PHIL1003 Lecture Notes - Lecture 3: Fallacy, Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion, Great Machine
Teleological Arguments for the Existence of God
• Teleological Arguments
o A Posteriori arguments appeal to empirical (sense-detected)
features of the world (complexity and functionality) to prove the
existence of God.
▪ A Posteriori arguments: appeal to premises known via
empirical observation of the world
▪ A Priori arguments: appeal to premises known prior to
empirical observation of the world (e.g. analytical or
mathematical or logical truths)
▪ Complexity: arrangement of parts in law-like relation to
each other
▪ Functionality: complexity of parts working together to
serve overall function
▪ Teleological System: any system of parts so arranged that
under proper conditions they work together to serve a
function
• Inductive Analogy
o P1 – Analogue subject (A) has features F, G, (… which are
causally related to A’s being J
o P2 - Primary subject P has similar features F’, G’, (’ so
o C – P is probably J
• (ume’s Strategy
o Introduces and discusses a version of the teleogical argument
through fictional characters
▪ Cleanthes: a theist putting forth a design argument
▪ Philo: Cleanthes’ main critic
▪ Demea: a skeptical contributor
o Quote from (ume’s Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion
▪ Cleanthes: Look around 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...curious adapting of means to ends,
throughout nature, resembles exactly, though it much
exceeds the productions of human contrivance – of human
design, thought, wisdom and intelligence...Since therefore
the effects resemble each other, we are led to infer, by 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 far larger faculties, proportioned to the
grandeur of the work he has executed. By this argument a
posteriori... do we prove at once the existence of a Deity and
his similarity to human mind and intelligence.
• Inductive Analogy
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