second mark is also
caused by scorching. The reason that this claim is crucial to the argument should be
clear; it is by claiming that the complexity in human artefacts and the complexity in natural
objects are like effects that we are able to claim like causes in both cases and so claim
God as the designer of natural objects. Claim 4, of course, is just the conclusion of the
argument and makes explicit the idea that emerges from claim 3; namely that if human
artefacts show complexity because they are designed, then natural objects, displaying
like effects and so having like causes, are also the product of design. And of course, the
obvious point is that the only thing that could be the intelligent designer of the world, the
universe, etc., is God.
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Objections and Replies
What are we to make of the argument from analogy? David Hume offers a range of wellknown objections, and it is widely thought that these criticisms seriously undermine the
argument from analogy. Hume’s most important objections, which we shall examine in
more detail below, are first, that the grounds for analogy between natural object and
human artefacts is too weak to warrant the inference that the argument from analogy
makes, and second, that even if the analogy is strong and permissible, it does not give us
the kind of God we might ordinarily think it does.
Objection 1: The Grounds for Analogy are too Weak
The main criticism is that the grounds for analogy are too weak for us to say that the
reason for the traits of design in human artefacts has an analogous reason at the level of
the world around us. Hume puts it like this:
If we see a house, we conclude, with the greatest certainty, that it had
an architect or builder because this is precisely that species of effect
which we have experienced to proceed from that species of cause. But
surely you will not affirm that the universe bears such a resemblance to
a house that we can with the same certainty infer a similar cause, or
that the analogy is here entire and perfect.
(Hume, Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion)
For Hume, the world or the universe is dissimilar enough to human artefacts for us to
think that the analogy fails. What he means is that although we can suggest that
similarities exist, these similarities might well be insignificant, and certainly not strong
enough to provide a basis for any argument that God exists. By way of driving his point
home, Hume extends this criticism by pointing out that the analogy is so weak, that we
can, in principle, draw similarities between the universe and a whole range of things:
The world plainly resembles more an animal or a vegetable than it does
a watch or a knitting loom. Its cause, therefore, it is more probable
resembles the cause of the former. The cause of the former is
generation or vegetation. The cause, therefore, of the world, we may
infer to be something similar or analogous to generation or vegetation.
(Hume, Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion)
Are we to assume, then, that this provides a good argument for thinking that the universe
developed organically, in much the same way as a vegetable? It seems that such an
argument could work in much the same way as the design argument, by providing a
ground for analogy and drawing an inference on the basis of that. Now, if we can draw
analogies between the universe and things that are designed on the one hand, and
between the universe and things that are not designed on the other, then why should we
think that one argument from analogy is any more convincing than the other? It looks as
though this particular teleological argument is not too convincing.
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Objection 2: The Many Designers Objection
The second interesting objection from Hume is that even if the argument from analogy is
accepted, it is not clear that it delivers the kind of God we would want. The thought is that
what we want to argue for is more that just the existence of God. Indeed, for many
people, we are trying to argue for a particular kind of God, for example, the God of
Christian, Jewish or Muslim religions. However, by saying that intelligent designers
created human artefacts and by analogy an intelligent designer designed the universe,
we do not automatically entitle ourselves to claim that it is this kind of God whose
existence we have proved. The best way of pointing this out is to note this point from
Hume:
A great number of men join in building a house or ship, in rearing
a city, in framing a commonwealth; why may not several deities
combine in contriving and framing a world?
(Hume, Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion)
What Hume is quite rightly pointing out here is that by the analogy, we have said that
human artefacts are made by intelligent designers, that is, by many humans; however,
the claim we want to make from the analogy is that the universe is made by an intelligent
designer, with particular characteristics. As things stand, we can’t be sure that whatever
did create the universe was a single creator, let alone a benevolent, omnipotent,
omniscient God. Note that this objection does not deny the possibility of a God; it just
notes that there is nothing in the argument from analogy that allows the claim that the
intelligent designer of the universe could be the God we have in mind.
Paley’s Teleological Argument
In many ways the argument from analogy is too simplistic, and has too many obvious
weaknesses. However, there is a development of the argument from analogy from the
19th Century Churchman William Paley which uses many of the same starting points, but
is certainly more sophisticated than the simple argument from analogy. A good
summarising statement of Paley’s argument is this:
[S]uppose I found a watch upon the ground, and it should be inquired
how the watch happened to be in that place, I should hardly think …
that, for anything I knew, the watch might have always been there. Yet
why should not this answer serve for the watch as well as for [a] stone
[that happened to be lying on the ground]?… For this reason, and for no
other; viz., that, if the different parts had been differently shaped from
what they are, if a different size from what they are, or placed after any
other manner, or in any order than that in which they are placed, either
no motion at all would have been carried on in the machine, or none
which would have answered the use that is now served by it.
(William Paley, Natural Theology)
What Paley is doing here is examining what marks the watch as designed. The key mark
of design which he identifies is that it performs a role that we take to be useful, that is, it
keeps time. Moreover, so Paley’s teleological argument goes, the watch could not
actually fulfil this role if it had been different in some way. This precise fitness to fulfil a
role tells us that the watch is purposefully this way.
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Having noted the characteristics which indicate design, Paley then goes on to conclude
that natural objects also have such characteristics. We shall examine this further in a
moment, but first, we must make something clear; this is not a simple argument from
analogy, despite the fact that, superficially, it looks as though Paley is saying that the
world is like a watch. As a matter of fact, Paley’s is not drawing an analogy, but pointing
out the features of the watch which he thinks indicate its being designed. He then goes on
to say that human artefacts are not the only things that display these features. In short, he
is identifying why we would think that the watch is designed and then pointing out that
natural objects have these features too.
To be clear, an argument from analogy, identifies one characteristic shared by different
objects, and then assumes on that basis, that other, related, characteristics are shared
too. Formally, the argument runs thus:
1.
2.
3.
4.
Human artefacts have characteristic Y.
Natural objects also have characteristic Y.
Human artefacts have characteristic Y because they also have characteristic Z.
Therefore, Natural objects also have characteristic Z.
Paley’s argument, although often construed this way, doesn’t take this form. Rather,
Paley uses the watch (whose characteristics he discusses for two chapters) to get clear
about the characteristics which designed objects (regardless of who designed them)
have. He then searches for, and finds, these characteristics in the natural world. Put more
formally, Paley’s argument runs roughly like this:
1. Some natural objects display design-like properties (they display a precise fitness to
purpose).
2. Design-like properties are the result of intelligent design.
3. Therefore, Natural objects are the product of design.
Notice that in this argument, there is no reference to human artefacts at all and so no
analogy being drawn. This is why, when properly construed, Paley’s argument is not a
simple analogical argument.
So, why does Paley think that natural objects also display the kind of purposive design he
identifies in the watch? A good example comes from the natural world. Think of
something like the length of a sword-billed hummingbird’s beak. These birds have thin
beaks three or more inches longer than their bodies and are perfectly suited to feed on
the flowers that grow in their habitat. All the flowers in the sword-billed hummingbird’s
habitat keep their nectar a long way from the opening of their flowers and any bird taking
this nectar needs a very long, thin beak. This makes the sword-bill’s beak perfectly suited
for its purpose. In fact, the minutest change in the length or breadth of the sword-bill’s
beak would mean that this particular hummingbird would be unable to feed and so would
soon become extinct. This precise complexity fitted to purpose is something we have
already seen in the watch, and as Paley points out, such a characteristic only arises
through purposive design. And of course, the final step is obvious. We know who the
designer of the watch is since we, humankind, designed it. But we know that we did not
design the hummingbird’s beak even though it bears the hallmark of purposive design,
and of course, we have to conclude that the only thing that could be the designer behind
the purposive design in nature is God.
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Objection: Evolution explains precise complexity fitted to purpose in nature
The first point we might raise against Paley’s argument is that it may not be so clear as
Paley assumes what the role or purpose that natural objects display is, and perhaps more
needs to be said on Paley’s part. However, the real problem with Paley’s argument is a
very famous theory: evolution. We know that the theory of evolution suggests that
complex biological organisms (the things which Paley thinks display purposive design)
evolved gradually over millions of years from simpler organisms through a process of
natural selection. Clearly, then, Darwin’s theory of evolution and natural selection gives
us an alternative way to explain the phenomena (complex functionality) that leads Paley
to think that a designer has left his mark.
To see this in terms of an example, think of the hummingbird’s beak again: the reason the
sword-billed hummingbird’s beak is so fit for purpose is that in that habitat, it is the only
one that works. Imagine that many thousands of years ago, there were many
hummingbirds with many different lengths of beak, and many flowers of differing lengths
too. Then, because of a sudden change in the environment, the shorter flowers died out.
This meant that only birds with long beaks who were able to get at the nectar in the
longer flowers were able to feed and survive. The birds with shorter beaks died out, and
the birds with long beaks thrived in their specialised habitat. Thousands of years later,
when all those birds with inappropriate beaks have died out, we come across this
environment and note that the long beaked birds fit so perfectly in this environment that
any change in the length of their beaks would see them become extinct. Obviously, had
we seen the thousands of years of natural selection that lead to this point, we wouldn’t
see the long bird beaks as designed for the environment, but rather as the result of
weaker less well fitted birds dying out. What this seems to do for Paley’s argument is
explain complexity and fitness for purpose without positing God as a designer. This
seems to render Paley’s teleological argument defunct.
There is, of course, a response here, often forwarded by Intelligent Design theorists:
evolution does not necessarily contradict the idea of intelligent design, rather, it could be
the tool of an intelligent designer. For example, the reason that hummingbird beaks are fit
for their purpose is indeed because they have evolved that way, but evolution could, in
fact, be the tool that God used to ensure that hummingbird beaks turned out the way He
intended. In effect, this does not argue against evolution, but rather co-opts it by claiming
that it is not, in fact, random. Of course, such a response would need to explain why there
exists in nature so many things which are either poorly designed, (eg. the shared food/air
passages in mammals) or apparently superfluous (the human appendix). If God is an
intelligent designer who can use guided evolution to effect his designs, why are so many
of His designs apparently so poor?
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c) It is impossible to decide if God exists
Agnosticism
Anyone who decides that it may be impossible to decide whether or not God exists might
be described as an agnostic. We shall look at why one might be an agnostic in a moment,
but first, it is important to note is that there is a distinction between being an agnostic and
being an atheist. These two concepts are often run together, since both agnostics and
atheists seem to find themselves uncommitted to the existence of God. However, the
atheist argues against the existence of God, while the agnostic argues that there is
insufficient evidence to decide either for or against God. So, why be an agnostic?
It may well already be apparent from looking at the cosmological and teleological
arguments that those who want argue for the existence of God (theists) and those that
want to argue against the existence of God (atheists) are adept at countering each others
arguments and objections. Moreover, a failure to prove that God does not exist is not
proof that God does not exist, (and vice versa). Even so, the agnostic is not committed to
saying that since there are no obvious winners it is better to sit on the fence. Rather, the
agnostic is best construed as saying that the evidence available might be used to support
either sides’ argument and that, until evidence becomes decisive, we have a
responsibility not to believe in one thing or the other. To see how this might work, think of
the discussion of the hummingbird’s beak in our discussion of the teleological argument.
It looks as though we have a bare fact: hummingbird’s beaks are perfectly fitted to the
environment in which they live. Both sides of the debate are able to use such evidence as
support for their preferred conclusion; intelligent design theorists take this apparent
fitness to purpose to be evidence of God’s existence, atheists on the other hand take this
to a sign of evolution and natural selection and so evidence that God does not exist. The
agnostic has to say that this piece of evidence does not decide the argument either way,
and that to believe either way on the basis of that would be irresponsible.
A way of understanding the agnostic’s position in slightly different terms comes from
some examples used by the nineteenth century mathematician, W.K. Clifford, who, to this
date offers the clearest statement of the ideas underlying the agnostic position. For the
agnostic, what is crucial is that we arrive at beliefs responsibly. Clifford generates a range
of scenarios to illustrate the importance of this point. In one case, he asks us to imagine
the owner of passenger ships that are not in good condition. By reasoning that in the past
the vessels have successfully completed the journey, he decides to make another
journey. Unfortunately the ships sink and all onboard are lost. It seems that the evidence
upon which the ship owner based his decision was not good (the problems of induction
are well known) or conclusive. However, by using this evidence to form a decision
generates undesirable results, results which show that the ship owner has arrived at his
beliefs irresponsibly. For Clifford, we are in a similar position regarding the evidence for
God in that we have to form our beliefs responsibly, and forming a belief for or against
God on current evidence would not be responsible.
So, for the agnostic, there is no clear cut evidence one way or the other about God’s
existence, and if we are to behave responsibly regarding the formation of our beliefs, we
will abstain from belief rather than commit ourselves on poor or inconclusive evidence.
But is the agnostic right to make these conclusions? Next we shall examine an argument
that suggests that we have plenty of grounds for reaching a conclusion in the
theist/atheist debate, even if the evidence is not conclusive one way or the other.
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Pascal’s Wager
Suppose that the agnostic is right, there really is no conclusive evidence one way or the
other, and that without conclusive evidence one way or the other, we really ought not
commit ourselves to either believing that God does exist, or that God doesn’t exist.
However, one argument, from the French mathematician and theologian Blaise Pascal,
suggests that the lack of conclusive evidence one way or the other is no reason for us not
to commit ourselves to believing in God. In brief, Pascal says that between believing or
not, we should believe in God because we have the least to lose by it. Philosophers call
this argument Pascal’s Wager. Put more formally, Pascal’s Wager looks something like
this:
1. If you believe in God and God exists, you will be rewarded in the afterlife.
2. If you do not believe in God and God exists, you will be punished in the afterlife.
3. If He does not exist nothing will happen to you in the afterlife, whether or not you
believed in Him (He doesn’t exist to do anything to you in the afterlife).
4. Clearly there is more to gain than lose from believing in God
Therefore
5. It makes sense to believe in God
The central point is to do with hedging your bets. It may be easier to think about this in
terms of getting or incurring financial rewards after we die. If you believe that God exists,
and God does exist, then when you die you go to Heaven. However, if you doubt that
God exists, and God does exist, then you go to hell. Heaven means getting a multi-billion
pound pay off and spending the rest of eternity to spend it. Hell on the other hand means
incurring a multi-billion pound debt and the rest of eternity to pay it off. Of course, if it
turns out that God does not exist, you get nothing either way; there is no pay out in
Heaven and no debt problem in Hell. Here, then, are the potential beneficial outcomes
when you die depending on whether you believe or not.
God Does Exist
God Does Not exist
I believe in God
Win £10,000,000,000,000.00
£ 0.00
I do not believe in
God
Lose £10,000,000,000,000.00 £ 0.00
Clearly, the potential benefits of believing are a considerable amount higher than not
believing; the worst that can happen to a believer is that he gets no money. However, the
worst that can happen to non-believer is that he gets in a lot of debt and the best is that
he gets nothing. So, looking at it this way, Pascal’s argument is that even if there no
evidence either way on the question of God’s existence, we should still form an opinion in
favour of God’s existence since, in terms of potential benefits, it is plainly more sensible
to believe.
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Objections
There are numerous objections to Pascal’s Wager. Here are just three:
1. It isn’t clear that those who abstain from belief in God do so out of some choice to not
believe. Those who abstain do so because there is no evidence from either side that they
find convinces them. To put the point in a slightly different way, Pascal is asking people to
believe in God for reasons that seem entirely unrelated to the usual reasons we do or
don’t believe. Suppose someone tries to persuade me that someone rich is coming to
town to hand out money by arguing that if they really are, then I will get some of that
money. This seems like completely the wrong reason for forming such a belief. I would be
better to form such a belief on the basis of evidence concerning whether such a person
exists and whether they are travelling through this region. The best we can say for
Pascal’s argument is that it provides evidence for the utility of believing but not the
truthfulness of the belief
2. Look again at Pascal’s argument. A big claim is that if God does not exist, then a life
spent believing in Him is not a life wasted. However, this may not be an assumption that
Pascal is entitled to in a straightforward way. After all, is it clear that if God doesn’t exist,
we lose nothing by believing, or gain nothing by not believing? To put things slightly
differently, how much of religious practice involves abstinence, restraint, devotion, etc.?
These are good things in lots of respects (and not just for the purposes of religion), but
you might think that if there is no God and ‘life is more than just a read through’, so to
speak, then we might benefit from a good spell of reckless behaviour. It might give us a
more rounded view of life and enable us to milk every last drop of experience from the
short time we are alive. If we think there is anything in this argument, then it might well be
that something is lost by believing in God if God turns out not to exist.
3. There is a much bigger problem for Pascal’s Wager though. It isn’t clear that the real
Wager is simply between believing or not believing. Imagine this: you spend your life
chaste and pure, and devoted yourself to God by becoming a Franciscan Monk. You die,
you find yourself heading towards the light, thinking, ‘fantastic, the Wager has paid off
and God exists’. You then hear the following presumably loud and booming voice ‘I am
Ganesh; behold my infinite love and wisdom. Tell me why did you choose to follow the
false belief of Jesus and God when the signs were so clear that Hinduism is the truth?’. In
such an instance, it looks as though you followed Pascal’s Wager and came down on the
side of believing in God. However, it was not so simple and you chose the wrong God.
You have lost anyway. The point is simple; it’s not just a choice about believing or
abstaining, but about who to believe? There are a myriad religions, myriad Gods and so
myriad ways to get it all wrong.
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Guide To Resources
Texts
Cosmological Arguments
•
•
•
•
Blackburn, S. (1999) Think. Oxford University Press. Ch. Five.
(A simple introductory survey of the problem and useful in orientating students.)
Craig, W. L. (1980) The Cosmological Argument from Plato to Leibniz. The Macmillan
Press.
Davies, B. (2003) An Introduction to the Philosophy of Religion. Oxford University
Press. Chapter Three.
(A very popular textbook for philosophy courses on religious topics which students
should find accessible.)
Hume, D. (1948) Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion. (edited with an introduction
by Norman Kemp Smith) Social Sciences Publishers.
(Even if no other historical text is used throughout the unit, this one should really be
consulted. Hume’s Dialogues are easy to read and often state the positions in these
arguments more clearly than modern textbooks.)
Teleological Arguments
•
•
•
•
•
•
Blackburn, S. (1999) Think. Oxford University Press. Ch. Five.
(A simple introductory survey of the problem and useful in orientating students.)
Davies, B. (2003) An Introduction to the Philosophy of Religion. Oxford University
Press. Chapter Four.
(A very popular textbook for philosophy courses on religious topics which students
should find accessible.)
Dawkins, R. (1996) The Blind Watchmaker: Why the Evidence of Evolution Reveals a
Universe without Design. Norton Publishing.
(Dawkins is eminently readable and teachers and lecturers will find this text useful for
getting quick summaries of why evolutionary theory can easily account for the
complexity of natural phenomenon.)
Hume, D. (1948) Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion. (edited with an introduction
by Norman Kemp Smith) Social Sciences Publishers.
(Even if no other historical text is used throughout the unit, this one should really be
consulted. Hume’s Dialogues are easy to read and often state the positions in these
arguments more clearly than modern textbooks.)
Manson, N. (ed.) (2003) God and Design: The Teleological Argument and Modern
Science. Routledge.
(A useful book for teachers and lecturers who want to get some grounding in the more
scientific arguments against the cosmological argument for God’s existence.)
Paley, W. (1963 [1802]) Natural Theology. Bobbs-Merrill.
(Famous statement of the teleological argument for God’s existence, which is also
accessible to students.)
Agnosticism and Pascal’s Wager
(There is very little in the way of student-friendly material on agnosticism but teachers and
lecturers may well find something in the following books.)
•
Smart, J.J.C. and Haldane, J.J. (2003) Atheism and Theism (2nd Edn). Blackwell.
(A useful book on matters in religious philosophy and the debate between theists and
atheists, but really not useful for students.)
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•
•
Clifford, W.K. ‘The Ethics of Belief’ (1877), in Clifford, W.K. (1999) The Ethics of Belief
and other Essays. Prometheus Books.
(Classical statement of agnostism. Students may find it hard to extract the simple
agnostic claims from Clifford’s broader claims about the ethics of belief though.)
Pascal, B. (1966) Pensées (trans. A.J. Krailsheimer). Penguin.
Journals
All of the following journals specialise in the Philosophy of religion and frequently publish
papers relevant to the material taught in this module.
Disputatio Philosophica: An International Journal Philosophy and
Faith and Philosophy
International Journal for Philosophy of Religion
Religion
The Journal of Religion
Journal of Religious Ethics
Journal of Religious Thought
Philosophy and Theology
Religious Studies
Religion
Religion and Theology
Web Resources
There are many easy to find web-resources, but the following are to be particularly
recommended for both teachers and students.
Stanford Encylopedia (http://plato.stanford.edu)
Especially Relevant Entries:
Cosmological Argument
Teleological Argument for God’s Existence
William Paley
Pascal’s Wager
Agnosticism and Atheism
Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy (http://www.iep.utm.edu)
Especially Relevant Entries:
Design Arguments for the Existence of God
William Paley
Pascal’s Wager
Film and Radio Resources
Films
My Night at Maud’s (Pascal’s Wager) (1969)
Inherit the Wind (Evolution and Intelligent Design) (1960)
Radio
The Existence of God: http://www.philosophytalk.org/ExistenceofGod.htm
Intelligent Design: http://www.philosophytalk.org/IntelligentDesign.htm
Hume: http://www.philosophytalk.org/pastShows/Hume.htm
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The Cosmological Argument
1. Everything has a cause.
2. Nothing is its own cause.
3. A chain of causes cannot be
infinite.
4. There must be a ‘first cause’.
5. God is the ‘first cause’.
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Hume On Necessary Beings
It is pretended that the Deity is a
necessarily existent being; and this
necessity of his existence is attempted to
be explained by asserting, that if we
knew his whole essence or nature, we
should perceive it to be as impossible for
him not to exist, as for twice two not to
be four. But it is evident that this can
never happen, while our faculties remain
the same as at present. It will still be
possible for us, at any time, to conceive
the non-existence of what we formerly
conceived to exist; nor can the mind ever
lie under a necessity of supposing any
object to remain always in being; in the
same manner as we lie under a
necessity of always conceiving twice two
to be four. The words, therefore,
‘necessary existence’, have no meaning;
or, which is the same thing, none that is
consistent.
(Hume, Dialogues Concerning Natural
Religion)
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Hume On Analogy
Look round the world: contemplate the whole
and every part of it: you will find it to be nothing
but one great machine, subdivided into an
infinite number of lesser machines, which again
admit of subdivisions to a degree beyond what
human senses and faculties can trace and
explain. All these various machines, and even
their most minute parts, are adjusted to each
other with an accuracy which ravishes into
admiration all men who have ever contemplated
them. The curious adapting of means to ends,
throughout all nature, resembles exactly, though
it much exceeds, the productions of human
contrivance; of human designs, thought,
wisdom, and intelligence. Since, therefore, the
effects resemble each other, we are led to infer,
by all the rules of analogy, that the causes also
resemble; and that the Author of Nature is
somewhat similar to the mind of man, though
possessed of much larger faculties, proportioned
to the grandeur of the work which he has
executed. By this argument a posteriori, and by
this argument alone, do we prove at once the
existence of a Deity, and his similarity to human
mind and intelligence.
(Hume, Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion)
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Structure
Analogy
Of
The
Design
1. The world around us resembles
the artefacts of human creation in
that they both display complexity.
2. The complexity in human
artefacts comes from having been
designed and made by intelligent
beings (humans).
3. We have no reason to assume
that what holds for human artefacts
should not hold for the world
around us.
4. Therefore, the complexity in the
world around us comes from having
been designed and made by an
intelligent being (God).
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Hume’s Critique of Analogy
If we see a house, we conclude, with
the greatest certainty, that it had an
architect or builder because this is
precisely that species of effect which
we have experienced to proceed from
that species of cause. But surely you
will not affirm that the universe bears
such a resemblance to a house that
we can with the same certainty infer a
similar cause, or that the analogy is
here entire and perfect.
(Hume, Dialogue Concerning Natural
Religion)
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Hume’s Competing Analogy
The world plainly resembles more
an animal or a vegetable than it
does a watch or a knitting loom. Its
cause, therefore, it is more probable
resembles the cause of the former.
The cause of the former is
generation or vegetation. The
cause, therefore, of the world, we
may infer to be something similar or
analogous
to
generation
or
vegetation.
(Hume,
Dialogues
Concerning
Natural Religion)
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Paley’s Watch Example
[S]uppose I found a watch upon the
ground, and it should be inquired how
the watch happened to be in that place,
I should hardly think … that, for
anything I knew, the watch might have
always been there. Yet why should not
this answer serve for the watch as well
as for [a] stone [that happened to be
lying on the ground]?… For this reason,
and for no other; viz., that, if the
different parts had been differently
shaped from what they are, if a
different size from what they are, or
placed after any other manner, or in
any order than that in which they are
placed, either no motion at all would
have been carried on in the machine,
or none which would have answered
the use that is now served by it
(Paley, Natural Theology)
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Pascal’s Wager
1. If you believe in God and God
exists, you will be rewarded in the
afterlife.
2. If you do not believe in God and
God exists, you will be punished in
the afterlife.
3. If He does not exist then nothing
will happen in the afterlife, whether
or not believed in Him. (He doesn’t
exist to do anything to you in the
afterlife)
4. Clearly there is more to gain than
loose from believing in God
Therefore
5. It makes more sense to believe in
God than to not believe.
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Debate Two: Do we have free will?
Unlike the mandatory content for debate one (is there a rational basis for belief in God?),
the candidates’ understanding of the mandatory content for debate two will be greatly
facilitated by presenting the material in a certain order. It is possible to present the
mandatory content in a variety of orders, but the ordering chosen here reflects a well
known, and usually effective method. First we shall outline some more ordinary and
intuitive thoughts about the freedom we take ourselves to enjoy, and what that means for
our practices of praising and blaming. Second, we shall look at the Hard Determinist
position and what this means for our more intuitive thoughts. We shall then look at, and
respond to some potential problems for the hard determinist position. Third, we shall
motivate and examine the compatibilist, or soft-determinist, position.
Teaching Outline
The best way to proceed with the problem of free will, and the method followed here, is to
draw out the very simple and intuitive thought that we assume that we make free choices
in our daily lives and that this assumption underlies our common practice of holding
people morally responsible for the choices they make. Having done this, we are then in a
position to outline the hard determinist position and point out that it undermines our
everyday practice of praising and blaming by undermining the claim that we have free
choices, and yet, it seems to be based on uncontroversial truths about cause and effect.
Having done that, we will then motivate the claim that what we most desire is a way of
making our principle of free will (and the corresponding practice of praising and blaming)
compatible with the well-founded scientific principles that underlie hard determinism. We
shall then offer just such a compatibilist theory.
a) Moral accountability presupposes that we have free will
The point about moral accountability presupposing free will is that we simply cannot
apportion praise and blame for actions performed if the agents of those actions have no
choice over whether they perform them or not. This is not a complex point and most
students will grasp it quite readily. All the same, it is worth drawing the point out slowly
and with a range of scenarios and examples as follows.
Imagine that you are playing football in the park. You have the ball. One team mate,
Claire, is marked by a defender. A second team mate, Harpreet, is unmarked. Who
should you pass to? Suppose that you pass to Claire and she is tackled. You might well
think to yourself, ‘I made the wrong choice there, I should have passed it to Harpreet, she
was unmarked’. And we could perhaps all agree with you about this. It looks as though
you had a choice about who to pass to, but selected the bad option.
We all have similar everyday experiences. For example, at breakfast we could chose
porridge instead of toast, or we may have decided to wear a blue sweater today, instead
of something red, etc. In general, then, we all seem to face options over our actions and
we seem to choose between these options. But these choices are quite bland and
probably without significant consequences. However, consider the following choice with
which I might be confronted.
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Suppose I am walking along the road and see someone trapped in a burning house. I
could do a range of things here: I could stand and watch, or I could raise the alarm and
call the fire brigade, or I could intervene and try to help. Suppose that I raise the alarm or
intervene. It seems that I made a choice, and the kind of choice that might result in praise
(I could get my picture in the paper, or be given a certificate of bravery). The point here is
just that it looks as though I can receive praise for my choices, and my exercising of free
choices can result in positive outcomes.
Here is another example or outcome. Suppose that I am the person who set the house on
fire. Moreover, I knew that someone was in the house and couldn’t escape. I didn’t have
to do this, but did so knowingly, and with intent. I could have chosen to do something
different and not set fire to the house. In this instance I made a choice that had a bad
outcome and it seems fair to say that I should be held responsible for my choice and its
bad consequences. I should be put to trial, found guilty on the evidence and sentenced
accordingly. So, it looks as though I can receive punishment for my choices and that my
exercising my free choice can result in negative outcomes.
So, what do these examples show? Well, we are just trying to say that it looks as though
we are often faced with choices and can select one option over the other quite freely; it is
down to us. Also, we are saying that in certain cases we feel that the actions that we
perform on the basis of our free choices warrant praise or punishment; after all we
choose to do these things. In short, we are pointing out that we hold people morally
responsible for the choices that they make. However, it is worth emphasising just how
essential we take free will to be for our holding people morally responsible for their
actions. Again, it is easier to do this with an example.
Although it is clear that we hold people morally responsible and punish or praise on the
basis of the choices they make, we also have to feel as though people are completely
free to make the choices and perform the actions they do if praise or punishment is going
to seem justified. For instance, consider again the case where I help save someone from
the fire and seemed to deserve praise. Imagine that the only reason I helped save the
person was because someone threatened to reveal a secret me about if I didn’t; I save
the person to keep the blackmailer quiet. Perhaps in such a case we might feel as though
my actions are less praiseworthy. Similarly, imagine that I am incapable of making any
choices at all and am, in fact, not conscious when I save the person; a scientist has put a
controlling chip in my brain and is working my body by remote control. In that case, we
might feel as though the scientist deserves the praise and not me (even though it was my
body that did the saving) because I had made no free choices about saving the person
from the fire.
And of course, we do the same kind of thing with the case where instead of saving the
person, I am the one who set fire to the house. If I set fire to the house because
gangsters have told me that if I don’t my whole family will be tortured and killed, or
because the scientist is controlling me but is not benevolent as in the previous case, then
you might think that I don’t deserve punishment since my actions where not really freely
chosen.
So, it seems quite clear that we feel that we can make choices and act freely and that in
cases where we hold people morally responsible and allocate praise or blame to them,
the idea that actions are freely chosen is especially important; we feel that actions must
be chosen freely if we are to hold people responsible. We feel this because we believe
that we have free will; that we are free to choose.
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We can summarise all the preceding thoughts and cases with the following thought which
we shall call the principle of free will.
Principle of Free will: Humans have the power to choose to perform actions, or refrain
from performing them, and so should be held responsible for the actions that they freely
choose to do.
b) The causal principle implies that our choices are predetermined
Although the hard determinist position can be introduced independently, it is most intuitive
to students to introduce it as either a response to the principle of free will, or at the very
least as being in tension with it. As it is introduced here, hard determinism is construed
not as a direct objection to the principle of free will, but rather as something which it
seems cannot be held in conjunction with the principle of free will. The reason for this is
that it leads in a clear and intuitive way into the compatibilist, or soft determinist position.
The previous section considered our actions from our point of view as agents; let us now
look at them from outside and consider how they fit in with the nature of the world. This
will lead us to conclude that this perspective conflicts with the Principle of free will. To
begin with, consider the following verse from the Roman poet Lucretius:
If movement always is connected,
New Motions coming in from old in order fixed,
If atoms never swerve and make beginning
Of motions that can break the bonds of fate
And foil the infinite chain of cause and effect
What is the origin of this free will
Possessed of living creatures throughout the earth?
(Lucretius De Rerum Natura)
What Lucretius is pointing out here is that the universe is governed by laws of cause and
effect. That is to say that every event in the world is caused by some previous event,
which in turn is caused by a previous event, and so on. What this means for our purposes
is that all of our actions have to be seen as part of a complex causal chain; part of a long
chain of causes and effects. One effect comes about because of a previous cause. The
present state of things (the effect) is the result of a previous state of things (the cause).
Furthermore, we know that the world works in this way, ie. through cause and effect; that
every event is the result of previous causes, and that our actions must be seen as part of
a complex causal chain are just the upshot of a fundamental law of science, namely that
every event has a cause.
What does all this talk of causes and effects mean for the problem of free will? Well, here
is an argument that relies on the laws of cause and effect and expresses the situation:
1. The past controls the present.
2. You can’t control the past.
3. In particular, you can’t control the way the past controls the present, because you
can’t control the past.
4. So you can’t control the present.
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The reason that this observation is important for the problem of free will is that having no
control clearly means having no choice. If you have no control over the present (by virtue
of having no control over the past), then nothing you do now is something you have
control over, you have no choice in what you do. Here is a slightly different way of putting
it. Suppose that I have porridge for breakfast. For me to have porridge for breakfast, the
world needs to be set up in a certain way. I need to have bought porridge, farmers need
to have grown oats, etc. Now, whenever the world is set up in precisely this way, I will
have porridge. If I have toast, the world needs to be set up differently. This all means that
the causes of my having porridge come from the state the world is in, and the effect of the
world being in this state is that I have porridge. Now, where is there room for choice
here? If the world is set up one way, I have porridge, if it is set up another way, then I
have toast. And since this morning the world is set up (for lots of reasons that have
already occurred) in a porridge state, I am always going to have porridge: I had no
control. So, even though I might like to think that I freely choose to have porridge this
morning, I don’t have any choice at all, I have no free will.
This kind of argument is proposed by someone who endorses what is called hard
determinism. To put the matters that we have been outlining above more precisely, the
hard determinist adopts what is often know as the causal or determinist principle and
suggests that it undermines any claims we may make to having free will. The determinist
principle (which underlies all of this) is expressed like this:
Principle of Determinism: Every event that occurs, including every human action, is
entirely the result of earlier causes.
And as we have pointed out, the presumed upshot of this is that the present state of
things is determined by previous states of things over which we have no control, (they are
in the past) and without some kind of control over our actions, we have no freedom, no
free will and no choices.
All of this seems to be at odds with our practices praising and blaming, or holding people
morally responsible for their actions. If people really have no choice over their actions,
then it is difficult to see how we could be justified in holding them morally responsible for
those actions. If, as the hard determinist suggests, our actions are not freely chosen, then
it seems as though we are not really responsible for our actions. My rescuing a person
from a burning house is something that I was determined to do by the past state of things;
I did not, despite appearances, choose to save the person. It may well seem, then, that I
do not deserve any praise for my bravery. It is not as if I went against anything in my
character, I just did it because I am part of the causal make up of the world. Similarly, if I
started the fire, I was always going to do that; I never made any choice to do it. It may
well seem as though some nasty murderous vindictive mood overtook me and lead me to
decide upon burning an innocent person, but in fact, I didn’t decide to take any such
course of action at all. The world is such that I was always going to do this and had no
hand in the matter. I did not choose or decide to do it; it is just the effect of some past
state of things over which I had no control. We may well infer, then, that if I did not really
have a choice, I can’t very well be held responsible for the actions I performed and so
should not be unduly castigated or punished for my actions. This just seems to be the
logical upshot of hard determinism upon our practice of blaming, praising, and holding
people responsible for their actions: if hard determinists are right and there is no room for
free will with the past state of things controlling the present state of things, then we
cannot rightly hold people responsible for actions over which they have no control, and
apportion praise and blame accordingly.
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However, many people find this consequence of hard determinism unpalatable. Our
practice of holding people morally responsible is well entrenched and something which
we feel is valuable, and well worth trying to keep; we take the principle of free will to be
well founded. The concern is, though, that the determinist principle seems equally well
founded; the present state of things seems quite clearly to depend on the past state of
things. But of course, these two things are difficult to hold true together. If the principle of
determinism is true (and it seems to be denying some very common sense thoughts to
say that it isn’t true) then it is hard to see how we could make sense of the principle of
free will. One answer is to say that the principle of free will is wrong but this leads to the
counter-intuitive claim that our practice of holding people morally responsible for their
actions is unjustified. What we want is way to reconcile the two, that is, we want to find a
way to hold both the principle of free will and the principle of determination together.
However, before we move on and look at one way to try to reconcile the two, it is worth
pausing to explain one very natural concern that arises from the problem, and which adds
impetus to our desire to find a solution.
c) Psychological Basis for free will
As we pointed out at the very beginning, we feel as though we make choices every day. I
choose to have toast, and not porridge, for breakfast; I choose to wear red, not blue. And
so on. But if the principle of determination and the principle of free will are not compatible,
then what is going on here? Why do we feel so attached to the idea that we are freely
engaging in such choices? Well says the determinist, the idea that we can make choices
freely, that we have free will is just an illusion. An example of how the determinist
explains our strong feeling that we have free choices comes from this quote from the
German Philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer:
Let us imagine a man who, while standing on the street, would say to
himself: ‘It is six o’clock in the evening, the working day is over. Now I
can go for a walk, or I can go to the club; I can also climb up the tower
to see the sun set; I can go to the theatre; I can visit this friend or that
one; indeed, I also can run out of the gate, into the wide world and
never return. All this is strictly up to me; in this I have complete
freedom. But still, I shall do none of these things now, but with just as
free a will I shall go home to my wife.’ This is exactly as if water spoke
to itself: ‘I can make high waves (yes! in the sea during a storm), I can
rush down hill (yes! in the river bed), I can plunge down foaming and
gushing (yes! in the fountain) I can, finally, boil away and disappear
(yes! at certain temperature); but I am doing none of these things now,
and am voluntarily remaining quiet and clear in the reflecting pond.
(Schopenhauer, On the Freedom of The Will)
Clearly, what Schopenhauer is getting at here is that the water is not aware that its
actions are the outcome of a causal chain over which it has no control. It cannot simply
choose to boil. However, the water believes that although it might boil, make waves, etc.,
it has instead decided to remain calm and placid like a pond. We can see how strange
this is. Well, says the hard determinist, people are just like the water; they are undergoing
an illusion that the actions they undertake are somehow of their choosing. It seems then,
that any claims we might make against the hard determinist position on the basis that our
actions feel as though they are freely chosen are not likely to do well.
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The hard determinist seems to be able to make the very simple claim that the
psychological certainty we feel about the freedom of actions is illusory; we may feel that
we chose toast instead of porridge for breakfast, but this feeling in no way effects the fact
that we were always going to have toast.
It seems, then, as though the need to reconcile the principle of determinism and the
principle of free will is not only urgent for saving our practice of praising and blaming, but
also for supporting our feelings of making free choices. So, given that the hard
determinist suggests that our feelings of free choice are illusory, and our holding people
morally responsible for their actions is apparently unfounded, how are we to reconcile the
apparent conflict between the two positions?
d) Free will as freedom from constraint
The problem as we have set it up is as follows: the determinist principle makes sense, the
past really does seem to determine the present and it looks as though our actions are the
result of earlier causes. It isn’t hard to see how causal chains travel from past to present
to future, but it is hard to see how we can have a guiding hand in this. But, similarly, the
principle of free will seems intuitive. As we have pointed out, we do feel as though we
make choices, some good choices and some bad choices, and that because these
choices are freely made, that we can hold people responsible for their actions and
apportion praise and blame accordingly. However, it is difficult to reconcile these two
things since the principle of determinism seems to deny the principle of free will. This
impasse brings us to an altogether different theory about the problem of free will:
compatibilism.
Motivating the compatibilist answer
Compatibilists suggest that the reason the problem of free will seems problematic to us,
and the reason that we think the principle of free will and the principle of determinism are
in conflict is that we are not fully clear about what each principle means, and more
importantly, what we should properly contrast each principle with.
As a way of understanding what the compatibilist thinks the issue is consider the following
sentences:
1. A tree can’t play the guitar (it has no hands), but I can (because I have hands).
2. I can’t play the guitar (I have never learned how) but my friend Winston can and so
can his friend Deepak (because they have learned how).
3. Winston can’t play the guitar (he’s hurt his hands) but his friend Deepak can play (his
hands are fine).
4. Winston’s friend Deepak can’t play the guitar (his mum won’t let him) but Deepak’s
friend Nirmha can (her mum lets her do what she wants).
Now, there is something going on in all of these examples that is important for our
understanding of the compatibilist strategy for answering the problem of free will; we are
saying in all examples that one person/or thing can play the guitar and some other person
or thing can’t. But, there are subtle differences between them in that what we mean by
‘can’ and ‘can’t’ in each of these cases is slightly different; the contrast we are making
between ‘can’ and ‘can’t’ is subtly different each time. For example, in sentence 1 the tree
can’t play and I can because of some important physiological differences. It doesn’t
matter if I don’t have the know-how to play; the point is that I have hands so in principle I
could. In 2 on the other hand, we are saying that I can’t play and Winston and Deepak
can because they have the knowledge and I don’t.
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Note that in this case, having hands is not enough to count as capable of playing, we
mean something slightly different by ‘can’ and ‘can’t’ here. And in sentence 3, Winston
can’t play because his hurt hands prevent him, but Deepak doesn’t have that problem.
The contrast here is no longer one of physiology or knowledge, but one of physical
impediment. And in sentence 4 Deepak can’t play because his mum has forbidden him,
but Nirmha can because her mum is more permissive. The contrast between ‘can’ and
‘can’t’ here is no longer about physiology, knowledge or physical impediment, arguably
Deepak and Nirmha can both play the guitar in these senses; in this case, the contrast is
one of permission.
Compatibilism
What does all this talk of contrasting ‘can’ and ‘can’t’ in a variety of different ways mean
for the compatibilist answer to the problem of free will? Well the, idea is that in questions
of free will and determinism, the compatibilist does something similar. The compatibilist
says the reason that we think the principle of free will and the principle of determinism are
not compatible is because we are thinking about what ‘free choice’ and ‘no choice’ means
in the wrong way. We are contrasting free will with determinism when in actual fact, the
contrasts involved, as in the ‘can’ and ‘can’t’ examples above, are more subtle than that.
So, let’s get onto the detail of compatibilism more fully.
Now lots of people are, or have been, compatibilists, but one of the clearest statements of
compatibilism is this from the English philosopher A.J. Ayer:
It is not, I think, causality that freedom is to be contrasted with, but
constraint. And while it is true that being constrained to do an action
entails being caused to do it, I shall try to show that the converse does
not hold. I shall try to show that from the fact that my action is causally
determined it does not necessarily follow that I am constrained to do
it: and this is equivalent to saying that it does not necessarily follow
that I am not free.
If I am constrained, I do not act freely. But in what circumstances can I
legitimately be said to be constrained? An obvious instance is the
case in which I am compelled by another person to do what he wants.
In a case of this sort the compulsion need not be such as to deprive
one of the power of choice. It is not required that the other person
should have hypnotised me, or that he should make it physically
impossible for me to go against his will. It is enough that he should
induce me to do what he wants by making it clear to me that, if I do
not, he will bring about some situation that I regard as even more
undesirable that the consequences of the action he wishes me to do.
Thus, if the man points a pistol at my head I may still choose to
disobey him; but this does not prevent its being true that if I do fall in
with his wishes he can legitimately be said to have compelled me.
And if the circumstances are such that no reasonable person would
be expected to choose the other alternative, then the action that I am
made to do is not for which I am to be held morally responsible.
(A.J. Ayer, Freedom and Necessity)
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What Ayer is getting at here is that we would do better to think of the opposite of free will
and free choice not as causation generally, but as coercion and constraint. Now, when
we talked about our practices of praising and blaming and holding people morally
responsible we used the example of my saving someone from a burning building, and in
what instances I am to be praised for saving the person. Let’s look at this case again, but
via Ayer’s compatibilist claim. We could say one of the following things:
1. I didn’t freely save the person from the burning building; the laws of cause and effect
caused me to.
2. I didn’t freely save the person from the burning building; the scientist with control chip
caused me to.
3. I didn’t freely save the person from the burning building; the blackmailer’s threat to
reveal my secret caused me to.
Clearly we are using ‘caused’ in all these cases, but what we mean by ‘cause’ is different.
In sentence 1, we do mean, as is clearly stated, something like the laws of cause of
effect. In sentence 2, we mean ‘caused’ as something like ‘constrained’: my actions are
completely constrained and controlled by the wishes of someone other me. In sentence 3,
what we mean is ‘caused’ as something like ‘coerced’. I didn’t act freely; I acted under
coercion or threat.
What this shows is that we can make a similar variety of contrasts between ‘free action’
and ‘caused action’ as we can between ‘can’ and ‘can’t’. However, the compatibilist point
goes further than this. Consider the ‘can’ and ‘can’t’ contrast again. Suppose I ask you,
‘can you play the guitar?’ and you say ‘yes, I can’, but you really can’t tell one end of the
guitar from the other. In this case, you have only answered my question if by ‘can’ I meant
‘able to play’ in contrast to the inability of trees to play. Further, if I say to Winston with his
injured hands, ‘Can you play’ and he says ‘No, I can’t’, then again his answer will only be
appropriate if my question is about the state of his hands healing, given that he has
hands and the know-how for guitar playing. Well, for the compatibilist, similar
considerations hold for the contrast between ‘free action’ and ‘caused action’. If we ask of
someone’s actions ‘Did they choose to do it? Did they perform that action freely?’, then
what we mean to ask is not whether their actions are the consequence of being
connected to the past by the laws of cause and effect, but rather, we are asking, are their
actions performed without the effects of constraint or coercion? If an action is performed
without the effects of constraint or coercion, then we take it to be performed freely. The
principle of free will, then, is the assumption that humans are able to choose actions
without the influence of constraint or coercion and that they are responsible for these
constraint-free choices. Such an assumption is clearly not to be contrasted with the
principle of determinism, since that principle concerns cause and effect, not constraint
and coercion.
What this does to our practice of praising and blaming, or holding people responsible is
clear. When we praise someone, we do so because we take their actions to be free from
constraint and coercion. Similarly, when we blame someone because their actions have
bad consequences, we do so because those actions are free from constraint and
coercion. We do not ask if murderers performed their actions free from the laws of cause
of effect, rather, we ask if they performed them free from mind control, or diminished
responsibility, or from duress. And when we feel that they did perform their actions free
from constraint and coercion we hold them morally responsible and so blame them
accordingly. This is the compatibilist answer to the problem of free will.
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The principle of free will and the principle of determinism are not in conflict with each
other. We can hold them both together; we can take it that the laws of cause and effect
hold, and we are to hold people morally responsible for their actions, just so long as we
remember that the freedom required for praising and blaming is freedom from constraint
and coercion.
A Possible Objection: Does freedom from constraint really underlie our holding
people responsible?
The compatibilist position, then, is this: The Principle of Free will and the Principle of
Determinism are clearly compatible when we realise that what we properly contrast free
will and free choice with is constraint and coercion (not simple cause and effect). This is
not to deny that at some fundamental level we are governed by the laws of cause of
effect, but this does not alter the need to hold people morally responsible and praise and
blame them for the actions. However, is the idea that being free means being free from
constraint and coercion really that helpful? Is it really clear that any of our actions are free
from some kind of constraint or coercion? And more to the point, is an actions being free
from constraint or coercion really behind our holding people responsible?
To see the point here, think first about what it means to steal things because you suffer
from kleptomania. Clearly, this is the kind of the case that springs to mind when we think
about people behaving in accord with some constraint or coercion. A kleptomaniac
behaves the way he does because he is constrained by his illness. Now think about
someone who refuses to steal things because they do not want to get into trouble. Why is
this commitment not somehow a constraint or coercion that governs their actions? Are the
actions of a morally upstanding person not somehow constrained by social conventions
and expectations?
We tend to feel that bad actions which stem from an addiction to drugs mean that a
person is, at least in part, exempted from blame. But we do not feel that good actions, a
high mark in an exam say, which stem from a commitment to learning should be
exempted from praise. Why? Why are these two things different? It is certainly not clear
that our differing attitudes to the two of them come from one being constrained and the
other not. After all, in some sense they are both constrained or coerced: the first by drug
addiction, the second by the value that society places on learning. In which case it looks
as though constraint and coercion, may have nothing to do with our practices of praising
and blaming, and by extension, nothing to do with the Principle of Free Will.
So, how can the compatibilist respond? After all, it looks as though when we examine
most of our actions clearly, we will find that there is some element of constraint or
coercion involved. I may choose to drink water over orange juice, but it seems that, at
some level at least, I am constrained to drink something because my body cannot survive
otherwise. One possible response is to try to distinguish between those cases like drug
addiction and kleptomania that we think do matter, and those cases like fear of
punishment and a love of learning that we think don’t matter. However, it is not clear how
the compatibilist should go about this, and if they can do it in a way that allows them to
keep the Principle of Free Will compatible with the Principle of Determinism.
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Guide To Resources
Texts
•
•
•
•
•
•
Ayer, A.J. (1982). ‘Freedom and Necessity,’ in Philosophical Essays. St. Martin’s
Press: 3-20; and reprinted in Gary Watson, ed., (1982) Free Will. Oxford University
Press. pp 15-23.
(Classical statement of compatibilism and good for more advanced students wanting
to understand the motivation behind soft-determinism.)
Blackburn, S. (1999) Think. Oxford University Press. Ch. Three.
(A simple introductory survey of the problem and useful in orientating students.)
Kane, R. ed., (2002) Oxford Handbook on Free Will. Oxford University Press.
(Full of lots of review articles on many subjects and issues in free will, useful, but
better for instructors than students.)
O’Hear, A. (1985) What Philosophy Is. Penguin. pp. 234-243.
(Again a simple short overview of the problem, and like Blackburn, useful for giving
students a quick overview of the issues.)
Pereboom, D. ed., (1997). Free Will. Hackett Publishing.
(A good collection of historical texts and useful if teachers want to give students an
historical overview of the subject.)
Pink, T. (2004). Free Will: A Very Short Introduction. Oxford University Press.
(A very good introduction, very short introduction and highly recommended for
students at this level.)
Journals
Any general philosophy journal will occasionally publish work on the problem of free will.
However, the debate on the problem of free will is now conducted at a level remote from
the material covered in this unit and is unlikely teachers or students will find much of use.
Web Resources
There are many easy to find web-resources, but the following are to be particularly
recommended for both teachers and students.
Stanford Encylopedia (http://plato.stanford.edu)
Especially Relevant Entries:
Causal Determinism
Compatibilism
Free will
Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy (http://www.iep.utm.edu)
Film and Radio Resources
Films
A Clockwork Orange (Free will) (1971)
Minority Report (Free will) (2002)
Groundhog Day (Determinism) (1993)
Donnie Darko (Determinism) (2001)
Radio
Is Free will an Illusion?: http://www.philosophytalk.org/pastShows/FreeWill.htm
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Principle of Free will
Principle of Free will:
Humans have the power to
choose to perform actions, or
refrain from performing them, and
so should be held responsible for
the actions that they freely
choose to do.
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The Past Controls The Present
The
past
present.
controls
the
You can’t control the past.
You can’t control the way the
past controls the present
(because you can’t control
the past).
So you can’t control the
present.
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Principle of Determinism
Every
event
that
occurs,
including every human action, is
entirely the result of earlier
causes.
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The Problem of Compatibility
We take ourselves to have free will,
hence:
1. Principle of free will: Humans have the power to
choose to perform actions, or refrain from performing
them, and so should be held responsible for the
actions that they freely choose to do.
We also take past states to control
current states, hence:
2. Principle of Determinism: Every event that occurs,
including every human action, is entirely the result of
earlier causes.
1 and 2 seem impossible to hold as
jointly true.
So, The Problem is:
How can we reconcile the principle of
free
will
and
the
principle
of
determinism?
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Student Support Section
Is there a rational basis for Belief in God?
Student Notes: The Cosmological Argument
What is the Cosmological Argument?
Motivating The Cosmological Argument
We live on the earth, a complex and amazing place. The earth is one of nine planets that
orbit the sun. The sun is our nearest star, one of millions in our galaxy. Our galaxy is part
of a cluster of nearer galaxies, and there are millions of such galaxies and galaxy-clusters
strewn across hundreds of millions of light years of space. This is the Universe, a vast,
intricate, amazing thing. But, it, and everything in it, was caused.
Take any particular thing in the universe, we can ask of it, ‘what caused this thing to
exist?’. And when we have an answer, we can ask the same question again. And if we
discover the answer, we can ask what caused that. And so on. Indeed, it looks as though
we can keep on asking these questions for what looks like an infinity.
We might ask, ‘is it right to think that we can keep asking these questions into infinity’?
Don’t we know that the universe, where all these things exist, probably began with the big
bang some 13.7 billion years ago? In which case, what caused the big bang? And if we
continue asking ‘what caused this?’, it’s hard to see how we can find an answer, unless
we can find something for which the question ‘what caused this?’ no longer makes sense
– perhaps this is where God comes in useful.
The Cosmological Argument
Thomas Aquinas had similar thoughts. He thought that the universe must have been
caused by something that was itself uncaused, something he called ‘the first cause’. More
importantly, though, Aquinas thought a cause which does not itself require a further cause
was just a description of God. His argument runs roughly as follows:
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
Everything has a cause.
Nothing is its own cause.
A chain of causes cannot be infinite.
There must be a ‘first cause’.
God is the ‘first cause’.
Take Note:
At first glance, it looks as though lines 1 and 4 contradict each other. 1 states
that everything has a cause. 4 states that there must be a cause which
does not require a further cause. This has led many to suggest that the
cosmological argument is wrong. However, there is no contradiction here.
Look at the argument closely, the first three lines, outline a problem which means we
must reject one of those premises and accept an alternative in its place. In this
argument, the problem that arises is that there cannot be an infinite chain of causes.
This means we must reject Premise 1, and accept an alternative, Premise 4, that
allows at least one thing that is not caused.
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Is there a rational basis for Belief in God?
Student Notes: The Cosmological Argument
Some Objections
Objection 1: ‘If God created the Universe, who created
God?’
If we say that God created the Universe, shouldn’t we now ask what is the cause of God?
And if we can find an answer to that question, we are still likely to need to ask the further
question, what is the cause of the cause of God?
This is not a good objection; it misses the point of taking God as the first cause. The
universe and everything in it is contingent; it relies on something else for its existence. If
we took something contingent to be the cause of the universe then this objection would
makes perfect sense. But, God is not contingent. Rather, God is necessary; He doesn’t
rely on something else for His existence. So, if someone caused or created God, then
God would be contingent (like the universe) and not necessary (like God) and so wouldn’t
be God at all.
Objection 2: Isn’t there a fallacy of composition in the argument?
Much of our thinking about the cosmological argument comes from our belief that the
universe requires a cause for its beginning. This is what led to us to decide that there
must be a first cause. But why are we supposing this? It seems that because those things
that make up the universe come into existence and require a cause for their beginning
that we are supposing that the universe as a whole requires a cause for its coming to
begin. However, this seems to commit the fallacy of composition.
The fallacy of composition is to mistakenly treat the characteristics of the parts of
something as though they were also the characteristics of the whole thing. For example, it
is wrong to state that if every member of the Celtic football team has two legs, then Celtic
F.C also has two legs. It is similarly fallacious to say that if all things require a cause for
their existence, then the universe also requires a cause for its existence.
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Is there a rational basis for Belief in God?
Student Notes: The Teleological Argument
What is the Teleological Argument?
Motivating The Teleological Argument
In the world around us, we can find complex things which might lead us to question
whether an intelligent designer played a part in their being here. Consider the following
quote as an example:
An atheist called al-Deysani said to Imam Ja’far al-Saadiq ‘Give me an evidence
for God!’ The Imam said to him to sit down for a minute. A young boy passed by
who had an egg in his hand . . . Imam Ja’far al-Saadiq asked the boy for the egg,
and the boy gave the Imam the egg. Imam al-Saadiq said to al-Deysani ‘This is a
complete system which has a hard shell on the outside and soft shell on the
inside. Inside that there is silver-like fluid and a gold-like fluid . . . it is not known
whether it is created to produce a male or a female; it hatches to produce such
colours as those of peacock feathers . . . do you think it has a maker?
(Imam Muhammad Shirazi)
An egg is a small compact thing that contains many things necessary to create a beautiful
peacock. How can something so complex not have been made? This kind of thinking
underlies teleological arguments.
A Teleological Argument: The Argument from Analogy
The most straightforward formal teleological argument, then, is the argument from
analogy. The argument is that complex natural phenomena, like the eye, display the kind
of complexity that we find in the objects made by humans. Further, the objects made by
humans display this complexity because they are designed by an intelligent being. It is
fair to infer, then, that the complexity displayed by natural phenomena result from being
designed by an intelligent being. The only candidate for that designer is God. Put more
formally the argument runs thus:
1. The world around us resembles the artefacts of human creation in that they both
display complexity.
2. The complexity of human artefacts comes from having been designed and made by
intelligent beings (humans).
3. We have no reason to assume that what holds for human artefacts should not hold for
the world around us.
4. Therefore, the complexity in the world around us comes from having been designed
and made by an intelligent being (God).
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Philosophy: Metaphysics (Higher)
Is there a rational basis for Belief in God?
Student Notes: The Teleological Argument
Some Objections:
Objection 1: The Grounds for Analogy are too Weak
The main criticism is that the grounds for analogy are too weak. Hume puts it thus:
If we see a house, we conclude, with the greatest certainty, that it had
an architect or builder because this is precisely that species of effect
which we have experienced to proceed from that species of cause. But
surely you will not affirm that the universe bears such a resemblance to
a house that we can with the same certainty infer a similar cause, or
that the analogy is here entire and perfect.
(Hume, Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion)
For Hume, the world is dissimilar enough to designed objects for us to suspect that the
analogy fails. Although similarities exist, they may not be strong enough to provide a
basis for the argument that God exists. Although the world may display the complexity of
designed objects, it is also dissimilar to such objects in many ways.
Additionally, we can note similarities between the world and non-designed objects. As
Hume says, ‘The world plainly resembles more an animal or a vegetable than it does a
watch.’ Should we assume that world developed organically like a vegetable? This too is
an argument from analogy. However, if we can draw analogies between the world and
designed objects on the one hand, and non-designed objects on the other, then the
argument from analogy doesn’t look that convincing.
Objection 2: What kind of God is the Designer?
If the argument from analogy is accepted, then does it deliver the kind of God we would
want? If we are arguing for a particular kind of God, the argument from analogy does not
entitle us to claim that the God whose existence we have proved has particular
characteristics. One way of pointing this out is to note this:
A great number of men join in building a house or ship, in rearing
a city, in framing a commonwealth; why may not several deities
combine in contriving and framing a world?
(Hume, Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion)
With the analogy, we have said that designed objects are made by intelligent designers.
However, the conclusion we want to draw is that the world has an intelligent designer,
with particular characteristics. As things stand, we can’t be sure that whatever did create
the universe was a single creator, let alone a benevolent, omnipotent, omniscient God.
Take Note:
This objection does not deny the possibility of a God; it just notes that
there is nothing in the argument from analogy that allows the claim that
the intelligent designer of the universe could be the God we have in mind.
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Is there a rational basis for Belief in God?
Student Notes: The Teleological Argument
Paley’s Teleological Argument
A development of the argument from analogy, by William Paley,
uses many of the same starting points, but is more sophisticated than the simple
argument from analogy.
Paley discusses a designed object, a watch, and asks, ‘what is it that marks the watch as
designed?’ The mark of design which he identifies is that it performs a role (it keeps time).
Moreover, it could not fulfil this role if it had been different in some way. This precise
fitness to fulfil a role tells us that the watch is purposefully this way.
Having noted that designed objects display a fitness to purpose, Paley then goes on to
conclude that natural objects also have such characteristics. A good example is the
length of a sword-billed hummingbird’s beak. These birds have long thin beaks perfectly
suited to feed on the flowers that grow in their habitat. All the flowers in the sword-billed
hummingbird’s habitat are long and thin making the sword-bill’s beak perfectly suited for
its purpose. Moreover, the smallest change in the length of the bird’s beak would mean
that it would starve and the species become extinct. This precise complexity fitted to
purpose only arises through purposive design. And of course, we must conclude that the
designer in the case of nature is God.
Take Note:
This is not a simple argument from analogy. Instead, Paley points out the
features of the watch which he thinks indicate its being designed, and
then says man-made objects are not the only things that display these
features. In short, he is identifying why we think that the watch is designed
and then noting that natural objects have these features too.
An argument from analogy identifies a characteristic shared by different objects, and
infers from that basis that other, related, characteristics are shared too. Formally, the
argument runs thus:
1. Human artefacts have characteristic Y.
2. Natural objects also have characteristic Y.
3. Human artefacts have characteristic Y because they also have characteristic Z.
4. Therefore, Natural objects also have characteristic Z.
Paley’s argument, although often construed this way, doesn’t take this form. Rather,
Paley uses the watch to identify the characteristics of designed objects. He then
identifies these characteristics in nature. Put formally, Paley’s argument runs like this:
1. Natural objects display design-like properties (namely, precise fitness to purpose).
2. Design-like properties are the result of intelligent design.
3. Therefore, Natural objects are the product of design.
This argument makes no reference to, or comparison with, man-made objects at all,
and so no analogy is being drawn. This is why, when properly construed, Paley’s
argument is not a simple analogical argument.
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Is there a rational basis for Belief in God?
Student Notes: The Teleological Argument
Objections To Paley’s Argument
Evolution is a better explanation of precise complexity fitted to purpose in nature.
The main objection to Paley’s argument is evolutionary theory. The theory of evolution
suggests that complex biological organisms evolved gradually over millions of years from
simpler organisms through a process of natural selection. This gives us an alternative
way to explain the phenomena (complex functionality) that leads Paley to think that a
designer has left his mark.
In terms of an example, think again of the hummingbird’s beak: the reason the swordbilled hummingbird’s beak is fit for purpose is that in that habitat, it is the only one that
works. Imagine that many thousands of years ago, there were many hummingbirds with
many different lengths of beak, and many flowers of differing lengths too. Then, because
of a sudden change in the environment, the shorter flowers died out. This meant that only
birds with long beaks who were able to get at the nectar in the longer flowers were able to
feed and survive. The birds with shorter beaks died out, and the birds with long beaks
thrived in their specialised habitat. Thousands of years later, when all those birds with
inappropriate beaks have died out, we come across this environment and note that the
long beaked birds fit so perfectly in this environment that any change in the length of their
beaks would see them become extinct. This seems to explain complexity and fitness for
purpose without invoking God as a designer.
There is a response to this objection though. Although evolution explains complexity, it
does not necessarily contradict the idea of intelligent design. Instead, evolution could be
the tool of an intelligent designer. The reason that hummingbird beaks are fit for their
purpose is because God designed them that way, and ensured that hummingbird beaks
accorded with His design by using evolution.
Take Note:
This response still has much work to do. For example it would need to
explain why there exist in nature so many things which are either poorly
designed, like the shared food/air passages in mammals, or apparently
superfluous, like the human appendix. In short, it must answer the question ‘If
God is an intelligent designer who can use guided evolution to create His designs,
why are so many of His designs apparently so poor?’
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Is there a rational basis for Belief in God?
Student Notes: Pascal’s Wager
What is Pascal’s Wager?
If the agnostic is right, and there really is no conclusive
evidence one way or the other about the existence of
God, does that mean that we should not form a belief on the matter? The French
mathematician and theologian Pascal suggests that the lack of conclusive evidence is no
reason for us not to commit ourselves to believing in God. In brief, Pascal says we should
believe in God because we have the least to lose by it. Philosophers call this argument
Pascal’s Wager. Formally it looks like this:
1. If you believe in God and God exists, you will be rewarded in the afterlife.
2. If you do not believe in God and God exists, you will be punished in the afterlife.
3. If He does not exist nothing will happen to you in the afterlife, whether or not you
believed in Him. (He doesn’t exist to do anything to you in the afterlife.)
4. Clearly there is more to gain than lose from believing in God.
5. Therefore, it makes sense to believe in God.
It may be easier to see Pascal’s argument in terms of getting or incurring financial
rewards after we die. If you believe that God exists, and He does, then when you die you
go to Heaven with a multi-billion pound reward. If, you doubt that God exists, and He
does, then you go to hell with multi-billion pound debt. Of course, if it turns out that God
does not exist, you get nothing either way; there is no pay out in Heaven and no debt
problem in Hell. Here, then, are the potential beneficial outcomes when you die
depending on whether you believe or not.
God Does Exist
God Does Not exist
I believe in God
Win £10,000,000,000,000.00
£ 0.00
I do not believe in
God
Lose £10,000,000,000,000.00 £ 0.00
Clearly, the potential benefits of believing are a lot higher than not believing; the worst
that can happen to a believer is that he gets no money. However, the worst that can
happen to non-believer is that he gets in a lot of debt; the best that can happen is that he
gets nothing. So, looking at it this way, Pascal’s argument is that even if there is no
evidence either way on the question of God’s existence, we should still decide that God
exists since, in terms of benefits, it is more sensible to believe.
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Is there a rational basis for belief in God?
Student Notes: Pascal’s Wager
Objections to Pascal’s Wager
Objection 1
It isn’t clear that those who abstain from belief God do so out of some choice to not
believe. Those who abstain do so because there is no evidence from either side that they
find convinces them. To put the point in a slightly different way, Pascal is asking people to
believe in God for reasons that seem entirely unrelated to the usual reasons we do or
don’t believe. Suppose someone tries to persuade me that someone rich is coming to
town to hand out money by arguing that if they really are, then I will get some of that
money. This seems like completely the wrong reason for forming such a belief. It would
be better to form such a belief on the basis of evidence concerning whether or not such a
person exists. The best we can say for Pascal’s argument is that it provides evidence for
the utility of believing but not the truthfulness of the belief.
Objection 2
Look again at Pascal’s argument. A big claim is that if God does not exist, then a life
spent believing in Him is not a life wasted. However, Pascal may not be entitled to this
assumption. Is it so clear that if God doesn’t exist, we lose nothing by believing, or gain
nothing by not believing? Lots of religious practice involves abstinence, restraint, devotion
etc. These are good things in lots of respects, but you might think that if there is no God
and ‘life is more than just a read through’, so to speak, then we might benefit from a good
spell of reckless behaviour; it might give us a more rounded view of life.
Objection 3
It isn’t clear that the real wager is simply between believing or not believing. Imagine this:
you spent your life chaste and pure, and devoted to God by becoming a Franciscan
Monk. You die, you find yourself heading towards heaven, thinking, ‘fantastic, the Wager
has paid off and God exists’. You then hear a loud voice say, ‘I am Ganesh. Tell me why
did you choose to follow the false belief of Jesus and God?’. In such an instance, it looks
as though you followed Pascal’s Wager and came down on the side of believing in God.
However, it was not so simple and you chose the wrong God. You have lost anyway. The
point is simple; it’s not just a choice about believing or abstaining, but about who to
believe? There are a myriad religions, myriad Gods and so myriad ways to get it all
wrong.
Scottish Further Education Unit
56
Philosophy: Metaphysics (Higher)
Do we have free will?
Student Notes: The Principle of Free Will
Praise, Blame and Choices
Consider the following examples:
1. Imagine that you are playing football in the park. You have the ball. One team mate,
Claire, is marked by a defender. A second team mate, Harpreet, is unmarked. Who
should you pass to? Suppose that you pass to Claire and she is tackled. You might well
think you made the wrong choice. But, this choice was quite bland and probably without
significant consequences. However, consider the following choice with which you might
be confronted.
2. Walking along the road you see someone trapped in a burning house. You could stand
and watch, or raise the alarm and call the fire brigade, or try to help. Suppose you raise
the alarm. It seems that you made a choice that might result in praise (you could get your
picture in the paper). It seems, then, that there are choices which can result in positive
outcomes.
3. Suppose that you set a house on fire. Moreover, you know that someone is in the
house. You didn’t have to do this; you could have chosen not to set the house on fire. In
this case you made a choice with a possible bad outcome. Also, it seems that you should
be held responsible for your choice if its consequences are bad. It seems, then, that there
are choices which can result in negative outcomes.
What these examples show is that we are often face choices which we seem to make
freely. Also, in certain cases we feel that the actions that we perform on the basis of our
free choices warrant praise or punishment. After all, we chose to do these things. In short,
we hold people morally responsible for the choices that they make. However, it is
essential that we have free will if we are to hold people morally responsible for their
actions. To see this, consider again you helping to save someone from a fire. Imagine
that the only reason you helped was because someone threatened to reveal your secrets
if you didn’t. We might feel as though your actions are less praiseworthy now they aren’t
so freely chosen. Similarly, imagine the case where you set fire to the house. If you did
this because gangsters would hurt your family otherwise, then we might think that you
don’t deserve punishment now your actions are not free.
So, it seems that we feel that we can make choices and act freely, and that in cases
where we hold people morally responsible and allocate praise or blame to them, it is
important that actions are freely chosen. We feel this because we believe that we have
free will; that we are free to choose.
We can summarise all the preceding thoughts and cases with the following thought which
we shall call the principle of free will.
Principle of Free will: Humans have the power to choose to perform actions, or refrain
from performing them, and so should be held responsible for the actions that they freely
choose to do.
Scottish Further Education Unit
57
Philosophy: Metaphysics (Higher)
Do we have free will?
Student Notes: The Principle of Determinism
The Past Controls the Present
Previously, we considered our actions from our point of
view; let us now look at them from the point of view of the
natural world. This will lead us to conclude that this perspective conflicts with the Principle
of free will. To begin with, consider the following verse from the Roman poet Lucretius.
If movement always is connected,
New Motions coming in from old in order fixed,
If atoms never swerve and make beginning
Of motions that can break the bonds of fate
And foil the infinite chain of cause and effect
What is the origin of this free will
Possessed of living creatures throughout the earth?
(Lucretius De Rerum Natura)
Lucretius is pointing out here that the world is governed by laws of cause and effect;
every event in the world is caused by some previous event, which in turn is caused by a
previous event, and so on. This means that all of our actions are part of a long chain of
causes and effects. One effect comes about because of a previous cause. Furthermore,
we know that the world works in this way and that every event is the result of previous
causes. Consequently, our actions must be seen as part of the causal chain.
But what does this mean for the problem of free will? Here is an argument that relies on
the laws of cause and effect and expresses the situation:
1. The past controls the present.
2. You can’t control the past.
3. In particular, you can’t control the way the past controls the present, because you
can’t control the past.
4. So you can’t control the present.
This is important because having no control clearly means having no choice. If you have
no control over the present (by virtue of having no control over the past), then nothing you
do now is something you have control over. And of course, if you have no control, and so
no choice, then you cannot be free.
This kind of argument is proposed by someone who endorses what is called hard
determinism. Put more precisely, the hard determinist adopts what is often know as the
causal or determinist principle and suggests that it undermines any claims we may make
to having free will. The determinist principle (which underlies all of this) is expressed like
this:
Principle of Determinism: Every event that occurs, including every human action, is
entirely the result of earlier causes.
Scottish Further Education Unit
58
Philosophy: Metaphysics (Higher)
Do we have free will?
Student Notes: The Principle of Determinism
The Effect on our practice of praising and blaming
If our present actions are caused by things from the past,
and if we have no control over that past, then we have no
control over our present actions, and so no freedom, no free will and no choices. All of
this seems to be at odds with our practices of holding people morally responsible for their
actions. If, as the hard determinist suggests, our actions are not freely chosen, then it
seems as though we are not really responsible for our actions.
For example if you rescue someone from a burning house, that action was determined by
the past state of things, not by you. In which case, you did not choose to save the person,
and so you do not deserve any praise for your bravery. Similarly, if you started the fire,
you were caused to do that by past events and so are not responsible for your actions. In
which case, you can’t very well be held responsible for your actions and so should not be
unduly castigated or punished for them. This just seems to be the logical upshot of hard
determinism upon our practice of blaming, praising, and holding people responsible for
their actions: if hard determinists are right and there is no room for free will with the past
state of things controlling the present state of things, then we cannot rightly hold people
responsible for actions over which they have no control, and apportion praise and blame
accordingly.
Take Note:
The reason that you have no control over your actions is because the
chains of causes that lead to them stretch back long into the past, so far
back in fact that most of the obvious causes come from before you were
born. It seems wrong to hold you responsible for actions which are the result
of things that occurred long before you were born. Think of the example of your
setting fire to a house. The house was built before you were born. Had it not been
built, you could not have burned it. Had humankind not discovered how to make fire,
and to produce matches, you could not have created the fire, and so on. All of these
events contribute in someway to your actions, but all of them precede your birth. And
had anyone of them not occurred, neither would your action. So how can you be held
responsible?
Scottish Further Education Unit
59
Philosophy: Metaphysics (Higher)
Do we have free will?
Student Notes: The Psychological Basis of Free will
Schopenhauer’s Water Example
If the principle of determination and the principle of free will are
incompatible, why do we feel so attached to the idea that we
make free choices?
The hard determinist simply says, the idea that we can make choices freely, that we have
free will, is just an illusion. An illustration of the hard determinist’s explanation of our
feeling that we have free choices is in this quote from the Arthur Schopenhauer:
Let us imagine a man who, while standing on the street, would say to
himself: ‘It is six o’clock in the evening, the working day is over. Now I
can go for a walk, or I can go to the club; I can also climb up the tower
to see the sun set; I can go to the theatre; I can visit this friend or that
one; indeed, I also can run out of the gate, into the wide world and
never return. All this is strictly up to me; in this I have complete
freedom. But still, I shall do none of these things now, but with just as
free a will I shall go home to my wife’. This is exactly as if water spoke
to itself: ‘I can make high waves (yes! in the sea during a storm), I can
rush down hill (yes! in the river bed), I can plunge down foaming and
gushing (yes! in the fountain) I can, finally, boil away and disappear
(yes! at certain temperature); but I am doing none of these things now,
and am voluntarily remaining quiet and clear in the reflecting pond.
(Schopenhauer, On the Freedom of The Will)
Schopenhauer’s point here is that the water is not aware that its actions are the outcome
of a causal chain over which it has no control. It cannot simply choose to boil. However,
the water believes that although it might boil, make waves, etc., it has instead decided to
remain calm and placid like a pond. We can see how strange this is. The hard determinist
is saying that people are just like the water; they are undergoing an illusion that they
choose their own actions.
If Schopenhauer’s point is correct, then it seems that we cannot argue against the hard
determinist on the basis that our actions feel as though they are freely chosen. The hard
determinist is able to make the very simple claim that the psychological certainty we feel
about the freedom of actions is illusory.
Scottish Further Education Unit
60
Philosophy: Metaphysics (Higher)
Do we have free will?
Student Notes: Compatibilism
Why Compatibilism?
Many people find the idea that hard determinism undermines our
practice of holding people responsible for their actions
unpalatable. These practices are something which we feel are valuable, and worth trying
to keep. In short, we take the principle of free will to be well-founded. However, the
determinist principle seems equally well-founded; present actions clearly depend on past
states. But, these two things seem to be incompatible. If the principle of determinism is
true, then how can we make sense of the principle of free will? What we want is way to
reconcile the two principles; we want to hold the principle of free will and the principle of
determination together at the same time. It is this desire that leads to the theory that we
shall look at next: compatibilism.
Motivating the compatibilist answer
We seem to have a problem: how can we hold the principle of free will if the principle of
determinism is true? However, compatibilism offers us a way to do just that. The key to
understanding the compatibilist’s solution to our problem is realise that we often use the
same word to mean a range of related, but subtly different, things. As an example of what
the compatibilist means, look at the following sentences:
1. A tree can’t play the guitar, but I can – I have hands.
2. I can’t play the guitar, but my friend Winston can – he learned how.
3. Winston can’t play the guitar – he’s hurt his hands, but his friend Deepak can – his
hands are fine.
4. Winston’s friend Deepak can’t play the guitar – his mum won’t let him, but Deepak’s
friend Nirmha can – her mum lets her do as she pleases.
In each case, we are saying that one person can play the guitar and another can’t.
However, the contrast made between ‘can’ and ‘can’t’ is subtly different each time.
In 1, the tree can’t play and I can because of important differences in the way we are
made. It doesn’t matter that I don’t know how to play; I have hands so I could learn.
In 2, I can’t play, but Winston can because he knows how and I don’t. In this case, having
hands doesn’t mean that I can play because we mean something different by ‘can’ and
‘can’t’ here.
In 3, Winston can’t play because his hurt hands prevent him, but Deepak doesn’t have
that problem. We aren’t talking here about how Winston and Deepak’s bodies are made,
or whether they know how to play. Instead we are talking about being physical impeded.
In 4, Deepak can’t play because his mum has forbidden him, but Nirmha’s mum allows
her to play. We aren’t contrasting ‘can’ with ‘can’t’ here in order to talk about the way
bodies are made, or knowledge, or physical impediment. Arguably, Deepak and Nirmha
can both play the guitar in all these senses. Instead we use ‘can’ and ‘can’t’ to note
whether or not permission is granted.
Scottish Further Education Unit
61
Philosophy: Metaphysics (Higher)
Do we have free will?
Student Notes: Compatibilism
The Compatibilist Theory
The idea behind all the previous talk of meaning ‘can’ and ‘can’t’
in different ways is important for the compatibilist answer to the
problem of free will. The compatibilist says the reason that we think
the principle of free will and the principle of determinism are not compatible is because
we are thinking about what ‘free choice’ and ‘no choice’ means in the wrong way. We are
contrasting free will with determinism when in actual fact, the contrasts involved, as in the
‘can’ and ‘can’t’ examples above, are more subtle than that. Consider the following
statement from A.J. Ayer:
It is not, I think, causality that freedom is to be contrasted with, but
constraint. […]
If I am constrained, I do not act freely. But in what circumstances can I
legitimately be said to be constrained? An obvious instance is the
case in which I am compelled by another person to do what he wants.
[…] It is enough that he should induce me to do what he wants by
making it clear to me that, if I do not, he will bring about some
situation that I regard as even more undesirable that the
consequences of the action he wishes me to do. Thus, if the man
points a pistol at my head I may still choose to disobey him; but this
does not prevent its being true that if I do fall in with his wishes he can
legitimately be said to have compelled me. And if the circumstances
are such that no reasonable person would be expected to choose the
other alternative, then the action that I am made to do is not for which
I am to be held morally responsible.
(A.J. Ayer, Freedom and Necessity)
Ayer is saying that we should think of the opposite of free will and free choice not as
causation, but as coercion and constraint.
When we talked about our practices of holding people responsible we used the example
of saving someone from a burning building, and in what instances we should praise such
an action. Let’s look at this case again, whilst bearing the compatibilists’ ideas in mind.
We could say one of the following things:
1. You didn’t freely save the person; your actions were caused by the laws of cause and
effect.
2. You didn’t freely save the person; your actions were caused by your being under the
influence of a hypnotist.
3. You didn’t freely save the person; your actions were caused by fear of a blackmailer’s
threat to reveal your secrets.
Although we use ‘caused’ in all these cases, we something different each time. In 1, we
do mean ‘caused’, as is clearly stated, as the laws of cause of effect. In 2, we mean
‘caused’ as something like ‘constrained’: my actions are controlled by the wishes of
someone other me. In 3, we mean ‘caused’ as something like ‘coerced’. I didn’t act freely;
I acted under coercion or threat.
Scottish Further Education Unit
62
Philosophy: Metaphysics (Higher)
Do we have free will?
Student Notes: Compatibilism
How does the Compatibilist’s idea solve our problem?
So, it looks as though we can contrast the idea of actions freely
chosen with a variety of actions which are not freely chosen. This
matters because we now have a way of understanding the Principle of Free Will that
means it is not necessarily incompatible with the Principle of Determinism. The
compatibilist says that when we describe someone as freely choosing an action, and so
responsible for its consequences, we simply mean that that action is chosen free from the
effects of constraint or coercion. The principle of free will, then, is the assumption that
humans are able to choose actions without the influence of constraint or coercion and
that they are responsible for these constraint-free choices. This is clearly not in conflict
with the principle of determinism, since that principle concerns cause and effect, not
constraint and coercion.
Now there is not necessarily a conflict between the two principles, our practice of holding
people responsible for their actions seems to be justifiable. When we praise or blame
someone, we do so because we take their actions to be free from constraint and
coercion. We do not ask if murderers performed their actions free from the laws of cause
and effect, rather, we ask if they performed them free from mind control, or diminished
responsibility, or from duress. And when we feel that they did perform their actions free
from such constraints, we hold them responsible.
So, in summary, the compatibilist answer to our problem is to claim that the Principle of
Free Will and the Principle of Determinism are not in conflict with each other; we can hold
them both together. The laws of cause and effect hold, and we can hold people
responsible for their actions, just so long as we remember that the freedom required for
praising and blaming is freedom from constraint and coercion, not freedom from cause
and effect.
Scottish Further Education Unit
63
Philosophy: Metaphysics (Higher)
Do we have free will?
Student Notes: Compatibilism
A Possible Objection
Does freedom from constraint really underlie our holding
people responsible?
The compatibilist claims that The Principle of Free will and the Principle of Determinism
are compatible once we realise that what the proper contrast to free will is constraint and
coercion, not cause and effect. This is not to deny that we are governed by the laws of
cause of effect, just that in matters of praise and blame ‘free action’ means free from
constraint and coercion. However, is the idea that free actions are free from constraint
and coercion really that helpful? Is it really clear that any of our actions are free from
some kind of constraint or coercion?
To see the point, imagine these cases:
1. You steal because you suffer from kleptomania.
2. You refuse to steal because you don’t want to get into trouble.
1 is just the kind of case that compatibilists have in mind when they talk of constraint or
coercion. Kleptomaniacs act as they do because they are constrained by illness. But what
about 2? Why is not wanting to get into trouble somehow not a constraint or coercion that
governs actions? Are the actions of a morally upstanding person not somehow
constrained by laws and maybe the threat that comes from breaking laws?
Similarly, we feel that bad actions arising from drug addiction mean that a person is, at
least in part, exempted from blame. But we do not feel that good actions, a high mark in
an exam say, which arise from a commitment to learning should be exempted from
praise. Why? Why are these two things different?
The problem that these cases show is that it is not clear that our differing attitudes to 1
and 2 come from actions being constrained in one case, but not in the other. After all, in
some sense actions in both 1 and 2 are constrained or coerced: In 1, by illness, and in 2
by the fear of getting into trouble. In which case, it looks as though constraint and
coercion may have nothing to do with our practice of praising and blaming, and by
extension, the Principle of Free will.
How can the compatibilist respond? After all, it looks as though when we examine most of
our actions, we will find that there is some element of constraint or coercion involved. I
may choose to drink water instead of orange juice, but it seems that I am constrained to
drink something because my body cannot survive otherwise. One possible response is to
try to distinguish between those cases like drug addiction and kleptomania that we think
do matter, and those cases like a fear of getting into trouble and a love of learning that we
think don’t matter. However, it is not clear how the compatibilist should go about this, and
if they can do it in a way that allows them to keep the Principle of Free Will compatible
with the Principle of Determinism.
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Sample Activities:
Cosmological Argument Exercise: Trying to get back to a first cause
Think of an every day event. What caused this event to happen?
What caused that cause?
Write a list that traces the causes and effects as far back as you can.
Does it seem possible to get back to a cause which doesn’t need a further cause?
Why?
Why should this matter for explaining how the universe began?
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65
Philosophy: Metaphysics (Higher)
Cosmological Argument Exercise: Objection 1
If I say that every player on my football team is a good player, therefore my
football team is a good team, what fallacy have I committed? Briefly explain why
this kind of reasoning is fallacious?
Why would this kind of fallacy offer an objection to the cosmological argument?
How could the defender of the cosmological argument reply to that objection?
Give argument supporting that reply, then give an argument against that reply.
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Philosophy: Metaphysics (Higher)
Cosmological Argument Exercise: Objection 2
Read the following passage and answer the questions:
It is pretended that the Deity is a necessarily existent being; and this
necessity of his existence is attempted to be explained by asserting,
that if we knew his whole essence or nature, we should perceive it to
be as impossible for him not to exist, as for twice two not to be four.
But it is evident that this can never happen, while our faculties
remain the same as at present. It will still be possible for us, at any
time, to conceive the non-existence of what we formerly conceived to
exist; nor can the mind ever lie under a necessity of supposing any
object to remain always in being; in the same manner as we lie under
a necessity of always conceiving twice two to be four. The words,
therefore, ‘necessary existence’, have no meaning; or, which is the
same thing, none that is consistent.
(Hume, Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion)
1. What is a ‘necessarily existent being’?
2. Why does Hume think that the words ‘necessary existence’ have no meaning
for us?
3. Assuming that Hume is right, what does that mean for the claim that God is
the only thing that could be the ultimate cause of the universe?
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67
Philosophy: Metaphysics (Higher)
Teleological Arguments Exercise: The Argument From Analogy
Look round the world: contemplate the whole and every part of it: you
will find it to be nothing but one great machine, subdivided into an
infinite number of lesser machines, which again admit of subdivisions
to a degree beyond what human senses and faculties can trace and
explain. All these various machines, and even their most minute
parts, are adjusted to each other with an accuracy which ravishes
into admiration all men who have ever contemplated them. The
curious adapting of means to ends, throughout all nature, resembles
exactly, though it much exceeds, the productions of human
contrivance; of human designs, thought, wisdom, and intelligence.
Since, therefore, the effects resemble each other, we are led to infer,
by all the rules of analogy, that the causes also resemble; and that
the Author of Nature is somewhat similar to the mind of man, though
possessed of much larger faculties, proportioned to the grandeur of
the work which he has executed. By this argument a posteriori, and
by this argument alone, do we prove at once the existence of a Deity,
and his similarity to human mind and intelligence.
(Hume, Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion)
1. What does Hume mean by saying ‘the effects resemble each other, we are led to infer,
by all the rules of analogy, that the causes also resemble’?
2. Pick a man made object – list five ways in which the world and that object are similar to
each other.
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
3. Why would these similarities suggest that God exists?
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Philosophy: Metaphysics (Higher)
Teleological Arguments Exercise: Objections
The world plainly resembles more an animal or a vegetable than it does
a watch or a knitting loom. Its cause, therefore, it is more probable
resembles the cause of the former. The cause of the former is
generation or vegetation. The cause, therefore, of the world, we may
infer to be something similar or analogous to generation or vegetation.
(Hume, Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion)
1. Pick an animal or a vegetable – List five ways in which the world and that object are
similar to each other.
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
2. What might these similarities suggest about how the world was created?
3. What does your answer to question 2 mean for the analogy argument that God exists
because the world needs an intelligent designer?
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Agnosticism Exercise: Pascal’s Wager
1. ‘Until we have evidence one way or the other, we should neither believe, nor disbelieve
in some claim.’ Give an argument in support of this assertion.
2. Assuming that we have no evidence one way or the other about the existence of God,
what does the assertion above mean for religious belief?
3. What is Pascal’s argument that, even if there is no evidence one way or the other, we
should still believe in God?
4. Do you think Pascal’s argument works for any claim where evidence is inconclusive?
Why?
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Agnosticism Exercise: Objections to Pascal’s Wager
1. Why does Pascal think that there is nothing to lose by believing in God?
2. Why might Pascal be wrong that we have nothing to lose by believing in God?
3. List five Gods from different religions.
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
4. Why might this list prove to be a problem for Pascal’s argument?
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The Problem of Free will Exercise: The Principle of Free will
1. List five things you have done today, and for each thing, suggest a way you could have
done it differently.
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
2. Suppose that I have stolen something valuable. Why should I be punished?
3. Suppose that I have stolen something because it was the only way to prevent harm
coming to my family. Should I still be punished? Explain your answer.
4. What do you think your answers to 3 and 4 tell us about the relationship between
making free choices, and being held responsible for those choices?
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The Problem of Free will Exercise: The Principle of Determinism
1. List five things you have done today, and for each thing, suggest a cause.
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
2. Pick one of the causes you listed above, can you find an earlier cause behind it? What
is it? Can you keep finding earlier causes? What are they? Can you trace these causes
back to a time before you were born? What is the first cause that occurred before you
were born?
3. Assuming that you can find earlier and earlier causes, then, the following principle
seems to be true: every event that occurs, including every human action, is entirely
the result of earlier causes. What does this mean for our holding people responsible for
their actions?
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The Problem of Free will Exercise: The Psychological Basis of Free will
Let us imagine a man who, while standing on the street, would say to
himself: ‘It is six o’clock in the evening, the working day is over. Now I
can go for a walk, or I can go to the club; I can also climb up the tower
to see the sun set; I can go to the theatre; I can visit this friend or that
one; indeed, I also can run out of the gate, into the wide world and
never return. All this is strictly up to me; in this I have complete
freedom. But still, I shall do none of these things now, but with just as
free a will I shall go home to my wife’. This is exactly as if water spoke
to itself: ‘I can make high waves (yes! in the sea during a storm), I can
rush down hill (yes! in the river bed), I can plunge down foaming and
gushing (yes! in the fountain) I can, finally, boil away and disappear
(yes! at certain temperature); but I am doing none of these things now,
and am voluntarily remaining quiet and clear in the reflecting pond.
(Schopenhauer, On the Freedom of The Will)
1. What claim is this quote from Schopenhauer arguing against?
2. Give a brief summary Schopenhauer’s argument.
3. Do you agree with Schopenhauer? Why?
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The Problem of Free will Exercise: Compatibilism 1
Look at these four sentences:
1. A tree can’t play the guitar (it has no hands), but I can (because I have hands).
2. I can’t play the guitar (I have never learned how) but my friend Winston can and so
can his friend Deepak (because they have learned how).
3. Winston can’t play the guitar (he’s broken his hands) but his friend Deepak can play
(his hands are fine).
4. Winston’s friend Deepak can’t play the guitar (his mum won’t let him) but Deepak’s
friend Nirmha can (her mum lets her do what she wants).
1. Construct a similar set of sentences using the phrases ‘choose’, and ‘didn’t choose’
instead of ‘can’ and ‘cant’.
1.
2.
3.
4.
2. What does your list of sentences suggest about the apparent conflict between free will
and determinism?
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The Problem of Free will Exercise: Compatibilism 2
If I am constrained, I do not act freely. But in what circumstances can I
legitimately be said to be constrained? An obvious instance is the
case in which I am compelled by another person to do what he wants.
In a case of this sort the compulsion need not be such as to deprive
one of the power of choice. It is not required that the other person
should have hypnotised me, or that he should make it physically
impossible for me to go against his will. It is enough that he should
induce me to do what he wants by making it clear to me that, if I do
not, he will bring about some situation that I regard as even more
undesirable that the consequences of the action he wishes me to do.
Thus, if the man points a pistol at my head I may still choose to
disobey him; but this does not prevent its being true that if I do fall in
with his wishes he can legitimately be said to have compelled me.
And if the circumstances are such that no reasonable person would
be expected to choose the other alternative, then the action that I am
made to do is not for which I am to be held morally responsible.
(A.J. Ayer Freedom and Necessity)
1. What is Ayer saying is the correct contrast for freely choosing an action? Why does he
think this?
2. If Ayer is right, what does this mean for our practices of holding people morally
responsible for their actions?
Scottish Further Education Unit
76