The Design Argument
The design argument has been argued by many philosophers over hundreds
of years. The design argument suggests that the world displays
elements of design, with things being adapted towards some overall end
or purpose and such design suggests that the world is the work of a
designer - God. Two of the main philosophers to argue this point were
Aquinas and Paley but many others since have tried to back these up
with there own approaches for example Swinburne with the argument from
probability. With all arguments there have been criticisms raised
against it with Hume being the main one but others include the
Epicurean Hypothesis, Darwin and Dawkins.
The main strengths are that it is a solid argument, based on
experience that people can relate to, there being a huge chance that
things were designed is a probable outcome, its logical, it makes
sense and it is believable.
Major criticisms were raised by Hume in one of his works - Dialogues
Concerning Natural Religion. In this he made five points against the
idea of design qua regularity and design qua purpose.
Firstly he said humans don't have enough knowledge or experience of
the universe to draw the conclusion of a designer, we only have
experience of stuff we've made and that is not sufficient to draw this
conclusion. Even though this A posteriori view may have been true in
Hume's day we now have a lot more knowledge so we don't know if we
have enough experience, but we do have knowledge of designed things
made by other species, e.g. bird nests and beaver dams.
Secondly he said the design argument does not prove the God of
classical theism, the univers...
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... how intelligent life could evolve naturally.
The problem with his argument is that someone had to write the
programme and set the parameters which suggest a designer and
experience shows that we can breed features into species by selecting
the ones with the desired characteristics and then breeding them over
a few generations. It has also been argued that we choose our mate on
a genetic basis, which could mean programming.
I conclude that the design argument does not prove the God of
Classical Theism but then again the criticisms do not disprove it. If
both sides of the argument are examined then it is really down to the
person whether they believe that the universe was created by a
designer and that designer being God as there are strong points made
for and against the argument and neither can be logically false.
Beuchamp, Tom (ed), David Hume, An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding, ( Oxford University Press 1999).
William Paley’s teleological argument (also known as the argument from design) is an attempt to prove the existence of god. This argument succeeds in proving that while existence was created by an aggregation of forces, to define these forces, as a conscious, rational, and ultimately godlike is dubious. Although the conclusions are valid, the argument makes several logical errors. The teleological argument relies on inductive reasoning, rendering the argument itself valid, but unsound. The argument fails to apply its own line of reasoning to itself, resulting in infinite regression. Beyond the scope of its logical flaws, the arguments content lacks accurate comparisons. The argument hinges on a watch metaphor, and as will be shown, this metaphor will prove inaccurate in explaining the creation of the universe.
However, reviewing Berkeley’s ideals on the matter, Hume seems to have more of an epistemological standpoint. Hume believes that everything that we have knowledge of is because of past experience. Everything that we know up to this point is because we have observed and learned from the past. Although everything is also the way it is because of naturalism and causation, every cause and effect that has taken place in history has been interfered with by humans and their knowledge. Berkeley believes that the world is as we perceive it to be, as does Hume. For people to believe the world to be a certain way must come from a certain ideal that we have in mind to be true. In other words, we have an idea of what the world should look like now and what it may look like in the future based off of what the past has looked like and what it is
Hume supports his claim with two arguments. Firstly, he states that when we reflect on our thoughts, they always become simple ideas that we copied from a first-hand experience of something, thus the idea has been copie...
that the same can be said for the universe as a whole. It seems to
The Design Argument For The Existence Of God This argument is also called the teleological argument, it argues that the universe did not come around by mere chance, but some one or something designed it. This thing was God. This argument is a prosteriori because the observation of the natural world is taken into the mind to conclude that there is a designer. The belief that the universe was designed by God was triggered by things like the four seasons; summer, spring, autumn and winter, that change through the year.
Langdon Winner (1993): Upon Opening the Black Box and Finding It Empty: Social Constructivism and the Philosophy of Technology
Hume draws upon the idea of building knowledge from experiences and introduces the concept of ca...
In the selection, ‘Skeptical doubts concerning the operations of the understanding’, David Hume poses a problem for knowledge about the world. This question is related to the problem of induction. David Hume was one of the first who decided to analyze this problem. He starts the selection by providing his form of dividing the human knowledge, and later discusses reasoning and its dependence on experience. Hume states that people believe that the future will resemble the past, but we have no evidence to support this belief. In this paper, I will clarify the forms of knowledge and reasoning and examine Hume’s problem of induction, which is a challenge to Justified True Belief account because we lack a justification for our beliefs.
... make fewer assumptions about things and move more into a check and balance system that one sees in just about every form of government from big to small and national and local forms. There have been countless mistakes and errors made from one persons judgment or individual beliefs. People may say that there are times when things need to be justified or not. I think Hume has adequately shot down those arguments with the relations of ideas and matter of fact methods he discussed. He said what was appropriate to be further explained and those things that are obvious and would be repetitive if examined too far. This argument that Hume brings up will continue to be a controversial issue that will be up for debate in the future. If one learned anything from this paper, just read the previous/final sentence, everything in the past will not be the same as the future.
Hume basically asserted in his writings that metaphysics, as a science, is not possible. He specifically drew on the theory of "causality", which is the attempt by people to rationalize situations. These rationalizations deal with the experience of cause and effect. People tend to attribute patterns to things according to their cause and effect. For example, gravity causes the anything that goes up to come down- we have become so used to this principle that we have made a very definitive statement on the subject. Hume however, attacks this principle by claiming that we have not experienced every instance of this matter. It is not that it must come down, but that it happens to come down. He believed that any "all" or "must" statement is not reinforced through reason but through repetition. Because Hume feels this way, he then concludes that metaphysics is not possible.
Hume states that in nature we observe correlated events that are both regular and irregular. For instance, we assume that the sun will rise tomorrow because it has continued to do so time and time again and we assume that thunder will be accompanied by lightning for the same reason. We never observe the causation between a new day and the sun rising or between thunder and lightning, however. We are simply observing two events that correlate in a regular manner. Hume’s skepticism therefore comes from the belief that since we do not observe causal links, we can never truly be sure about what causes anything else. He then goes so far as to say that if this is the case, it must be a fact that nothing causes anything else. In Hume’s theory, there is not only no objective causation, but no objective principle of cause and effect on the whole.
Descartes believes that the mind and body are separate of one another causing the problem to form in the transmission of information between the mind and the body. Hume does not conquer this task of mind and body one or separate. He is more concerned with the idea of self and how one is maintained over a period of time. He believes there is no such thing as self. That each moment we are a new being due to the fact that we are forever changing and nothing remains constant within ourselves. Yes, our DNA may be the same but that is not
Constructivism is a defined, when referring to the learner, as a "receptive act that involves construction of new meaning by learners within the context of their current knowledge, previous experience, and social environment" (Bloom; Perlmutter & Burrell, 1999). Also, real life experiences and previous knowledge are the stepping stones to a constructivism, learning atmosphere. (Spigner-Littles & Anderson, 1999). Constructivism involves the learner being responsible for learning the material and, not necessarily, the teacher (Ely; Foley; Freeman & Scheel, 1995). When learning occurs, the goals, values, and beliefs of the individuals need to be linked to the new data. Also, in constructivism, the person, who is taking in the knowledge, can somehow filter, amend, and reformat the information that he or she feels is important to the schema (Spigner-Littles & Anderson, 1999). A constructivist learner uses the creative approach to apply their own meaning to a topic using the social and cognitive circumstances around themselves (Bloom; Perlmutter & Burrell, 1999). A short and sweet summary of constructivism is "how one attains, develops, and uses cognitive processes" (Airasian & Walsh, 1997).