Posted on by Matthew Livermore

A Level Philosophy Exam 2018

So the exam is tomorrow. Remember there will be 4 questions and you answer 3. They will be marked out of 40, 16 marks for AO1 and 24 for AO2, which means you must be evaluative and have an answer which is driven by answering the question rather than reciting a list of views. The questions could be from year 1:

Plato and Aristotle

Mind, Body and Soul

Arguments for God from experience

Arguments for God from reason

Religious Experience

Problem of Evil

or from Year 2:

Religious Language – traditional approaches

Religious language – 20th Century approaches

Nature of God

As this is the first year of this exam I have nothing to go on for a prediction as no areas have come up yet. However, I think it would be odd if they didn’t have at least 2 questions from the second year, perhaps even three. In that case there is likely to be a question on God’s nature, and one on religious language. So here we go, here are my four guesses – no idea if anything like this will come up, but it’s always good to have a focus, and as I say, there should be something in at least a few of these areas.

“The conflicts between the divine attributes make belief in the classical view of God impossible” Discuss.

Critically assess non-cognitive approaches to religious language.

“Tillich’s view of Symbol is incoherent” Discuss.

To what extent can teleological arguments be defended from the challenge of chance?

Update: The questions were:

Boethius on eternity and free will

Hume on arguments from observation

The Cataphatic Way

Corporate Experiences

 

Posted on by Matthew Livermore

As Frys to Wanton Boys

“As flies to wanton boys are we to th’ gods; they kill us for their sport” Gloucester – King Lear (IV. i. 36-37)

A lot of attention is being paid to a clip of Stephen Fry talking about what he would say to God if he died and found himself at the Pearly Gates.

There’s a few things I want to say. Firstly, the problem of evil is generally recognised as a very difficult, even intractable, challenge to theism – perhaps the one challenge which is capable of shaking even the strongest believer’s faith. That doesn’t mean attempts haven’t been made to solve it – they are called theodicies (‘God-justification’), but there is a great deal of debate about whether they succeed. One problem with trying to answer the problem of evil and suffering is that believers often fall into the trap of platitudes which underestimate the experiential force of evil and suffering – platitudes such as “God moves in mysterious ways”, or “everything happens for a reason”. Clearly such responses are not sufficient and deservedly provoke the mockery of atheists. Most theists however, don’t do this – Byrne, whilst speechless, at least didn’t try, and neither have recent Popes when asked.

Probably because of the way he was asked the question, the particular form that Fry frames it in here is as a protest against a cruel and capricious God. This kind of standpoint is usually called ‘protest atheism’. According to this position, God is taken as existing, but then evidence such as Fry presents is brought to show that no-one could justifiably worship such a God – supposedly all-loving, all-powerful and all-knowing – who could allow such things to take place in His creation. I would guess that most protest atheists who use this argument now do not actually believe in God – they just use the argument as a kind of reductio ad absurdum of the believer’s view. And of course we know Fry doesn’t believe in the God with whom he gets so angry in this interview, so I guess we have to take that as a piece of acting on Fry’s part (to me this seems rather insincere and hollow, I suspect Bertrand Russell’s similar response to the same question was not delivered with quite the same sense of fake outrage, but then again, Russell was a philosopher who had thought deeply about these things, not a media luvvy and actor with a large vocabulary…I know; ad hominem….).

It is my view that the case for what is called protest atheism has not actually been put very forcefully here by Fry. It has been much more strongly argued by the character of Ivan Karamazov to his brother Alyosha in the Dostoevsky novel The Brothers Karamazov. Dostoevsky, a man of faith, could hardly be called a polemicist or apologist for theism, but he has crafted his novel as an exploration of themes of freedom, suffering and faith. After  detailed historic accounts of horrific torture of innocent children Ivan says:

“… if the sufferings of children go to swell the sum of sufferings which was necessary to pay for truth, then I protest that the truth is not worth such a price. I don’t want the mother to embrace the oppressor who threw her son to the dogs! She dare not forgive him! Let her forgive him for herself, if she will, let her forgive the torturer for the immeasurable suffering of her mother’s heart. But the sufferings of her tortured child she has no right to forgive; she dare not forgive the torturer, even if the child were to forgive him! And if that is so, if they dare not forgive, what becomes of harmony? Is there in the whole world a being who would have the right to forgive and could forgive? I don’t want harmony. From love for humanity I don’t want it. I would rather be left with the unavenged suffering. I would rather remain with my unavenged suffering and unsatisfied indignation, even if I were wrong. Besides, too high a price is asked for harmony; it’s beyond our means to pay so much to enter on it. And so I hasten to give back my entrance ticket, and if I am an honest man I am bound to give it back as soon as possible. And that I am doing. It’s not God that I don’t accept, Alyosha, only I most respectfully return him the ticket.”

Fry, in focusing only on ‘natural evil’ – bone cancer and worms that burrow into eyes – in his argument, probably wants to avoid the classic move of theists when asked about human evil – that it is the result of free will. But in doing so he is presenting a weaker argument. There are two points to make here. Firstly, in a universe where random material processes have combined to create the conditions for organisms to compete with each other in a struggle for survival, there can be no such thing as evil or good, or if there are such realities they are simply the result of human subjectivity projected onto the world – what is evil for the blind child is good for the worm. Some might simply turn the challenge on the atheist here for them to explain what in their world view leads them to believe in evil as a reality ( and it is worth noting that some theodicies would simply point to the fact that natural evil is largely the result of the fact that there are general laws of nature which we can sometimes fall foul of – but that is bound to be the case in a universe which has a ‘way things go’) . However, it is worth remembering that the argument is focused against the believer – and it is their account of God and their account of evil which are claimed to be at odds with each other.

But secondly, even if we grant Fry the point – natural evil undermines belief in a good God – we would have to say that the examples of intentional cruelty by rational human beings against innocent children given by Ivan Karamazov are far more compelling as a challenge, simply because here we confront the reality of human evil in all its horrific strength. We are precluded even from arguing that it is justifiable on the basis of God needing to grant humans free will, or God building a future utopia on it – as Ivan says “too high a price is paid for harmony” if that harmony will somehow come out of the undeserved suffering of innocents. Surely intentional cruelty by free beings (beings who could have chosen not to inflict that suffering, and who must have known it was wrong even whilst doing it, unlike unconscious worms)  is a much more difficult problem to solve than ‘nature red in tooth and claw’? After all, a flawed natural order is only one side of the coin – there is also the existence of beauty and harmonious cooperation in nature, and simply to emphasise one over the other is misleading. The evidence is ambiguous in ways that Fry won’t admit – he would be the first to talk of marvel at the intricacies of the natural order, but he certainly wouldn’t use that to point to God. He is however happy to use disharmony in the natural order to point away from God, or at least to accuse God.

A flawed natural order has been recognised as one of the signs of the workings of an evil force in a world destabilised from its original perfection by the Fall, which begins in the heavenly hierarchies of the Angels. What I’m saying here is not that people within Christianity have tried to give an answer to this problem, but that the whole Christian vision of the cosmos is based upon the reality of suffering, evil and death and the sure and certain hope that they will not have the last word, that in God, all things will be made new.

So okay, meh to Fry. He thinks he gave God a bit of a kicking. I don’t think he did particularly, when I consider how Dostoevsky answers the more serious challenges which he sets up through Ivan. I’ll explain in a bit.

His mention of the Greek gods was interesting, which is a belief he says is far more honest because they can be seen clearly for what they are – projections of human inclinations and obsessions.  He knows that he would have nothing to say about bone cancer and so on if he died and went to Hades and met Pluto; the Greek gods would inflict cruelty on mortals for sport or curiosity. The take-away from this is clearly meant to be – basically all gods are projections because we can clearly see our own needs and desires written in them – but that evidence points to a pantheon of gods like the Greek ones, limited, flawed superhumans – not to the Christian God, who is as Fry notes meant to be wholly beyond our limitations as humans. Indeed, it is this very transcendence which sets him apart from all pagan gods. However, what Fry doesn’t mention is that the Christian God also became human, vulnerable, poor, broken and took on all suffering and pain. Christ crucified – this fact St. Paul famously describes as a stumbling block to the Jews and folly to the Greeks – their wisdom paradoxically kept them from seeing to the real meaning of the cross; God wants to deliver us from all suffering, but he can only do this through love, which is an abiding-with, even amongst the shadows of evil and suffering.

There is no straightforward answer to the protest atheist’s challenge. There are narratives within which we can perhaps make some sense of the challenge though. I mentioned the Brothers Karamazov above. In a future post I will attempt to show how Dostoevsky frames the challenge as a conflict between rationality and love.

 

Posted on by Matthew Livermore

The futility of arguments for God

Dave Webster has an interesting video here where he uses Kierkegaard to discuss whether there is any point to theistic arguments. My own view is that he is probably not far from Aquinas on this, as someone has pointed out that the actual percentage of the Summa devoted to arguments for God is absolutely miniscule. It’s almost like he wants to get them done as quickly as possible and move on, to show that reason is not dumb when it comes to God, but that there are more important things to do in Theology! I’m not sure whether I entirely agree though, that faith begins and ends in aloneness, fear and anxiety. This seems to ignore the massive social element in religion, but maybe this was the inessential part for Kierkegaard? I don’t know his thought well enough to say.

Posted on by Matthew Livermore · 2 Comments

Explain Gaunilo’s challenges to Anselm’s Ontological argument. (25)

I attempted this question in 25 minutes. It is not one that has come up in any recent exam, but students are required to have knowledge of Gaunilo’s challenges. So it would be useful to look it over. 

 

Gaunilo of Marmoutier disagreed with Anselm that the existence of God could be logically proved based on an understanding of his essence or his definition. Anselm’s claim that only a fool says ‘there is no God’ (because this is like saying ‘the thing that has to exist doesn’t exist’) is disputed by Gaunilo because he doesn’t believe it is possible to have an understanding of who God is in himself anyway.

This kind of belief that it is impossible to know the nature of God is often labelled a kind of agnosticism. This is not the usual use of the term for people who are undecided about God’s existence, but instead it means a more general lack of knowledge about who God is in himself. For instance Aquinas is also convinced that it is impossible to know the nature of God, because as creatures, our knowledge, or rationality is only capable of knowing things concretely. God, being an incorporeal being, and one who surpasses all created things in perfection, thus goes beyond the limits of what we can know with our reason.

Gaunilo claims that Anselm’s dependence in his argument on a definition of God as ‘that than which nothing greater can be conceived’ is flawed, as we simply cannot hold such a definition. Furthermore, to have this notion of God’s nature in one’s mind, as Anselm claims, would also be impossible for our reason.

Gaunilo’s second and more famous challenge to Anselm is that we cannot go from the definition of something to it’s existence. He uses a reductio ad absurdum argument, which aims to show the absurdity of holding the viewpoint of Anselm, by using the example of an island. He says: We can conceive of a perfect island. A perfect island must be more perfect in reality than in the mind. Therefore a perfect island exists. The perfect island stands for Anselm’s perfect being. Gaunilo aims to show with this example that Anselm’s argument is fallacious, as you can use his argument to prove the existence of things such as perfect islands.

Clearly, it is hard to see how a perfect island would have to exist just because of this argument, and Gaunilo believed he had proved that Anselm’s similar argument was flawed. However, in Reply to Gaunilo, Anselm refers him to the Proslogion 3, in which Anselm had pre-empted such a challenge with a second version of the ontological argument.

Posted on by Matthew Livermore

Explain Descartes’ understanding of existence as a perfection which God cannot lack (25)

Essay Plan:

Start with: Descartes’ method of doubt by which he tries to establish foundations beyond doubt upon which to build knowledge.

In his book Meditations, arrives at one certainty – that he is a thinking being (as he could be deceived about what he is thinking, but not about that he is thinking). Asks if there is anything else he can be certain of.

Decides that he can form clear and distinct impressions of mathematical objects and numbers, but these things exist in some sense independently of his mind.  He can “draw the idea of something from my thought”.

Explain the method he uses to do this, which is to meditate upon the essence of something, ie. what makes it what it is. With a triangle this is that its internal angles add up to 180 degrees.

This truth about triangles exists in his mind clearly and distinctly, and he argues that he can be certain of it.

How does he do this? From the preceding thought experiment he found out that the one thing he could be certain of was that he was a thinking thing, but that he might be deceived about having a body etc.

Therefore, he argues, things of the mind are more certain than physical things.

They are much more clearly and distinctly known than that of the body.

One such idea is the idea of God that Descartes finds in his mind. He says:

1. I have an idea of God, a perfect being.

2. There must be as much reality or perfection in the cause of any thing as in the effect.

a. This applies not only to the existence of ideas, but also to the reality of what they represent. Not only must the existence of the idea be explained, but also what it represents.

3. The idea of God represents something so perfect that I could not have been the cause of this idea.

Therefore, God must exist as the only possible cause of the perfection found in my idea of Him.

So far, this is all background to get you as far as Descartes’ idea of God in the mind. If you understand how he arrives at that, then you will be better equipped to answer a part b question.

Descartes then uses his version of the ontological argument –  the idea of God can be said to exist in reality, because existence is a perfection God cannot lack.

Use the example of rivers not being able to exist without banks – they logically have to go together. Triangles have to have three internal angles. God necessarily exists because he has all perfections (that’s what we mean by God) therefore God must have existence, as that is a perfection.

To explain this further talk about God’s essence including existence. Descartes tries to show that it is impossible for God not to exist.

 

Posted on by Matthew Livermore

Descartes’ understanding of existence as a perfection which God cannot lack

I will be putting up some posts on particular aspects of the Ontological argument that are mentioned in the OCR specification but haven’t turned up in exam questions recently. The first is Descartes’ understanding of existence.

It is necessary to know a little background on Descartes to understand his version of the argument fully. In his book Meditations (1641) he sought to find out what could be known with certainty. To do this he considered all knowledge in a sceptical or doubtful light, doing what is often called now a thought experiment, imagining that he was being deceived by an evil demon. A great condensed version of this is here .

Another excellent resource to understand Descartes is this set of youtube videos . The link opens to the first of five sections. I recommend you start at about 8 minutes into the first one and then watch the whole of part 2 and 3 to really understand how Descartes arrives at the idea of God as a kind of ‘maker’s mark’ in the mind. This was a BBC series called The Great Philosophers presented by Bryan Magee.