PHILOSOPHY NOTES Part 2 The Limits of Philosophy

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Philosophy Notes                 

This is the second post in a series that I call Philosophy Notes. Each post is a supplement to my philosophy study guides, designed to help beginning philosophy students read, understand, and think critically about the classic books of philosophy.   

The Limits of Philosophy: Descartes and Hume on the Existence of God

In the first episode (“What is Philosophy?”) we ended by asking whether the philosophical method of concept analysis can be used to prove the existence of God. Have past attempts to prove that God exists stayed within or gone beyond the limits of what philosophy can prove or disprove?

In chapter V of Meditations on First Philosophy (1641), Rene Descartes states what is now called the Ontological Argument for the Existence of God.  The argument is called ontological because it derives the existence of God not from experience or matters of fact but from the concept of God. Here is the argument in Descartes’ words:

 1. The clear and distinct idea of God in my consciousness is the idea of a being whose nature is supreme perfection.

2. I know with clearness and distinctness that an actual and eternal existence pertains to the nature of a supremely perfect being.

3. Therefore, God actually and eternally exists.

The popular version of the argument is much shorter:

1. God is an all-perfect being.

2. Existence is a perfection.

3. Therefore, God exists.

The ontological argument did not begin with Descartes. The first version was stated by Anselm and later repeated by Duns Scotus.  In Descartes’ time, it was accepted as valid by Leibniz.

But it was not received well by some contemporaries of Descartes and it was later criticized and rejected by the great philosophers Immanuel Kant and David Hume.

Kant’s counter argument is that existence is not an attribute or property like omniscience or omnipotence. If existence is not a property, then we cannot prove the existence of someone or something by analyzing the concept of that one or thing.  For example, I cannot logically derive the existence of 100 dollars from the concept One Hundred Dollars. One hundred real (existing) dollars is the same amount as in the concept. Adding existence to the concept of one hundred dollars does not change the amount in the way that adding one dollar changes the amount and (therefore) changes the concept itself (to One hundred and one dollars).

 By analogy, I cannot logically derive the existence of human beings from the concept Human. An analysis of this concepts will not be sufficient to prove that that human beings actually exist. If 100 dollars and humans exist at all, this can only be confirmed by observation and experience, not by concept analysis.

If existence is not an attribute or property of an object, event or person, then being “supremely perfect” cannot imply that a supremely perfect being exists, any more than does being “supremely imperfect” imply that a supremely imperfect being does not exist. Non-existence like existence is not a property.

David Hume has a slightly different approach to the ontological argument.  In his Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion, Hume writes that “there is an evident absurdity in pretending to demonstrate a matter of fact, or to prove it by any arguments a priori.” (55). Statements about what does or does not exist are statements about matters of fact not statements about logical relationships between ideas (concepts).

As matters of fact, statements about the existence of God are no different than statements about the existence of the gods of ancient Greece, for example, the existence of Zeus.  Such statements cannot be “demonstrated,” as was attempted in the ontological argument presented by Descartes.   They can only be proved by observation and experience. 

Hume explains in the same quote that to demonstrate that a proposition is true is to prove it by an argument a priori. I can demonstrate (prove) that triangles have three sides because the sentence “Triangles have three sides” relates one concept (triangularity) to another concept (three-sided shape).  The relation is one of necessity. To deny that a triangle has three sides is to state a contradiction.

Matter of fact statements are not about relations of ideas (concepts). If I say that 20^th century houses have indoor plumbing, I am not stating that the idea of a 20^th century house is necessarily related to the idea of indoor plumbing. Instead, I am reporting a fact about 20^th century houses that can be proved or disproved by experience and observation.  It is a contradiction to say that some triangles have four sides. It is not  a contradiction to say that some houses do not have indoor plumbing. 

Returning to the ontological argument for the existence of God, if there can be no demonstration of a matter of fact, then any inquiries about  the existence of a thing or event is an inquiry about  a matter of fact not about a relationships of ideas (concepts).  Consider, for example, the concepts Piano and Existence. When we say, “pianos exist,” we are not saying that pianos are things that necessarily exist, that is, we are not saying that existence is tied to the concept of Piano in the same way that three-sidedness is tied to the concept of Triangle.  The  same  thing can be said about “God exists.”  Despite Descartes’ dubious claim that existence is a perfection, the existence of anything, be it God or a piano, can only be proved by observation and experience.

If proof of the existence of God depends on observation and experience, then the proof is empirical not analytic. Observation and experience coupled with experiment provide evidence that supports conclusions that are probable not certain. Such proofs are called “inductive” and they belong in the province of science not philosophy.

This did not stop some philosophers from using inductive arguments to prove the existence of God or life after death.  In the next episode of “What is philosophy?” we will look at David Hume’s critical examination of the most popular inductive argument: The Design Argument for the Existence of God.  We will also show how Hume’s criticism of the Design Argument reveals a fatal flaw of any attempt to prove by inductive argument that there is an afterlife.

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Learn more about Descartes’ ontological argument in Laurence Houlgate’s Understanding Rene Descartes: The Smart Student’ Guide to Meditations on First Philosophy, at https://www.amazon.com/dp/B08MDJTW2K

Learn more about David Hume’s critique of the ontological and design arguments in Laurence Houlgate’s Understanding David Hume: The Smart Student’s Guide to Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion and the Essays on Miracles, Immortality, and Suicide at https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07RN9HQHS

UNDERSTANDING RENÉ DESCARTES: THE SMART STUDENT'S GUIDE TO MEDITATIONS ON FIRST PHILOSOPHY

 

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This philosophy study guide for Descartes' Meditations on First Philosophy is the seventh book in the Smart Student's Guides to Philosophical Classics series. Like the other books in the series, it is much more than an outline or a set of notes and flash cards. It is a book for “smart students” who are serious about understanding and thinking critically about one of the most consequential books ever written in the history of philosophy. Part I of the book has the complete text of John Veitch's translation of the original Meditations, presented in a way that makes it much easier for a beginning philosophy student to understand and think critically about Descartes’ classic work. Each of the six Meditations is divided into smaller sections with sub-titles, followed by Professor Houlgate’s commentary and critiques. Questions for thought and discussion are at the end of each chapter. These questions are intended to help students prepare for examinations and give them ideas and topics for term papers. Part II takes the student deeper into Descartes’ meditations. It includes two chapters on method, analyses of Descartes’ arguments and comparisons to and criticisms of other philosophers on important philosophical problems and theories. These are presented in a way that invite students to do their own thinking about the meditations, engage with their professor in classroom discussion, and organize and write a successful term paper.

Now available at Amazon.com as an eBook or  paperback.  Go here for details.

Does God Exist? Dialogues on Rational Religion, #2

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Dialogues on Rational Religion, part 2

Scene of the dialogue: An undergraduate Philosophy of Religion honors class at a diverse 21^st century American university

 
Dialogue participants: Professor Shanice Washington and students DeShawn Russell, Juanita Valdez, Jakub Dabrowski, Robert Devereaux, Yoshiko Yamamoto, Makena Kalenjin.

(continued from part 1)

1.2  What do the words ‘god’ and ‘God’ mean?

Professor Washington:  What assumptions are we making when we ask the question "Does God exist?"

Juanita: I can answer that.  We are assuming that we know what the word 'God' means.

Prof:  Right on!  We can’t search for something or someone until we know what it is we are looking for.  We can’t answer the question “Does God exist?” until we know what the word ‘God’ means.  

 So let’s start there.  What does the word ‘God’ mean?

Robert: In several of his early dialogues, Plato has the character Socrates says that if we want to discover what a word means, we must first find out what the things or beings referred to by that word have in common.  For example, if I want to find out what the word ‘bachelor’ means I have to find out what bachelors have in common. 

DeShawn:  I see what you are suggesting.  Well, I’m a bachelor and so is Jakub and
Robert.  What we have in common is that we are male, unmarried and eligible. 

I can see how we would use Plato's method when defining the word ‘god’.  There have been thousands of beings called gods in ancient history, for example, Freya, Thor, Dionysus, Poseidon, Hathor, Bastet, and on and on.  We could probably come up with features that they have in common. 

Prof:  I agree, but once we do this, it would take a lifetime to answer the question “Do gods exist?”  This would be a question about the gods of polytheistic religions, that is, religions having many gods: gods of the harvest, gods of war, gods of the underworld and so on.  We could find out what these gods have in common and then challenge believers to prove that one or more of their gods exist. We could start with the Egyptian gods, and then move on to the Greek, Norse Polynesian, Chinese, and Japanese gods until we have investigated arguments for the existence of gods of all cultures and religions. 

Makena: We might finish by the end of the century.  Does anyone here want to go down this path?

[Silence]

Jakub: I certainly wouldn’t volunteer.  And I doubt whether anyone in ancient history ever gave arguments for the existence of any of these gods.  These beliefs were just part of the culture. 

Prof.  I agree.  A professor at U.C. Berkeley conjectured that  interventions of the gods was the only explanation that ancient peoples knew how to give for the occurrence of floods, earthquakes, exploding volcanoes and other destructive natural phenomena.[1]  If humans did not and could not cause such massive events, then they imagined that invisible superhumans must have been responsible for the destruction.  It did not occur to them to look to nature itself as the cause. Eventually, these superhuman beings came to be called gods and the first religions celebrating and praying to them for constructive interventions were born. 

Prof. But enough of that.  I have a suggestion.  Since there seems to be no interest in discussing the history and existence of gods with a lowercase ‘g’, let’s confine our inquiry to monotheism, the religious view that there is only one God, a supreme being who is honored in religious writings with an upper case ‘G’

Juanita  God is a god.  What I mean is that God's name belongs in a list with all the other gods in ancient history. The word 'God' like 'Thor' and 'Poseidon' is the proper name of a being who belongs to the class of beings called 'gods'. 

DeShawn: So should we begin by finding out what God has in common with other gods? 

Jakub:   Professor Washington has already mentioned one common feature: supremacy.  All beings called 'god' are supreme in one or more ways.  For example, Thor is the Norse god of thunder, lightning and storms. Poseidon is the Greek god of the sea, storms and earthquakes.  To be the god of one or more of these dangerous events was to have the ability to both cause and control them.  Since there is no human who could do any of these things, the gods had a kind of supremacy over humans.

Yoshiko:  Okay.  I see where you are going with this.  God is the god of a monotheistic religion and like any other god He also has supremacy over humans.  But God also has supremacy over all other gods.  Instead of just being better at physically controlling events like earthquakes than humans, God is omnipotent, that is, He is all-powerful.  There is no limit to His power. Whatever Poseidon, Thor or any other god can do, God can do better. 

Professor W:  At least in the monotheistic Abrahamic religions (Judaism, Christianity, Islam), it is not the 'oneness' of God but His attributes that make God unique.  Unlike the gods of polytheistic religions, God is not only omnipotent, He is also omniscient (all-wise), omnibenevolent (all-good) and omnipresent (present everywhere at the same time).

Jakub: Wow!  That is a lot of attributes to digest all at once.  Could we discuss them one at a time at our next class meeting? 

Professor W: Of course.  We'll discuss not only the meaning of each attribute but also the logical problems of making them consistent with one another. 

Great discussion.  See you next week.

(to be continued)

For further commentary on rational religion, see my student's guide: Laurence Houlgate, Understanding David Hume (Amazon Kindle, 2018), www.houlgatebooks.com

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[1] Wallace I. Matson, The Existence of God (1965).