Philosophy Exam #1

John Tukey

Who said " Certainty is an illusion throughout the sciences *Much the same could be said about everyday life

Infinite past

If an infinite future is possible (which does seem to be a central part of some religious beliefs), then why isn't an -------- ------ possible?

1- Ontological

arguments developed 'from the armchair - ex: using reason only, with no empirical claims

Cosmological (Arguments for God's existence)

arguments that start from certain basic facts about reality ex: that there is a universe, the nature of causality) to the existence of God as the necessary creator of reality. -Aquinas' first four ways are of this sort

Conflict

Secondly, responses that make the existence of evil necessary for the existence of good seem to attribute some sort of inner -----? /inconsistency to God's nature --The supremely good entity would always try to eliminate evil, but the good nature of God (logically, metaphysically) depends on the existence of the thing that God would try (and necessarily fail) to eliminate

Gaunilo's

•All Anselm's argument can prove is that if God exists - i.e., if something really answers to the concept of God at work in the argument - God does so necessarily. It can't tell us that God does, in fact, exist ---------? parody trades on this

Some

•Also, why can't a contingent thing be eternal? Why believe premise (2)? -You and I are contingent things that came into being at some time and will cease to exist at some other time. But why couldn't there be ----- contingent thing that has always existed and always will

necessary

•Another attempted reply to premise 3 is to argue that every evil which takes place is a -----? condition of a (or the) greater good which will take place as a result of that evil •Two problems face any response to the argument based on the idea that evil is in some way necessary for there to be good •First, it looks to place limits on God's power, what God can/can't/must do -Looks like a denial, or major qualification of, Premise 1

time

•Aquinas's first three arguments turn on issues related to the nature of ---- that, for all I know, are not consistent with what physics tells us (or will one day tell us) about time -I.e., whatever persuasive force the arguments may have could very well be due to intuitions we have about time, intuitions that (like so many others we have) are flawed

Russell on Cosmological Arguments

•Bertrand Russell on the "no infinite regress" principle in the cosmological arguments and the first cause (mover, etc.) conclusions: -"If there can be anything without a cause, it may just as well be the world as God, so there cannot be any validity in [the first cause] argument ... There is no reason why the world could not have come into being without a cause; nor, on the other hand, is there any reason why it should not have always existed"

Examples

•E.g., the St. Petersburg Paradox is generated by imagining a "game" you are offered to play for a fee. •A fair coin is tossed and the game ends the first time it shows heads. If the coin shows heads on the first toss, you get $2. If it first shows heads on the second toss, you get $4. On the third, $8. That continues, with a payoff in dollars that doubles with every toss. •Given the probabilities involved, each toss has an expected value of $1, which means that an infinite run of tosses has an infinite value. •If you are concerned only with the expected value of the gamble, you ought to be willing to pay any finite amount of money necessary for the "privilege" to play this game. But it is ridiculous to suppose that anyone would be willing to pay more than a few dollars to play.

Coding Different

•First, there are certain similarities between all (minus a very few exceptions) forms of life in the basic "stuff" out of which they are built -They share the same genetic -----? scheme to build the same amino acids, out of which the different kinds of organisms are built -There is a remarkable similarity in the genetic codes used by -----? species

Good occasion

•Mackie: even if you grant the coherence of the notion of free will, there remains a difficult question for the defender of God's existence: -"[If] God has made men such that in their free choices they sometimes prefer what is good and sometimes what is evil, why could he have not made men such that they always freely choose the -------? If there is no logical impossibility in a man's freely choosing the good on one, or even on several, occasions, there cannot be a logical impossibility in his freely choosing the good on every --------?" (108) -Being free and always doing right seem logically compatible -Also, why so much suffering, even if some is necessary?

satisficer

•Rather, nature is a ---------?- all that is needed is to get the job done well enough to ensure survival and successful reproduction

logical

•The alleged inconsistency is rooted in the idea that God is both all powerful and supremely good -This is a -----?problem, thus the challenge to the rationality of religious belief

("fitness") - evolution

•The basic idea is that organisms vary in different traits that affect their chances of surviving and successfully reproducing

Creationism evolutionary

•The challenge facing -----------? is that we seem to have a lot of trouble coming up with a version of creationism that makes definite predictions and which is better supported by the available evidence than evolution -"Perfect adaptation" creationism is not consistent with observations about actual creatures -We cannot discriminate, based on predictions and outcomes, between ------ theory and a version of creationism that claims that God directly created the world so that it would look just like life had evolved from a common ancestor -A "minimalistic" creationism which claims that God, somehow, intervened to affect the characteristics of living things makes no testable predictions

"evolution alone"

•The challenge to the design argument from evolution is not that evolution entails that God (or any other intelligent designer you like) does not exist, but that no version of the design hypothesis is more probable than the ------- ------?hypothesis This undercuts the abductive (best explanation) inference to the designer's existence

3 to 4

•The move from (?) to (?) is suspicious, though •It does not follow from the fact that each particular thing does not exist at some time or other, that there is some one time at which everything does not exist •From the fact that everyone takes his or her first breath at some time or other, it does not follow that there is some single time at which all people take their first breath together

The Problem of Evil

•The point of arguments based on the existence of evil in the world is that not only does religious belief lack rational support (due to the familiar problems with arguments for God's existence), but religious belief is irrational -The internal inconsistency of religious doctrine is supposed to be to blame -Mackie and Hume have offered well-known versions of this kind of argument

Intentional

•The problem with Anselm's argument is that it misunderstands the ----------? nature of our thoughts and concepts •How we represent things in our minds does not determine how things really are -Being conceived of as such-and-such or believed to be so does not guarantee things are a certain way - we can misconceive, have empty concepts, false beliefs, etc

not

•The second is that, contrary to what one might expect from a supremely intelligent designer, organisms are ----- perfectly adapted to their environments

fields

•There are different varieties of creationism, each of which runs into its own specific problems -E.g., young earth creationism claims that the earth is only, say, ten thousand years old. However, not only is that claim incompatible with claims within biology about evolution, it's also in conflict with findings in physics, astronomy, geology, and other ------?.

Miraculous

•This shared feature looks to be a -----? coincidence - something radically improbable - if different forms of life evolved separately; i.e., do not share a common ancestor

Common

•This shared feature looks to be just the kind of thing we would expect, if all life evolved from a ------? ancestor

Related Common

•Two main pieces of evidence are routinely cited in support of the claims that 1.) all life is -----? and 2.) that all current forms of life evolved from -----? ancestors

Pascal

(A PERSON) - Doesn't argue that God exists (necessarily or otherwise) - Pascal's argument differs from the other types we've just noted, in that he aims to show only that the most rational thing for us to do is to believe that God exists.

Singular -If each non-conscious thing that acts for an end is directed by something with intelligence, it doe not follow that there is a single intelligence that directs all non-conscious things toward their ends

(Aquinas's Fifth Way) One problem right off the bat is the move to a ------ intelligence in (4)

Deity Wrong God

(Pascal's Wager) *Another issue is that the same reasoning could be use to motivate belief in other supreme deities who are not the Judeo-Christian (in fact, Catholic for Pascal) God at issue in the Wager * One response is to grant that the Wager does not decide among religions, but it does secure for us a more general theism. ex. Justification for belief in some supreme ---- * Depending on the true nature of that supreme deity (assuming it exists), that might not be good enough ex. perhaps those who believe in the ------- ---- are punished just as though they were atheists, or worse!

Evil

(The Problem of Evil) * Another option is to deny the existence of ---? (i.e., deny premise 3) -- Unfortunately, one only has to look around one's neighborhood to see how implausible that is -- Plausible/coherent denials of the existence of evil (e.g., morality is merely a human invention) sit uncomfortably with most religious belief systems.

Must

(The Problem of Evil) * One might consider different challenges to premise 2 and/or premise 3 -- These responses would be particularly appealing to someone who thinks that a certain amount of suffering ----? exist in the world, in order for our souls to appropriately develop and for us to be able to take credit for our own good actions

Supreme Attributes

(The Problem of evil) •This argument cannot by itself prove that no deity exists •At most, what it shows is that, if God exists, God is not a ------? being possessing all --------? •This puts considerable pressure on standard theological positions -John Mackie: the Problem of Evil shows "not that religious beliefs lack rational support, but that they are positively irrational, that the several parts of the essential theological doctrine are inconsistent with one another" •Mackie's charge is true, if this argument succeeds, only so long as religious belief is understood in terms of an all-PKG God

Mysterious

* Another response to consider is the claim that God works in ------- ways and human minds are too limited to understand God's purposes, including why God would allow evil to exist in the world.

Irrational

* One thing to observe about such a response is that it concedes a lot what the proponent of the argument from evil wants to establish. - Argument from evil: religious belief is -------? - This reply: religious belief is not subject to (grounded in, sensitive to, etc) rational standards and (at least strongly seems like it) flies in the face of reason and evidence

Conceived

-Conceivability is often thought to be a guide to what is possible, although there are lots of complicated disputes amongst philosophers about these matters; e.g., different types of possibility, perhaps everything that is conceivable is possible but (due to the limitations of the human intellect) not everything that is possible can be -------?

Unless For everything that changes or moves, there is something that brings about its changing or moving. -- Causes precede effects

According to Newton's physics, objects remain in uniform motion (or at rest) ---- they are acted on by a force- the motion (/rest) does not need a "supporting cause"

Systems

-Radical overhauls of existing structures cannot be achieved on demand, obsolete structures cannot be wholly eliminated "in a flash", new materials cannot be brought in out of the blue, changing one part of a system can have effects on other -----? that depend on it Common examples: panda's thumb, vestigal organs, chick embryo's teeth, human embryo's gills

Pascal's wager

- God's nature is totally unlike ours and is incomprehensible - Previous attempts to prove God's existence are compelling - "If there is a God, He is infinitely incomprehensible, since, having neither parts nor limits, He has no affinity to us. We are then incapable of knowing either what He is or if He is" Despite this, the potential payoff from belief in God is so great as to make it rational to 'bet' that God exists

Darwin's Theory

-All current forms of life are related (you may have to go back very far in time to find common ancestors between humans and phytoplankton) -The diversity of forms of life is explained by natural selection

Gaunilo's Parody

1.We have in our mind a concept of a perfect island ("P-island"), of which no greater island can be conceived. 2.(By 1) P-island at least exists in our mind. 3.(By 2) Either P-island exists in the mind alone, or in the mind and extra-mentally. 4.If P-island existed in the mind alone, then we could conceive of an island which was greater than P-island. 5.(By 1 & 4) P-island does not exist in our mind alone. 6.(By 3 & 5) P-island necessarily exists extra-mentally; i.e., as an independent thing.

Paley's Watch

1. Suppose, while walking about about in nature, you were to find an intricate piece of machinery. The object, a watch, has a complex set of interacting parts, all of which work together to measure time in a very precise way. What best explains the existence of this object and the fact that is put together in such a way that it so well serves the ends of measuring time?

Aquinas's Third way

1.) Contingent things exist. 2.) Every contingent thing began to exist at some time or other. 3.) Assume that everything is contingent. 4.) (by 2 & 3) There must have been a time at which nothing existed. 5.) A contingent thing can exist only if it has been brought into existence by something else. 6.) (by 4 & 5) Then nothing would exist now. 7.) (by 1 & 6) It is not the case that everything is contingent; i.e., there is at least one necessary being. 8.) There is no infinite regress of necessary beings whose necessity is caused by another necessary being. 9.) (by 7 & 8) There is an independent necessary being, which we call God.

2- Aquinas's Fifth Way

1.) Non-conscious things act in a uniform way and tend toward what is best 2.) (by 1) Non- conscious things achieve their ends not by chance, but on purpose. 3.) Things that achieve their ends on purpose must be directed by intelligence and consciousness, either internally or externally 4.) (by 2&3) Non-conscious things are directed by an external intelligence 5.) There must exist an intelligence capable of directing the massive number of non-conscious things in nature toward their ends 6.) (by 4&5), as the intelligence that directs non-conscious nature, exists.

Aquinas's Second Way

1.Every event has a distinct, direct cause which temporally precedes it. 2.(By 1) No event can be its own cause. 3.An infinite regress of causes is not allowed; i.e., there must be a first cause. 4.(by 2 & 3) There must be an uncaused cause, which we call God.

Not

1.If God exists, God is a supreme being possessing all (positive?) attributes to an infinite degree. a.E.g., God is omnipotent, omniscient, omnibenevolent (aka all-PKG: powerful, knowledgeable, and good) 2.If an entity is omnibenevolent, then that entity would not allow injustice to occur if that entity knew about it and could prevent it. a. We'll use 'injustice' to refer to any undeserved or unnecessary suffering (broad understanding of 'evil'). 3.The world, which is God's creation, is full of injustice. 4.(By 2 and 3) Therefore, God is either not omnipotent, not omniscient, or not omnibenevolent. 5.(By 1 and 4) Therefore, God does ----- exist.

Aquinas's First ways

1.Things change or move. 2.It is impossible for a thing that changes or moves to cause its own change or movement. 3.(By 1& 2) For everything that changes or moves, there is something that brings about its changing or moving. -- Causes precede effects 4.An infinite regress of 'changers' ('movers') is not allowed; i.e., there must be a first mover. 5.(By 3 &4) There must be an unmoved mover, which we call God.

3. Anselm's Ontological Argument

1.We have in our mind a concept of God as a supreme being, of which no greater being can be conceived. 2.(By 1) God at least exists in our mind. 3.(By 2) Either God exists in the mind alone, or in the mind and extra-mentally. 4.If God existed in the mind alone, then we could conceive of a being which was greater than God. 5.(By 1 & 4) God does not exist in our mind alone. 6.(By 3 & 5) God necessarily exists extra-mentally; i.e., as an independent being.

Human (Paley's Watch)

2. Well, the best explanation is that some quite intelligent entity - at least as smart as a -----? designed the object and fit its intricate nature to the purpose of measuring time. a.) Certainly, it is implausible to suppose that a random process could have produced such a complex object that is so well-suited to measuring time.

Paley's Watch

3. The whole of nature is full of complexity, of a much higher degree than that of a watch. Moreover, organisms are extremely well-suited to their environments (survival, reproduction, etc). even more so than are watches to time-keeping. What best explains the staggering complexity and proper adaptation found in nature?

limitations

A more general worry is based on Pascal's admission that God is incomprehensible * One might alse object that, for more technical reasons, decision theory has certain ---------- or requires more sophisticated rules when it comes to dealing with infinite payoffs

Infinite

Also, if we can't have an infinite change of causes going backwards, by parity of reason it seems that we couldn't go forward infinitely, either. - However, an infinite future (eternity) seems to be part of the overall package that Aquinas wants to sell us. Such an --------- future would seem to include an infinite chain of causes.

Plants

Also, what does it mean to say that non-conscious things tend toward what is best? Best on what scale? Judged by whom? Even if we take non-conscious things to have ends, evolutionary theory gives us a good way of thinking about how non-conscious things like -----? . virii, and bacteria can act for their own ends without being guided by an external intelligence -Even if evolutionary theory is false, its mere coherence is enough to give us an alternatuve to what is claimed to necessarily be so in premise (3); note the 'must' in (3)

must exist

Anselm's Ontological Argument:: •Okay, suppose Anselm gets that God's existence is possible •Well, now the nature of God - actually, our concept of God's nature - becomes important •God is conceived of as being perfect •Mind-independent existence is superior to mind-dependent existence •Necessary mind-independent existence is superior to contingent mind-independent existence •Therefore, our concept of God entails that God ------ -----?independently of our concept of God

Priori

Anslem's argument is a -----? the truth of its conclusion (should it be so) is supposed to not depend on any facts about how the world is or might turn out to be

Darwin

Appling ----- theory to a particular species to explain how members of that species get faster, stronger, more colorful, etc is not controversial -Selective breeding of birds, livestock, cats, dogs, etc. had been going on for thousands of years.

William Paley and Cleanthes

Aquinas is a variant of the teleological argument, further developed in different forms by ? and ? (in David Hume's Dialogues concerning natural religion) - Versions of this argument data back at least to the Ancient Greeks

Five proofs

Aquinas offers five proofs of God's existence

Premise 2 and premise 3 (Aquinas's First Way)

Aquinas's First way... Premise ? (and hence premise ?) seems false. Not everything that changes is changed by some other, external thing.

Teleological (Arguments for God's Existence)

Arguments that use the order (ex: design, harmony, function, etc) of the universe to argue that God exists, as the 'designer' or 'fine-tuner' of the universe. - Aquinas' fifth way, Paley, contemporary discussions of intelligent design.

Decision under uncertainty (or ignorance)

At least some forms of the wager Pascal considers are -------- under ------- (or ignorance) - We have no idea about the probabilities attached to possible states of the world ( in this case whether God exists or doe not exist) - In certain circumstances despite such ignorance, a rational choice is dictated by what we know about the best/worst outcomes of the available choices.

parents

At least some of that variation can be passed along by ------ to their offspring

Certain

Creationism, however, is incompatible with our best science in a variety of fields. * Note that (responsible) scientists don't claim that evolution theory is -----? Rather, it's what is best supported by the best evidence we have on hand

Eye

Darwin couldn't explain the wondrous nature of the human -----? •However, in many respects, it's actually quite a poorly or oddly designed imaging instrument -Only certain evolutionary trajectories were available from some distant ancestor of ours to us, which constrains what kind of eye we could end up with -In the human eye, various competing purposes must be balanced, such as wavelength analysis, spatial resolution, sensitivity in dim lighting, motion detection

Best

Ex: God made it look as though the evolutionary account is true, but it actually isn't. •This predictive equivalence is bad news for teleological arguments that are portrayed as inferences to the ----? explanation

free will

First, one could simply appeal to free will and claim that it makes God's existence consistent w/ evil -- It might be assumed that there could be no genuinely good action w/o ----- ----?, and a consequence of free will is that there will be bad action as well as good.

Expected utilities (Pascal's Wager)

For decisions under risk, we are able to assign probabilities to the possible outcomes to come up with -------- ------ for each choice

new

Given enough time, a subpopulation might evolve in such a way that its members can no longer produce fertile issue with members of the rest of the population. -That's how we get ---- species

God

God's existence is supposed to be possible simply because we can conceive of ----- existing

Leibniz's Principle of Sufficient Reason

Has it that every fact has an explanation "brutely"), one that is genuinely capable of accounting for the fact in question

Certainty

He argues that based on reflection on the gains and losses presented by each ide of the wager, we are justified in believing that God exists, although we will not have ----- of God's existence

extremely (Paley's Watch)

It is even more implausible to suppose that a random process could have produced the wondrous characteristics found in nature than it is to suppose that such a process could produce a watch. Moreover, the sort of intelligence that produced the characteristics of nature must be far beyond that of the sort of intelligence required to produce a watch. 5.) Thus, there exists an ----- intelligent designer (maker, etc) of the world.

Vary

Natural selection works when the members of a population of organisms ---- in the degrees of fitness that they inherit from their parents -This requires a mechanism for parents to pass along traits to their off spring -Fitness has to fo with a creature's ability to survive and successfully reproduce -Fitness is in important ways dependent on the specific nature of one's environment, as well as basic physical principles -There must be differences amongst the members of the population in their heritable traits that affect their fitness

Species

What is controversial is using Darwin's theory to explain how new species arise - by claiming that given enough small changes within a subpopulation of a new species, that subpopulation will come to form a new ---- - In fact, claiming that new species can come about challenges a thesis very dear to some creationists - the fixity of species.

teleological argument

What is the type of fifth argument?

Sexual selection

Note that for sexually reproducing species, Darwin also thought that ---- ---- ? (selection for traits that is drive by mate choice played a crucial role -Other factors like genetic drift are also thought to play a role

hypotheses

Note the "most probable" and "best explanation" in order for this argument to have any merit, two things are required: 1.) We've identified all the relevant ----? 2.) We've correctly gauged the probabilities of those hypotheses

Infinite Pays

One decion principle: maximize the worst payoff you can get, however things turn out (maximin) - Avoid ----- punishment Another: maximize expected utility, using a pessimistic guess at the probability of God's existence. --Even if the chance of God existing is 1/1,000,000, it looks like it still "----?" to believe

Comforts Higher

One might quibble with this depiction of things, arguing that believers get a positive payoff, even it God doesn't exist -- That is, maybe the top-right cell should be +10 (+8, +14, whatever) -- The believers will at least have the ------? of religion, the community with their fellow believers, etc -- However this issue is resolved does not affect the analysis of which decision is in your best interest (Pascal's Wager) In that case, whether God exists or doesn't exist, the believers have it better; i.e., their payoff is ----------- than that of the non-believers

Environments

One version of creationism that is often focused on: organisms are perfectly adapted to their -----?

Sober (evolution)

Our best science is neutral on whether there is a God. -Thus we have no scientific basis for preferring either atheistic evolutionism or theistic evolutionism

Decision theory

Pascal's reasoning here is based on ------ theory, and this is one of the earliest (if not the earliest documented) uses of it. Facts about how the world is and an agent's available choices of action determine what decision is rational for the agent to make

Believing

Pascal's thinks we cannot avoid having to take a stand on --------- whether God exists.

disbelieving

Pascal: We must make a choice between believing and ?

Random

Radioactive decay is ----, and there is no causal explanation (in terms of the effects of some external thing or event) for why decay occurs at one time rather than another

PKG rational

The Problem of Evil * One could reply to the argument by simply denying premise 1, that God is all-? -- That works to avoid the challenge from the existence of evil, but now it's even less clear what ------? basis there could be for religious belief --- Typical arguments on behalf of God's existence (teleological, cosmological, and ontological) turn on attributing to God all-PKG status or something very close to that

intelligent designer (Teleological Arguments)

The basic idea behind arguments is that the most probable explanation of the order, purpose driven behavior, etc we observe in the world is that the world is a product of an ------ - It does seem ludicrous to think that sheer randomness could deliver the world we find ourselves in, whatever shortcomings we might think it has -Inferences to the best explanation are "abductive"

"shaped" Novel

The existences of inherited variation of fitness in a population allows it to evolve - Existing traits can be "?" - ? traits can arise

legitimacy

The plausibility of the free will defense depends on the (disputed)------- of the doctrine of free will

Contingency

The property of being possible but not necessary. - Some contingent things are actual (really exist), others are not - Things that are necessary must exist (be how they are, etc)

-Choice: Believe in God, live a moral life; Outcome: God exists; Payoff: Infinite happiness -Choice: Don't believe in God, lead a pleasure-seeking life; Outcome: God exists; Payoff: Infinite punishment -Choice: Believe in God, live a moral life; Outcome: God doesn't exist; Payoff: Finite suffering (or finite happiness) -Choice: Don't believe in God, lead a pleasure-seeking life; Outcome: God doesn't exist; Payoff: Finite happiness

There are four situations and their payoffs:

Ontological

They are supposed to work by showing that, from the very nature of certain of our concepts and the rules of reason, denying the existence of God leads to a contradiction. Thus, it follows -with necessity- that God exists.

Arguments for God's Existence

Truths of reason are thought to be necessarily true -they do not depend on specific facts about different ways the world might turn out. -The truths of arithmetic are supposed to be necessary in this way.

Unexplained

We might also challenge premise 4: Why is an infinite regress impossible? - If there were an infinite regress, it's not as though things would go ------; every change that occurs would be explained by another one, going back infinitely

1. Theistic evolutionism 2. Atheistic evolutionism 3. Creationism

What are the three positions of evoltion by Elliot Sober?

cosmological

What are the type of the first 4 arguments?