PHL 301: Introduction to Philosophy

24 January 2001

I. Review: Cosmological Argument

A. Aquinas’s Second Way:

1. Premise (1) Efficient causes come in series.

2. Premise (2) Nothing causes itself.

3. Premise (3) The series of efficient causes cannot go back to infinity.

4. Therefore: There is an uncaused first cause (God).

B. Valid? Premises true?

C. Modification: allow infinite series of causes—eliminate Premise (3).

1. Even if there can be an infinite series, why does the series as a whole exist?

2. Theist: There must be something that produced or is responsible for the series as whole, even if that series is infinite.

3. Critic: nothing sustains the series as a whole. Its existence is a brute fact.

4. Does this favor the religious view? Denial of God leaves us with an unexplained fact.

5. But the conclusion of modified cosmological argument has its own brute fact—the existence of God.

II. Teleological Argument

A. Basic form of argument:

1. The world exhibits teleological order.

2. Therefore, it was produced by a designer.

B. Teleological order

1. From the Greek telos: goal, end

2. Structure fitted to an end

3. Examples: the eye, watches

C. Hume’s version of Teleological Argument (Cleanthes)

1. The world is like a machine.

2. Machines are made by human beings, in accord with plans.

3. Like effects have like causes.

4. Therefore, the world owes its existence to something like a human being, who operates according to something like a plan.

D. Hume’s criticisms (through Philo)

1. Effects not similar enough to infer like causes

a. Teleological Argument amounts to overgeneralization

b. Perhaps world is more like a vegetable than it is like a machine!

2. Argument too strong: makes God too much like human beings

3. Argument too weak : unable to derive important attributes of God

a. Infinity

b. Perfection

c. Unity

d. Humans are apparently better designers (related to problem of evil)!

4. Alternative explanations of same data: design without a designer?