teleological/design arguments Flashcards
what is a design/teleological argument
An argument for God as the mind/designer/intelligence which explains the order we find in reality/the universe (i.e. spatial order and/or temporal order).
what does teleological mean
The term ‘teleological’ comes from the Greek word ‘telos’ which means ‘end’, ‘purpose’ or ‘aim’. The teleological argument suggests that nature has been designed with some goal in mind. For this reason arguments from design are also known as teleological arguments.
what type of justification do all of the teleological arguments have
a posteriori
a posteriori arguments for god
- Arguments for God where at least one premise is a posteriori (justified based on experience).
- These arguments suggest that the existence of God makes the best sense of what we experience
what are the 2 types of ‘orders’ in nature
- spatial order/regularities of copresence
- temporal order/regularities of succession
who classified the different types of orders
Swinburne (1968) makes a distinction between two types of order in nature upon which design arguments might be based
spatial order/regularities of copresence
are patterns of spatial order at some one instant of time. An example of a regularity of copresence would be a town with all its roads at right angles to each other, or a section of books in a library arranged in alphabetical order of authors.
- patterns of order within something in space at one instant of time (e.g. the arrangements of the parts of the human body, the eye, or a cell) which allow a function to be performed.
temporal order/regularities of succession
are simple patterns of behaviour of objects, such as their behaviour in accordance with the laws of nature-for example, Newton’s law of gravitation, which holds universally to a very high degree of approximation, that all bodies attract each other with forces proportional to the product of their masses and inversely proportional to the square of their distance apart.
- patterns of behaviour of objects over time (e.g. their behaviour in accordance with the laws of nature/science / those laws of nature/science themselves).
The design argument from analogy (as presented by Hume)
- Hume outlines a version of the design argument before going on to heavily criticise it. He presents it as an analogical argument - it draws an analogy between the properties that human-made objects have and the properties found in natural objects and uses this to conclude that they must have a similar cause (i.e. a designer). He focuses on spatial order.
- 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.
- 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
argument from analogy
An argument from analogy is a special type of non-deductive/inductive argument, where known similarities between things are used as a basis to infer that there is (probably) some further similarity.
- An analogy is a comparison between two objects, or systems of objects, that highlights respects in which they are thought to be similar.
- Analogical reasoning is any type of thinking that relies upon an analogy.
- An analogical argument is an explicit representation of a form of analogical reasoning that cites accepted similarities between two systems to support the conclusion that some further similarity exists.
premise argument for the design argument presented by Humes
P1: Human artifacts (e.g., cameras, machines, organisations) have ‘spatial order’, a form of ‘teleological’ property whereby parts are arranged in space with high complexity such that they work towards a purpose.
P2: Nature itself (and natural entities within it: e.g. eyes, organisms) also have ‘spatial order’ (as above).
P3: Human artifacts have these spatial order because they have been deliberately designed by an intelligent being.
P4: Similar effects / properties typically have similar causes / explanations
C1: Therefore, nature/natural entities (probably) has spatial order because they have been deliberately designed by an intelligent being.
P5: Natural entities are much more complicated than human artifacts
P6: This greater complexity probably requires greater intelligence
C2: Therefore this intelligent being/designer which exists probably has much greater intelligence than a human.
C3: Therefore, God exists.
human artefacts
- parts are arranged in space with high complexity such that they work towards an purpose
- not living
- not self-sustaining and not self replicating
- all have a clear purpose
- designed by an intelligent being
nature
- parts are arranged in space with high complexity such that they work towards a purpose
- living
- self sustaining and self replicating
- nature as a whole has no clear purpose
- NO longer reasonable to conclude it likely has a designer
paley
- deductive design argument: from spatial order/purpose
- paley attempted to present the design argument in a non-analogical way.
- Hume heavily criticised his own argument from analogy, and for this reason Paley wanted to formulate the argument differently in order to avoid some of the objections that Hume raised.
- Paley thought it was obvious that eyes are designed without any need for comparison with human artefacts. Even if all you had ever had experience of was an eye, you would know, says Paley, that it was designed based on its teleological features.
- this is NOT an argument from analogy - we’d have a good reason to think the eye was designed even if that was all we’d seen (i.e. even if we’d never seen anything like it made my humans).
what does paley use to identify what is a reliable indicator of an intelligent being
the watchmaker analogy
