Kenny Anthony. The Rise of Modern Philosophy: A New History of Western Philosophy. Volume 3

Подождите немного. Документ загружается.

state of which everyone is a citizen; therefore there is an international state

of which everyone is a citizen.’

Perhaps Berkeley is really intending to argue that if things existed only in

Wnite minds, their existence would be patchy and intermittent. The horse

in his stable would exist while he was looking at it, and again when his

groom was attending to it, but would go out of existence in between

whiles. Only if there is an inWnite, omnipresent, omnitemporal mind will

continuous existence be guaranteed. This is the theme of a famous pair of

limericks in which Ronald Knox tried to summarize Berkeley’s contention:

There was a young man who said, ‘God

Must think it exceedingly odd

If he Wnds that this tree

Continues to be

When there’s no one about in the Quad.’

Reply:

Dear Sir, your astonishment’s odd

I am always about in the Quad.

And that’s why the tree

Will continue to be

Since observed by

Yours faithfully,

GOD.

The God whose existence is allegedly proved by Berkeley’s route seems

diVerent in an important respect from the God of traditional theism. If

objects when perceived by no Wnite spirit are kept in existence by God’s

perceiving them, there must be in God’s mind ideas of all perceptible

things—not only objects like desks and ladybirds, but also colours, shapes,

smells, pleasures, pains, and all kinds of sense-data. But Christian thinkers

had commonly denied that God enjoyed sense-experience. The psalmist

asked: ‘Is the inventor of the ear unable to hear? The creator of the eye

unable to see?’ These rhetorical ‘questions expecting the answer no’ were

given a ‘yes’ answer by Thomas Aquinas and a multitude of other theolo-

gians. Commenting on the text ‘the eyes of the Lord are on the just,’

Aquinas wrote, ‘Parts of the body are ascribed to God in the scriptures by a

metaphor drawn from their functions. Eyes, for exampl e, see, and so when

316

GOD

‘‘God’s eye’’ is spoken of, it means his power to see, even though his seeing

is an intellectual and not a sensory activity’ (Ia 3.1 ad 3).

For Aristotelians it was clear that God had no senses or sensory experi-

ence, because in order to see, hear, feel, taste, or otherwise sense it was

essential to have a body, and God had no body. However, since Descartes

had made popular the idea that the key element in human sensation was in

fact a purely mental event, the matter was no longer so clear-cut. But

Berkeley is anxious to avoid the conclusion that God has sense-experience.

In the third dialogue Hylas, the opposition spokesman, says that it

would follow from Berkeley’s theory that God, the perfect spirit, suVers

pain, which is an imperfection. Berkeley’s mouthpiece, Philonous, replies as

follows:

That God knows or understands all things, and that he knows, among other

things, what pain is, even every sort of painful sensation, and what it is for

creatures to suVer pain, I make no question. But that God, though he knows

and sometimes causes painful sensations in us, can himself suVer pain, I positively

deny ...Nocorporeal motions are attended with the sensations of pain or pleasure

in His mind. To know everything knowable is certainly a perfection; but to endure

or suVer or feel anything by sense is an imperfection. The former, I say, agrees to

God, but not the latter. God knows, or hath, ideas; but His ideas are not conveyed

to him by sense as ours are. (BPW, 202–3)

It is diYcult to see how this is consistent with Berkeley’s epistemol ogy.

Among the ideas we encounter are those of hot and cold, sweet and sour. If

all ideas are ideas in the mind of God, then these ideas are somehow in the

mind of God. If God nonetheless does not feel sensations, then the

possession of such ideas is insuYcient for sensation. But if that is so, then

Berkeley’s account of ordinary human sensation is quite inadequate.

Hume on Religion

Unlike Berkeley , Hume made a lasting, if negative, contribution to natural

theology. His critical observations on the arguments for the existence of

God, and his discussion of the role of miracles in establishing the authority

of a revelation, have remained points of departure for both theist and

atheist philosophers of religion. We may consider Wrst the essay on miracles

317

GOD

which was inserted as section ten of the Inquiry, having no counterpart in

the earlier Treatise.

A miracle, for Hume, is a violation of a law of nature: he gives as examples

of miracles a dead man coming back to life, or the raising of a house or ship

into the air. Surprisingly, he does not deny that miracles are possible—

he does not, like some of his followers, argue that if an apparently miracu-

lous event were proved to have happened that would not show that a law

had been violated, but that we had oversimpliWed our statement of the

law. What he is really interested in is not whether miracles can be done,

but whether they can be seen to be done. For his target is the use of

miracles by apologists to claim supernatural authorization of a particular

religious message.

The Wrst part of the essay ends with the following statement:

No testimony is suYcient to establish a miracle unless the testimony be of such a

kind that its falsehood would be more miraculous, than the fact, which it

endeavours to establish . . . When anyone tells me that he saw a dead man restored

to life, I immediately consider with myself whether it be more probable that this

person should either deceive or be deceived, or that the fact, which he relates,

should really have happened . . . If the falsehood of his testimony would be more

miraculous than the event which he relates; then, and not till then, can he

pretend to command my belief or opinion. (W, 212)

Hume is not ruling out that a miracle could be proved, any more than he

ruled out that a miracle could happen. Indeed, he tells us that given the

appropriate unanimity of testimony, he would himself be prepared to

believe what he regards as a miracle, namely, a total darkness over the

whole earth for eight days. We may Wnd this surp rising. On his own

deWnition a miracle is a violation of the laws of nature, and someone’s

being deceived or deceiving could never be a violation of a law of nature;

therefore the evidence against a miracle must always be stronger than the

evidence for it. But we must remember that according to Hume’s account

of the human will, a human action can be just as much a violation of a law

of nature as any physical event.

Hume is surely right that if it is claimed that an event E has happened

which is a violation of a law of nature, then the probability that E

happened must be in inverse proportion to the evidence that if E happened

it would be a violation of the law. For the evidence that if E happened it

318

GOD

would be a violation of the law is eo ipso evidence that E didn’t happen. But

surely Hume must have overstated his case. Otherwise it would never be

possible for scientists to correct a mistaken belief about a natural law. Faced

with a claim by a colleague that his experiments have revealed a counter-

example to the law, they should, on Hume’s showing, discount the evidence

on the grounds that it would be less of a miracle for the experimenter to be

lying or mistaken than for the law to be violated.

In the second part of the essay Hume oVers three de facto arguments to

show that miracles never have been established on evidence full enough to

meet his standards. First, he states categorically that no miracle has been

suYciently attested by suYciently good witnesses who have much to lose

and can be easily detected if fraudulent. Second, he evokes the credulity of

the human race, as shown in the numerous imposture miracles subse-

quently detected. Third, he maintains that supernatural and miraculous

stories abound chieXy among ignorant and barbarous nations. Each of

these contentions can be, and has been, contested on straightforward

historical grounds.

More interesting is his fourth argument, which is based on the un-

doubted fact that miracles are claimed to have been wrought in aid of

religions which contradict each other. If a miracle proves a doctrine to be

revealed by God, and consequently true, a miracle can never be wrought

for a contrary doctrine. Hence, every story of a miracle wrought in support

of one particular religion must be a piece of evidence against any story of a

miracle wrought in favour of a diVerent religion.

Hume considers three examples to illustrate his point: the cure of a blind

and lame man by the emperor Vespasian, reported in Tacitus; Cardinal de

Retz’s account of a man who grew a second leg by rubbing an amputated

stump with holy oil; and the miracles wrought a t the tomb of a devout

Jansenist, the Abbe

Paris. The three cases are of uneven interest: the evidence

for the Wrst two miracles is no more than a few hundred words, but for the

third there are volumes and volumes of authenticated testimony. Hume

describes the events thus:

The curing of the sick, giving hearing to the deaf, and sight to the blind, were

everywhere talked of as the usual eVects of that holy sepulchre. But what is more

extraordinary: many of the miracles were immediately proved on the spot, before

319

GOD

judges of unquestioned integrity, attested by witnesses of credit and distinction, in

a learned age, and on the most eminent theatre that now is in the world. (W, 220)

Hume’s picture is a little overdraw n, and is not quite consistent with his

earlier point that miracles are only reported in barbarous contexts. But

historians of undoubted Catholic piety conWrm the main lines of his

account of these miracles wrought in support of a heresy that had been

repeatedly condemned by the popes. It seems to me that this W nal argu-

ment does establish Hume’s case that a miracle cannot be proved in such a

One of the Jansenist healings cited by Hume in his treatise on miracles

320

GOD

way as to be the foundation of a religion. Not, of course, that theists have

ever thought that it could be so, in the sense of showing that God exists;

they have only claimed that if we know from elsewhere that God exists we

know that he is almighty and that it is in his power to work miracles,

perhaps in order to authenticate one sect rather than another.

Do we know of God from other sources—from the traditional argu-

ments, for instance? Hume believed that there was no being whose non-

existence implied a contradiction: accordingly, he had little sympathy with

the ontological argument for the existence of God. But he makes no direct

onslaught on it; his most relevant remarks occur in the section of the

Treatise in which he is trying to establish the nature of belief. In arguing that

belief was not an idea, he claimed that when, after conceiving something,

we conceive it is existent, we add nothing to our Wrst idea:

Thus when we aYrm, that God is existent, we simply form the idea of such a

being, as he is represented to us; nor is the existence, which we attribute to him,

conceiv’d by a particular idea, which we join to the idea of his other qualities, and

can again separate and distinguish from them . . . When I think of God, when I

think of him as existent, and when I believe him to be existent, my idea of him

neither encreases nor diminishes. (T, 94)

It is correct that believing and conceiving need not diVer in content: if I

believe that God exists and you do not we are disagreeing, in Hume’s terms,

about the same idea. But having a thought about God and believing that

God exists are two quite diVerent things—an atheist who says ‘if there is a

God, then he is a brute or braggart’ expresses, in his if-clause, the thought

that God exists without assenting to it. And Hume is wrong to say that

there is no concept of existence distinct from the concept of the existing

thing—if that were so, how could we judge that something does not exist?

But it is true, and important, that the concept of existence is quite a

diVerent kind of concept from the concept of God or the concept of a

unicorn. To say that unicorns exist is to make a statement of a quite

diVerent logical form from the statement that unicorns are diYcult to

tame. Hume’s insight here was given more precise and accurate form by

later philosophers such as Kant and Frege, who used it in a deWnitive

demolition of the ontological argumen t.

The argument from design is treated more fully and respectfully by

Hume. His Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion feature three characters,

321

GOD

Cleanthes, Philo, and Demea. It is a tribute to Hume’s skill in composition

that it is not easy to identify which of the three is the spokesman for his own

views. Of the three, Demea is the character presented least sympathetically ;

but scholars have been willing, on both internal and external grounds, to

identify both Philo and Cleanthes as mouthpieces for their author. It is

remarkable that both of them take seriously the argument from design.

In the second part, Cleanthes compares the universe to a great mac hine

divided into an inWnite number of smaller machines:

All these various machines, and even their most minute parts, are adjusted to each

other with an accuracy, which ravished into admiration all men, who have ever

contemplated them. The curious adapting of means to ends, throughout all

nature, resembles exactly, though it much exceeds, the productions of human

contrivance; of human designs, thought, wisdom and intelligence. Since there-

fore the eVects resemble each other, we are led to infer, by all the rules of analogy,

that the causes also resemble; and that the Author of Nature is somewhat similar

to the mind of man; though possessed of much larger faculties, proportioned to

the grandeur of the work, which he has executed. (W, 116)

Philo is critical of this argument, but he too, in the Wnal section of the

dialogues, and after a detailed presentation of the problem of evil as a

counterbalance to the argument from design, is willing to say that a divine

being ‘discovers himself to reason in the inexplicable contrivance and

artiWce of Nature’ (W, 189). But his assent to natural theology is very

guarded. He is willing to agree that the cause or causes of order in the

universe probably bear some remote analogy to human intelligence; but

his agreement is hedged about with conditions. However, provided: (1) that

‘this proposition be not capable of extension, variation or more particular

explication’; (2) that ‘it aVord no inference that aVects human life or can be

the source of any action or forbearance’; and (3) that ‘the analogy,

imperfect as it is, can be carried no farther than to the human intelligence’,

then he is prepared to accept the conclusion of the argument from design.

‘What can the most inquisitive, contemplative, and religious man do more

than give a plain, philosophical assent to the proposition as often as it

occurs; and believe that the arguments on which it is established exceed the

objections which lie against it’ (W, 203).

This probably represents Hume’s own position. It is clear that Hume

enjoyed annoying the clergy, and that he detested Christianity itself,

despite the ironical compliments to it which he scatters throughout his

322

GOD

works. But with respect to the existence of God he was an agnostic, not an

atheist. It was not until the triumph of Darwinism in the next century that

an atheist could feel conWdent that he had an eVective antidote to the

argument from design.

Kant’s Theological Dialectic

The third chapter of Kant’s transcendental dialectic is entitled ‘The Ideal of

Pure Reason’: its principal topic is a critique of rational theology, the

attempt to establish by pure reason the existence of a transcendent God.

Kant begins with the claim that all possible proofs of God’s existence must

fall into one of three classes. There are ontological arguments, which take

their start from the a priori concept of a supreme being; there are cosmo-

logical proofs, which argue from the general nature of the empirical world;

and there are proofs based on particular natural phenomena, which we

may call ‘physico theological proofs’. In every kind of proof, Kant says,

reason ‘stretches its wings in vain, to soar beyond the world of sense by the

mere might of speculative thought’ (M, 346).

The ontological argument, as Kant sets it out, begins with a deWnition of

God as an absolutely necessary being. Such a being is a thing whose non-

existence is impo ssible. But can we really make sense, he asks, of such a

deWnition? Necessity really belongs to propositions, not to things; and we

cannot transfer the logical necessity of a proposition such as ‘a triangle has

three angles’ and make it a property of a real being. Logical necessity is only

conditional necessity; nothing is absolutely necessary:

To suppose the existence of a triangle and not that of its three angles is self-

contradictory; but to suppose the non-existence of both triangle and angles is

perfectly admissible. The same holds true of the concept of an absolutely necessary

being. If you think away its existence, you think away the thing itself with all its

predicates, and there is no question of any contradiction. (M, 348)

If the ontological argument is valid, then ‘God exists’ is an analytic

proposition: ‘exist’ is a predicate that is tacitly contained in the subject

‘God’. But Kant insists that all statements of real existence are synthetic:

we cannot derive actual reality from pure concepts. We might object

that we can at least argue from concepts to non-existence: it is because

323

GOD

we grasp the concepts square and circle that we know there are no square

circles. If ‘square circles do not exist’ is analytic, why not ‘there is a

necessary being’?

Kant’s real objection to the ontological argument is not that ‘God exists’

is a synthetic proposition, but that it is not a subject–predicate proposition

at all. ‘God is omnipotent’ contains two concepts linked by the copula

‘is’. But:

If I take the subject, God, with all its predicates including omnipotence and say

‘God is’ or ‘There is a God’ I add no new predicate to the concept of God, I merely

posit or aYrm the existence of the subject with all its predicates: I posit the object

corresponding to my concept. (M, 350)

Existential propositions do not, in fact, always ‘posit’, because they may

occur as subclauses in a larger sentence (as in ‘If there is a God, sinners will

be punished’). But it is true that neither the aYrmation nor the suppos-

ition of God’s existence adds anything to the predicates that make up

the concept of God. This point is correct whether or not any particular

concept of God is coherent or not (as Kant thought necessary being was not).

Even if we allow that God is possible, there remains the point that Kant

memorably expressed by saying that a hundred real dollars contain no

more than a hundred possible dollars.

Echoing Hume, Kant says: ‘By however many predicates we may think

a thing—even if we completely determine it—we do not make the least

addition to the thing when we further declare that this thing is. Other-

wise it would not be exactly the same thing that exists, but something

more than we had thought in the concept; and we could not, therefore,

say that the exact object of my concept exists’ (M, 350). It must always

be illegitimate to try to build existence—even possible existence—into the

concept of a thing. Existence is not a predicate that can enter into such

a concept.

Abelard in the twelfth century, and Frege in the nineteenth century,

urged us to rephrase statements of existence so that ‘exists’ does not even

look like a predicate. ‘Angels exist’ should be formulated as ‘Some things

are angels’. This has the advantage that it does not make it appear that

when we say ‘Angels do not exist’ we are Wrst positing angels and then

rejecting them. But it does not settle the issues surrounding the onto-

logical argument, because the problems about arguing from possibility to

324

GOD

actuality return as questions about what counts as ‘something’: are we

including in our consideration possible as well as actual objects? Thus some

recent philosophers have tried to restate the ontological argument in a

novel way, by including possible objects within the range of discussion.

A necessary being, they argue, is one that exists in all possible worlds. So

deWned, a necessary being must exist in our world, the actual world. Our

world would not exist unless it were possible; so if God exists in every

possible world he must exist in ours.

Kant is surely right to insist that whether there is something in reality

corresponding to my concept of a thing cannot itself be part of my concept.

A concept has to be determined prior to being compared to reality, other-

wise we would not know which concept was being compared and found to

correspond, or maybe not correspond, to reality. That there is a God cannot

be part of what we mean by ‘God’; hence, ‘there is a God’ cannot be an

analytic proposition and the ontological argument must fail.

However, Kant overestimated the force of his criticism. He maintained

that the refutation of the ontological argument carried with it the defeat of

the much more popular proof of God’s existence from the contingency of

the world. That argument is briskly set out by Kant:

If anything exists, an absolutely necessary being must also exist. Now I, at least,

exist. Therefore an absolutely necessary being exists. The minor premise contains

an experience, the major premise the inference from their being any experience at

all to the existence of the necessary. The proof therefore really begins with

experience and is not wholly a priori ontological. For this reason, and because the

object of all possible experience is called the world, it is entitled the cosmological

proof. (A, 605)

Kant argues that the appeal to experience here is illusory; the force of the

cosmological derives only from the ontological argument. For what is

meant by ‘necessary being’? Surely, a being in whom essence involves

existence, that is to say, a being whose existence can be established by the

ontological argument. But here Kant ignores the possibility of a diVerent

deWnition of ‘necessary being’ as meaning a being which can neither come

into nor go out of existence, and which cannot suVer change of any kind.

Such in fact was the standard account of necessary being given by medieval

philosophers who, like Kant, rejected the ontological argument. Such a

being may well be regarded as suYciently diVerent from the caused,

325

GOD