In Hume’s Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion we are introduced to three characters that serve the purpose to debate God and his nature, more specifically, what can mankind infer about God and his nature. The three characters; Demea, Philo, and Cleanthes all engage in a debate concerning this question and they all serve the purpose of supporting their views on the subject. It is the “argument from design” put forth by Cleanthes that is the focal point of the discussion, and it is Demea and Philo who attempt to discredit it.
It is Cleanthes who gets the ball rolling in Part II of Hume by laying out his “argument from design.” Cleanthes believes that there is ample evidence in the nature that surrounds us to draw conclusions on what God is like. Cleanthes compares the surrounding world as one great “machine.” He goes on to discuss how this “machine” is “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.”(837) Cleanthes goes on to suggest that these “machines” are all adjusted to each other in such a way that it resembles the productions of man and human design. By this Cleanthes is saying that nature is organized much the same way as a machine built by man. He states this by saying “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.”(837) Cleanthes main emphasis is not the question of the intelligent designer itself, but rather that the designer similar to mankind. He makes his assumption concrete by saying “By this argument a posteriori, and by this argument alone, do we prove at once the existence of a Deity and his similarity to human mind and intelligence.”(837)
In other words Cleanthes believes that we need to look no further than this analogy to prove that God is similar to a human designer, only much more perfect due to the perfection we see in the system of nature.
It is this inference by Cleanthes that both Demea and Philo have problems with. In turn they spend the rest of Hume’s Dialogues rebutting Cleanthes claims. However, Demea and Philo do differ from each other on why they believe Cleanthes’ “argument from design” is flawed.
Demea firmly believes that God is so outside the realm of hu...
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...”(867)
Personally, after assessing all the information brought forth in Hume’s Dialogues I can only say that I agree more with Demea and Philo than I do with Cleanthes. It can be easily construed that Hume wrote these dialogues with the intent of portraying Philo as the victor, contrary to what Part XII might say. I must say that if I did believe in a supreme being I would have to side with Demea’s argument that we as humans cannot possibly comprehend God, or try to understand him through our reasoning. Further more, with respect to Cleanthes claims that God can be understood through out own surroundings, I have to disagree for most of the same reasons as Philo did. The concept of evil is virtually impossible for Cleanthes line of reasoning to overcome and is definitely the strongest argument against the “argument from design.” Over all I have to once again go back to Demea as being the overriding constant voice of dissent. His assertions of mans' inability to understand God, although simple, in my mind easily overrides all arguments put forth by Cleanthes.
Work Cited
Hume, David. Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion. 1779. Buffalo, NY: Prometheus, 1989.
In order to understand Hume's problem of induction, it is first necessary to understand the principles upon which it stands. At the outset of his work, Hume declares that "all our ideas or more feeble perceptions are copies of our impressions or more lively ones."1 He justifies this statement by two arguments. Firstly, he analyzes the roots of our knowledge, and discerns that all knowledge has its origins in "a precedent feeling or sentiment"2 To Hume, even the idea of God is derrived from a prior sensation. He argues that we can have an idea of God simply by augmenting our ideas of wisdom and goodness. Essentially, we can multiply the goodness that we sense or experience up to infinity, in order to have an idea of God. Secondly, Hume states that all knowledge must come from sensations. To illustrate this, he uses the example of a blind man. A blind man will have no idea or impression of the colour blue. Since he has never seen blue, let alone colour, there is no possible way for him to know what blue is. Thu...
... and wrong. While Descartes believes that all bad things that happen were actually good if we could just see the bigger picture, Hume says this does not matter. The human and animal mind is not created to think of the bigger picture, it is only able to think about what is right in front of it. So in this aspect, humans and animals are both able to perceive what is right and wrong, therefore supporting Hume’s idea that humans and animals aren’t so different.
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From the distinction of perceptions, Hume created his ‘microscope’ in order to trace all ideas back to impressions. He did this to search for the limits. If an idea could not be traced back to its impression, it was too abstruse. Hume separated the objects of human reason into two categories. First, the relation of ideas, which represented all that is ‘a priori’. Secondly, he created the category of matters of fact. Matters of fact made up the ‘a posteriori’ piece of the spectrum of reason. Matters of fact are contingent, meaning they could be otherwise.
In Part II of David Hume’s Dialogues of Natural Religion, Demea remarks that the debate is not about whether or not God exists, but what the essence of God is. (pg.51) Despite this conclusion in Part II, in his introduction to the Dialogues Martin Bell remarks that the question of why something operates the way it does is quite different from the question why do people believe that it operates the way it does. (pg. 11) This question, the question of where a belief originates and is it a valid argument, is much of the debate between Hume’s three characters in the Dialogues. (pg. ***)
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The argument from design discussion occurs in parts two through five of the Dialogues, and begins with Demea professing that what needs to be questioned is God’s nature, not his existence, since all three of the members already agree that God exists. He says that humans are weak and will never be able to understand God’s nature, stating “finite, weak, and blind creatures, we ought to humble ourselves in his august presence, and, conscious of our frailties, adore in silence his infinite perfections, which eye has not seen, ear has not heard, neither has it entered into the heart of man to perceive” (Hume 607). By this, Demea means that understanding God’s nature is beyond the capacity of human understanding, and humans will never have a clear answer regarding it. Philo agrees with Demea on this idea, but also says that he does not assume that God is like humans in any way at all. To defend his argument, he says “Wisdom, thought, design, knowledge— these we justly ascribe to him, because these words are h...
The way in which a concept comes to exist in one’s mind is itself a concept worth examining. Many philosophers have looked for the origin of thought in the human mind, and many different reasons for this origin have been put forth. As a philosopher, it is only fitting that Hume would propose his own framework for human thinking. For Hume, perceptions are developed either as the understanding of the outside world, or as recollections of these events or alterations of these memories within the mind¹. This distinction is important, as it allows Hume to differentiate perceptions as true or false notions. With this, Hume puts forward his concepts of belief and fiction. Belief is defined in perceptions that one, simply put, believes, and fiction encompasses the thoughts that are not believed. These definitions seem redundant when viewed as so, but further examination of Hume’s framework sheds light on the meaning of what he attempts to establish concerning belief.
Sometimes it is hard to be sure what conclusion to draw from a Humean analysis, and he is easy to misrepresent. This is partly because one argument he is engaged in may raise a number of related issues that he has dealt with elsewhere, and some of his points seem contradictory. My wish is to consider some of the possible readings of David Hume’s critique of causation, as it appears in Section VII of the Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding, “On Necessary Connexion”, and their relation to the propositions of Section II, “Of the Origin of Ideas”, and Section X, “On Miracles”. I will offer criticisms and alternatives to Hume’s account(s) and conclude by picking which interpretation of Section VII best works for Hume, given certain arguments elsewhere in the Enquiry.
David Hume in An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding and Benedict De Spinoza in The Ethics run noteworthy parallels in about metaphysics and human nature. Spinoza and Hume share opinions of apriori knowledge and free will. For human nature, similar concepts of the imagination and morality arise. Although both philosophers derive similar conclusions in their philosophy, they could not be further distanced from one another in their concepts of God. Regarded as an atheist, Spinoza argues that God is the simple substance which composes everything and that nothing is outside of this simple substance. Hume rejects this notion completely and claims that nothing in the world can give us a clear picture of God. Hume rejects the argument from design
...ated into complex by chance, should at the level of impressions have recourse to no other 'agent'. One is inclined to wonder why Hume thought it impossible that ideas should be constantly associated by chance into the same ordered pattern that we apprehend in experience, but that it is not impossible for impressions to be thus associated.
“Relations of ideas are indestructible bonds created between ideas and all logically true statements and matters of fact are concerned with experience and we are certain of matters of fact through cause and effect“(Hume Section IV). This proves that the both the mind and body are one because of the cause and effect. He believes that there are connections between all ideas in the mind, and that there are three different kinds. The first is resemblance that describes looking at a picture then thinking of what it represents in the picture. Then there is contiguity looking at something then thinking of about something different. Then there is the cause and effect of something happening to you and then to imagine the pain of the wound. Once again beginning able to look at something and then create an idea from it only proves that without senses we couldn’t just come up with an idea out of the blue.