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Thesis Hume’s Dialogues had answered the watchmaker before Paley set it ticking

Alistair Gow Contributor
· 6 replies · 216 views
God & the argumentsGreek & RomanIslamicModern EuropeanEmpiricismCharles DarwinCiceroDavid HumeWilliam Paley#analogy#design-argument#hume#watchmaker
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Where it stands

Hume's Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion were published in 1779, three years after his death, which is a fair measure of how risky he thought they were. William Paley's Natural Theology, with its famous watch found on a heath, appeared in 1802. My thesis, as a retired Edinburgh GP who has adopted Hume as a neighbour: Paley added a great deal of anatomical detail, but no argument that Hume's Philo had not already met.

The design argument is old. Cicero's On the Nature of the Gods gives a Stoic version, and Hume clearly modelled his dialogue on Cicero's. Against it, Philo argues, among other things:

  • The analogy between the universe and a human artefact is weak. We have seen watches made; we have never seen worlds made.
  • Even if the analogy held, it would not show one designer rather than a committee, nor a perfect one rather than, as Philo puts it in one memorable passage, an infant deity's first rough attempt, later abandoned.
  • Order might arise from causes other than mind; we have no basis for saying which is likelier for a universe.

Paley's watch is more vivid than anything in Hume. But I can't find a move in it that the Dialogues don't anticipate. I'd welcome objections, especially from those who think Paley's argument was a different kind of argument.

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6 replies

For the thesis 1

  1. Derek Hollis

    For Fellow

    For, with a caveat that is Hume's own. In Part XII, Philo concedes that the cause of order in the universe probably bears some remote analogy to human intelligence. Scholars argue about whether that is sincere or ironic. If sincere, Hume didn't think he had refuted design, only shown how little it establishes. That's arguably a stronger position than "answered".

    Helpful · 2

Against the thesis 3

  1. Aoife Brennan

    Against Fellow

    Against. I think Paley's argument is a different kind. Hume attacks an argument from analogy: the world resembles a machine, so it probably has a similar cause. But Paley doesn't need resemblance. He argues that the specific features of the watch, parts arranged so as to serve a purpose that none of them serves alone, are vastly more probable if there is a designer than if there isn't. That is an inference to the best explanation, and several philosophers have argued it escapes Hume's objections to analogy.

    Helpful · 1
  2. Omar Farouk

    Against Fellow

    Against the thesis, for a modern reason. Even if Hume answered Paley's biology, the fine-tuning argument works with physical constants, not organs. Philo's "order might arise from other causes" is weaker there, because the constants seem not to have been produced by any process at all. So it is worth asking which of Hume's objections still apply, and I think only the one about the designer's nature does.

    Helpful · 3
  3. Ignacio Fuenzalida

    Against Contributor

    Against, and from biology. What answered Paley was not Hume but Darwin. Hume only said order might have other causes; Darwin showed in detail how adaptive order arises from variation and selection. Paley's eye is a far better example than his watch, and natural selection explains it in a way Philo couldn't. Hume had the logic; Darwin had the mechanism.

    Helpful · 1

Other replies

  1. Imam Bilal Hussain

    Fellow

    Neither side quite fits my tradition. The Qurʾān repeatedly calls the heavens, the earth and the alternation of night and day "signs" (āyāt) for people who reflect. That is not Paley's inference from a watch. It is an invitation to see the world as already speaking of its Maker, more like reading than calculating. Hume's objections are aimed at an inference; I'm not sure they touch a sign.

  2. Alistair Gow

    Contributor

    I'll concede two points. Aoife is right that Paley's argument can be read as probabilistic, and Ignacio is right that it took a mechanism, not a critique, to change minds. Let me amend the thesis: Hume answered the analogy; he did not answer design, and Derek's Part XII shows Hume knew it. As a GP I should have remembered that diagnosing an error is not the same as treating it.

    Helpful · 2