teleological/design arguments

Question 1

what is a design/teleological argument

Answer 1

An argument for God as the mind/designer/intelligence which explains the order we find in reality/the universe (i.e. spatial order and/or temporal order).

Question 2

what does teleological mean

Answer 2

The term ‘teleological’ comes from the Greek word ‘telos’ which means ‘end’, ‘purpose’ or ‘aim’. The teleological argument suggests that nature has been designed with some goal in mind. For this reason arguments from design are also known as teleological arguments.

Question 3

what type of justification do all of the teleological arguments have

Answer 3

a posteriori

Question 4

a posteriori arguments for god

Answer 4

• Arguments for God where at least one premise is a posteriori (justified based on experience).
• These arguments suggest that the existence of God makes the best sense of what we experience

Question 5

what are the 2 types of ‘orders’ in nature

Answer 5

• spatial order/regularities of copresence
• temporal order/regularities of succession

Question 6

who classified the different types of orders

Answer 6

Swinburne (1968) makes a distinction between two types of order in nature upon which design arguments might be based

Question 7

spatial order/regularities of copresence

Answer 7

are patterns of spatial order at some one instant of time. An example of a regularity of copresence would be a town with all its roads at right angles to each other, or a section of books in a library arranged in alphabetical order of authors.

• parts that have been arranged in high complexity in space at one instant of time (e.g. the arrangements of the parts of the human body, the eye, or a cell) which allow a function to be performed.

Question 8

temporal order/regularities of succession

Answer 8

are simple patterns of behaviour of objects, such as their behaviour in accordance with the laws of nature-for example, Newton’s law of gravitation, which holds universally to a very high degree of approximation, that all bodies attract each other with forces proportional to the product of their masses and inversely proportional to the square of their distance apart.

• simple patterns of behaviour and objects arranged consistenlty over time (e.g. their behaviour in accordance with the laws of nature/science / those laws of nature/science themselves).

Question 9

The design argument from analogy (as presented by Hume)

Answer 9

• Hume outlines a version of the design argument before going on to heavily criticise it. He presents it as an analogical argument - it draws an analogy between the properties that human-made objects have and the properties found in natural objects and uses this to conclude that they must have a similar cause (i.e. a designer). He focuses on spatial order.
• we see many examples of natural objects being perfectly suited for their purpose, just like when humans design something for a specific goal. For example, birds have wings designed for flight, and plants have roots that are perfect for absorbing water. These natural “designs” seem planned for a certain purpose to fulfill, just like human inventions, but nature’s adaptations are often far more complex than anything humans can come up with.
• the effects resemble each other, we are led to infer, by all the rules of analogy, that the causes also resemble; and that the Author of Nature is somewhat similar to the mind of man, though possessed of much larger faculties, proportioned to the grandeur of the work which he has executed

Question 10

argument from analogy

Answer 10

An argument from analogy is a special type of non-deductive/inductive argument, where known similarities between things are used as a basis to infer that there is (probably) some further similarity.

• An analogy is a comparison between two objects, or systems of objects, that highlights respects in which they are thought to be similar.
• Analogical reasoning is any type of thinking that relies upon an analogy.
• An analogical argument is an explicit representation of a form of analogical reasoning that cites accepted similarities between two systems to support the conclusion that some further similarity exists.

Question 11

premise argument for the design argument presented by Humes

Answer 11

P1: Human artifacts (e.g., cameras, machines, organisations) have ‘spatial order’, a form of ‘teleological’ property whereby parts are arranged in space with high complexity such that they work towards a purpose.
P2: Nature itself (and natural entities within it: e.g. eyes, organisms) also have ‘spatial order’ (as above).
P3: Human artifacts have these spatial order because they have been deliberately designed by an intelligent being.
P4: Similar effects / properties typically have similar causes / explanations
C1: Therefore, nature/natural entities (probably) has spatial order because they have been deliberately designed by an intelligent being.
P5: Natural entities are much more complicated than human artifacts
P6: This greater complexity probably requires greater intelligence
C2: Therefore this intelligent being/designer which exists probably has much greater intelligence than a human.
C3: Therefore, God exists.

Question 12

human artefacts

Answer 12

• parts are arranged in space with high complexity such that they work towards an purpose
• not living
• not self-sustaining and not self replicating
• all have a clear purpose
• designed by an intelligent being

Question 13

natural entities

Answer 13

• parts are arranged in space with high complexity such that they work towards a purpose
• living
• self sustaining and self replicating
• nature as a whole has no clear purpose
• NO longer reasonable to conclude it likely has a designer

Question 14

paley

Answer 14

• deductive design argument: from spatial order/purpose
• paley attempted to present the design argument in a non-analogical way.
• Hume heavily criticised his own argument from analogy, and for this reason Paley wanted to formulate the argument differently in order to avoid some of the objections that Hume raised.
• Paley thought it was obvious that eyes are designed without any need for comparison with human artefacts. Even if all you had ever had experience of was an eye, you would know, says Paley, that it was designed based on its teleological features.
• this is NOT an argument from analogy - we’d have a good reason to think the eye was designed even if that was all we’d seen (i.e. even if we’d never seen anything like it made my humans).

Question 15

what does paley use to identify what is a reliable indicator of an intelligent being

Answer 15

the watchmaker analogy

Question 16

what is the watchmaker analogy

Answer 16

there are two features of a watch that reliably indicate that it is the result of an intelligent design:
1. it performs some function that an intelligent agent would regard as valuable; the fact that the watch performs the function of keeping time is something that has value to an intelligent agent.
2. the watch could not perform this function if its parts and mechanisms were differently sized or arranged; the fact that the ability of a watch to keep time depends on the precise shape, size, and arrangement of its parts suggests that the watch has these characteristics because some intelligent agency designed it to these specifications.

• these two characteristics endow the watch with a functional complexity that reliably distinguishes objects that have intelligent designers from objects that do not.
• Since the works of nature possess functional complexity, a reliable indicator of intelligent design, we can justifiably conclude that these works were created by an intelligent agent who designed them to instantiate this property.

Question 17

paleys design argument

Answer 17

P1: Nature itself (and natural entities within it: e.g. eyes, organisms) has ‘spatial order’, a form of ‘teleological’ property whereby parts are arranged in space with high complexity such that they work towards a purpose.
Paley discussed, as examples eyes, ears, hummingbirds (see below)
P2: Nature can only have spatial order if they were deliberately designed by an intelligent being.
Paley remarks that even if some such thing was produced by another thing (e.g. watches that produced further watches, humans that produce new humans), and even if this went on for infinity, this would still not explain the design features (the spatial order) that these individual things possess.
C1: Therefore, an intelligent being/designer exists (and created the entire natural universe).
P3: Nature/natural entities are of great complexity
P4: This greater complexity/variety requires great intelligence.
C2: Therefore, this intelligent being/designer must be very intelligent.
P5: This intelligent being/designer cannot be part of nature since nature as a whole has design properties that need explaining.
C3: Therefore, this greatly intelligent being/designer must exist outside of the natural world.
MC: Therefore, God exists.

Question 18

what does paley want to show

Answer 18

• we can directly infer the existence of a designer from the properties of natural objects and indeed from properties of the universe as a whole without this being based on any comparison of them to non-natural objects.

Question 19

what type of argument is paleys argument

Answer 19

Although Paley’s argument is routinely constructed as analogical, it in fact [is deductive].

Question 20

swinburne

Answer 20

his argument on “temporal order” (regularities of succession) rather than on “spatial order” (regularities of copresence) because he thinks that this puts him on less slippery ground. (less likely to be objected against

Question 21

swinburnes design argument

Answer 21

P1: The universe as a whole contains temporal order (ie the fundamental laws of nature e.g. gravity).
P2: There are two possible hypotheses to explain this: (H1) temporal order has a scientific explanation; or (H2) temporal order has a personal explanation (i.e. explanation in terms of a free and intelligent being)
P3: (H1) fails: science can only explain the existence of temporal order (natural laws) in terms of more fundamental temporal order (natural laws). Science cannot itself explain why the fundamental laws of science exist as they do.
P4: (H2) can explain the temporal order that is the fundamental laws of nature. It is similar to the temporal order produced by human agents (the singing of the song.) and so, by analogy, are produced by a free intelligent being.
P5: Because the whole physical world contains temporal order, the free intelligent being in question would have to be of immense power and intelligence, free and disembodied, which is to say God.
C1: Therefore, God exists.

Question 22

what does swinburnes argument use

Answer 22

This argument is inductive and uses abductive reasoning and argument from analogy.