Simon Blackburn quotes the following passage from Hume’s Dialogues Concerning NaturalReligion

Simon Blackburn quotes the following passage from Hume’s Dialogues Concerning NaturalReligion

Paper requirements and topics

 

 

Preamble

This first assignment asks you to explain and criticize an argument from our text.

The foremost virtue of such a paper is clarity. The task is to explain to an intelligent reader who has not necessarily read the passage in question exactly what the author of the argument wishesto show and how he or she thinks this is to be done. Explain all terms that need explaining, don’t take it for granted that the reader can see the connections you think you see. Make thestructure and the content of the argument explicit. If you wish to make a criticism of theargument, don‘t say you don’t like something. Only criticisms that help clarify the argument orparts of are acceptable: a structural problem with the argument, an unclear premise, a conclusionthat is not what the author thinks it is, etc. In philosophy papers one generally does not needmuch of an introduction. You need to state what the purpose of your paper is and what it’s mainconclusion is going to be. But this can be done in a single sentence, not a lengthy discursiveparagraph.

In a philosophy paper you are being asked to think through some issues by yourself. It is, therefore, both unnecessary and usually not advisable to look at outside sources. The readingsthat we provide plus the material in lectures and tutorials should be more than enough.

 

The paper topics

 

Choose ONE of the three options below and explain the main argument being presented and itsrole in the debate of which it is a part.

 

UNDER NO CIRCUMSTANCES SHOULD YOUR PAPER CONSIST OF A BLOW-BYBLOW

RECAPITULATION OF EVERYTHING IN THE PASSAGE.

 

1. A) Simon Blackburn quotes the following passage from Hume’s Dialogues Concerning NaturalReligion:

 

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 thecause 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 bothsides; and it is chiefly his interest on the present occasion to stick to this agreement.Judging by our limited and imperfect experience, generation has some privileges abovereason: for we see every day the latter arise from the former, never the former from thelatter. (p. 10 in our readings)

1. B) Simon Blackburn first attributes an objection to the cosmological argument to Russell, and then argues that the objection is too quick:

 

Russell is supposed to have remarked that the first cause argument was bad, but uniquely, awfully bad, in that the conclusion not only failed to follow from the premises, but also actually contradicted them. His idea was that the argument starts off from the premise”everything has a [distinct, previous] cause”, but ends with the conclusion that theremust be something that has no distinct, previous cause, but carries the reason of hisexistence in himself. Then the conclusion denies what the premise asserts.Russell’s dismissal is a little glib. For the point of the argument, from the theologicalperspective, is that although everything material or physical has a distinct previous cause,this very fact drives us to postulate something else, that has none. In the theologicaljargon, this would be a thing that is “necessary” or “causasui”: a thing that is its owncause. And since this is not true of the ordinary things that surround us, we need topostulate something extraordinary, a Deity, as the bearer of this extraordinaryself-sufficiency. (P. 7 of our readings)

 

1. C) Blackburn argues that Pascal’s argument has a fatal flaw:

 

Unfortunately the lethal problem with this argument is simple, once it is pointed out. Pascal starts from a position of metaphysical ignorance. We just know nothing about therealm beyond experience. But the set-up of the wager presumes that we do knowsomething. We are supposed to know the rewards and penalties attached to belief in aChristian God. This is a God who will be pleasured and reward us for our attendance atmass, and will either be indifferent or, in the minus-infiinityoption, seriouslydiscombobulated by our non-attendance. But this is a case of false options. (P. 20 of ourreadings)