Hume’s criticism of the Design Argument

Jeff Speaks

source: https://www3.nd.edu/~jspeaks/courses/mcgill/201/Hume-Dialogues.pdf

Hume’s criticism of the attempt to ground religion in the design argument is framed as a dialogue. Cleanthes represents the defender of the attempt to establish religious principles on the basis of observed fact about the natural world (natural religion); Demea represents the defender of religious belief who does not attempt to ground this belief in evidence
about the world; and Philo comes the closest to representing Hume’s own perspective.

He is a philosophical skeptic about the attempt to ground religion in an inference from observed phenomena to the existence of an intelligent designer.
The sections from the Dialogues we will be looking at are a series of three arguments presented by Philo against the kind of use of the design argument we saw in Paley. Below is an outline of the three arguments.

1 The objection from the lack of evidential basis

Hume suggests that in cases where we justifiably infer from the existence of some phenomenon that a certain kind of cause must have existed, we do so on the basis of an observed pattern of correlations:

“That a stone will fall, that fire will burn, that the earth has solidity, we have
observed a thousand and a thousand times; and when any new instance of this
nature is presented, we draw without hesitation the accustomed inference.”

The problem: we have no pattern of observed correlations between universes and their
designers:

“But how this argument can have place where the objects, as in the present
case, are single, individual, without parallel or specific resemblance, may be
difficult to explain.”

This amounts to a lack of evidence for the ‘best explanation’ claim made by the design
argument.

A reply: what arguments of this sort require is not sameness, but just sufficient similarity.
This leads to a different formulation of the objection. Hume points out that when we infer
from the fact that one phenomenon has a cause that some other phenomenon has a cause
of the same time, we must be very cautious in making sure that the two phenomena are
indeed similar:

“That all inferences, Cleanthes, concerning fact are founded on the supposition
that similar causes prove similar effects, and similar effects, similar causes, I
shall not at present much dispute with you. But observe, I entreat you, with
what extreme caution all just reasoners proceed in the transferring of experiments
to similar cases. Unless the cases be exactly similar, they repose no
perfect confidence in applying their past observation to any particular phenomenon. ”

But if this is right, then the dissimilarity of artefacts to the universe must be taken as a
flaw in the case for natural religion:

“If we see a house, Cleanthes, we conclude, with the greatest certainty, that it
had an architect or builder because this is precisely the species of effect which
we have experienced to proceed from that species of cause. But surely you
will not affirm that the universe bears such a resemblance to a house that we
can with the same certainty infer a similar cause, or that the analogy here is
entire and perfect. The dissimilitude is so striking that the utmost you can
here pretend to is a guess. ”

The idea that claims about what best explains some phenomenon must be grounded in
evidence about the explanations of similar phenomena. If this is true, would it undercut
the design argument? Is it true? Can you think of any sort of phenomenon where
an inference to an explanation is justified even though we lack any evidence about the
explanation of similar phenomena?

2 The objection from a regress of explanation

At this point, Hume switches tacks. Rather than arguing that we do not have sufficient
evidence to think that an intelligent designer is the best explanation of the design of the
universe, he now argues that, whatever its evidential merits, there is a sense in which the
appeal to an intelligent designer is unstable.

The core of Hume’s objection here is that the existence of an intelligent designer would
require explanation every bit as much as the existence of the world does; so the design
argument does not offer any real explanatory gain. Hume puts it like this:

“How, therefore, shall we satisfy ourselves concerning the cause of that Being
whom you suppose the Author of Nature, or, according to your system of
anthropomorphism, the Ideal World into which you trace the material? Have
we not the same reason to trace that ideal world into another ideal world or
new intelligent principle? But if we stop and go no farther, why go so far?
Why not stop at the material world? How can we satisfy ourselves without
going on ad infinitum?”

And states his conclusion as follows:

“If reason . . . be not mute with regard to all questions concerning cause and
effect, this sentence at least will it venture to pronounce: that a mental world
or universe of ideas requires a cause as much as does a material world or
universe of objects. ”

He then imagines his opponent replying that the ideas of God can be explained by God’s
rationality, and replies as follows:

“It was usual . . . when the cause of any phenomenon was demanded, to have
recourse to their faculties . . . and to say, for instance, that bread nourished
by the nutritive faculty, and senna purged by its purgative. But it has been
discovered that this subterfuge was nothing but the disguise of ignorance, and
that these philosophers, though less ingenuous, really said the same things with
the skeptics or the vulgar who fairly confessed that they knew not the cause
of these phenomena. In like manner, when it is asked, what cause produces
order in the ideas of the Supreme Being, can any other reason by assigned
by you, anthropomorphites, than that it is a rational faculty . . . ? But why a
similar answer will not be equally satisfactory in accounting for the order of
the world . . . may be difficult to determine.”

The idea is that this explanation is just a concealed restatement of the facts. The example
of the virtus dormativa.

What premise of the design argument is Hume attacking here? One way to read the
argument is as similar to Gaunilo’s reply to Anselm: he is not showing us which premise
of the design argument is wrong, but simply showing us that something about it must be
wrong, since it leads to a false conclusion.

Is there any principle of best explanation on which an intelligent designer would be the
best explanation of the design of the universe and which does not lead to the conclusion
that we have to posit an intelligent designer of the intelligent designer?

3 The objection from the limitations of the design argument

Hume thinks that a scientific view of the universe makes it seem quite different from
any human artefact; he thinks that this should lead us to think that its origin should be
different in virtually every way than that of artefacts like a watch:

“All the new discoveries in astronomy which prove the immense grandeur and
magnificence of the works of nature are so many additional arguments for a
Deity, according to the true system of theism; but, according to your hypothesis
of experimental theism, they become so many objections, by removing
the effect still farther from all resemblance to the effects of human art and
contrivance. . . . The farther we push our researches of this kind, we are still
led to infer the universal cause of all to be vastly different from mankind, or
from any object of human experience and observation.”

Hume’s final objection is that even if we can use an argument like this to establish that
the universe had an intelligent creator of some kind, the argument gives us no grounds
for thinking that this creator has any of the attributes which we traditionally ascribe to
God (infinity, perfection, goodness, etc.).

“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. The world, for aught he knows, is very faulty and
imperfect, compared to a superior standard; and was only the first rude essay
of some infant deity who afterwards abandoned it, ashamed of his lame performance:
It is the work only of some dependent, inferior deity, and is the object
of derision to his superiors: It is the production of old age and dotage in some
superannuated deity; and ever since his death has run on at adventures, from
the first impulse and active force which it received from him . . . ”

How a proponent of the design argument should reply: scaling back the ambitions of the
design argument.

A different way of reading Hume’s argument: the design of the universe not only does
not ground claims about the traditional attributes of God, but in fact lends support to
the claim that, if the universe had a designer, it is a quite different sort of being than we
ordinarily take God to be.

4 Two versions of the design argument

Versions of the design argument based on analogy, and versions based on more abstract
formulations of inference to the best explanation.

The argument from analogy.

1. The universe is analogous to human artefacts, but greater.
2. Like things have like causes.
C. The universe must have a maker which is analogous to the makers
of human artefacts, but greater.

The argument from inference to the best explanation.

1. The universe is well-ordered for the production of some phenomenon
(e.g., intelligent life).
2. The best explanation of this fact is that the universe was created
by an intelligent designer.
C. The universe was created by an intelligent designer.

It seems that strains of each can be found in Paley’s discussion. The question is whether Hume’s arguments count against each equally.