0415191246.Routledge.Humes.Natu

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.Consequently we may assume that objects of human design and natural objects have been caused by analogous processes of design.Stated in this form, the argument is very easily demolished.For example, present rain differs from past rain merely in degree.But objects of human design differ from natural objects in kind.Thus for most people the resemblances between the two are much less striking than the differences.This would suggest that their causes are not analogous.As Hume makes clear in the Dialogues, there are many other objections.For example, the inference with regard to the clouds is based on a vast accumulation of experience.We have observed many instances of rain falling from clouds.We have observed, also, many instances of human objects being produced by design.But we have never experienced natural objects being so produced.Again, in the case of the clouds, we infer from one part of the world to another.But in the case of the argument from design, we infer from one part of the world to the whole.Out of the innumerable processes of nature, we select one, falling within our experience, to explain all the others.But the one falling within our experience occupies an infinitely small place within those we seek to explain.It is impossible to see therefore how it can sustain a valid induction.And so on.108REASON AND THEOLOGYNow Hume’s own version of the argument at the end of the Dialogues does not depend on simple induction but presupposes that we have a sense of order which is not itself the product of experience.Thus he makes clear that a scientist, such as Copernicus, presupposes a principle of simplicity or of order in nature.There is no suggestion that he has arrived at this principle through noting a resemblance between natural objects and those of human design.Indeed there is a striking passage earlier in the dialogue where Cleanthes himself puts forward a version of the argument which is quite independent of simple induction.The declared profession of every reasonable sceptic is only to reject abstruse, remote and refined arguments; to adhere to common sense and the plain instincts of nature; and to assent, wherever any reasons strike him with so full a force, that he cannot, without the greatest violence, prevent it.Now the arguments for natural religion are plainly of this kind; and nothing but the most perverse, obstinate metaphysics can reject them.Consider, anatomize the eye: Survey its structure and contrivance; and tell me, from your own feeling, if the idea of a contriver does not immediately flow in upon you with a force like that of sensation.19Here Cleanthes says that our sense of teleological structure is as immediate as any experience.But then it can hardly arise only as an inference from it.Moreover, it is obvious that Hume takes Cleanthes to have scored a hit, because he follows his speech with this passage: ‘Here I could observe, Hermippus, that Philo was a little embarrassed and confounded: But while he hesitated in delivering an answer, luckily for him, Demea broke in upon the discourse, and saved his countenance.’20Different versions of the argument from design are therefore present in the Dialogues.But the differences between them are never made explicit.The reason is that Hume shares many of the empiricist assumptions he attributes to Cleanthes.As we have seen, for example, he assumes that causal inference arises only through repeated experience.We can infer B from A only because the two have become associated in our minds through experiencing other instances of A and B.On this assumption, he can apparently account for a simple induction, such as the one about the dark clouds.But he cannot account for any other.In short, he cannot account for any inference about the facts which goes beyond simple induction.For that reason, he cannot clearly distinguish between different forms of the argument from design.Now the Dialogues, as we have said, is widely held to have demolished natural theology.It has acquired this reputation through the arguments which Philo deploys, in the bulk of the work, against Cleanthes’ version of the argument from design.It is therefore necessary to emphasize that the arguments both of Cleanthes and Philo rest on such assumptions as that a 109REASON AND THEOLOGYcausal inference is equivalent to a simple induction or generalization from experience.In short, they rest almost exclusively on empiricist assumptions.These assumptions, were they valid, would certainly demolish natural theology.But then they would as readily demolish the whole of science.To see the point, let us consider one of the arguments.When we attribute design to the world as a whole, we attribute to the whole what we have experienced only in one of its parts.Our only experience of an object’s being designed is confined to our experience of that process as it occurs amongst human beings, who occupy, whether in space or in time, only a minute portion of the world as a whole.The induction now seems invalid, for our experience seems insufficient to sustain so general a conclusion.Exactly the same point applies, however, to any general conclusion in science.The accumulated experience of all science covers, whether in space or in time, only a minute portion of the world as a whole.For example, a scientist assigns an absolute speed to light [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

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