The Student Room Group
Reply 1
may i just ask which exam board this comes from?
Reply 2
In essence, if two things are similar, they must have been caused by similar things. The argument being, the universe is quite like a watch, a watch is built by an intelligent person, so the universe must have been built by an intelligent person too.
And hume criticises it because its bull!

Person creates a watch
X created the universe.
The universe is quite like a watch, so X is quite like a person.

Well no. Firstly, unless a watch and the universe are exactly the same you can't be sure the difference between them isn't because they were caused by very different things. Moreover, even if they were both the same that's not to say they couldn't have very different causes. A pebble polished by the sea and a pebble polished by a person might be exactly the same, does that mean the sea is like a person in all respects?

Secondly, if we want to be really specific, watches are never perfect, and the people who make them are sometimes eccentric and crazy. So why aren't we then saying, "ah ha! so God must be imperfect and a little crazy and eccentric too!" Why do we think some similarities between watch and universe are important but not others?

Thirdly, Hume thinks cause is all about seeing something happen over and over again. We say pressing the switch causes the light to come on because whenever we press the switch, unless something weird is going on, the light always comes on too. That's (in essence) Hume's view of causation. But we can't have seen universes created over and over again because there is only one. So how can we say what caused the universe. We've never seen a universe created before, so in Hume's eyes we can't possibly know what caused it.

Good luck
Reply 3
Thank you so much!!! *mwah* <3

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@pr3tty - it comes from AQA RS06 :smile:


Another question - is there a difference between DEFINTIONS of a miracle and CONCEPTS of a miracle? I'm lead to believe there is by the mark-scheme... :confused:
Reply 4
There could be. I assume you are talking about Hume again?
Read Hume's "Of Miracles ", its very clear and plus then you can say you've read extra primary material. I assume what they are getting at though is the difference between the idea of a miracle as an act of God, and what this would in fact be like. Hume's saying in his article (which is well worth reading, don't be put off by the old language, it's good stuff) that a miracle would only be worth believing if there was so much testimony for it that it would be more of a miracle if all that testimony was wrong. So you only ever get a miracle if it would be more of a miracle for the thing to be just a myth. And says Hume that's never happened, so there aren't any miracles yet.
Reply 5
hume always has a lot to say about these things!

this stuff is all coming flooding back to me from my philosophy AS last year.

there is no reason why hume criticises things. he just did. a lot of his criticisms are ungrounded and can therefore be more strongly criticised than the argument he attempts to criticise himself!
Reply 6
oh yay a debate. What's wrong with the criticisms in say 'Of miracles' then? Or his criticisms of the argument from design?
Reply 7
Hume may well be often Crazy, but his Dialogues on Natural Religion and "Of Miracles" are certainly not good examples of this. It's just a shame more people don't read them.
Reply 8
Agreed
Reply 9
. o 0 (I wish I could just go through his entire works and re-punctuate them all)
Reply 10
hehe. And Descarte. It's the comma obsession. Using 26 commas and no other punctuation isn't a sentence, it's a logic bracket problem. You have to find the middle set of commas, read that bit first, and then move outwards.
I once found a sentence in one of the two which was 146 words long with nothing but commas.

But! Natural Religion, Of Miracles, and the meditations are still wonderfully readable. When the actuall philosophy is that clear, the punctuation problems melt away