Today’s Lecture One more thing about your first assignment David Hume Some comments on religious experience.

Today’s Lecture

• One more thing about your first assignment • David Hume• Some comments on religious experience

One more thing about your first assignment

• I need your first assignments back. It won’t take long, but I forgot to do something with them. I’m afraid that I won’t be able to return your second assignment until I see your first assignment. Sorry about the inconvenience.

Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion: Part III

• Demea proffers the following replies to Cleanthes.• (1) Cleanthes’ argument assumes a strong

resemblance between the Divine and human. This is suspicious on at least two grounds. (i) (As even the pagans will admit) the Divine is beyond comprehension or description. (ii) We appear to be showing a partiality to our ourselves in likening the Deity to humanity (rather than something or someone else) (FP, p.63).

Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion: Part III

• (2) An examination of the human mind makes it unlikely that the Divine resembles it in any substantial way. After all, human sentiments aid in our survival and well-being ... something we cannot reasonably say of a Divine Mind. Our mental content, all of which is derived form the senses, often lacks veracity ... something again we cannot reasonably say of a Divine Mind. Our thought, which is all that remains of the human mind, is “fluctuating, uncertain, fleeting, successive and compounded” (FP, p.64) ... again something we cannot reaonsably say of a Divine Mind (FP, pp.63-64).

Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion: Part IV

• Cleanthes has three important responses to these contentions.• (1) Theists must presume that there is some correspondence

between the Deity and humanity if they are to be left with anything to regard, worship or talk about at all (FP, p.64).

• (2) Those ‘theists’ who insist that we cannot intelligibly anthropomorphize the Deity, and that the Deity’s nature is wholly incomprehensible to mortals such as ourselves, commit themselves to a view of Deity irrelevant to their lives and the lives of those around them (FP, p.64).


• (3) Perfect Being Theology does not describe a Divine Person (or the Goddess), as it does not describe what can be sensibly called a person at all (FP, pp.64-65).

• “A mind, whose acts and sentiments and ideas are not distinct and successive; one, that is wholly simple, and totally immutable, is a mind which has no thought, no reason, no will, no sentiment, no love, no hatred; or, in a word, is no mind at all” (FP, p.65).


• Note that Cleanthes rejects the view of Deity assumed in the Ontological and Cosmological Arguments, as Philo points out (FP, p.65).

• “You are honouring with the appellation atheist all the sound, orthodox divines, almost, who have treated of this subject; and you will at last be, yourself, found, according to your reckoning, the only sound theist in the world” (FP, p.65).


• Philo now begins a critical assessment of the anthropomorphic view of God proffered by Cleanthes.

• Note his aim is to show that “there is no ground to suppose a plan of the world to be formed in the divine mind, consisting of distinct ideas, differently arranged, in the same manner as an architect forms in his head the plan of a house which he intends to execute” (FP, p.65).


• (1) There is no good reason to think that only the material or physical world requires an explanation involving a Cause. If, indeed, we ascribe mind to the Deity we ascribe a mental world as diverse and rich as the physical or material universe. If these effects resemble each other (i.e. if the universe of objects and the Divine ‘universe’ of mental ideas relevantly resemble each other in their complexity and arrangement), then they also resemble each other in having a cause (FP, p.65).


• Philo contends that Cleanthes can’t have it both ways. • (1) Either the Divine World of ideas, to which we go

in the Teleological Argument to explain the material or physical world, is in need of explanation for its own existence, or, if it is appropriate to go no further than that ‘World of ideas’, then we need not begin the journey in search of a cause of the material or physical world in the first place (FP, pp.65-66).


• (2) If we do pursue a cause for the Divine World of ideas we are threatened with an infinite regress of causes.

• (3) This is not acceptable.• (4) So, we need not begin the journey in search of

a(n ultimate) cause of the material or physical world in the first place. (I.e. it is enough that we find a cause for its existence within itself.) (FP, pp.65-66).


• We could preempt this move, argues Philo, only by cheating on the explanation of the order held to exist in the mind of the Deity. After all, if we have no substantial explanation of such order except that it is the nature of the Divine Mind to be so ordered (i.e. it is by nature rational), why not explain the order of the material or physical universe through an appeal to its own natural tendency to move towards order? (FP, p.66)


• Cleanthes has two responses for Philo.• (1) Even in common investigations of causes

we do not demand that an explanation is complete unless we definitively finish the chain of relevant causes.

• (2) Despite the difficulties highlighted by Philo, it is still plain (or self-evident) that the universe was created (FP, p.67).


• Philo’s response to Cleanthes is to grant (1), but with the caveat that no one would view an explanation complete if the explanatory cause is in as much need of explanation as the effect to be first explained. This is the trouble with Cleanthes’ view, according to Philo (FP, p.67).

Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion: Part V

• The beginning of this Part of the Dialogues consists of Philo getting Cleanthes to admit that his Teleological Argument will only work if he supposes that the mind of the Deity is relevantly similar to the minds of humanity. But this lies in tension with discoveries of a macro and micro universe that no human mind could duplicate or maintain (FP, pp.67-68).


• Cleanthes so agrees, and Phil provides the following concerns about such an anthropomorphic view of God.

• (1) We need only propose a cause necessary to bring about the perceived effect. We must also be wary, under Cleanthes account, of describing the mind of the Deity in such a way that it no longer relevantly resembles that of humanity. This means that, on both counts, we must jettison “all claim to infinity in any of the attributes of the Deity” (FP, p.68).


• (2) We need not regard the Deity perfect even in His finite capacities to create and maintain the universe, as we cannot assume this universe to be itself perfect (FP, p.68).

• (3) Even if the universe is itself perfect, this does not require a perfect creator, just a good learner of what works and what, in the long or short term, does not (FP, p.69). Thus, we cannot eliminate the possibility that the Deity has created many universes, and that this universe is the result of His (or Her) cumulative learning experience (predicated on His or Her past failures) (FP, p.69).


• (4) Once down this road we also cannot rule out the possibility that the creation of the universe was a group effort. Only Perfect Being Theology necessitates monotheism (FP, p.69).

• (5) This possibility also raises the possibility that the Deities so involved are by no means perfect. After all, the effort of a group requires less expertise from any one member to successfully coordinate the activities of the whole (FP, p.69).


• (6) This, now, only gets worse. We need not, at this point, insist that the relevant Deity or Deities are immortal. Cleanthes, remember, is not interested in worries about infinite regresses, so this worry need not restrain our philosophical sensibilities within this context of conversation (FP, p.69).

Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion: Part V• (7) We need not restrain our philosophical sensibilities

concerning the form of the Deity or Deities either. After all, the Transcendence of Deity is not to be thought of, at least in this context, as beyond anything recognizably human. So, it is possible that the relevant Deity or Deities have a physical, and not just a mental, form that relevantly resembles humanity (FP, p.69).

• Think of it this way. Cleanthes doesn’t want us to radically depart from the human model of mentality or cognition. But of course embodiment is an important aspect of human cognition. Consequently, to remain relevantly human-like, the Deity or Deities should, perhaps, be thought of as embodied.


• “In a word, Cleanthes, a man who follows your hypothesis is able perhaps to assert, or conjecture, that the universe, sometime, arose from something like design: but beyond that position he cannot ascertain one single circumstance; and is left afterwards to fix every point of his theology by the utmost license of fancy and hypothesis. ... From the moment the attributes of Deity are supposed finite, all these have place. And I cannot, for my part, think that so wild and unsettled a system of theology is, in any respect, preferable to none at all” (FP, p.70).

Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion: Part VII

• In this Part of the Dialogues you have Philo suggest a competing model of the universe than the model suggested by Cleanthes.

• Solely on the grounds of relative ‘fit’, Cleanthes has likened the universe to the artifacts created by human ingenuity or skill.

• Philo suggests that Cleanthes method of generating adequate models of the universe from which to infer its ultimate cause cannot exclude, at least in principle, likening the universe to biological organisms, be they fauna or flora (FP, pp.70-71).


• Through this suggestion Philo hopes to raise suspicions about the choices Cleanthes has made along in this argument ... including Cleanthes’ willingness to relax the criteria for what counts as principled argument and what counts as rational or reasonable. Philo does not, himself, take this suggestion seriously (FP, p.71).


• “This is the topic on which I have all along insisted. I have still asserted, that we have no data to establish any system of cosmogony. Our experience, so imperfect in itself, and so limited both in extent and duration, can afford us no probable conjecture concerning the whole of things. But if we must needs fix on some hypothesis; by what rule, pray, ought we to determine our choice? .... And does not a plant or an animal, which springs from vegetation or generation, bear a stronger resemblance to the world, than does any artificial machine, which arises from reason and design?” (FP, p.71)


• “Now, that vegetation and generation, as well as reason, are experienced to be principles of order in nature, is undeniable. If I rest my system of cosmogony on the former, preferably to the latter, it is at my choice. The matter seems entirely arbitrary. And when Cleanthes asks me what is the cause of my great vegetative or generative faculty, I am equally entitled to ask him the cause of his great reasoning principle. These questions we have agreed to forbear on both sides; and it is chiefly his interest on the present occasion to stick to this agreement” (FP, p.72).

Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion: Part VIII

• Note that Philo is giving Cleanthes room to move here. All he is saying is that, given the parameters of the conversation, Cleanthes cannot rule out, in any principled way, the alternative models of the universe Philo has suggested. Cleanthes can regard his path so far as adequate, but only at the price of regarding various antithetical models as legitimate competitors to his own model (FP, p.73).

Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion: Part VIII

• Cleanthes cannot even use the criterion of ‘that which admits of no problems or inconsistencies with experience’ as a way of ruling out antithetical models of the universe. His own model is as liable to fail such a criterion than anything Philo might suggest (FP, p.75).

• This, Philo, thinks generates, at best, a stalemate between the anthropomorphite and the Perfect Being Theologian or atheist. Given that there is no principled way, in this context, to decide between the alternatives, it is best, contends Philo, to totally suspend judgment of the matter (FP, pp.75-76).

Some comments on the philosophical analysis of religious experience

• As I have already said, there is no principled reason to exclude the phenomena of religious experience from philosophical discussion.

• I think we can make this claim stronger. If we are not going to beg questions against theism, we need to make room for philosophical analyses of religious experience.


• On the other hand, we have no good reason to suspect that religious experience is directly tied to, or immediately gives rise to, a particular theological system of beliefs.

• That is to say, despite similarities in the reports of those who experience a presence of the Divine, there is not a corresponding similarity in the doctrinal expressions used to interpret said experiences. What’s more, there are, in many cases, no particular set of doctrinal expressions that best fits the experiences in question.

Some comments on the philosophical analysis of

religious experience• There are at least two competing non-

naturalistic models of religious experience discussed in the literature: (1) Perceptual models of religious experience and (2) ‘Other Minds’ models of religious experience.


• (1) Perceptual models of religious experience liken an individual’s experience of the Divine to our common experiences of objects in the external world.

• (2) ‘Other Minds’ models of religious experience liken an individual’s experience of the Divine to our common experiences of other (human or nonhuman) minds.

• (1) and (2) primarily differ on (i) the ‘proximity’ of religious experience to the relevant religious beliefs and, consequently, (ii) the relevant cognitive mechanisms or processes used to acquire certain rudimentary or theoretically simple interpretive beliefs about the experience.


• Given what I have already said about the underdetermination of many, if not most, religious beliefs, perceptual models of religious experience lack prima facie plausibility.


• A naturalistic model of religious experience seeks to find an adequate explanation of religious experience that does not require the existence of supernatural or non-natural entities.

• We might, for instance, think that a continuing need for a parental figure in certain individuals’ lives inclines some to have experiences that confirm their safety or security in a Power that is both invincible, loving and ever present.

• Alternatively, we might think that certain religious experiences help various oppressed or disenfranchised members of society deal with their ongoing encounters with said oppression or disenfranchisement.


• One philosophical approach to Natural or Dogmatic Theology is to see it as providing the details of a working hypothesis for interpreting past, and predicting future, religious experience.

• The cost of such an approach is the tentative epistemic status accorded the relevant Natural or Dogmatic Theology. I.e. the individual seeking to confirm or disconfirm the relevant religious hypothesis ought to remain open to the possibility that her religious framework is false or, at the very least, deeply flawed.

• This makes it very difficult, though not impossible, to integrate a philosophical approach to Natural or Dogmatic Theology into an ongoing devotional practice.

Today’s Lecture One more thing about your first assignment David Hume Some comments on religious experience.

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