Think: A Compelling Introduction to Philosophy (23 page)

The argument is powerfully presented, but is it valid?

Russell is supposed to have remarked that the first cause argument was bad, but uniquely, awfully bad, in that the conclusion not
only failed to follow from the premises, but also actually contradicted them. His idea was that the argument starts off from the
premise `everything has a [distinct, previous] cause, but ends with
the conclusion that there must he something that has no distinct,
previous cause, but `carries the reason of his existence in himself'.
Then the conclusion denies what the premise asserts.

Russell's dismissal is a little glib. For the point of the argument,
from the theological perspective, is that although everything material or physical has a distinct previous cause, this very fact drives us to postulate something else, that has none. In the theological jargon, this would he a thing that is `necessary' or `causa sui': a thing
that is its own cause. And since this is not true of the ordinary
things that surround us, we need to postulate something extraordinary, a Deity, as the bearer of this extraordinary self-sufficiency.

In Hume's Dialogues the problem with this is quickly exposed.

It is pretended that the Deity is a necessarily existent being;
and this necessity of his existence is attempted to be explained
by asserting, that if we knew his whole essence or nature, we
should perceive it to be as impossible for him not to exist, as for
twice two not to be four. But it is evident that this can never
happen, while ourJaculties remain the same as at present. It
will still be possible for its, at any tinge, to conceive the nonexistence of'what we formerly conceived to exist; nor can the
mind ever lie under a necessity of supposing any object to remain always in being; in the same manner as we lie under a
necessity of always conceiving twice two to be Jour. The words,
therefore, `necessary existence, have no meaning; or, which is
the same thing, none that is consistent.

Hume's spokesman at this point, the character called Cleanthes,
goes on to say that for all we know, the material world or universe
as a whole itself might be the necessarily existent being, in spite of
the way in which parts of it depend upon other parts. For it must be
`unknown, inconceivable qualities' that make anything a 'necessary existent'. And for all we know, such unknown inconceivable
qualities may attach to the ordinary physical universe, rather to any
immaterial thing or person or deity lying behind it.

It is important to remember here that as far as everyday experience goes, minds are just as much in need of explanation, just as much dependent beings, as physical objects. Postulating a mind
that is somehow immune from dependency on anything else whatsoever is jumping away from experience just as violently as postulating a physical thing that is so.

The first cause argument speaks to worries that are natural, and
indeed according to some philosophers, notably Kant, inevitable.
When we think back to the `big bang' our next question is why that
event, then? We are not happy with the answer `no reason, because
we are not happy with events `just happening': the drive to explanation grips us. So we postulate something else, another cause
lying behind this one. But the drive now threatens to go on forever.
If we have cited God at this point, we either have to ask what caused
God, or cut off the regress by arbitrary fiat. But if we exercise an arbitrary right to stop the regress at that point, we might as well have
stopped it with the physical cosmos. In other words, we are in the
position of the Indian philosopher, who asked what the world
rested on replied `an elephant, and asked what the elephant rested
on, replied `a tortoise, and asked what the tortoise rested on,
begged to change the subject.

There are versions of the cosmological argument that are not
concerned with the first cause, in time. Rather, they consider the
ongoing order of the universe: the uniformity of nature. It can
seem an amazing fact that laws of nature keep on holding, that the
frame of nature does not fall apart. One can think that these facts
must be `dependent' and require a necessary sustaining cause (like
Atlas propping up the world). But once more, there is either a
regress, or a simple fiat that something has `unknown inconceivable properties' that make it self-sufficient. This would be some thing whose ongoing uniformity requires no explanation outside
itself. And that might as well be the world as a whole as anything
else. But we return to the uniformity of nature in the next two
chapters.

THE WISE ARCHITECT

The same Cleanthes who is given the job of refuting the cosmological argument is the spokesman for a different attempt to prove
the existence of a deity: the argument to design-the view that
heaven and earth declare the glory of the creator. This argument
was the showpiece of eighteenth-century theology, and still exerts
a powerful influence. I shall follow the classic discussion given in
Hume's Dialogues. Cleanthes presents the argument:

Look round 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. All these various
machines, and even their most minute parts, are adjusted to
each other with an accuracy which ravishes into admiration
all men who have ever contemplated them. The curious
adapting of means to ends, throughout all 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 all the rules of analogy, that the causes also resemble; and that theAuthor of Nature is somewhat similar to the mind of Hrn, though possessed of much larger faculties,
proportioned to the grandeur of the work which he has executed. 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.

There are two important points about this argument. First, it is an
argument by analogy. The world resembles the objects of human
design. Therefore, just as it would be reasonable, coming across a
watch, to postulate a human designer, so it is reasonable, coming
across the entire frame of nature, to postulate a godly designer. Second, the argument is `a posteriori. That is, it argues from experience, or from what we know of the world as we find it. It is here that
the evidence for design shines out.

After Darwinism had begun to offer a natural explanation of the
way in which complex biological systems become adjusted to one
another, the argument began to lose some of its lustre. But in fact
Hume (and Kant) makes the right points without relying on any
alternative explanation of such things as biological adaptation.
And that is just as well, for the argument is not essentially about
biology, which give us just one kind of instance of the adjustments
of nature. Cosmology affords others. (For instance, on one current
authoritative estimate, the chances of the various cosmological
constants being adjusted so that organized life became possible
anywhere in the universe, are i in to to the u)' "-an unimaginable
number-against. So perhaps it took a wise architect to adjust
them.)

So how does Hume, in the persona of Philo, his spokesman in
the Dialogues, attempt to rebut the argument to a designer? Philo points out that the argument takes one of the operations we encounter in nature, the operation of thought, as a 'rule for the
whole'.

But, allowing that we were to take the operations of one part
of nature upon another for the jin ndation of our judgment
concerning the origin of the whole (which never can be admitted), yet why select so minute, so weak, so bounded a principle as the reason and design of animals is found to be upon
this planet? What peculiar privilege has this little agitation of
the brain which we call 'thought, that we must thus make it
the model of the whole universe? Our partiality in our own
favour does indeed present it on all occasions; but soundphil-
osophy ought carefully toguard againstso natural an illusion.

Argument by analogy requires certain conditions in order to be reliable. First, the bases for the analogy should be extremely similar.
Second, we should have experience covering the likely explanations. That is, we should know as much as possible about the kind
of cause that produces this kind of effect. For example, a hole in a
tree is quite similar to a hole in a human body. But to suppose'by
analogy' that since the human is apt to die from the one, the tree is
apt to die from the other, is to stretch our reasonings too far. We
need more observation, more refined understanding of the way
things fall out before we would be wise to make any such inference.
It is this second kind of experience that is sadly lacking in theology,
for we have no inkling of the kinds of'thing'that cause entire physical universes to come into existence.

Furthermore, resemblances are quite easy to come by, and Philo has a great deal of fun inventing them. First, even if the universe resembles a clock, still more it resembles a vegetable:

The world plainly resembles more an animal or it vegetable,
than it does a watch or a knitting-loom. Its cause, therefore, it
is more probable, resembles the cause of the former. The cause
of the former is generation or vegetation. The cause, therefore,
of the world, we may infer to be something similar or analogous to generation or vegetation.

Of course, a theist is going to urge that this gets us nowhere, for it
would only take us back to another vegetable-like cause, whose origin we would then ask about. But the same is true if we are taken
hack to something resembling a mind. If Cleanthes, defending the
argument, stops the regress there, he cannot blame Philo,opposing
the argument, for stopping the regress with a vegetable. As Philo
says:

If l rest my system of cosmogony on the former, preferably to
the latter, it is at my choice. The matter seems entirely arbitrary. And when Cleanthes asks me what is the cause of nay
great vegetative orgenerative faculty, 1 am equally entitled to
ask him the cause of hisgreat reasoning principle. These questions we have agreed to fi)rbearon both sides; and it is chiefly
his interest on the present occasion to stick to this agreement.
Judging by our limited and imper/ec t experience, generation
has someprivilet,,'es above reason: biar we see every day the latter arise from the former, never the farmer f rom the latter.

This final point is quite devastating. Cleanthes prides himself on
the `scientific' nature of his reasoning: an argument by analogy,
from experience. But then experience shows us how fragile, and dependent upon other things, the existence of intelligence is. In
our experience minds require brains which are fragile, dependent,
late, and unusual arrivals in nature. `Generation, that is, animal or
vegetable growth from previous animal or vegetable life, is by contrast common, and as far as we ever observe, necessary for the existence of intelligence. So, arguing from experience, it is much less
likely that there is a self-sustaining mind than some other physical
cause responsible for the whole show.

Since Philo's point here seems unanswerable, it is good to speculate a little about the allure of the argument to design. Why do not
people appreciate Philo's counter? I suspect the root cause is the
same as that responsible for some of the problems of free will. We
think that it is more satisfactory to halt the regress with 'intelligence' rather than `generation, because we think that in our own
experience we have an example of an uncaused mental event, say,
my deciding to initiate an action, giving rise to a physical event. So
we take that as a model for the arbitrary creation of a universe by
an intelligent deity. While we think like this we forget Schopenhauer's point (see Chapter 3): sometimes when we act we are not
conscious of causation, but it does not follow, and is not true, that
we are conscious of the absence of causation. This interaction between the design argument and the interventionist conception of
free will has an interesting moral aspect. Arguably, the two images
of God as supernatural, and of our `selves' as equally outside nature, feed off each other. And each leads people to deny the sovereignty of nature. It leads people to see the world as something that
`we' have dominion over, just as God does. Whereas the truth is that
the world is something of which we are a very, very small part.

I said that resemblances are cheap, and Philo has a field day with
another kind. Suppose we waived all these objections, and allowed
Cleanthes a `designer. What then? Designs are sometimes the
product of one mind. But more often, and in the case of very great
designs, like ships, they are the product of many minds acting together. Some are the product of better designers than others: