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On David Hume's Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion (1779). How would a scientifically minded person argue for God's existence?

In Hume's dialogue, a character named Cleanthes argues from this point of view for God's existence based on the complexity and order apparent in nature: It looks designed. But how good is that argument, and is it enough to prove an infinite God of the traditional sort?

Stephen West from the Philosophize This! podcast joins Mark, Wes, and Dylan to talk through the roles of the different characters in the dialogue, whether their various arguments make sense, and what Hume's actual views might be. Watch a video accompanying Mark's episode introduction.

Don't wait until next week for part 2; get the rest of the discussion now with your ad-free Citizen Edition. Please support PEL!

Hume picture by Solomon Grundy.

The Partially Examined Life

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Hume on Intelligent Design (Part One)

Continuing on David Hume's Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion (1779), with guest Stephen West. We get further into what's wrong with the design argument and why Hume thinks that it's merely a verbal dispute whether we want to say that God designed the orderly universe or just say that the universe is orderly. Also, the problem of evil!

Listen to part 1 first, or get the ad-free, unbroken Citizen Edition. Please support PEL!

End song: "Shittalkers" by Ken Stringfellow, as interviewed on Nakedly Examined Music ep. 39.

Shittalkers

Hume on Intelligent Design (Part Two)

On Blaise Pascal's Pensées (1670).

Is it rational to have religious faith? You're likely familiar with "Pascal's Wager," one of the most famous arguments for the existence of God, but it's not clear that Pascal bought into the argument as it is usually understood.

To see why, you have to get Pascal's picture of human nature, which is surprisingly insightful, and is what Mark, Wes, and Dylan spend all of part one discussing. Pascal thinks that humanity in its actuality is thoroughly wretched. We're morally wretched: innately selfish, really despising each other, vain, self-deceiving, unable to focus on the good, always chasing after one imaginary lure or other. We're epistemically wretched: Our reason deceives us, our senses deceive us, our instincts are self-destructive, and our imagination, again, is the worst. Pascal believes that we need to follow "heart" over reason, but that doesn't mean what we mean, e.g. in talking about romantic love, which Pascal sees as exactly the kind of destructive, ultimately imaginary drive that I've just been describing. Our greatness comes from realizing our wretchedness, from the fact that we have ideals that let us see our depravity, and he thinks that these come from God. And since "God" qua infinite being is nothing that we could really understand, much less have a personal relationship with, he thinks that Jesus is absolutely essential for authentic religiosity.

To return to the wager (which, again, we don't actually discuss until part 2): Yes, reason is inadequate to tell you definitively whether or not to believe (though Pascal thinks that reason does tell you that it's not unreasonable to believe, and thinks that the miracles were and are pretty darn properly convincing to people on purely rational grounds), so all those arguments by Descartes and St. Thomas are for naught.

Pascal does, then, say that since the risk you incur by believing is negligible: Human life and its non-religious pursuits are all such crap that you're not giving up anything by putting all your energy toward God. And on the other side, if you "bet against God," then you're risking your eternal soul, potentially winning eternal bliss if the Christian God is real. But you can't actually just "choose" to believe; that's not how human psychology works, and Pascal knows this. You can, however, go through the motions: Go to church, open yourself toward God, and at the very least, virtue will be its own reward, and with grace, you'll end up a real believer.

Pascal has anticipated your objections: What if Zeus or some other God is the real one? Well, that's why he spends so much time arguing that only Christianity accurately describes human nature, both in laying out our wretchedness and giving us the cure for it. Those other alleged gods just wouldn't do the trick, so we can rule them out (you'll have to actually read the book to get the details of his arguments here). And simply not making a choice is not an option, and deciding not to care about the question is irresponsible to the point of monstrous.

Pascal's take on our psychology includes some surprising verdicts about political authority and tradition. Pascal is liberal enough that he recognizes the arbitrariness and illusory character of a lot of this, but he also understands how these things are emergent properties of human nature, and as such are better guides to our action than the vain flights of fancy of revolutionary political philosophers.

Pascal's biography is probably the most interesting thing about him; I recommend this account by Will Durant, which describes his work in science and mathematics before his turn to religion, as well as his other famous book, Lettres Provinciales.

Pascal on the Human Condition (Part One)

Continuing on Pascal's Pensées.

More on our human desire and how God is supposed to address that, plus Pascal's views on political philosophy, the relation between faith, reason, and custom… and finally, the wager! We get into the obvious objections. Why not just be a skeptic? Is Pascal right that people suck?

End song: "44 Days" by Dutch Henry, written and sung by Todd Long, as interviewed on Nakedly Examined Music #34.

Pascal picture by Drew Blom.

44 Days

Pascal on the Human Condition (Part Two)

On Allan Bloom's 1987 best-seller about why students' disconnection from Great Books has led to relativism and ultimately nihilism.

What is the role of the university in our democracy? Bloom relates from his many years' teaching the problem with kids today: They're subject to the evils that Tocqueville warned us go with American-style democracy: They're conformist, superficial, focused on the practical at the expense of the soul, and worst of all, the democratic ethos taken intellectually means that they're indiscriminate: Everyone's ideas are equally good. Bloom thinks that a liberal education should be the cure for this: By connecting with brilliant minds of the past, witnessing them speaking across history to each other, we become part of the great conversation about truth and virtue. People need to at one point in their lives seriously consider the question "what is man?" in relation to our highest aspirations as opposed to our common, base needs. We need to forget, at least temporarily, about training for a particular job or any other practical consideration, and just engage in thinking for thinking's sake, which is the thing that Aristotle said makes us most human.

Bloom bemoans that incoming students for the most part no longer have favorite books, that their music is all instant gratification, and that they see truth and relative. While it is democracy itself that tends to support making people like this, ironically this condition means that we're no longer fit to intelligently participate in politics. Bloom thinks that we need to understand intellectual history to understand the foundations of liberty and so be able to defend it. In overthrowing elites like the church and the noble class, we should become independent thinkers, but what much more often happens is that we just go along with the crowd, and the crowd's ethos in our case involves an ignorant scientism that ignores the needs of the soul, a leveling of values the precludes any serious discussion of the good, and the related idea that every opinion is equally valid.

Bloom includes Rawls and Mill in this condemnation. As you may recall, both of these thinkers were insistent that government shouldn't dictate the good to citizens (in Mill's case, this was a matter of not restricting speech), but Bloom is less concerned with the logical consequents of their philosophies than with the actual, social consequences, which in both cases Bloom diagnoses as nihilism: By denying values a central place in public norms, we promote mere legalism, pragmatism, i.e. a lack of values.

The full foursome is on board to reflect on how we feel about these critiques. Have our society and our educational system really produced a bunch of Nietzschean "last men?" Does Bloom's suggested program of Great Books (which is pretty much what Wes underwent at St. John's) actually produce better citizens?

The image is by David Levine, drawn for the New York Review of Books' review of Bloom's book by Martha Nussbaum, which is pretty scathing and well worth your time. She focuses on the elitism involved in Bloom's account; he's really only worried about the quality of education of his elite students, and recommends a regimen that will surely be out of reach of most people who actually have to worry about making a living.

The Partially Examined Life Philosophy Podcast

"The Closing of the American Mind": Allan Bloom on Education (Part One)

Welcome to Burn Your Draft, a new podcast about the Reed College senior thesis experience. Each episode features an interview with a student or alum about their thesis experience. The first episodes launch on August 31st, 2020, and new episodes will release every other Monday.

Trailer

In this special episode we hear from Seth Paskin '90, Reed alumnus and co-founder of Burn Your Draft, on the motivation behind the podcast. We’ll also hear about his own experience as a co-founder and co-host of the podcast, The Partially Examined Life, and his time thesising at Reed as a philosophy major.
This live interview was recorded during the 2020 Paideia week on January 25th in the living room of Prexy, a building on the Reed College campus that housed presidents of the college in the early days of Reed. It’s now the home of the Center for Life Beyond Reed and Alumni Programs.

#0: Burn Your Draft Live Debut Event with Seth Paskin '90, Philosophy

You don’t have to look beyond Portland to see the topic of this thesis. Today we will be hearing from Economics/Mathematics Reed graduate, Ryan Kobler '20, about her thesis on land pricing in Portland.

Reed community members can read Ryan's thesis online in the Electronic Theses Archive: https://rdc.reed.edu/i/5cf0fb28-87b4-42e6-86dc-0493bbae04d5

#1: Land Pricing in Portland with Ryan Kobler '20, Econ/Math

I’m sure you've read joke books, but have you read ancient joke books? Let’s go back to our comedic roots with Jake Buck and his translation of one of the oldest Chinese joke books.

#2: Translating Ancient Chinese Jokes with Jake Buck '20, Chinese

Make sure to grab your tin foil hats for this episode of Burn Your Draft and get ready to hear from Molly Johnson on the sociological aspects of UFO subculture. Seth Paskin '90 hosts this episode.

#3: UFOs and the People Who Love Them with Molly Johnson '19, Sociology

Is history repeating itself? Today we will hear from Soha on China’s Belt and Road Initiative (which is often described as the 21st century silk road), and its effect on foreign investment in sub-saharan Africa.

Reed community members can read Soha's thesis online in the Electronic Theses Archive: https://rdc.reed.edu/c/etheses/s/r?_pp=20&query=soha%20ahmed&s=cba1d9f104c81a09b4c2739df6299fa52165a034&p=1&pp=1

#4: China's New Silk Road with Soha Ahmed '20, Economics

Quarantine has created an atmosphere for a lot of difficult conversations with friends and especially families. Today we will hear from Jade about her research study on gender and pronouns amongst Reed students.

Reed community members can read Jade's thesis online in the Electronic Theses Archive: https://rdc.reed.edu/i/d704b617-47e4-4300-bb0b-cf209765f3b3

#5: Gender Pronoun Use at Reed with Jade Fung '20, Psychology

The Partially Examined Life is a philosophy podcast by some guys who were at one point set on doing philosophy for a living but then thought better of it. Each episode, we pick a text and chat about it with some balance between insight and flippancy. You don't have to know any philosophy, or even to have read the text we're talking about to (mostly) follow and (hopefully) enjoy the discussion.

"The Closing of the American Mind": Allan Bloom on Education (Part One)

Partially Examined Life

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