Hume's Presence in the Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion by Fogelin Robert J.;

Author:Fogelin, Robert J.; [Fogelin, Robert J.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Oxford University Press, Incorporated
Published: 2017-06-22T00:00:00+00:00

This is all very strange. The matter at issue in section 11 of the Enquiry and part 11 of the Dialogues is whether the existence of a providential deity can be established on empirical grounds. The rather simple point of both discussions is that it is illicit to attempt to do so by extended empirical conclusions beyond their evidential base. Even if it is granted on empirical grounds that the deity is a member of the class of intelligent and designing agents, the nature of this deity remains underdetermined. If real, Lucifer would be a member of this class as well. The only way to resolve questions of this kind is to turn to the world and ask whether it, in fact, exhibits the hand of an intelligent creator at work, and, if so, what sort of deity the creation itself reveals? Priestley reverses the direction of the argument, in other words, by asking: “Assuming the existence of a powerful benevolent deity, how can we explain (or explain away) the appearance of evil in the world as we encounter it?” This pattern of argument, if it can be brought home, could prove the compatibility of the existence of a providential deity with the existence of evil in the world. Hume has Philo explicitly grant this possibility in part 9. It is a gross error that the same pattern of argument can be used to prove the existence of a providential deity.

Philo offers essentially the same response to Cleanthes’ claim that the world as we experience it exhibits the hand (or staff) of a finitely perfect deity. If such a deity exists, how would this finite (though great) goodness and power manifest itself? Philo lists a number of things that we might reasonably expect such a finite, though powerful, being could do to mitigate natural evils, even if this deity could not eliminate them all. Philo offers a shopping list of suggestions:

1. Guide our conduct using differences in degrees of pleasure rather than the difference between pleasure and pain. (11, 6)

2. Conduct the world without relying on general rules that seem “nowise necessary to a very perfect being.” (11, 7)

3. Let humans “be endowed with a greater propensity to industry and labor.” (11, 10)

4. Exercise better quality control to reduce the “inaccurate workmanship of all the springs and principles of the great machine of nature.” (11, 11)

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