Part Eight

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Robert J. Fogelin
Keyword(s):  
Cloud Formation ◽  
Striking Similarity ◽  
Common Life ◽  
Natural Religion ◽  
Sextus Empiricus ◽  
Argument From Design

Philo expands on the nature of his objections to the natural religion of Cleanthes: far-fetched comparisons are dismissed in matters of common life, but are appropriate objections when we rise to the level of abstruse and remote reasoning. He offers a counterargument to the design-designer hypothesis, citing Epicurus. Constancy and change are discussed; cloud formation is one example. Philo’s critique of Cleanthes’ argument from design moves through stages, with striking similarity to Agrippa’s suspension of belief as presented by Sextus Empiricus.

“In Every Drop of Dew”: Imagination and the Rhetoric of Assent in English Natural Religion

1994 ◽  
Vol 12 (3) ◽  
pp. 293-325
Author(s):  
David Foster
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Probabilistic Reasoning ◽  
Rhetorical Theory ◽  
Discourse Community ◽  
Discursive Practices ◽  
Natural Religion ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
Argument From Design

Abstract: Seventeenth-century “natural religion” in England included the work of many theologians and scientists who comprised a close-knit discourse community shaped by a common theology and many similarities in intellectual outlook. They developed a complex rhetoric compounded of probabilistic reasoning and a wide range of figurative conventions for the argument from design. These writings offer a rich intertext of discursive practices which are more classically rooted, more intuitive and imaginative in appeal, and simultaneously more probabilistic and less demonstrative in reasoning, than has generally been assumed. This essay focuses on the imaginative, figurative dimensions of this work, identifying its primary classical sources and its sanctions in the rhetorical theory of the time.

The Argument from Design

Philosophy ◽  
1968 ◽  
Vol 43 (165) ◽  
pp. 199-212 ◽  
Author(s):  
R. G. Swinburne
Keyword(s):  
Natural Religion ◽  
Argument From Design

The object of this paper is to show that there are no valid formal objections to the argument from design, so long as the argument is articulated with sufficient care. In particular I wish to analyse Hume's attack on the argument in Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion and to show that none of the formal objections made therein by Philo have any validity against a carefully articulated version of the argument.

The Argument From Design: Some Better Reasons for Agreeing with Hume

1980 ◽  
Vol 16 (2) ◽  
pp. 145-161 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gary Doore
Keyword(s):  
David Hume ◽  
Natural Phenomena ◽  
Existence Of God ◽  
Inductive Proof ◽  
Natural Religion ◽  
Teleological Argument ◽  
Argument From Design ◽  
Analogical Argument ◽  
Weak Claim ◽  
The Universe

I. The argument from design or ‘teleological argument’ purports to be an inductive proof for the existence of God, proceeding from the evidence of the order exhibited by natural phenomena to the probable conclusion of a rational agent responsible for producing that order. The argument was severely criticized by David Hume in his Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion, and it was widely conceded that Hume's objections had cast serious doubt on the adequacy of the teleological argument, if not destroyed its credibility entirely. However, there has been a recent reappraisal of this claim by R. G. Swinburne, who maintains that none of Hume's criticisms have any validity against a ‘carefully articulated version of the argument’. Using an analogical argument based on temporal regularities rather than on spatial regularities (or arrangement of parts), Swinburne claims to have shown that the teleological argument is a legitimate inference to the best explanation whose force depends only on the strength of the analogy and on the degree to which the resulting theory makes explanation of empirical matters simpler and more coherent. Moreover, he claims to have shown that the argument provides support for the Christian monotheistic hypothesis and not merely for the weak claim that the universe was designed (somehow). This is an important claim since it has long been thought that Hume's most devastating blow was dealt when he showed that the teleological argument (if it is admitted to have any force at all) provides just as much support for the negation of certain propositions considered essential to Christian monotheism as it does for their affirmation.

Hume and Ancient Pyrrhonian Scepticism

2019 ◽  
pp. 77-116
Author(s):  
Peter S. Fosl
Keyword(s):  
General Framework ◽  
Common Life ◽  
Sextus Empiricus ◽  
Conceptual Apparatus ◽  
Suspension Of Judgment ◽  
Pyrrhonian Scepticism

Chapter Three charts the development of ancient Pyrrhonism, from its origins with Pyrrho of Elis through Timon of Phlius and Aenesidemus, concluding with the chronicling work of Sextus Empiricus. The chapter unpacks the conceptual apparatus of Pyrrhonism in some detail, including: scepticism as practice (agogê), its Fourfold way of observing appearances (phainomena), its observance (teresis) of the pre-theoretical understandings (prolepsis) of common life (ho bios ho koinos), its argumentative modes (tropoi, both Aenesidemus’ ten and Agrippa’s five tropes), its suspension of judgment (epochê), its practice of balancing oppositions (isosthenia), its non-assertive silence (aphasia) about what is hidden (ta adêla), its critiques of causality, its Apelletic method, its critical and inquiring openness (zetesis), its quasi-goal of tranquillity (ataraxia), and its anti-Platonic ideas about recollection. The chapter closes with a seven-point General Framework defining Pyrrhonian Scepticism.

‘Galen's Muscles’: Wilkins, Hume, and the educational use of the argument from design

1993 ◽  
Vol 36 (3) ◽  
pp. 577-597 ◽  
Author(s):  
Isabel Rivers
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Natural Religion ◽  
Religion And Ethics ◽  
Argument From Design

ABSTRACTWilkins's The principles and duties of natural religion, edited by Tillotson and published posthumously in 1675, designed to combat scepticism and infidelity, was reprinted nine times up to 1734 and was widely used as a textbook in the education of clergy and ministers. Hume's Dialogues concerning natural religion, substantially written in 1751 but withheld from publication on the advice of friends and only published posthumously in 1779, reversed Wilkins's procedure by scrutinising the tenets of natural religion from the perspective of scepticism. This essay explores the importance of Wilkins's text in the tripartite eighteenth-century scheme of natural religion, revealed religion, and ethics, and shows how Hume's parody of a well known passage from Wilkins – the ‘Galen's muscles’ of the title – was intended to contribute to the undermining of this scheme.

scholarly journals Une critique d'explication par les causes finales: l'anticontractualisme de Hume. Une histoire naturelle du politique

Dialogue ◽  
2007 ◽  
Vol 46 (4) ◽  
pp. 637-662
Author(s):  
Céline Bonicco
Keyword(s):  
Natural History ◽  
Political Theory ◽  
Human Nature ◽  
The Political ◽  
Natural Religion ◽  
Final Cause ◽  
Treatise Of Human Nature ◽  
Efficient Cause ◽  
Argument From Design ◽  
Final Causes

ABSTRACTThis article proposes to show how David Hume's critique of contractualism is the political consequence of his analysis of causality. Hume rejects contractualism mainly for methodological reasons: explanations based on final causes are never satisfying. Therefore, contractualism applies to the political sphere the argument from design presented in the Dialogues concerning Natural Religion. The genesis of politics unfolded in A Treatise of Human Nature must be seen as a particular application of the only pertinent way of explaining phenomena, i.e., natural history, in which sympathy immanently configures and reconfigures society. The final cause must be replaced by the efficient cause. Hume's political theory—either positive or negative—and epistemology cannot be dissociated.

Cognition and the argument from design.

1996 ◽  
Vol 51 (1) ◽  
pp. 57-58
Author(s):  
Laurence E. Heglar
Keyword(s):  
Argument From Design
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