Kant

Kantian Ethics is too abstract to be used in practical moral decision making. Discuss [40]

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Immanuel Kant proposed his system of ethics in “The Groundwork for the Metaphysics of Morals” (1785) and subsequently refined his thinking in “The Critique of Practical Reason” (1788) and “The Metaphysics of Morals” (1791).  For Kant, reason demands that we follow the Categorical Imperative whenever we are faced by a moral situation, involving human wellbeing.  He explained what the Categorical Imperative using six different forms of words in the Groundwork, variations of three principles; universalisation, ends and means and kingdom of ends. He was clear that these principles are not laws, to be followed unquestioningly, but rather descriptions of how a rational person (good will) will choose to act, freely, in a moral situation.  Further, that the different formulations were not intended to be applied separately, as they all describe the single moral demand of reason.  While Kantian Ethics does begin with an abstract principle, the Categorical Imperative, it is intensely practical and is in fact the best guide to moral decision making in the real world. 

Firstly, the Categorical Imperative does not seek to be a rule to follow unquestioningly.  Despite the common charge that Kantian Ethics is “harsh and inflexible” as Allen Wood put it, in reality Kant demands that we act autonomously, applying the demands of reason to each specific moral challenge.  In this way, Kantian Ethics – although it expresses the abstract demands of reason – is also intensely practical.  It recognises the complexity of moral situations and supports individuals to make their own decisions, rather than attempting to simplify things to a set of secondary precepts or rules as Roman Catholic Natural Law or Rule Utilitarianism do.  Natural Law produces sweeping rules that often seem to clash, and offers little practical help in resolving these dilemmas, resulting in a diversity of interpretations ranging from Grisez to Hoose.  On the other hand, Kantian Ethics is more practical in explicitly prioritising negative duties over positive duties, helping people to navigate a way through the clashing duties that dominate practical moral decision making.  Rule Utilitarianism ranges between harsh inflexible versions that try to reduce the complexity of moral decision making to a few absolute edicts and impractical versions that generate huge numbers of highly specific rules which still struggle to support practical decision making. On the other hand, Kantian Ethics is more practical, avoiding rules altogether and simply supporting people to be fully human, making decisions rationally and freely on the basis of the specific situation.  Kantian Ethics also recognises the existence of moral absolutes and handles these much better than Situation Ethics, which (at least in Fletcher’s formulation) implies that even dropping a nuclear bomb, murder or rape might be justified in some situations in a way that most people feel deeply uncomfortable about.  It also avoids the problem of prediction, which blights situation ethics and act utilitarianism, and does not demand that people predict and weigh up consequences with insufficient information to do this accurately. Of course, the support Kantian Ethics offers to individuals facing dilemmas can’t make their decisions easy.  Being reminded by conscience – which Kant defined as “practical reason holding the human being’s duty [i.e. the Categorical Imperative] before him” – that my action in helping my dying grandmother to die quickly rather than suffering on for days enacts the same maxim as a murderer is deeply uncomfortable.  Yet this reminder is an important one.  It is impractical to pretend – as Fletcher’s Situation Ethics seems to do – that the situation justifies one in taking a life, when this denies inevitable feelings of guilt and possible implications for how we relate to human life after we have crossed the line of taking it.  Kantian Ethics cannot make practical decisions easy, but it clarifies those decisions in a way that is practical and helpful if not pleasant to experience.  It follows that – despite being abstract – Kantian Ethics is the best approach to real-life moral decision making.

Secondly, Kantian Ethics is practical because it is rooted in human experience. Kant argued that when faced with another human being, reason demands that we treat them as we would wish to be treated.  While reason is abstract, the feeling of empathy and agape-love that it supports is not and is part of human experience every day.  In the “Critique of Practical Reason” he called the formulation of the Categorical Imperative “always treat humanity, whether in the person of yourself or another, always as an end and never as a means to an end” the “Practical Imperative” because it is what we instinctively do in any case.  Kant presupposed that we all have a conscience, which he defined as “practical reason holding the human being’s duty before him for his acquittal or condemnation in every case that comes under the law.” As he pointed out, human beings are “pathologically loving”; it is human nature to treat others as we would wish to be treated and so not to use people as a means to an end.  Of course, Bernard Williams accused Kantian Ethics of being “atomistic” and encouraging people to focus on their own moral characters, ignoring the demand to help others in a positive way if it would mean breaking a negative duty.  For example, Kantian Ethics encourages people not to pull the lever in the Trolley Problem, which feels selfish.  Yet the fat-man version of the same problem shows that Kant was right and that what we might feel comfortable with in theory we shrink from doing in practice.  For another example, as Onora O’Neill has shown, Kantian Ethics prioritises our duty to those we have promised to protect (i.e. the duty not to lie or break a promise) over our duty to help famine-stricken countries overseas (i.e. the duty to save life).  Nevertheless, Kantian Ethics does this because a decision to break a negative duty, whether killing a person as a means to an end in the trolley problem or breaking a promise to the electorate, doesn’t just affect that person or that situation, but sets an example which erodes the principles of the sanctity of human life or trust in government, making it more difficult for all other people to hear and follow the demand of reason and the Categorical Imperative in the future.  Kant’s principle of the Kingdom of Ends shows that it is irrational to act inconsistently, because we each set an example to everybody else, so any inconsistency prevents society developing towards the summum bonum. He appeals to reason which shows the consequences of prioritising consequences to be much worse consequentially, then the consequences of making a few tough decisions in order to uphold a principle.  Even Utilitarians John Stuart Mill and Henry Sidgwick and Peter Singer recognise this, suggesting that rules such as “do not murder” should be enforced more or less strictly for the sake of “the greatest happiness for the greatest number”.  Mill even campaigned to keep the death penalty for murder, against his fellow Utilitarian Bentham’s followers, partly because he believed in the importance of vindicating the law protecting the sanctity of human life as well as in the deterrent example that death represents.  It follows that, while Kantian Ethics does not make individual moral decision-making easy, it is practical and consistent with what most people recognise to be the most effective way to behave and run a society. 

Of course, the existence of people who are apparently without conscience and claim not to feel a duty to treat others as ends does seem to undermine Kant’s case, suggesting that the Categorical Imperative does not appeal directly to everybody through reason.  For example, mass murderers like Ian Brady and Myra Hindley or Levi Bellfield seem to be without a conscience and describing them as “pathologically loving” seems ridiculous.  Nevertheless, in “Religion within the boundaries of reason alone” (1794) Kant explained that the reason why some people appear to be without a conscience and why they don’t recognise the demand of the Categorical Imperative is because of Radical Evil.  Once a person has acted irrationally, out of deference to authority, fear or habit once, it becomes easier and easier to do the same again to the point whereby we feel powerless to change and become a “good will”. Like St Augustine, Kant saw the Human condition as one whereby we don’t do what we actively want to do and feel unable to change. For Kant, this is because rationally we appreciate that in order to deserve the heavenly reward (that Kant postulated to make sense of his moral system) we would have to have a good will, which in practice none of us have because we have all fallen short of acting on one at some point, not least in childhood.  Without any reasonable hope of reward, it becomes irrational to follow the demands of reason.  It is not rational to do what will make us miserable forever and can never result in any happiness.  In effect, we are trapped between the demands of reason with respect of moral action and following the categorical imperative and the demands of reason with respect of not doing what will only make us miserable.  Kant’s solution to this and way of making it possible to change and be good despite feeling trapped was controversial.  Again, Kant depended on St Augustine’s theology.  That is, to trust in the order and fairness of the universe, to believe in the possibility of moral regeneration, to assert our freedom to do what is right.  Jesus’ example is important; He showed that it is possible to have a “good will” making it rational to trust and believe.  While Goethe accused Kant of “smearing his philosopher’s cloak with the shameful stain of original sin” and recent writers have speculated that Kant was losing his reason by the time he developed this part of his theory. In fact, Kant makes rational sense of Augustinian teachings about the human condition and why it is difficult to do what we know we ought. While it is true that Kantian Ethics is extremely demanding and sets an impossibly high standard, it is the fact that it is demanding and not its abstract nature which is the reason why many people are reluctant to use it in moral decision making.  This shows that despite being abstract, Kantian Ethics is also practical, because it is rooted in real human experience.

In conclusion, Kantian Ethics is practical and can be used in moral decision making, despite being rooted in abstract concepts such as reason and duty.  This is because Kantian Ethics is more practical than Natural Law, Situation Ethics and Utilitarianism, being focused on helping people to make decisions autonomously, rather than forcing people to follow absolute rules that take no account of complexity or forcing people to predict and weigh up consequences with insufficient information to do so accurately.  Also, because Kantian Ethics is rooted in the practical experience of being human and provides a rational explanation of why people feel unable to do what they know they should do.  Kantian Ethics may be harsh and demanding, but so is the world and so are the dilemmas we face.  Rather than letting us hide behind rules or forcing us to play God, Kantian Ethics supports us to recognise and have the strength to follow our consciences and the demands of reason, which Kant called the Categorical Imperative.  Act fairly and consistently, honour and don’t use people, set an example and act as though you were being watched… these are moral guidelines we all recognise from childhood and practical experience. They are not too abstract to be practical and should always determine how we make moral decisions.

Critically evaluate Kant’s criticisms of the Ontological Argument. [40] 

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The ontological argument is the name that Kant himself assigned to arguments which attempt to demonstrate God’s existence from reason alone.  Starting with an a priori definition of God, such as that God is “that than which nothing greater can be conceived of” (St Anselm, Proslogion II) or that God is “supremely perfect” (Descartes, Meditation V), ontological arguments show that existence – or necessary existence – is part of that definition and thus that God’s existence is de dicto necessary, as the fact that a man is unmarried is de dicto necessary if he is a bachelor.  Having coined the term “ontological argument”, Kant went on to criticise these arguments in the opening to his Critique of Pure Reason (1781), arguing that the arguments fail because 1) all existential statements must be synthetic, 2) existence is not a perfection and 3) existence is not a predicate.  He concludes that the ontological argument is “so much labour and effort lost” because it cannot do what it sets out to do and prove God’s existence from reason alone.  Nevertheless, despite being enormously influential, Kant’s criticisms fail to establish the impossibility of an ontological argument for God’s existence because they depend on Kant’s worldview which he asserts dogmatically and fails to argue for. 

Kant’s claim that the ontological argument fails because all existential statements must be synthetic is nothing more than an assertion of his own critical worldview, developed in the years after Hume “awoke me from my dogmatic slumbers and gave a completely different direction to my enquiries…” in 1770.  Kant claims that “If, then, I try to conceive a being, as the highest reality (without any defect), the question still remains, whether it exists or not. For though in my concept there may be wanting nothing of the possible real content of a thing in general, something is wanting in its relation to my whole state of thinking, namely, that the knowledge of that object should be possible a posteriori also…” He points out that there is nothing self-contradictory about saying “God does not exist”, because existence cannot be part of the concept of God, but must always be established empirically, synthetically, so that existence is always contingent and includes the possibility of non-existence. Yet, what privileges a posteriori knowledge over a priori knowledge, beyond Kant’s assertion?  As GW Hegel noticed straightaway and as WV Quine late pointed out in his “Two Dogmas of Empiricism” (1951) Kant simply asserts that meaningful claims must be either synthetic or analytic and that all existential claims must be synthetic.  Who says that the empirical senses are the arbiters of existence or that nothing can be said to exist that is incapable of being experienced through the senses?  How could it be reasonable to suggest that the senses of a hairless ape inhabiting temperate regions of an insignificant planet orbiting a small star on an outer spiral of the milky way provide the only window on reality?  As Plato and Descartes would have agreed, the “reality” we experience through our senses is ever-changing, imperfect and seen through the filter of senses and concepts in the mind.  Concepts and ideas are permanent and our window on them through reason less misty, so it is more reasonable to see these as ultimate reality.  Further, for followers of Wittgenstein, even if Kant’s worldview is accepted, as Norman Malcolm pointed out, Kant’s worldview and thus “language game” is just one out of many.  To those who hold a different worldview – such as a Platonic worldview in which ultimate reality is metaphysical and the means of accessing it reason – the claim that all existential statements must be synthetic is untrue and unconvincing.  It follows that Kant’s criticism fails to destroy the possibility of an ontological proof for God’s existence.  

Kant’s claim that the ontological argument also fails because existence is not a perfection fails because, as Charles Hartshorne pointed out, while ordinary contingent existence is not a perfection, necessary existence might well be.  Kant’s example of 100 thalers being the same in concept whether it exists or not, and not 101 thalers or 150 by existing, seems to make his point convincingly… and yet neither Anselm nor Descartes conceives of God’s existence being like the existence of other, contingent things.  A chocolate cake, a unicorn, a man or an island might be said to exist or not to exist, but only God can necessarily exist, so while existence might not alter the concept of cake, unicorn, man or island, necessary existence is of the essence of God as the supremely perfect being.  Charles Hartshorne suggested that Anselm’s ontological argument in Prosologion 3 might well evade Kant’s criticism that existence is not a perfection for this reason, nevertheless, Kant would reject this criticism of his point, rejecting the whole concept of necessary existence.  As he had already said, all existential statements must be synthetic, so necessary existence is, in Kant’s worldview, impossible.  JN Findlay noted this, suggesting that “it was indeed an ill day for Anselm when he hit upon his famous proof. For on that day he not only laid bare something that is of the essence of an adequate religious object, but also something that entails its necessary non-existence.” (Findlay, 1948) And that Anselm’s ontological argument in Proslogion III, by demonstrating how God’s contingent existence is impossible, shows that God’s existence is impossible because nothing can necessarily exist.  Yet, as I have already argued, Findlay and Kant are doing nothing more than asserting their own worldview, which excludes necessary existence not because it is inconceivable but because it is not compatible with their stated position which privileges things which can be experienced through the empirical senses. Further, as Hartshorne also pointed out, if it makes sense to talk about God’s necessary non-existence then it makes just as much sense to talk about God’s necessary existence. And, as Norman Malcolm pointed out, what is possible and impossible depends more on our language game than on what it might or might not refer to objectively.  It seems that in arguing that existence is not a perfection Kant got no further than Gaunilo had in refuting the ontological argument; again he just asserted that it was incompatible with his own limited worldview.  

Finally, Kant wrongly argued that existence is not a predicate.  By this Kant meant that existence cannot be accidentally predicated of God, because – as Anselm had pointed out – God’s existence is not something that might or might not be true of God.  Also, existence is wrongly used as an accidental predicate in relation to other things, because it adds nothing to the concept of the object (is not a perfection).  Rather, existence is the basis on which anything else can meaningfully be predicated.  As Russell pointed out, if I say “the present King of France is bald” I imply that there is a present King of France, which makes my predication of baldness meaningful.  If there is no present King of France, predicating anything of him is meaningless.  Similarly, if I say that God exists, I imply that there is a God who exists, smuggling my conclusion into my premises and in this way begging the question.  It follows that existence is not an accidental predicate and could not be used as one of God even if it were.  Further, existence cannot be essentially predicated of anything because… all existential statements must be synthetic. Here again, Kant reverts to asserting his worldview.  While He is right to point out that existence is not an accidental predicate because it is not a perfection, this is beside the point when it comes to the Ontological Argument, as Anselm pointed out in his Responsio to Gaunilo.  In this context, the question concerns whether existence is of the essence and nature of God, whether God necessarily exists.  As Hartshorne reasoned, necessary existence might well be predicated essentially of God, even if contingent existence cannot be used as an accidental predicate of anything.  For Hartshorne there are three alternatives for us to consider: 

i.God is impossible 

ii.God is possible, but may or may not exist 

iii.God exists necessarily. 

because God cannot be just a possibility, since he is by definition preeminent, so God’s existence is necessary.  Hartshorne’s modal ontological argument has been refined in different ways, including by Plantinga and Craig, but in essence – for those who share his worldview at least – it proves God’s necessary existence.  It seems that Kant’s criticism that existence is not a predicate fails to undermine the ontological argument either, at least beyond those who share his worldview.   

In conclusion, Kant’s criticisms of the Ontological Argument are persuasive if and only if you share his limited and dogmatic worldview.  Of course, many Philosophers did and do share this worldview – including Lotze, Schopenhauer, Russell and Findlay – and they will not accept the existence of other worldviews because it is part of their worldview to see their own perspective as the only truthful perspective on reality.  Nevertheless, for anybody who holds a different worldview – such as for St Anselm, Descartes, Hartshorne or Malcolm – Kant’s criticisms are ineffective and there is still the possibility of proving God’s existence a priori, from reason alone.  If ultimate reality is metaphysical and accessed through reason not empirical experience, and if existence is not defined in terms of being contingent existence, then the concept of God can de dicto necessarily contain His necessary existence despite His being incapable of empirical observation.  

Is there really a moral difference between killing somebody and letting somebody die? [40]

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The answer to this question seems obvious. Legally, there is a significant difference between killing someone and letting them die. Killing somebody by active means, depending on the circumstances, might be treated as murder, manslaughter or causing death by dangerous driving for example, all of which are subject to serious punishments. On the other hand, letting somebody die might attract no penalty at all, because this is what we all have to do at some point when medical options are unavailable or not in a person’s best interests. In the case of Airedale NHS Trust v. Bland, the House of Lords judgement “thou shall not kill, but thou needst not strive officiously to keep alive.” When it is in a patient’s best interests it can be the right thing to do to do nothing and let them die. Even where a doctor is negligent and allows somebody to die who might have been saved the penalty is much, much less than if they actively killed somebody – and usually covered by insurance. Nevertheless, despite the obvious answer, the question concerns the moral and not the legal difference between killing and letting die. The answer to this is more contentious. On the one hand traditional Christian Ethics and Kantian Ethics would agree with the law, that there is the world of difference between killing and letting die, but on the other hand, Utilitarianism and Situation Ethics as consequentialist approaches to decision-making would reject that distinction, arguing that the effects of both are the same so as actions they are morally equivalent. Nevertheless, the claim that killing and letting die are morally equivalent is not persuasive. Consider other examples whereby the same effects are achieved by different means. Is there a moral difference between actively lying to a friend or not telling them something that you might have? Is there a moral difference between making somebody homeless and failing to help a homeless person by housing them? Most people would see acts of omission (failing to do good) as less morally serious than acts of commission (i.e. actively doing wrong), so there is a moral difference between killing and letting die.

Firstly, the fact that there is a difference between killing and letting die is supported by the Bible, which distinguishes between things we do intentionally and accidentally and things done actively and passively. In the Old Testament the penalty for murder (intentional, active killing of a person) was death [Genesis 9:6], but nobody suggested that fellow citizens should be executed for failing to feed famine victims. The moral instruction to leave crops for the poor to glean existed of course [Leviticus 23:22], but there was no specific and individual penalty for ignoring it. While Prophets warned that the people would be punished collectively for ignoring the rights of the poor and vulnerable [e.g. Amos 2], suggesting that ignoring these rights is immoral and against the will of God, there can be no doubt that there is a moral difference between active, intentional killing (murder) and letting die, whether intentionally or otherwise. On the other hand, in the New Testament Jesus equated the intention with the action in his moral teaching. In Matthew 5 He taught that anger was morally equivalent to murder, a lustful look morally equivalent with adultery. By this logic, allowing somebody to die with malign intent would be the equivalent of murder, and yet this principle has rarely, if ever, been adopted by Christian ethics. Perhaps the key to this issue is what the word “morally” means. Because it is often impossible to know what motivated an action it is not possible to put a lot of weight on intentions in law or in formal Christian ethics. A person might even be unsure about their own motivations, so it is extremely difficult to assess these objectively. Nevertheless, Christians believe that God knows the inmost secrets of our hearts, being aware of motivations that we might not even be aware of ourselves [Psalm 139]. In this case, intentions might make all the difference to the moral status of an action in God’s eyes, while in the eyes of formal Christian ethics they cannot. Having said that, a Roman Catholic might argue that the Church has been given the authority to “bind and loose” Matthew 18:18, and this would suggest that the moral judgement of the Church – which cannot give much weight to intentions – still applies in heaven. This suggests that there is a moral difference between killing and letting die, whatever the situation or motivations, although that does not mean that letting die is always morally permissable.

Secondly, most versions of Natural Law (used alongside the Bible and Church teaching as the basis for Roman Catholic Ethics) teach that actions are more significant than intentions, which suggests that there is a moral difference between killing and letting die. For example, because of Natural Law Catholic ethics would see it as far worse to use artificial contraception or abortion than to remain celibate and so childless. Contraception and abortion actively prohibit a basic human good – life – while celibacy might be necessary in order to achieve another human good, as in the case of Priests. Morally, there is a real difference between doing something – often for an evil intention – and committing not to do it for a good intention. In Summa 2i, 20, 1 Aquinas explains that an action may be good when carried out with a good intention, but morally evil when carried out with an evil intention. He uses the example of giving alms – good when done out of agape-love and evil when done for vainglory. This implies that saving a life might be good when in the best interests of a patient, but morally evil when done for other reasons, in which case allowing to die might be morally preferable. The same reasoning might suggest that killing would be morally wrong when done with a malign intention and potentially right when done with a loving intention, yet Aquinas stops short of this conclusion. He reasons that while it is a duty to follow synderesis, even if it leads us to make such a faulty decision, this does not excuse us if we carry out actions which contradict conscientia, as killing a person always would because it actively prohibits the basic human good of life. It follows that the wrongness of killing is not dependent on motivations, and yet the situation does make some difference. Aquinas acknowledged the difference between not acting in cases where you can and should act and not acting when you can’t do anything or shouldn’t because of an order etc. He wrote “the cause of what follows from want of action is not always the agent as not acting; but only then when the agent can and ought to act.” [Summa 2i, 6, 3] This suggests that letting a relative die when you can’t help or have been ordered, such as by a court, not to would be morally very different from letting a patient die as a doctor when you could and are allowed to help. Further, in Summa 2i, 76, 3 Aquinas notes that ignorance might reduce the sinfulness of an action, because it makes some actions involuntary, when “voluntariness is essential to sin.” In this way, there would be a moral difference between a person whose synderesis led them to kill an elderly relative out of compassion and a person who intentionally killed an elderly relative in order to benefit from a will. Nevertheless, this interpretation would be strongly rejected by the Roman Catholic Church today, which teaches that any active euthanasia is the moral equivalent of murder, evil. In 2020 the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith has reaffirmed Roman Catholic teaching that euthanasia is an “intrinsically evil act”. The letter Samaritanus Bonus: On the care of persons in the critical and terminal phases of life described assisted dying and euthanasia as “homicide”, and said that the sacraments must be withheld from those who are planning to end their lives. This underlines the moral difference that the Church perceives between killing somebody – regardless of motivations – and letting die.

Thirdly, Kantian Ethics agrees that there is a moral difference between killing and letting die. For Kant, the maxim behind our actions is the action considered independently of any context and, if it cannot be universalised, it is absolutely and always wrong. In this way killing a hated enemy, killing an elderly relative to benefit from their will, killing a relative who is begging for an easeful death and suicide are all morally equivalent. Because the maxim cannot be universalised, killing is absolutely wrong. Despite this, Kant also taught that intentions are even more significant in determining the moral status of an action than the action in itself. Famously, he began the “Groundwork for the Metaphysics of Morals” (1785) by stating that “Nothing in the world—or out of it!—can possibly be conceived that could be called ‘good’ without qualification except a GOOD WILL.” If an action is undertaken out of fear or habit or for any other reason than freely, for duty’s sake, then this renders the action morally wrong, which pollutes the will and prevents it being worthy of the eternal reward which we must postulate as existing for good wills, so that they can do as they feel that they should and so that the universe is fair. Further, Kant taught that a negative duty i.e. not to kill, lie or steal always trumps a positive duty e.g. to feed the hungry. This suggests that there is a moral difference between killing and letting die; while in some circumstances both are immoral, killing (achieving the end by active means) is always worse. Nevertheless, Peter Singer would reject this conclusion, arguing that there is little moral difference between killing and letting die. In “Practical Ethics” he argued that there is no moral difference between aborting a near-term foetus because it has a disability and killing a newborn infant. In fact, he argued that it is morally preferable, even a moral duty, to kill a newborn who is suffering and who has no hope of a quality life so that money spent on neonatal care could be spent more productively elsewhere. In “Unsanctifying Human Life” Singer and Kuhse argue the same with regard to Euthanasia, suggesting that it is morally preferable to kill an elderly relative with dementia than to allow them to die – slowly and expensively – while others suffer for lack of healthcare resources. Further, in “The Life you can Save” Singer argued that neglecting an opportunity to help somebody and killing them are morally equivalent. He used the example of a child drowning in a pond, pointing out that we would feel a moral imperative to ruin expensive shoes in order to save them… and that we should equally feel a moral imperative to save a child on the other side of the world by sending the £200 our shoes cost to a charity. Through all these cases, Singer makes a fair point in pointing out that we are wrong to place so much weight on the moral difference between killing and letting die. It is helpful to consider that letting die might well cause more suffering and that killing should not be the taboo that it is to most people, when in practical terms it may be preferable. Singer is also right to point out how most people wrongly prefer people who are close to us and choose to ignore those who are further from us, whether in space or time, meaning that we tend to be thoughtless and ignore the moral imperative to use our money wisely and avoid decisions which – however unintentionally – harm others now or in the future. Nevertheless, however right Singer is to make a theoretical point as regards the equivalence of killing and letting die, in practice it is not reasonable to treat the two as moral equivalents, because the law deals in rules and generalities, not intentions and specific situations. Further, as Onora O’Neill has argued, we can’t agree that failing to help somebody in need – such as by giving money for famine relief – is morally the same as killing them. While both are morally bad, killing is worse because it is active and intentionally evil.

Despite this, most consequentialists will agree with Singer, arguing that there is no moral difference between killing and letting die, because the consequences, which justify an action or condemn it, could be the same either way. Take for example a case of assisted dying; the patient is dying, so the only factor that decides the morality of killing them or letting them die is the amount of pleasure or pain that results from the action, so far as the patient and other interested parties are concerned. As Bentham pointed out “all other things being equal, poetry is as good as pushpin” or, in other words, what you do to produce the results is immaterial; all that matters, morally, is the results. This means that there is no essential moral difference between killing and letting die such as would make one better than the other in all situations. It may be that letting someone die produces more suffering than killing them would, as in a case of a patient dying of motor-neurone disease who has asked to “die with dignity” and whose relatives and friends are all supportive. In other cases however, killing would undoubtedly cause more suffering than allowing to die, such as when the law allows passive euthanasia but not active. In such a case, killing might get a doctor struck off and even imprisoned, even when their intentions were altruistic and good. The case of Dr Cox and Lilian Boyes shows how this could be the case. While the situation makes all the difference in terms of the moral status of the action, Utilitarians such as Jeremy Bentham would reject the idea that intentions make any moral difference; as he argues “nature has placed mankind under two sovereign masters; the pursuit of pleasure and avoidance of pain” so we should “always act so as to produce the greatest happiness for the greatest number…” what we intend is not at issue, only what we achieve in respect of pleasure and pain in society. This highlights one of the problems with consequentialism – what Peter Singer has identified as the biggest problem that Utilitarianism faces – the Problem of Prediction. That is, consequentialism depends on our ability to calculate the pleasure and/or pain resulting from possible actions so that we can choose the one which is morally preferable in maximising pleasure and minimising pain, in advance of doing anything. In practice, our calculations are often flawed meaning that while we intend to minimise suffering, in the end we fail to do this. Because intentions don’t count and the only thing that justifies an action, morally, is the consequences the agent takes a risk every time they act, trusting that what they intend will happen and so ensure that they have done what is right. In a case of euthanasia, for example, the situation is further complicated by the difficulty of assessing someone else’s pain, whether in the person dying or in their relatives and friends. How can we measure grief or accurately determine whether it is outweighed by the suffering a person dying, say of cancer, experiences in their final hours? Bentham’s felicific calculus, while well meant, is of little practical use when it comes to making such assessments and only serves to highlight another significant criticism of consequentialist ethics, that they are subjective. Of course, rule utilitarianism, such as that proposed by Peter Singer in recent years, gets round both the problem of prediction and the subjectivity problem by developing rules on the basis of the utilitarian maxim, which are then applied in most or all cases regardless of the details. Yet, as RM Hare pointed out, rule utilitarianism means that there is little difference between a Utilitarian and say a Kantian approach. Also, in answer to this question, it would probably mean that there is a moral difference between killing and letting die because rules tend to be framed around actions, not omissions and because it is hard to imagine a rule prohibiting letting people die being practical in many cases!

In conclusion, there is a moral difference between killing and letting die because this is the case in law, in the Bible, in Natural Law and Kantian Ethics. As has been discussed, it is also true in Rule Utilitarianism, which is really the only practical version of Utilitarianism.

Assess the view that the Ontological Argument depends on logical fallacies that cannot be overcome.

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The Ontological Argument was first proposed by St Anselm in 1078. In the Proslogion he tried to demonstrate the existence of God from reason alone, first by defining God as “that than which nothing greater can be conceived of”… as existence “in re” rather than only “in intellectu” makes something greater, God must therefore exist, and then by claiming that necessary existence is greater than contingent existence and so must be a property of God. The Ontological Argument soon attracted criticism, first from Gaunilo of Marmoutiers whose “on behalf of the fool” suggested that it seems like a joke to suggest that something must exist just because it is perfect, and then from Aquinas, who pointed out that “because we do not know the nature of God, His existence is not self-evident to us.” Nevertheless, while most people are sceptical of Anselm’s argument, as Bertrand Russell pointed out “it is easier to feel convinced that it must be fallacious than it is to find out precisely where the fallacy lies.” As it happens, the argument – while containing some logical fallacies – does not depend on these so that they cannot be overcome. It is a valid argument… the question of its soundness depends on one’s worldview.

Firstly, it could be said that both versions of Anselm’s argument depend upon the logical fallacy of bare assertion, as in they assert that “God is that than which nothing greater can be conceived of” without proper argument. Nevertheless, all a priori arguments start with a priori premises, definitions which depend on a priori knowledge (reason alone) and often cannot be argued for using evidence. For example, if I argued that as bachelors are unmarried men and Simon is unmarried, that Simon must be a bachelor, it is not reasonable for you to demand that I demonstrate that bachelors are unmarried men from observations before proceeding. Similarly, if I argued that 2+2 = 4, I must begin with a priori knowledge of the numbers 2 and 4 and the concept of addition. It is not reasonable to ask for an argument that 2=2 and 4=4 before accepting that 2+2 = 4… because any sane person knows what 2 and 4 refer to and what the concept of addition entails. Anselm pointed out that anyone who claims that God is not “that than which nothing greater can be conceived” must be a fool. How can anyone think that there could be something greater than God… if they do, then they have fundamentally misunderstood the concept of God. In this way, while Anselm does assert his premises, he is justified in doing so and this “logical fallacy” is not a serious criticism of the ontological argument. Similarly, Anselm’s argument could be accused of begging the question, meaning that his conclusion of God’s necessary existence is contained within the premises. Yet surely this is the whole point of a deductive argument! Nobody criticises the argument 2+2 = 4 because the concept of 4 contains the concept of 2 twice. What Anselm is trying to do is to clarify that our concept of God includes His necessary existence, so it is unreasonable to expect Anselm’s conclusion not to contain his premises. In both these ways, Anselm’s Ontological Argument does not depend on any logical fallacies that cannot be overcome.

Secondly, it could be said that Anselm’s argument is guilty of being ad hominem and of appealing to authority. Anselm certainly attacks atheists as fools and quotes from Psalm 14:1 as part of his argument. Nevertheless, neither Anselm’s colourful language nor his Biblical allusion are part of his reasoning, so his argument could be stated without either quite easily. More seriously, addition, Anselm could be accused of asking a loaded question of atheists. Is God “that than which nothing greater can be conceived of”? The atheist is railroaded into answering yes, in which case they have already admitted the conclusion, or no, in which case they are a fool… Yet as Bertrand Russell pointed out, asking a question about the properties of a non-existent object is meaningless. If I asked you “is the present King of France bald?” I feel bound to give a yes or no answer, when in fact I can’t give either because there is no present King of France. Similarly, in asking atheists to answer the question “is God that than which nothing greater can be conceived of”, Anselm could be bamboozling the atheist into answering yes or no, when either option would mean that they cede their point. This seems a lot like the either-or fallacy as well, with Anselm excluding options other than yes or no. However, it is clear that everybody, atheists included, have a concept of God as “that than which nothing greater can be conceived of” in their minds, meaning that He undoubtedly exists “in intellectu” in a way that the present King of France, perfect islands etc. do not. As Anselm pointed out in his “Responsio” to Gaunilo, there is a difference between islands and God, in that islands can only exist contingently whereas God exists, if he exists at all, necessarily. This means that Russell’s point about the present King of France is not relevant to the Ontological Argument, as when Anselm asks “is God greater than that which can be conceived of”, he is justified in assuming that the knowledge of God exists a priori in intellectu, when the knowledge of contingent things – whether Kings or Islands – can only be a posteriori and synthetic. Kant is right to say “Whatever, therefore, our concept of an object may contain, we must always step outside it, in order to attribute to it existence…” when it comes to any and all contingently existing things, but as Anselm pointed out, God is not like other things, so the ontological argument could only ever apply to God. It seems that Anselm’s argument survives the accusation of depending on these logical fallacies as well.

On the other hand, Kant argued that Anselm creates the whole category of “necessary existence” to get around Gaunilo’s obvious criticism that what applies to perfect Gods should apply equally to perfect islands, unicorns and such. In this way, Anselm’s argument would depend on special pleading. Kant argued that existence involves having the potential to be and not be, so necessary existence is a contradictory concept like a square circle and so impossible. He reasoned that because existence must include having the potential to be and not be, existence cannot be used as an essential predicate of anything. Later in 1948 JN Findlay went further, claiming that “it was indeed an ill day for Anselm when he hit upon his famous proof. For on that day he not only laid bare something that is of the essence of an adequate religious object, but also something that entails its necessary non-existence.” For Findlay, if there are three options – God is impossible, God may or may not exist or God necessarily exists, then the Ontological Argument serves to show that God must be impossible and necessarily not exist, because if God may or may not exist He wouldn’t be God and necessary existence is impossible. Nevertheless, Hartshorne rejected this, arguing that if Findlay says that necessary existence is impossible, so must be necessary non-existence. Further, Kant’s definition of existence applies to contingent existence only, as does his claim that existence cannot be an essential predicate, necessary existence does not include the potential to exist and not exist by definition and so it could be an essential predicate of God. For Hartshorne, there is nothing impossible about necessary existence. We can conceive of God necessarily existing in much the same way as we can conceive of a three-sided triangle, when we cannot conceive of a square circle. As Alvin Plantinga and William Lane Craig have pointed out, if God’s necessary existence is even possible – in the way that a unicorn or a Gruffalo is possible but a five-sided triangle is not – then God exists necessarily in every possible world. Of course, Kant would reject this, pointing out that we have no experience of “necessary existence”, making it a “cupola of judgement”, being outside our possible existence and entirely speculative. Nevertheless, although Kant’s criticisms are coherent with and conclusively destroy the Ontological Argument within his worldview, Kant’s worldview has been criticised by Quine for depending on dogmas and is not shared by everybody. As Norman Malcolm pointed out, it is clear that “necessary existence” is possible and not contradictory within some “forms of life” and their language games. This suggests that at least within these forms of life, necessary existence is not an impossible or invented category of existence, so Anselm’s argument does not depend on special pleading.

Further, other critics suggest that Anselm’s argument takes advantage of the useful ambiguity in the word “necessary”, thus depending on the fallacy of equivocation. The word necessary can mean de re necessary, in the sense it is used in Aquinas’ third way, meaning that God is self-explaining, doesn’t depend on anything, fully actual. The word necessary can also mean de dicto necessary, in the sense that it means that God’s existence is part of the concept of God so God’s non-existence cannot be asserted without contradiction. For example, saying “this triangle has five angles” would be to assert a contradiction, because the word tri-angle necessarily and by definition entails having only three angles. Could it be that the word “necessary” means two different things and that Anselm shifts from one meaning to the other to bamboozle us with a what Schopenhauer called a “sleight of hand trick?” While the concept of necessary existence is confusing and while the word “necessary” is used in both senses in the argument, the argument does not depend on ambiguity or equivocation because there is what Hegel called a “unity of thought and of existence in the infinite.” While there are two meanings to the word “necessary” these are related in that de dicto necessity refers to concepts and the rules of logic that originate in and depend on God’s de re necessity. Of course, Aquinas’ criticism of the attempt to demonstrate God’s existence from reason alone is apt here. Given that most – if not all – people struggle to “conceive of” God’s nature, how can we analyse that nature to find necessary existence – another almost inconceivable idea – within it? Aquinas as right that while God’s existence may be self-evident, it is not self-evident to us, and therefore that it is better to demonstrate His existence from what is known, observations. Nevertheless, the question asks whether the Ontological Argument depends on logical fallacies that cannot be overcome and the answer to that must be that it does not. There is no equivocation or fundamental ambiguity on which the argument depends.

In conclusion, Russell was right to say that “it is easier to feel convinced that it must be fallacious than it is to find out precisely where the fallacy lies.” The Ontological Argument does not depend on logical fallacies that cannot be overcome. It is a valid argument, but depends for its soundness on the particular worldview or form of life within which it is advanced.

“Kantian Ethics is the most useful approach to making decisions in Business.” Evaluate this statement. (40)

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In 1997 Freeman and Evan published an article proposing a Kantian stakeholder theory of corporate responsibility, which was (from 1998) included in “Ethical Theory and Business”, the Cambridge University Press reference work in this area.  This article awakened interest in applying Kantian Ethics to business, using it to improve decision-making, broaden its ethical concern and counterbalance the superficial utilitarianism that had dominated discussions about business ethics in the later 20th Century.  Shortly afterwards in 1999, Norman E. Bowie, one of the editors of “Ethical Theory and Business”, published “Business Ethics: A Kantian perspective,” through which he argued that Kantian Ethics was indeed the most useful approach to making decisions in business.  Since then, a number of other writers have developed their own explorations of how Kant’s ethical principles might inform Business decision making and other scholars have criticised this approach. The major “Kantian Business Ethics: Critical Perspectives” edited by Arnold and Harris, which was published in 2012, outlines the debate.    In short, Norman E Bowie’s argument for a Kantian Approach to Business Ethics falls well short of addressing the true implications of Kant’s work for Business, preferring to characterise Kantian Ethics in simplistic terms as the demand that businesses should act consistently, considering the effect of actions on stakeholders and on the long-term reputation of the business.  While Kant would not disagree with the need for people to act consistently, consider the effect of their actions on those persons directly affected and on the precedent set to society in general, Kant’s philosophy raises deeper questions about the ability of a business to make moral decisions at all and about the morality of any person agreeing to be employed by a business and make decisions on its behalf which Norman E Bowie neglects.  Because of this, while it might be fair to say that Bowie’s ethical guidelines would be a useful way to approach making decisions in Business, it is a stretch to call these guidelines truly Kantian.  Kantian Ethics when properly understood, would be very far from a useful approach to making decisions in business.

In the first place, Bowie argues that a Kantian approach to decision-making demands that businesses act consistently, yet for Kant the Categorical Imperative is about more than mere consistency, it is about always doing what is universally right.  In the Groundwork for the Metaphysics of Morals Kant recommended that people should “always act so that the maxim of your action should become, through your will, a universal law”… this has far wider implications than just choosing to do whatever you do consistently.  The categorical imperative demands that people choose to do only what they could rationally will for all other people to do, ignoring the particular detail of the situation.  When facing a decision about marketing a product, the Kantian should strip away the detail about the decision being made in the content of a business seeking to make a profit and focus on whether the maxim of the action is universalizable.  Kant famously argued that lying to a suspected axe-murderer to save the life of a friend was not universalizable, so it seems probable that he would argue that the exaggerations, selective use of information and misrepresentations that are the heart and soul of advertising could not be universalised.  Both lying to an axe murderer and lying about the efficacy of a face-cream or the healthiness of a yoghurt are based on the maxim of lying… which is not universalizable.   By deceiving the customer-base the business also uses persons as means to the end of making profit.  As Karl Marx observed “capitalism is theft”… the business marketing face-cream relies on using cheap ingredients and paying its workers a lot less than the product finally sells for.  The essence of marketing is in making the consumer believe that the product is worth more than it is.  In this way, Kantian Ethics demands far more than consistency of decision-makers and decisions in business are unlikely to be consistent with the demands of the categorical imperative.

In the second instance, Bowie argues that a Kantian approach to decision-making demands that businesses consider the impact of decisions on stakeholders.  Yet, Kant’s Practical Imperative, the formula of ends and means, demands much more of decision-makers.  In the Groundwork for the Metaphysics of Morals Kant wrote “always act so that people, whether in the person of yourself or another, should be treated as ends in themselves and never as means to an end”.  Notice how Kant speaks of people, not stakeholders.  As Freeman and Evan suggested in their 1997 article, the stakeholders that a business should consider include shareholders, employees, customers and local community.  Even by this relatively generous definition, there are many people who do not count as stakeholders.  Further, Bowie makes little mention of the idea that Kant demands more of decision-makers than an impact assessment.  Treating a person as an end in themselves is not just minimising harm to them, it is about recognising that as a person they have inherent value equal to that of all other persons, including the decision maker.  The person living in the Maldives has the same value as the President of the Corporation and must, by Kant’s logic, be treated as an end in themselves.  If Kantian Ethics are taken seriously, there is no way a business could justify prioritising the short/medium term interests of its shareholders over the longer-term interests of its poorly paid employees or indeed the interests of the person in the Maldives in not having their home flooded by rising sea-levels which result from climate change.  In this way as well, Kantian Ethics demands far more than assessing impact on stakeholders; decisions in business are unlikely to be consistent with the demands of the categorical imperative.

Thirdly, although Bowie suggests that businesses should make decisions on the basis of Kantian principles, Kant’s writings reject the idea that a non-human agent can act morally.  As Matthew C Altman argued in 2007, a business is in itself neither free nor rational and cannot have a “good will” as Kant described it in the opening lines of the Groundwork for the Metaphysics of Morals.  Further, business decisions are made by people, who do have moral agency, but by people who are acting under the principle of limited liability.  For Kant, the idea that a person could sign an employment contract and so limit the extent to which they are morally responsible for their actions would be ridiculous.  For Kant, to be good a will must recognise its freedom and choose to follow the demands of reason anew in every individual moment.  Any action taken out of habit, fear, deference to authority etc, however good it may seem and whatever positive results it might yield, is in actuality an evil action and contaminates the will in a way that seems irreversible and which precludes the possibility of the eternal reward that reason makes us postulate.  By Kant’s understanding, the managers who make decisions on behalf of a business are – both in a moral sense and eternally – responsible for those decisions, whatever legal waiver might be in place.  Further, if a manager makes a decision because they have been trained to do so, out of fear for losing their job, because they have been instructed to do so or to conform with an agreed policy, their action is immoral and their will eternally damned regardless of whether the decision is in itself universalizable or compatible with treating persons as ends.  It seems that Kantian Ethics, when considered in its entirety, would not only make it impossible for a business to act ethically, but would also make it impossible for anybody to be employed by a business to make ethical decisions on its behalf.  In this way Kantian Ethics, when properly understood, is very far from a useful approach to making decisions in business.

In conclusion, Kantian Ethics is not the most useful approach to making decisions in business.  This is not to say that Bowie’s principles might not be a useful basis on which to make business decisions, but it is to say that it is a stretch to call these principles Kantian. 

St. Anselm succeeded in demonstrating God’s existence from reason alone. Discuss [40]

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Most of the arguments for God’s existence start with observations of the natural world, concluding a posteriori, after the fact, that God’s existence is the most probable explanation of those observations.  As such, most arguments for God’s existence are inductive and so are subject to the problem of induction; even when these arguments are strong, they do not provide proof but only a high degree of probability. Their conclusions are always falsifiable if and when observations are found to be flawed or incomplete (and the premises of the argument thus shown to be untrue), as well as if and when a more probable explanation of these observations is suggested.  Because of the limitations of arguments for God’s existence that start with observations, St Anselm sought to demonstrate God’s existence from reason alone.  In his Monologion (1075-6) he proposed a deductive argument based on the grades of perfection in things, arguing that the existence of God as supreme perfection is contained within claims that other things are more or less perfect.  Nevertheless, Anselm’s argument was criticized by his predecessor as abbot of Bec, Lanfranc.  Lanfranc argued that Anselm had not succeeded in demonstrating God’s existence from reason alone, because the premises in his argument depended on observations, even though they did contain his conclusion.  Because of Lanfranc’s criticism, Anselm determined to try to demonstrate God’s existence from reason alone in the Prosologion (1078).  Anselm developed two novel a priori arguments in this work and he remained confident of his own success, despite criticisms leveled during his lifetime, writing…

“I BELIEVE that I have shown by an argument which is not weak, but sufficiently cogent, that in my former book I proved the real existence of a being than which a greater cannot be conceived; and I believe that this argument cannot be invalidated by the validity of any objection. For so great force does the signification of this reasoning contain in itself, that this being which is the subject of discussion, is of necessity, from the very fact that it is understood or conceived, proved also to exist in reality, and to be whatever we should believe of the divine substance.” Concluding words of Anselm’s “Responsio” to Gaunilo

Nevertheless, history has shown that St Anselm did not succeed in demonstrating God’s existence from reason alone. 

In the Prosologion Book II St Anselm presents a simple version of what Kant later termed an Ontological Argument from God’s existence.  He started by quoting Psalm 14:1 and claiming that atheists are fools because they accept that God is “that than which nothing greater conceived of” and claim that there is nothing by that definition that exists in reality, when existence is a perfection and so my definition a property of “that than which nothing greater can be conceived of”.  For St. Anselm, if God only existed in the mind, it would always be possible to conceive of something greater, namely something that existed in reality, so existence in reality must be a property of God.  This argument was criticised by Gaunilo of Marmoutiers in his wittily titled “On behalf of the fool.” Gaunilo objected to St. Anselm’s claim that Atheists accept his definition of God as “that than which nothing greater can be conceived of.” He argued that people can recognise a word without forming an idea of what it refers to in their minds and that is particularly likely in the case of God, because it is a word which refers to something that is unlike any other thing and which is beyond most peoples’ experience.  Further, Gaunilo argued that it is possible to have in one’s minds all sorts of ideas of things which do not exist in reality.  He then used St Anselm’s own example of a painter and a painting to reason that the idea of something in the mind must always precede understanding that that idea also exists in reality.   St Anselm rejected Gaunilo’s points in his Responsio, arguing that if Atheists do indeed recognise the word God but not have any idea what it refers to then so much more are they fools!  Later, Descartes’ examples of triangles and valleys support St Anselm’s reasoning here – how could somebody claim to recognise the word triangle without understanding its essential predicate of three-sidedness?  St Anselm then reasoned that God is not like the idea of a unicorn or a Gruffalo, because unlike any other imaginary thing, the idea of God is of a being whose supreme nature logically contains existence in reality.  He hit back at Gaunilo, claiming he never intended his example of the painter and painting to be used in the way that Gaunilo used it.  Nevertheless and despite these responses, Gaunilo’s criticisms are effective.  Having ideas “in intellectu” for words to refer to depends on experience, on having ideas about similar things to draw on.  When an artist paints, they form an idea of what they want to paint in their minds that usually draws on experience before they then apply paint to the canvas and come to understand their painting as an object that now exists in reality as well as in the mind.  When an artist paints a triangle, they have experience of three-sided shapes to draw on and if not that, then some experience of shapes full stop.  However, if an Artist tried to paint God, they would have no comparable experience to draw on at all, so the idea of God in the artist’s mind would always be prior to and separate from the idea of God existing in reality.  Atheists have no experience of God and so the word “God” is just a sound, a sign without anything to point towards.  Later, St Thomas Aquinas agreed with Gaunilo.  While he accepted that God’s existence can be said to be self-evident and known through reason alone to somebody who really understands all that can possibly be known about the nature of God, Aquinas noted that in practice most people have little concept of what God is.  In Summa 1,2,1 Aquinas wrote: “Now because we do not know the essence of God, the proposition is not self-evident to us; but needs to be demonstrated by things that are more known to us…— namely, by effects.”  In this way, St Anselm failed to demonstrate that Atheists are fools because God’s existence can be known from reason alone.

Further, a version of St Anselm’s argument in Proslogion II presented by Descartes was later criticised by Immanuel Kant and Bertrand Russell.  Persuasively, Kant pointed out that St Anselm and Descartes are wrong to claim that existence is a perfection.  Taking the example of a job interview, a candidate who exists is not more perfect than a candidate who does not, rather the application of the non-existent candidate is meaningless.  Superficially, it might seem that Kant is nitpicking.  A real chocolate cake, any real chocolate cake, will always be greater, more perfect, more tasty etc. than any imaginary chocolate cake, even an imaginary one with zero calories.  No less authorities than St Anselm and Descartes saw this as a matter of common sense.  Despite this, Kant’s point deserves deeper consideration.  In logic, following Aristotle, there are two kinds of predicates – accidental predicates and essential predicates.  Accidental predicates are properties that an object may or may not have – like cherries or cream in the case of a chocolate cake.  Essential predicates are properties that an object must have or not be that object – like chocolate-flavour in the case of a chocolate cake.  In the Critique of Pure Reason (1781) Kant argues that existence is neither an essential predicate of anything, nor really an accidental predicate.  Focusing for the moment on existence as an accidental predicate, existence cannot be seen as a quality that an object might or might not have in the same way that cherries or cream are qualities that a chocolate cake might or not have.  To explain this point, Bertrand Russell used the example of a claim such as “the present King of France is bald” – it seems like a meaningful claim and capable of being true or false, but in fact because there is no present king of France the claim is meaningless.  St Anselm implies that there is a scale of perfection, the idea of an imaginary God appearing lower down the scale, with Gods having more or less perfect attributes appearing alongside, with the real God at the top of the scale.  In fact real existence is a precondition of appearing on the scale and being capable of comparison.  Russell points out that when St Anselm defines God as “that than which nothing greater can be conceived of” he begs the question and smuggles the existence of God as the object into the premises of his argument, reasoning that existence must de dicto be an accidental predicate of God.  If there is no “that than which nothing greater can be conceived of” then predicating anything of it is meaningless.  St Anselm needs to establish the existence of God before his demonstration of God’s existence will work, so the argument could only ever succeed for a person who had reason to believe already, on other grounds.  For these reasons as well, St Anselm failed to demonstrate God’s existence from reason alone.

Perhaps aware of the shortcomings of his argument in Proslogion Book II, in the Proslogion Book III St Anselm had already presented a different type of Ontological Argument, reasoning that it is greater to exist necessarily than only contingently, so necessary existence is a property of God as “that than which nothing greater can be conceived of.”  Here, St Anselm is arguing that existence is not just an accidental predicate of “that than which nothing greater can be conceived of” but is actually an essential predicate of God, to use Descartes’ later example as three-sidedness is an essential predicate of being a triangle.  In his “On behalf of the fool” Gaunilo criticised this argument as well, trying to reduce it to absurdity by using the analogy of a perfect island.  Nobody but a fool would believe that an island exists simply because somebody says that it is a perfect island, so existence (necessary or otherwise) must be predicated of it.  In this last criticism, at least as applied to the argument presented in Proslogion III, Gaunilo fails to show that Anselm’s argument is flawed.  As St Anselm wrote in the Responsio:

“I promise confidently that if any man shall devise anything existing either in reality or in concept alone (except that than which a greater be conceived) to which he can adapt the sequence of my reasoning, I will discover that thing, and will give him his lost island, not to be lost again.”

St Anselm is right to remind Gaunilo that necessary existence cannot logically be said to be a property of islands, unicorns or gruffalos for that matter.  Such things exist within time and space, contingently.  No contingent existence can necessarily exist.  Only God, who is “that than which nothing greater can be conceived of” has and must by definition have the unique property of necessary existence.  Despite this, however, St Anselm assumes that the idea of necessary existence is possible.  Persuasively, Immanuel Kant argued that because all our possible knowledge is of contingently existing things, any claims about necessary existence are like a “cupola of judgement”.  For Kant, all existential claims must be synthetic, capable of being verified through sense-observations.  We simply cannot claim to know that anything necessarily exists, so St Anselm’s argument is speculative and must fail to demonstrate God’s existence from reason alone.  Further, Kant argues that existence cannot be an essential predicate of anything.  He wrote:

“If, then, I try to conceive a being, as the highest reality (without any defect), the question still remains, whether it exists or not. For though in my concept there may be wanting nothing of the possible real content of a thing in general, something is wanting in its relation to my whole state of thinking, namely, that the knowledge of that object should be possible a posteriori also…”

Kant is effectively agreeing with Gaunilo, although supporting his argument rather better, in reasoning that existence is “out there” in the world of the senses and so incapable of being demonstrated analytically, through reason alone, and without reference to the senses.  Today, the vast majority of people would side with Kant and Gaunilo in their understanding of what it means to exist, and for this reason St Anselm failed to demonstrate God’s necessary existence from reason alone.

Nevertheless, after WWII Kant’s world-view started to be questioned and along with it his claims that all existential statements have to be synthetic and that existence cannot be an essential predicate of anything.  Perhaps drawing on those like Hegel who drew attention to cracks in the foundations of Kant’s critical philosophy early in the 19th Century, scholars such as Hartshorne and Quine pointed out how dogmatic Kant’s understanding of existence and meaning was.  For Hartshorne, Kant’s criticism of seeing existence as an accidental predicate is fair, but ignores the possibility that necessary existence could be an essential predicate of God and only God.  Hartshorne reasoned that either God’s existence is contingent (which it cannot be, by definition), or God’s existence is necessary and necessary existence is impossible or God’s existence is necessary and possible, in which case God exists.  Rejecting Kant’s limited world-view, Hartshorne argued that God’s necessary existence is not impossible, so God necessarily exists.  Of course, Hartshorne’s argument depends on his ability to reject the claim that necessary existence is an impossible concept.  JN Findlay strongly disagreed with Hartshorne on this point, arguing that by showing that God’s existence can’t be contingent and can only be necessary when necessary existence is impossible,

“it was indeed an ill day for Anselm when he hit upon his famous proof. For on that day he not only laid bare something that is of the essence of an adequate religious object, but also something that entails its necessary non-existence…’ [First published in Mind, April 1948] 

While others have agreed with and built on Hartshorne’s reasoning, including Norman Malcolm and later Alvin Plantinga, those who side with Hartshorne tend to be those who believe in God on other grounds.  Again, attempts to revive the Ontological Argument serve to show that Anselm failed to demonstrate the existence of God from reason alone to anybody who doesn’t already believe in God on other grounds.

In conclusion, St. Anselm’s arguments in the Proslogion fail to demonstrate the existence of God from reason alone.  Gaunilo, Kant and Russell among many other critics have shown how St. Anselm’s reasoning is problematic, firstly by showing how Atheists need not accept the first premise of the argument, that “God is that than which nothing greater can be conceived of” and by undermining the whole attempt to demonstrate existence by analysing the concept of anything, and then by showing that existence is not a perfection or quality that can properly be accidentally predicated of anything and that necessary existence is impossible, because existence cannot be an essential predicate of anything.  That is not to say that St Anselm’s arguments have no value.  While they fail to demonstrate God’s existence from reason alone, for those who already believe in God – or at least for those who already reject Kant’s critical world view with its limitation on possible knowledge and meaningful claims – the arguments remain an important part of articulating their faith and revealing the nature of God.

Aquinas’ first cause argument successfully proves the existence of God. Discuss. (40)

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Aquinas’ first cause argument is the second of his three versions of the Cosmological Argument, which form the first of his three ways to God in the first part of the Summa Theologica.  As a Cosmological Argument, Aquinas’ first cause argument starts from the observation of order, in this case causation, in the universe.  The word “Cosmological” derives from the Greek “Kosmos” which means both “order” and “universe”.  As Anthony Kenny[CV1]  explains, Aquinas relies on Aristotle’s theory of causation, as outlined in the Metaphysics Book IV.  Aristotle argued that all things in the universe have four causes, which can by understood in terms of the material, efficient, formal and final.  Material causes are the physical ingredients of things, efficient causes the agents that cause them to exist as they do, formal causes the definitions of things which make them what they are and the final cause to which things aim is their goal or telos and ultimately flourishing.  Focusing on efficient causation, Aquinas’ second way to God argues that everything in the universe is caused by one or more agents outside itself and nothing causes itself to exist.  If this is so then there is a problem – what was the first efficient cause.  An infinite chain of efficient causes makes no sense, because without a first cause nothing would exist.  Something cannot come out of nothing.  There must be a first efficient cause, but this must itself be uncaused, which makes it unlike any other thing.  The uncaused cause of the universe could then be said to be “neither something nor nothing” and, Aquinas concludes, this is what everybody calls God. As an inductive argument the conclusion of the Cosmological Argument, that God exists, is supported by observed premises which are falsifiable.  Because of this, Aquinas’ first cause argument cannot be said to prove God’s existence.  The problem of induction ensures that the most that the argument can be said to achieve is a very high degree of probability that its conclusions are, in fact, true[CV2] . Leaving the problem of induction and the issue of proof to one side: Aquinas’ first cause argument is still a convincing argument for the existence of God and, as William Lane Craig continues to argue, it is a useful means of defending the rationality of faith[CV3] . 

An immediate criticism of Aquinas’ argument is that it assumes that EVERYTHING in the universe is caused.  Although this claim is supported by Aristotle, it may be fair to suggest – as indeed JL Mackie did in “The Miracle of Theism” (1982[CV4] ) – that there may be things in the universe that are uncaused.  Indeed, Quantum Physics has concluded that there are sub-atomic particles that are in a sense uncaused. It could be that Aquinas’ first premise – that everything in the universe is caused – is untrue and if that is the case then the argument would fail. Nevertheless, it would be going too far to suggest that Physics has proven the existence of uncaused things in the universe.  Quantum particles could well be caused, for all we know, even though they appear not to be.  The most that Mackie’s criticism achieves is to show that Aquinas’ first premise must remain uncertain.  Although it seems likely on the basis of present experience that all things are caused, as Hume observed it is always possible that there are things in the universe that are uncaused and that these could explain the universe without recourse to God[CV5] . In this way, although Aquinas’ first cause argument is not entirely successful as an argument for God’s existence from observation, it is able to survive an obvious line of criticism.

In Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion (1779) Hume went on to suggest that the universe itself could be the uncaused cause of itself.  Russell made a similar point in his debate with Frederick Copleston[CV6] , suggesting that the universe should be seen as a “brute fact”.  This is certainly possible; Aquinas’ might be guilty of committing the fallacy of composition in reasoning that just because things within the universe need causes that the universe as a whole needs a cause.  Russell gave the analogy of mothers – just because all men have mothers doesn’t mean that the human race has a mother.  While Hume and Russell could well be right and the universe might be the cause of itself, this goes well beyond our experience.  It is just as difficult to theorise about the universe being self-causing as it is to theorise that it has an uncaused cause.  Neither conclusion can be drawn with any degree of confidence.  What does seem certain is that Aquinas is correct to reason that the universe must be explained in terms of something that is uncaused, whether that is within the universe, the universe itself – or God.  William Lane Craig[CV7] , in adapting the Cosmological Argument for modern Christian Apologetics, chooses to leave the argument at its first conclusion – that there must exist an uncaused causer.  He leaves it to Theologians to convince people that the uncaused cause is in fact “what everybody calls God” and it seems that his caution is sensible. Neither Aquinas’ first cause argument nor any other version of the Cosmological Argument can conclusively prove the existence of God, but the argument can point to the rationality of faith given the necessity for a cause for the universe which is unlike anything within our normal experience[CV8] .

Immanuel Kant advised such caution when in the Critique of Pure Reason he argued that the Cosmological Argument, like other inductive arguments for God’s existence, goes beyond the boundaries of what we can claim to know.  It is reasonable to observe that all things are caused and that there is a tension implicit in this which demands explanation – but it is not reasonable to draw conclusions about that explanation when they go beyond possible experience.  Perhaps this is where faith comes in; the first cause argument cannot successfully PROVE the existence of God, but it can point towards a mystery which is evident in the observed universe, a mystery which is suggestive of the existence of something supernatural if not of the God of Classical Theism.  As Hume pointed out, the first cause argument cannot claim to lead to the God of Christianity – even to a single God in fact – but limited as it is, the argument provides a useful defence for the believer[CV9] . 

 [CV1]Precise relevant detail and range of scholarly views

 [CV2]Acknowledging & engaging with the precise wording of the title – This also works to show the LIMITATIONS of the argument.

 [CV3]THESIS

 [CV4]Using a range of scholarly views.  This paragraph also serves as the COUNTERCLAIM, as it does cede some of the point that Mackie makes.

 [CV5]Evaluating the “maybe not everything has a cause” criticism, linking to the THESIS, justified, developed…

 [CV6]Range of scholarly views – again a bit of counterargument (balance) here, allowing that Hume and Russell have a point.

 [CV7]Range of scholarly views

 [CV8]Evaluating the fallacy of composition criticism and linking to the THESIS – justified, developed, sustained…

 [CV9]Drawing in Kant’s criticism & another of Hume’s in drawing the final CONCLUSION, which restates the THESIS – successful argument.  Builds step by step and is therefore convincing.

Critically assess Kant’s criticisms of the Ontological Argument. [40]

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Immanuel Kant criticised what he first termed the Ontological Argument at the beginning of his Critique of Pure Reason (1781). Focussing on the argument as presented by Rene Descartes, which suggested that existence is a perfection and thus a necessary attribute of God, who is a supremely perfect being, in the way that having three sides is a necessary property of a triangle or having valleys is a necessary property of being a hill – Kant concluded that the argument was “so much labour and effort lost”. For Kant, existence is not a perfection and is wrongly used as a predicate. He used the example of a sum of money – the difference between a real and imaginary sum is not that the real sum is worth more, just that the real sum might be in my pocket. Existence is not a predicate and does not describe the properties of an object, it just informs me whether there is such an object in the real world. Bertrand Russell developed this point, using the example of the claim “the present King of France is bald”. Russell pointed out that although the claim seems sensible, as if it is referring to the properties of the King of France’s head and might be either true or false, in actual fact, the claim is meaningless because there is no present King of France for the claim to refer to and thus no way that the claim is either true or false. Existence is not a predicate, it is not just another property that the present King of France does or does not have, it is the ground of meaning on which all sensible claims must be made. Michael Palmer used another example to explain this; that of two candidates applying for a job. If a panel is faced with two CVs listing the “perfections” of the candidate A and candidate B, it would be ridiculous to list “exists” as one of them – existence is neither a perfection nor properly used as a predicate, rather it is what makes the analysis of the CV and the contest between the candidates meaningful. Kant’s criticisms of the Ontological Argument were highly influential and following the publication of the Critique of Pure Reason in 1781, scholarly interest in the Ontological Argument declined steeply. Nevertheless, developments in the second half of the 20th Century showed that Kant’s criticisms are far from conclusive and reawakened scholarly interest in the Ontological Argument for God’s existence.

While Kant’s criticisms were directed at Descartes’ Ontological Argument, they are often applied to the arguments of St Anselm of Canterbury, presented in his Proslogion (1078). Anselm argued that if God is “that than which nothing greater can be conceived of” then God must, a priori, exist because it is greater to exist in reality than just in the mind, so if God existed only as an idea in the mind (as he must, if Anselm’s definition was accepted) then something greater could conceivably exist… something that existed in reality as well as in the mind. If God is, therefore, the greatest conceivable being then God must exist in reality, because existence is a perfection which makes something greater. Clearly, Kant’s arguments that existence is not a perfection and that existence is wrongly used as a predicate seem to undermine Anselm’s argument fatally. As Gaunilo of Marmoutiers had observed in his “On behalf of the fool”, the idea that the perfect island has to exist just by virtue of being the perfect island is absurd; nobody is going to book a ticket to go there on the basis of an argument like that. Nevertheless, that ignores how Anselm developed his argument in the next chapter of the Proslogion, a point that he made in response to Gaunilo’s attack by restating this part of the argument in his Responsio. In Proslogion Chapter 3 Anselm reasons that it is better to exist necessarily than to exist only contingently, therefore necessary existence – not being able to not exist – must be an attribute of that than which nothing greater can be conceived of. This development of the Argument could defeat Kant’s standard criticisms, in that while existence is not a perfection or rightly used as a predicate, that does not necessarily apply to necessary existence, which is a total state of existence either possible or impossible, not a property which might or might not be added to a object that could only ever contingently exist.

Norman Malcolm argued that Anselm’s argument in Proslogion 3 can be presented in terms of modal logic. Either God’s necessary existence is impossible – as in it contains a formal contradiction – or possible. If God’s necessary existence is possible, then it is necessary.   Remember, necessary existence is not existence in the sense that we could encounter through our senses. The world of sense is a world in which things exist contingently and might or might not exist, as St Thomas Aquinas observed in his Third Way to God (Summa Theologica I.II QIII). To exist necessarily is to exist in a different way, a way that is by definition beyond anything that we could experience through our senses. For Kant, because necessary existence is beyond possible experience, then it can only be speculative to even speak of it. Kant called necessary existence a “cupola of judgement” meaning that it strays so far beyond possible knowledge to be a flight of fancy or a castle in the air. Nevertheless, this assumes Kant’s world view and the primacy of sense-experience. For rationalist philosophers like Descartes, Leibniz and later Malcolm, what is real cannot be limited to what can be experienced through the senses. The world of sense is faulty, partial, subjective and limited; empirical knowledge is contingent and ever-changing. For Descartes and Leibniz, rational knowledge should be primary because it is none of these things. A clear and distinct idea, an idea which contains no contradictions, is certain, complete, objective and constant. Just as we know that 1+1=2 without resorting to a posteriori reasoning based on experiences with apples and oranges, we know that God necessarily exists a priori because he is supremely perfect. Alvin Plantinga and William Lane Craig have developed this line of reasoning, using the device of possible worlds. A concept is possible if it could be instantiated in any possible world. A unicorn is a possible concept; although unicorns (at least in the sense of being live horses with single horns!) don’t exist in this world, it is not inconceivable that they might exist in a multiverse. The concept of a horse with a horn is not contradictory, it is possible. On the other hand, a square circle is impossible and could not exist in any possible world because the definition of a square is to have four straight sides, something which directly contradicts the definition of a circle. God’s “maximal greatness” – which must include Omnipotence, Omniscience and Omnibenevolence – is possible not impossible and, because maximal greatness precludes the possibility that God might or might not exist in any one universe, God must necessarily exist in every possible world, including this one. In essence, Plantinga and Craig show that Kant’s criticisms of the Ontological Argument fail because they rely on an impoverished epistemology.

To explain this, for Kant, all existential claims have to be synthetic, they have to refer to something in the world of sense-experience and therefore contain the possibility of being either true or false. If I say “unicorns exist” I am making the claim that there are such things as unicorns in the world – if I saw a unicorn I would know that the claim was true and if no evidence of unicorns has ever been found it is probably fair to say that the claim is false. Making the claim “God exists” does not refer to anything in the world of sense experience and it is not possible, therefore, for the claim to be either true or false… in the terms of the Logical Positivists, it is a meaningless claim. In 1951 American Philosopher WV Quine attacked the basis of Kant’s objections to the Ontological Argument in his essay “Two Dogmas of Empiricism”. Like Karl Popper and AJ Ayer, as a young man, Quine had spent time with the Vienna Circle of Logical Positivists, but by 1950 Quine came to reject their approach, not only to establishing meaning in language but also to bigger questions about epistemology – “what can we know?” and “what does it mean to say that something exists?” Logical Positivists were Positivists, that is to say that they approached philosophy on the basis that scientific, empirical observation is the only source of knowledge and that metaphysics is a waste of time. Positivism formally began with the work of French philosopher Auguste Comte, but looked back to Kant and before that to Hume and Locke. Locke rejected continental rationalism and argued that human beings have no innate ideas, being born as tabula rasa and gaining all their knowledge and understanding from experience. Hume agreed to a large extent, although he acknowledged the limitations of sense-experience as well. Kant said that Hume “awoke me from my dogmatic slumbers and gave a new direction to my philosophical enquiries” and adopted Hume’s fork, the categorisation of possible knowledge into either what is known analytically or what is known from sense-experience, dismissing any other claimed knowledge – including most metaphysical and religious claims – as speculative. Scientific method drew on the work of Locke, Hume and Kant in that it came to focus on sense-experience as the source of all new knowledge and limiting the role of reason to one of analysis and clarification. It is fair to say, therefore, that the Logical Positivists were empiricists. Quine rejected empiricism, and the Logical Positivism of his youth, arguing that in embracing Hume’s fork Kant had awoken from one set of dogmatic slumbers only to fall into another set of dogmatic slumbers. On what basis, Quine asked, did the Logical Positivists claim that sense-experience is the only source of new knowledge? The Logical Positivists failed to provide an adequate explanation of why meaningfulness should depend on either sense-experience or logic and on nothing else. This point was later developed by Alvin Plantinga in his “God and Other Minds” when he pointed out that the Verification Principle is itself unverifiable and therefore self-defeating. Quine also questioned the lack of any adequate explanation for the authority of logic, pointing out that you have to accept logic in order to defend why you should accept logic, which is circular. The same applies to the authority of the empirical senses, Quine argued. On what basis do we say that the sense-experience are the only source of new knowledge without just appealing to sense-experience? This is pure reductionism and again, the justification for Positivism is circular. The answer is that the Logical Positivists adopted Kant’s world-view without much thought, ignoring the fact that Hume (not to mention Descartes) had already outlined the serious problems with relying on the senses in that they are faulty, limited in scope and that data always needs to be interpreted through reason anyway. If Quine is correct and Kant’s epistemology is more dogmatic than critical, then his criticisms of the Ontological Argument start to collapse. On what basis did Kant claim that all existential claims have to be synthetic? For Quine, he had no adequate justification for assuming the authority or primacy of sense-experience, other than by appealing to that same sense experience. Without any proper justification for his epistemology, it seems that Kant’s criticism of the Ontological Argument is on shaky ground indeed.

Further, to say that sense-experience is the only source of new knowledge is to relegate whole fields of study, discussion and indeed human experience to junk status. The fact that the Verification Principle proposed by the Logical Positivists as the gold standard of meaning had to be liberalised through the 1930s and 1940s shows that the claim that discussions about topics such as Ethics, History and Aesthetics (let alone Religion) are meaningless is unworkable and runs against what most people believe and experience. Quine proposed an alternative holistic approach called Ontological Naturalism, which moved away from the attempt to define the meaning of individual statements in terms of their reference and towards assessing their meaning in terms of cohering with and contributing to the whole field of science as an explanatory framework. Popper also rejected Verificationism, proposing another, more generous and inclusive, approach to meaning in scientific terms in the Falsification Principle. Both were influential and contributed to a decline in Logical Positivism to the extent whereby by 1960 it was declared “dead, or as dead as any philosophical movement can be.” The decline of Logical Positivism demonstrates the inadequacy of Kant’s world-view for the modern world. What place has a system which claims that sense-experience is the only source of new knowledge in a world of Quantum science and particle-Physics, in which the very act of observing particles changes their state? Long gone is the idea that the senses offer human beings a transparent window on the external world, even the world of matter and energy. Today, the whole field of theoretical Physics would have to be declared “meaningless” by Schlick, Ayer and Carnap… and yet the insights it yields offer humanity unthought of technological advances… they work. Further, Physics suggests that what appears “real” to our senses is far from being solid and as it appears. On the Planck scale no matter exists… if I hit the table the contact I experience is really the interaction of charges in the fields which make up the vast majority of each atom in the wood and in my hand. The universe, which appeared like a vast machine to Kant and which still appears eternal to the amateur start-gazer has been revealed to be infinite while still having edges, a shape and a colour and while expanding at an increasing rate… into nothing. All of this suggests that reason – mathematics – can yield new knowledge and confidently move past anything we can hope to observe through our senses, to a much greater degree than either the Logical Positivists, or Kant, allowed.

On the other hand, even theoretical Physicists admit the need to test their theories through experiments. Very recently, different theories on black holes were tested when radio-telescopes were linked together to take a photograph of a black hole. The photograph – an observation – was necessary to check analytical calculations and prevent them from being purely speculative. This supports Kant’s claim that all existential claims must be synthetic. Physicists theorise about black holes, but it is not possible to say that or how they exist unless and until we take a photograph or make some other observation to verify (or falsify) the theories. Nevertheless, there are aspects of Physics – as there are aspects of Theology – which resist any possible observation. By definition, it is not possible to observe God’s necessary existence, because by definition it must be outside of the matrix of time and space in which our senses operate. Similarly, it is not possible to observe what caused the Big Bang which created the space-time continuum, or to experience conditions in a multiverse. The extent to which cosmological theories like cosmic inflation and string theory are pseudo-scientific (to use Popper’s phrase) because they are not falsifiable or subject to normal scientific method has been a matter of controversy on the letters’ page of Scientific American since 2017. Nevertheless, this should not stop Physicists (or Theologians) from using reason, the other source of knowledge available to them, to push forward the boundaries of knowledge. While Kant was right to be cautious and to warn against metaphysical speculation – because after all, the greatest obstacle to finding something is being convinced that you already have it – his world-view with its focus on the senses as the arbiter of possible knowledge is too restrictive for the 21st Century in the way that the world-view of the Logical Positivists became too restrictive for the 20th Century. It also sits ill with both developing insights about the way in which our senses work and rely on our brains and pre-existing ideas and with insights about the different reality beyond how things appear to our senses, on the Planck scale. While Popper’s Falsification Principle is more flexible than the Verification Principle, it still limits what can be said scientifically to that which can be falsified in relation to observations, it still assumes a Kantian world-view, and herein lies the problem for particle Physics and Cosmology with Scientific Method as it is conceived today. It seems that Kantian epistemology and the assumed world-view within which science has operated since the 1790s is on the verge of being rejected; to use Thomas Kuhn’s phrase, the Positivist scientific (and philosophical) paradigm is shifting and giving way to a paradigm which is more open to reason providing new knowledge which cannot be checked by observation. Given this, it seems that Kant’s criticisms of the Ontological Argument will lose a great deal of their power. As William Lane Craig has pointed out, the Ontological Argument (as he presents it) is valid. If it is accepted that an argument can also be sound – its propositions can be said to be true – even when they cannot be verified or falsified empirically, then the Ontological Argument is much more persuasive.

Nevertheless, even if Kant was too cautious about using reason as a source of new knowledge, it could be fair to say that the Ontological Argument pushes things too far. St Thomas Aquinas made just this point in his Summa Theologica I.II question 1 (1264) when he wrote “because we do not know the essence of God, the truth of God’s existence is not self-evident to us.” Aquinas dismissed the Ontological Argument because to suggest that any human being can have a “clear and distinct idea” of God to use Descartes phrase from the Meditations, sufficient to analyse that idea and find necessary existence – a unique property of God – within it, is arrogant. God is, to use Augustine’s words “other, completely other”, outside time and space, so even if we have innate ideas – as Descartes and Plato argued – it stretches credulity to rely on those ideas being so complete in relation to God so as to make the Ontological Argument plausible. Clearly, what it means for God to be perfect or great is not what it means for human beings to have a perfection or be called great. Aquinas even rejected the idea that it could just be a matter of scale, with God at the top of the scale and people (and other created things) at the other. If God is timeless then God’s perfection and greatness must also be timeless and cannot include any potential for God to be other than he is, to change or to choose. Aquinas’ saw claims about God’s nature as necessarily analogical. Yes, our greatness depends on God’s greatness, but in the way that the healthiness of a yoghurt depends on the healthiness of somebody who eats it. Healthy people are slim, muscly and bounce around… healthy yoghurts are none of these things! For Aquinas, God’s nature can be described (and known) positively, but only in a very limited sense, not completely enough to support an ontological demonstration of God’s necessary existence from an a priori definition of His nature. Nevertheless, St Anselm and Descartes on one hand and Karl Barth and Iris Murdoch on the other would all reject this argument, with reasons that also serve as criticisms of Kant’s approach to the Ontological Argument.

For Anselm it is true to say that God’s attributes are not the same as human attributes, because God is timelessly perfect, nevertheless it is possible to understand enough about God’s greatness to deduce that necessary existence is a necessary property of it. This is because, according to the a posteriori argument in Anselm’s Monologion, God is the best explanation for our ability to judge things in this world as more or less perfect. God creates us with an innate conception of perfection, the top of a scale which we use to measure things in this world every day. Indeed, Aquinas – although he still denied that this would give people a clear enough concept of God to analyse and find necessary existence within – included a similar argument as his fourth way to God in Summa Theologica I.II question 3, arguing that claims about God’s nature can be understood as analogies of proportion as well as as analogies of attribution (as above). This suggests that Aquinas’ rejection of Anselm’s approach was more about the degree to which we can conceive of the essence of God and a matter of interpretation, rather than about Anselm’s whole methodology in the Monologion, which he later used to support his reasoning in the Proslogion. Descartes “trademark” argument in the Meditations supports Anselm’s belief that God creates us with an innate idea of God’s existence and there have been other, similar arguments in the work of scholars from St Augustine to CS Lewis, arguing from the experience of believers, their desire for and innate awareness of God, a posteriori to the conclusion of His existence. It seems that many believers could accept the idea that we have an understanding of God’s supreme greatness even if we cannot completely conceive of what that might entail. It seems, therefore, that Aquinas’ dismissal of a priori attempts to argue that God’s existence is self-evident is rather hasty. Just as Aquinas’ rejection of the idea that God’s existence is self-evident and exclusive focus on arguments from observation as the only approach to defending God’s existence rationally does not fit with believers’ experience of God as an innate idea, Kant’s rejection of both a priori and a posteriori arguments for God in the Critique of Pure reason does not fit with the imperative to believe in God which he himself expressed in strong terms, most completely in “Religion within the bounds of Reason alone” (1794). While Kant dismisses all the rational arguments for God’s existence, including the Ontological Argument, he argues that God is a necessary postulate, an assumption that it is our rational duty to make, to explain the existence of the moral law which we know as a synthetic a priori. Kant reasons, therefore, that we know the moral law a priori, before experience, although it is supported in all respects by experience as well. The moral law is, furthermore, necessarily explained by God. On what basis can Kant argue that Descartes is wrong to claim that we know God’s existence a priori, something which is supported in all respects by experience as well, but proceed to make a similar claim about the moral law. It is worth asking, is Descartes concept of God actually different from Kant’s concept of God? All that Descartes attempts to demonstrate through his Ontological Argument is that Supreme Perfection necessarily exists… he makes no claim about the Ontological Argument proving anything about the nature of that Supreme Perfection, stopping short of listing attributes like being male, being the father of Jesus etc. Is it fair to claim that the moral law can be known a priori – as Kant does – and reject the idea that the necessary existence of Supreme Perfection cannot be known a priori, when both seem equally borne out by experience.

Further, Karl Barth (and later Iris Murdoch) pointed out that the Ontological Argument, although not conclusive as a proof of God’s existence for the non-believer, it is deeply persuasive for the person with faith. In Barth’s “Faith Seeking Understanding” (1930), far from pre-empting Norman Malcolm’s claim that the Proslogion was an exercise in modal logic (a claim that has been accepted by Hartshorne, Plantinga and Craig), Barth argued that Anselm’s work had been wrongly characterised as a philosophical treatise and argued that it was really a prayer, a deeply spiritual meditation on contingency and necessity and the nature of reality. If Barth is correct then Kant’s criticisms of the argument, at least as they are applied to Anselm rather than their intended target, Descartes, are misplaced. To say that Anselm’s work is “so much labour and effort lost” misses the point that he may not have intended to formulate a deductive proof such as to convince a non-believer at all. Further, while the philosophical intent behind Descartes’ arguments in the Meditations is difficult to deny, it is worth mentioning that this work too was written from the perspective of pre-existing faith. Descartes too had “faith seeking understanding” and was not engaged in a work of Christian apologetics. Kant’s criticisms approach Descartes’ ontological argument for God in isolation and attempt to dismantle it from the perspective of a radically different world-view and epistemological framework. Given the doubt that has been cast on the possibility of attaining objective Truth and a grip on ultimate reality – a doubt that was adopted by Kant from Hume but which was often subsequently ignored – the idea that Kant’s world-view and epistemological framework, which as has been explained rests on as many assumptions as does Descartes, should have the authority to dismiss Descartes’ Ontological Argument is unconvincing. Today, most philosophers have to look to coherence rather than to correspondence to find meaning, and thus have to be open to the possibility that an Ontological argument might be both valid and sound within one form of life and simultaneously valid but not sound in another form of life.

In conclusion, Kant’s criticisms of the Ontological Argument are effective only if his epistemology and world-view are accepted.

“The arguments for the existence of God do nothing to support the God people actually worship” Critically evaluate this statement. [40]

/ vardycharlotte / Leave a comment

It is fair to say that the arguments for the existence of God fail to prove the existence of God.  The ontological argument is the only one that sets out to deliver an a priori proof and as Immanuel Kant argued in his “Critique of Pure Reason” (1781) it is “so much labour and effort lost“.  It is equally fair to say that the inductive arguments for God’s existence, both Cosmological and Teleological, fail to demonstrate the existence of God conclusively.  Criticisms leveled at the arguments by David Hume, amongst many others, point out their several flaws and fallacies.  Nevertheless, to say that the arguments do nothing to support the God people worship is a big overstatement. [THESIS]

The ontological argument, for all it seems to rely on bad grammar by treating existence as a perfection and a predicate, remains a powerful thought-exercise for those who already believe.  For one example, Karl Barth – who utterly rejected Natural Theology – appreciated the spiritual depth of Anselm’s argument.  In “Faith Seeking Understanding” (1931), he suggested that Anselm was not trying to prove that God exists, but was rather meditating on how God exists.  For Barth “that than which nothing greater can be conceived of” is a revealed name of God which contains something of God’s nature.  Reflecting on it and seeking deeper and deeper understanding is an essential faith-activity, which supports and enriches peoples’ relationship with the divine.  For another example, the mystic Thomas Merton was inspired by Anselm’s “faith seeking understanding” and exploration of how God necessarily exists as his starting point in opening his mind to insights about God from all religions [Faith Seeking Understanding: Theological Method in Thomas Merton’s inter-religious Dialogue by Ryan Scruggs, Journal of Ecumenical Studies 46:3 2011].  Both Barth and Merton used Anselm’s ontological argument to support their understanding of and enrich their faith in God, in their different ways.  It is wrong to say then that this argument for God’s existence does nothing to support the God that people worship. [REASON]

Cosmological arguments point to God as the Prime Mover, uncaused cause and Necessary sustainer of the universe.  For St. Thomas Aquinas, these arguments show a posteriori how God must be eternal in the sense of being outside time and space, which in turn distances God from creation and limits how He can be understood to know and intervene in what happens.  On one level, this suggests that the statement “the arguments for the existence of God do nothing to support the God people actually worship” is reasonable.  Omnipotence – in the sense of being able to work miracles – omniscience – in the sense of being able to respond to prayer – and benevolence – in the sense of understanding and having a personal relationship with worshipers – are all crucial to the Christian concept of God.  Aquinas’ God, although well-supported by the cosmological argument – is not obviously the God most Christians worship.  Nevertheless, Aquinas’ ways to God  only serve as a preamble to the substance of his argument in the Summa Theologica, which seeks to show why the necessary being supported by observational evidence must be the God Christians worship.  It is true that for Aquinas, the meaning of divine attributes like omnipotence, omniscience and omni-benevolence has to be understood analogically and cannot be understood literally, univocally.  Yet he also maintains that there is real and positive meaning in claims such as “God is good”, which are central to Christian worship.  It is clear that Aquinas’ cosmological arguments establish the necessary existence of the God Christians worship, even if they do not by themselves explain how or why God must be as Christians worship Him. Therefore it is an overstatement to say that the arguments do nothing to support the God people worship.  [REASON]

Teleological arguments suggest a God who is more obviously involved in His creation than either ontological or cosmological arguments.  William Paley used the analogy of watch and watchmaker to describe the close relationship between creation and creator.  Even Aquinas’ fifth way suggests that God is the intelligence that directs inanimate things towards their ends (telos) “as an arrow is given flight by the archer.”  In “Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion” David Hume’s character Philo is right to point out that the observable evidence of creation includes things that seem poorly designed or even cruel and might more properly suggest an imperfect deity, or multiple deities, than the perfect God of Christian worship because in practice, most Christians are resigned to worshipping a God who at least allows evil and suffering, albeit for a morally sufficient reason.  For example, John Hick argued that God created human beings in His own image, with only the potential to grow into His likeness after passing through the “vale of soul-making” that is human life.  In “Evil and the God of Love” (1966) he argued that belief in a God who allows people to suffer for the spiritual benefit that they (or other people) may gain from that experience is compatible with Christian faith and worship.  After all, in the Garden of Gethsemane Jesus called out to “Abba, Father…” asking that “this cup of suffering” be taken away by God’s will.  God did not act to prevent his suffering, even when Jesus called out “Eloi, Eloi, lama sabachthani, which means “my God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” (Mark 15:34)  Christians do not worship a God who doesn’t know about or understand suffering and nor do they worship a God who even tried to create a world with no potential for horror… he placed the tree in the garden after all.  It follows that teleological arguments support the God Christians actually worship, “the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob” far more than they support the perfect “God of the philosophers”, to use Blaise Pascal’s distinction.  [REASON]

Pushing this line of reasoning might give more credence to the claim that “the arguments for the existence of God do nothing to support the God people actually worship.”  Certainly, ontological and cosmological arguments – if they are sound and cogent respectively – support the existence of a perfect God.  Anselm defined God as “that than which nothing greater can be conceived of,” Descartes defined God more straightforwardly as “Supreme Perfection” and Plantinga similarly defined God as a “maximally great being.”  Aquinas’ cosmological arguments support a God who is the Prime Mover, uncaused causer and de re necessary being sustaining the universe.  By definition, such a God is 100% actual and has no potential, is outside time and space and cannot change.  Aquinas successfully showed that this God must be all-good.  In the Aristotelian sense defining goodness in terms of fulfilling potential and evil in terms of falling short, a God whose nature is to unchangingly be 100% actual cannot be other than all-good.  Further, Aquinas successfully showed that this God must be all-powerful and all knowing in the sense of being the primary cause of everything that exists, what is responsible for things being as they are and no other way.  Nevertheless, Christians do not worship a God who is perfect in this abstract way.  The Bible casts God as the creator of everything, but a creator who has a defined purpose for each aspect of his creation (Genesis 1:27-31) and who can and does interact with and respond to people both in Eden (Genesis 2-3) and subsequently throughout Biblical History.  In Genesis God appears to Abraham – albeit in a mysterious way – then Jacob wrestles with God, mistaking him for a man.  In the New Testament God speaks to acknowledge Jesus as His son, Jesus calls God Abba (literally Daddy) and claims “the father and I are one” (John 10:30) before dying horribly on the cross.  It is difficult to claim that the God Christians worship is the abstract if all-powerful, all-good God supported by ontological and cosmological arguments.  [DISAGREE]  Nevertheless, the Nicene Creed affirms that the Christian God is the perfect God of the philosophers as well as being the God of Biblical history.  God is the creator both of what is “seen and unseen”, Jesus’ incarnation is part of the original creation, willed from the beginning of time rather than being a response to circumstance.  God speaks but through the prophets, acts but through the agency of the Holy Spirit.  It is fair to say that the Christian God, the God Christians actually worship, is paradoxical and mysterious but it is not fair to say that the God supported by the arguments is not the God people actually worship.  [EVALUATION]

In conclusion,  to say that the arguments do nothing to support the God people worship is a big overstatement. [THESIS] While it is true that the ontological argument and the cosmological argument point towards an abstract, perfect God which demands theological explanation to show as the God of Biblical history, it is unfair to say that the arguments do nothing to support the God people actually worship.  Certainly, as Karl Barth and Thomas Merton pointed out of the ontological argument, they are useful in enriching and sustaining faith by supporting deeper understanding of God’s nature.  Certainly, as Reformed Epistemologists like William Lane Craig have argued, cosmological arguments help believers to “defeat the defeaters” and show that faith – while not based on or dependent on arguments – is not irrational despite that.  In addition, as St Thomas Aquinas reasoned, a proper understanding of religious language shows that the attributes of the God supported by the arguments and the attributes of the God actually worshipped by Christians share meaning, even if that meaning is of a specific and limited type.  Finally, teleological arguments offer essential support for the God people actually worship, showing His creative care and causing people to reflect on the existence of evil and suffering in a way that is essential to Christian worship.  Without appreciating the reality of suffering – and rational reflection on God as designing intelligence encourages this – Christians could not understand the importance of the atonement or stake their lives on the hope for salvation, and in this case there would be little point in worship.  [Significance]

 

 

Critically evaluate the classical teleological argument (40)

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Teleological arguments move from observations of purposiveness in the universe to the conclusion that God is the best explanation for the existence of the universe as it is. The Greek word TELOS originally referred to the target in archery and Aquinas, in his fifth way to God plays on this imagery by selecting an arrow as his analogy for purposiveness in the universe.  He wrote…

“We see that things which lack intelligence, such as natural bodies, act for an end, and this is evident from their acting always, or nearly always, in the same way, so as to obtain the best result. Hence it is plain that not fortuitously, but designedly, do they achieve their end. Now whatever lacks intelligence cannot move towards an end, unless it be directed by some being endowed with knowledge and intelligence; as the arrow is shot to its mark by the archer. Therefore some intelligent being exists by whom all natural things are directed to their end; and this being we call God.”

The argument has its roots in Aristotle, who wrote of things in the universe and the universe as a whole advancing towards fulfilling a FINAL CAUSE, a telos or purpose, and suggested that there must be some mysterious force guiding this process and supporting the tendency towards fulfilment, goodness, in everything we see. It has been advanced many times and in many different variants since Aquinas, but it is characterised by arguing qua purpose and by the use of analogies to emphasise the improbability of efficient organisms and processes arising by chance. The classical teleological argument fell out of favour in the mid-19th century as Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution by natural selection was accepted as offering a natural explanation for the appearance of purposiveness in things.  This essay will argue that while evolution remains the best reason for rejecting teleological arguments, there are other good reasons for rejecting them as well.

In 1779 David Hume’s Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion was published.  It contained a complete, and eminently readable, refutation of the classical teleological as well as other arguments for the existence of God.  Hume’s character Cleanthes sets up the argument, using the analogy of a machine and its maker(s)…

“Look round the world, contemplating the whole thing and every part of it; you’ll find that it is nothing but one big machine subdivided into an infinite number of smaller ones… The intricate fitting of means to ends throughout all nature is just like (though more wonderful than) the fitting of means to ends in things that have been produced by us”[2]

He concluded…

“Since the effects resemble each other, we are led to infer by all the rules of analogy that the causes are also alike, and that the author of nature is somewhat similar to the mind of man, though he has much larger faculties to go with the grandeur of the work he has carried out.”[3]

In 1803 Cleanthes’ argument was famously reproduced by William Paley, who used the analogy of a watch and watchmaker, concluding that from the similarity between the watch, natural organisms and even the universe as a whole…

“the inference, we think, is inevitable, that the watch must have had a maker”

The arguments presented by both Cleanthes and Paley are arguments from analogy and, as such, both can only be as strong as the analogies they employ.  As Hume’s character Philo observed, Cleanthes (and reasonably Paley) relies on a “very weak analogy”.  He reduces the argument to absurdity by suggesting alternative analogies – a house, legs, a ship – and concludes that

“Doesn’t the great disproportion ·between part and whole· bar all comparison and inference? From observing the growth of a hair, can we learn anything about how men come into being? Would the way a leaf blows—even if we knew this perfectly—teach us anything about how a tree grows?”[5]

As Philo points out, there is a great dissimilarity between any analogy and the universe as a whole, and this is not just one of degree as Paley suggests in Chapter II Part V of Natural Theology.  It is not reasonable, even from the perspective of the 19th Century Newtonian world-view, to suggest that

“Thought, design, intelligence, such as we discover in men and other animals, is just one of the springs and forces of the universe…”

It follows that the analogies commonly employed to persuade readers by proponents of the classical teleological argument add nothing to the strength of their argument as a whole.

Apart from the analogies, the classical teleological argument can be summarised through this syllogism…

P1.  Natural organisms act towards an end

P2. Natural organisms cannot act towards an end independently

C1. There must be some intelligence causing natural organisms to act towards an end

C2. This intelligence is what everybody calls God.

Clearly, both propositions can be disputed.  There are many examples of inefficiency in nature and even where purposiveness is apparent, this can now be explained by evolution through natural selection.  Yet the most problematic step in the argument is the secondary conclusion, that the “intelligence” is what everybody calls God.  Surely God is usually seen to be whatever caused the universe to be the way that it is, however the qualities of omnipotence and omnibenevolence are usually imputed to God and there can be no doubt that the universe contains many examples of gratuitous innocent suffering.  As Tennyson wrote “nature is red in tooth and claw”[7] – Darwin himself and later John Stuart Mill remarked how implausible it is to suggest that a loving God could create a world in which animals must kill each other to survive.  To many people this world seems more like the project of a sick science-fiction project than of the God of Christianity! Is it not reasonable to suggest that this universe could be the first, “rude effort of an infant deity”[8]?  This would better account for the imperfect characteristics of the universe as we find it than suggesting that it is the perfect product of a perfect God.

Further, there is nothing to suggest that the intelligent designer of the universe would have to be single.  As Philo observed…

”a great number of men join in building a house or a ship, in rearing a city, in framing a commonwealth; why may not several deities combine in contriving and framing a world?” 

This would render the secondary conclusion of the classical teleological argument, that the intelligence behind the universe could be called God, redundant.   No Christian – and few members of other faiths – could accept that multiple Gods could have had a hand in creating the universe; to do so would place limits on the power of each, reducing the God’s to the status of spirits or demons. Philo admits that supposing the existence of multiple deities would be to “multiply causes unnecessarily” in a way that is philosophically unsound, and yet he argues that although it would be just as wrong to say that there must be one God as to say there must be multiple Gods.  There is no way that human beings can know one way or the other.  The secondary conclusion is not adequately supported by the premises and so the argument fails in its objective of being a demonstration of the existence of God.

Of course modern Intelligent Design arguments get around this difficulty by eliminating the secondary conclusion and leaving just the inference that God might be the intelligence that the argument has concluded to exist.  Scholars such as Michael Behe and William Dembski point out the inadequacy of Darwin’s Theory of evolution through natural selection as a complete explanation for the universe.

Michael Behe points to irreducible complexity in microbiological organisms, such as the flagellum of certain bacteria, suggesting that linear evolution cannot account for complex organisms in which all parts need to work together for any function to be performed.  Individual parts of irreducibly complex organisms are, Behe claims, without purpose unless all the other parts are present and correctly arranged.  How could things evolve all at once to be this way?  An intelligence is needed to explain these structures, some of which are the very building-blocks of life.  It may be that evolution explains some aspects of nature, but without hypothesising intelligent design scientists cannot explain all of nature[9].  Of course Behe’s argument is rejected by most mainstream scientists, who point out that parts of organisms can evolve out of existence as well as into existence.  It could well be that each part of an irreducibly complex organism had a purpose in relation to the organism as it was in a previous stage of evolution, but as the new purpose evolved the old one became redundant and other parts of the structure with no new purpose did not survive.  Most critics of Behe claim that he has either misunderstood the science and is making invalid claims to irreducible complexity or claim that he is too hasty in his conclusion that an intelligent designer hypothesis is required. If they are right, as I am persuaded that they are – the critics vastly outnumber and outrank his supporters – then Behe’s modern version of the teleological argument fails, even with its scientific examples and lack of secondary conclusion.

Like Behe, William Dembski proposes that an intelligent designer hypothesis is needed to account for the characteristics of natural organisms.  Dembski appeals to what he calls “specified complexity”, instances where incredibly complex structures occur where each part of the whole is finely tuned for its job.  The obvious example is DNA – each “letter” of a strand of DNA, ACGT, has a specific role and there are millions and millions of them in the most basic genome. As a statistician, Dembski calculates the probability of such specified complex structures arising by chance and concludes that where the probability surpasses what he calls the “universal probability bound” (10×1150) then it is incredible to suppose that it happened by chance rather than design[10].  Dembski has as many critics as Behe.  Again they claim that he has either misunderstood the science or jumped to his conclusion of intelligent design too hastily.  Specifically, Dembski starts with specified complex structures as they are today and assumes that they were always meant to be this way when he calculates probability, which ignores the possibility that they genuinely exist by chance and could very well not exist or exist differently.  Scientists are beginning to recognise that DNA contains a huge percentage of redundancy – code that was once relevant but which has been rendered redundant by new code which has been added as species evolve.  Certainly, cutting out a section of DNA will change the efficacy of the whole strand, but that is because redundant elements are woven into the fabric of the whole.  Take Brighton Pavilion as an example – its structure is highly complex and each bit is integral to the whole.  This is not as a result of design but because the building was remodelled through several different designs and the present building incorporates and relies on elements of older buildings.  The guttering runs inside the walls and now holds up the ceilings in some places.  Start taking things away – even things as small as layers of wallpaper or light-fittings – and the whole building starts to crumble.  As Richard Dawkins has observed, it is more reasonable to suggest that specified complex structures did arise naturally, over extended periods of time and as a result of environmental pressures, than to claim that they were created as they are my a mysterious “intelligence”[11].  Such a conclusion multiplies improbabilities and by the scientific and philosophical principle of Occam’s Razor, is illogical.  It follows that Dembski’s argument fails as well.

In conclusion it seems that the classical teleological argument fails to demonstrate the existence of God.  The versions proposed by Aquinas, Cleanthes and William Paley are undermined by their use of weak analogies, their propositions are questionable and the conclusions, both that an intelligence and that God exists, are not adequately supported by those propositions.  Most persuasively, the argument fails to explain how a recognisable God could create an imperfect universe or why the characteristics of the universe should not be imputed to demonstrate the existence of an imperfect God, or even a committee of Gods.  Yet, in the end, Darwin’s theory of evolution through natural selection remains the best reason for rejecting teleological arguments, whether in their classical or modern forms.  The failure of Intelligent Design arguments such as those proposed by Michael Behe and William Dembski shows that any attempt to argue qua purpose to God lacks credibility when evolution offers an elegant and demonstrable explanation of purposiveness that does not demand recourse to the supernatural.  Certainly, examples of structures which biology does not yet understand exist.  However absence of evidence does not constitute evidence of absence!  Science is by its nature a process and it is unreasonable for religious critics to demand that it present a complete explanation now or admit failure.  There is ample evidence that evolution continues to offer explanatory power and that it is making progress in explaining even the most irreducibly complex or specifically complex structures.  Nevertheless, the failure of classical arguments qua purpose and modern derivations of them does not obviate the possibility of arguing to God qua regularity.  In particular, the aesthetic argument presented by Richard Swinburne could survive the criticisms outlined here[12].  That a universe should exist and evolve in the way that it does is incredible and this sense of awe and wonder could be the basis for a successful abductive argument for some sort of a God, if not the God of Classical Theism.

Footnotes

[1] Summa Theologica: First Part, Question 2, Article 3

[2] Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion (1779) Part II

[3] Ibid.

[4] Natural Theology page 3.

[5] Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion (1779) Part II

[6] Ibid.

[7] In Memoriam, Canto 56

[8]   Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion (1779) Part V

[9] See “Darwin’s Black Box” (1994)

[10] In books such as “No Free Lunch” (2002)

[11] See the case he presents in episode 2 of his documentary “Religion: The root of all evil” (2002)

[12] The Existence of God (2004)