Hume is usually taken to have an evidentialist account of testimonial belief: one is justified in believing what someone says if one has empincal evidence that they have been reliable in the past. This account is impartialist: such evidence is required no matter who the person is, or what refotions she may have to you. I, however, argue that Hume has another account of testimony, one grounded in sympathy. This account is partialist, in that empincal evidence is not required in (...) order for one to be justified in believing some of the assertions of one's friends. (shrink)

This essay gives a new interpretation of Hume's second thoughts about minds in the Appendix, based on a new interpretation of his view of composition. In Book 1 of the Treatise, Hume argued that, as far as we can conceive it, a mind is a whole composed by all its perceptions. But—this essay argues—he also held that several perceptions form a whole only if the mind to which they belong supplies a “connexion” among them. In order to do so, it (...) must contain a further perception or perceptions. But when the perceptions in question are all of those belonging to a given mind—as in the section “Of personal identity” and the Appendix—there cannot be a further perception in that mind, and so those perceptions do not form a whole. Hence, Hume's views were inconsistent. This essay argues that, unlike most others, this interpretation explains his retreat to skepticism in the Appendix. (shrink)

In The Riddle of Hume's Treatise: Skepticism, Naturalism, and Irreligion, Paul Russell makes a strong case for the claim that “The primary aim of Hume's series of skeptical arguments, as developed and distributed throughout the Treatise, is to discredit the doctrines and dogmas of Christian philosophy and theology with a view toward redirecting our philosophical investigations to areas of ‘common life,’ with the particular aim of advancing ‘the science of man’”. Understanding Hume in this way, according to Russell, sheds light (...) on the “ultimate riddle” of the Treatise: “is it possible to reconcile Hume's skeptical principles and conclusions with his aim to advance the ‘science of man’”? Or does Hume's skepticism undermine his “secular, scientific account of the foundations of moral life in human nature”? Russell's controversial thesis is that “the irreligious nature of Hume's fundamental intentions in the Treatise” is essential to solving the riddle. Russel.. (shrink)

This essay explores a simple argument for a Ground of Being, objections to it, and limitations on it. It is nonsensical to refer to Nothing in the sense of utter absence, hence nothing can be claimed to come from Nothing. If, as it seems, the universe, or any physical ensemble containing it, is past-finite, it must be caused by an uncaused Ground. Speculative many-worlds, pocket universes and multiverses do not affect this argument, but the quantum cosmologies of Alex Vilenkin, and (...) J. B. Hartle and Stephen Hawking, which claim that the universe came from literally nothing, would. I argue that their novel project cannot work for reasons both physical (their "nothing" is actually a vacuum state governed by eternal physical laws) and methodological (physical theory cannot explain the emergence of the physical per se). Thus my argument stands. However, as David Hume showed, a posteriori arguments like mine infer a creation, and Creator, of a certain character, namely, a stochastic concept of creation and a panentheistic, partly physical Creator lacking omniscience and omnipotence. Rather than undermining the cosmological argument, as Hume intended, these limitations liberate the concept of the Ground from unnecessary problems, as Hartshorne suggested. (shrink)

In current debates concerning atheism, two positions are considered possible: naturalistic atheism or anti-naturalistic theism. Anti-naturalistic theism is motivated by the failure of naturalism to explain the fundamental nature of reality. We, however, endorse anti-naturalistic atheism by reviving the ‘anthropomorphic critique’, arguing that theism misattributes human traits to the deity. Anti-naturalistic atheism is better suited to refute theists, since it undercuts their appeal to science's inadequacies. We trace the anthropomorphic critique from Hume's Dialogues, through Kant's epistemology, and conclude with its (...) reception in Feuerbach. The anthropomorphic critique is an epistemological – not metaphysical – thesis, hence, it is agnostic about the fundamental nature of reality. Yet it convincingly shows that theism is not a tenable position. In essence, we aim to decouple atheism from naturalism, on the basis of a salient critique in the history of modern philosophy, in order to ameliorate current debates between atheists and theists. (shrink)

The main body of Meynell's book The Intelligible Universe divides into two parts of roughly equal length. It is argued in the first that the universe manifests the property of ‘ intelligibility ’, and in the second that this could not be so unless there were ‘something analogous to human intelligence in the constitution of the world’. The concern of this article is limited to the argument of the first part. It will be maintained that it consists of three intertwined (...) arguments which, when disentangled, turn out not to be mutually supportive, as Meynell intends, but logically incompatible, and that neither singly nor in synthesis do they yield a notion of universal intelligibility which could provide the basis of an argument for the existence of God. (shrink)

David Hume’un Doğal Din Üzerine Diyaloglar kitabı, başlığının da ima ettiği gibi, vahiy metinlerine başvurmadan Tanrı’nın varlığına ve niteliklerine ulaşılıp ulaşılamayacağını araştıran bir metindir. Metin boyunca, felsefe tarihinde de gördüğümüz, iki ana yaklaşımı temsil eden iki temel argüman sunulur. Bunlardan ilki, a priori yaklaşımı temsil eden kozmolojik argümandır. Diğeri ise, a posteriori yaklaşımı temsi eden zeki tasarım argümanıdır. Bu yazıda, Hume’un, diyalogdaki Philo karakteri üzerinden ortaya koyduğu, kozmolojik argümana yönelik eleştirileri ele alınıp, böyle bir argümanın neden Tanrı’nın varlığı ve nitelikleri (...) konusunda bizi bir sonuca ulaştırmayacağı ortaya konmuştur. (shrink)

No evangelistic erroneous network of ideas can guarantee the satisfaction of these two demands : (1) propagate the network without revision and (2) completely insulate itself against losses in credibility and adherents through criticism. If a network of ideas is false, or inconsistent or fails to solve its intended problem, or unfeasible, or is too costly in terms of necessarily forsaken goals, its acceptability may be undermined given only true assumptions and valid arguments. People prefer to adopt ideologies that (i) (...) are logically consistent, (ii) are more truth-like and of higher information content than their rivals, (iii) are systematically organised, (iv) solve their problems better than their rivals, (v) do not contain unfeasible demands, and (vi) do not contain uneconomic demands. Truth and validity therefore act as Darwinian-like filters on ideologies. Using Popper's notion of situational analysis and with reference to Darwinian evolution, considered as a special case of the former, and Bartley's theory of comprehensively critical rationalism I argue that a propagandist cannot guarantee his message or his movement from sound criticism. All positions are in a methodological sense open to argument. Moreover, the logic of a propagandist's situation constrains him into making his message and himself open to criticism in order to maximize its chances of being propagated through the population. But he then loses control of the message in two respects. Firstly, his audience are disposed to select from the competing ideas they encounter those that satisfy (i) to (vi) because of man's evolutionary history. Secondly, he cannot guarantee protection from criticism even a privileged section of his message because he cannot predict in a systematic way what logical repercussions each protective reformulation of the ideology will have on other sections of the ideology and what criticism the ideology will encounter. He cannot do the latter because of certain logical properties of theories that endow them with unfathomable depths. Marxism and Freudianism serve as case studies, especially for the analysis of Popper's notion of the immunizing stratagem, a methodological/logical device that is supposed to save theories from criticism. "Immunizing stratagems" either abandon the ideology they are meant to protect or seriously lower its chances of being reproduced. (shrink)

John Watson's thought has not been well understood. A question suggested by previous scholarship, namely, how successful was he at his task of re-founding the Christian religion on a philosophical base? is answered first in terms of consistency with the theological tradition. His revision of Christian theology is found to be inadequate by traditional standards; it is then examined as a philosophy of religion which, to his mind, overcame the difficulties of classical theism. It is argued that, despite some advantages, (...) his philosophy of religion is deficient in two respects. First, its method is vitiated by a strained and sometimes mistaken interpretation of the philosophical tradition, indicative of arbitrariness. Second, "Speculative Idealism" as the result of that method reveals conceptual ambiguities corresponding to the ambiguities of classical theism. As the method is not self-evident and is used implicitly by Watson, and the results are philosophically ambiguous, the appropriation of this thought was theologically or philosophically shallow. Though Watson's thought, as far as it was understood, provided an underpinning for the "social gospel" movement in Canada, it is argued that this shallow appropriation explains, at least in part, the brevity of its appeal as philosophy of religion. (shrink)

الهیات طبیعی فهمی الهیاتی است که مستقل از حقایق وحیانی و تنها از طریق معارف بشری در پی ارائۀ دلیلی موجّه برای باور به وجود خداوند است. الهیات طبیعی همواره به عنوان حلقۀ ارتباط همدلانه میان علم و دین مورد توجه بوده است. زیرا اگر منظور از دین حقایق وحیانی و منظور از علم مجموعه معارف بشری است، الهیات طبیعی را می‌توان همواره تبلور تلاش خداباوران برای برقراری گونه‌ای ارتباط میان دین و معارف بشری دانست. آیا چنین شیوه‌ای اعتبار دارد (...) و در صورت اعتبار آیا ضرورت نیز دارد؟ پلانتینگا در این خصوص دو دیدگاه متفاوت را در حیات فکری خود برگزیده است. او در دیدگاه اول نه تنها الهیات طبیعی را غیرضروری بلکه آن را همچون الحاد طبیعی بی‌اعتبار می‌خواند، و در عین حال با تشبیه باور به وجود خدا به باور به دیگر اذهان بر عقلانیت آن تأکید می‌کند. اما در دیدگاه دوم، علی‌رغم تأکید بر نفی ضرورت الهیات طبیعی، آن را به لحاظ معرفتی معتبر می‌داند و کارکردهایی را برای آن برمی‌شمارد. (shrink)

کانت به طور کلی براهین نظری دال بر وجود باری را در سه دستۀ برهان وجودی، جهان‌شناختی و نظم جای می‌دهد. در نگاه او، چون وجود یک محمول واقعی و تعین‌بخش نیست، نمی‌تواند در تعریف شیء حاضر باشد و بنابراین برهان وجودی عقیم است. این مقاله، همگام با کانت و بنت، می‌کوشد تا نشان دهد که وجود نه مایۀ کمال و نه محمولی تعین‌بخش است. نیز بر خلاف نظر بنت، که دلایل کانت را ناکافی می‌داند، ادعا می‌شود که کانت مغالطۀ (...) بنیادینی را که در برهان وجودی نهفته است پیدا و هویدا کرده است. به زعم کانت، خطای برهان جهان‌شناختی وابستگی آن به برهان سست‌بنیان وجودی است. بنت به درستی، ابهام و سستی این وابستگی را مورد توجه قرار می‌دهد. با این حال، کانت در فرصتی دیگر، با نقدی قوی، استدلال جهان‌شناختی را از اعتبار ساقط می‌کند. در مرحلۀ آخر، کانت با همۀ دلبستگی‌ای که به برهان نظم دارد، آن را مبتنی بر برهان معیوب جهان‌شناختی توصیف می‌کند. نقد بنت در این مرحله، از ارتباطی ذاتی که میان برهان جهان‌شناختی و نظم وجود دارد غفلت می‌ورزد. (shrink)