Next: About this document ...
Up: HUMA 11600, Winter 2004,
Previous: Instructions
- Pamphilus says: ``What truth is so obvious, so certain, as the
being of a God, which the most ignorant ages have
acknowledged, for which the most refined geniuses have ambitiously
striven to produce new proofs and arguments?'' (DNR,
p. 2). According to Hume's characters (or Hume himself, if you think
you can figure that out) and others we have read, what motivates
attempts (their own attempts, or the attempts of others) to prove that
God exists? Is it mainly ignorance and/or ambition, as Pamphilus seems
to suggest, or are there other motives? Do different motives imply or
require different types of proof? How do they affect what must be
proved--i.e., what is meant by ``God'' (and/or by ``exists'')?
- According to our sources, to what extent (if at all) can we
understand God's nature (what God is)? How does the way we know this
(if at all) compare with the way we know the nature of other things
(ourselves, other people, external bodies)? Would (or does) knowing
what God is help in proving that he exists, and if so how? (Note: one
way this comes up, though not the only way, is in discussions of the
ontological proof.) Is it (again, according to our sources) more pious
and/or more helpful to religion (as a human institution) to say that
we know God's nature, or that we don't? (Implied here, obviously: it
might or might not be pious/helpful to religion to say the
truth. Different authors/characters might disagree about this; also,
they might disagree about whether religion and piety are good things
or not.)
- What, according to our sources, is or should be the relationship
between philosophers and ``the vulgar''? (This is related to one of
the suggested topics for the first paper, though the contrast I
mentioned then was between the learned and the ignorant, which might
or might not be the same thing.) What kind of knowledge and/or belief
is possible for each (possibly including, but not necessarily limited
to, knowledge and/or belief about God)? To what kinds of deception
(including self-deception) are each particularly prone? What kind of
access, if any, do or should the vulgar have to the things known by
philosophers? (Do ``the vulgar'' possibly know some things that
philosophers don't?) What does this imply about the actual, possible,
and/or desirable role of philosophers in society? What does it imply
about the actual, possible, and/or desirable relationship between
philosophy and religion?
- Of these possible sources of human knowledge: the senses; logic
and/or reason and/or the intellect; imagination (i.e., in some way
producing or entertaining sense-like images which do not come directly
through the senses); reading authoritative texts, which (if any),
according to our authors, is useful in proving the existence and/or
determining the nature of God? What does this imply about the
relationship between knowledge of or about God and knowledge of or
about other things? (In particular: how, if at all, can knowledge of
one help or interfere with knowledge of the other?) (I've left ``other
things'' here deliberately vague. This could be pushed mostly in the
direction of God vs. corporeal/physical reality, but on the other
hand could also or instead involve our knowledge of ourselves, of
other people, of human society, of human history.)
- What, according to our authors and/or their characters, is the
relationship between belief and suffering? (I mean belief in general,
not just religious belief, but obviously religious belief might be an
important case.) Does suffering (or the fear of suffering) tend to
teach us the truth, or to deceive us? Conversely, does or can
knowledge help to alleviate suffering, or might it make things worse?
(Is ignorance itself, or knowledge itself, a form of suffering?)
- Philo says: ``All men of sound reason are disgusted with verbal
disputes, which abound so much in philosophical and theological
inquiries; and it is found that the only remedy for this abuse must
arise from clear definitions, from the precision of those ideas which
enter into any argument, and from the strict and uniform use of those
terms which are employed'' (DNR, p. 80). Would all of our
authors/characters agree with that? That is: (1) would they agree that
``verbal disputes''--disputes, let us say, about how certain words
should be used, or about what should be called what--are disgusting
(or at least uninteresting), and (2) if so, would they agree that the
(only) remedy is the one Philo describes? (Note that Philo himself
goes on to give examples where the ``remedy'' apparently won't work,
but it seems that those are supposed to be cases where--because there
is no ``remedy''--the whole argument is worthless.) If not, how can
disputes (or questions) about names actually be serious and/or
productive? (This is somewhat difficult; you may need to pay a lot of
attention to what certain authors do, rather than what they
explicitly say, and then conjecture--based on what they do say--as
to how they would justify their practices.)
- A topic from last time, but which might look different in light
of the Fourth and Sixth Meditations: comment on the
following statement: ``Things are deceptive, but nevertheless always
contain some truth.''1 In particular: Descartes and
Don Quixote (among others) are afraid of being deceived. According to
the authors we've read (including Descartes himself), are they right
to fear this? In what ways, according to them, are we liable to
deception (by our senses, by books, by other people, by God)? What
steps, if any, can be taken to head this off? How, if at all, might or
must potentially deceptive things (including, for example, but not
limited to: dreams, fictions, history, traditional philosophy, logical
arguments, the Bible, the sensible world, the Eucharist) nevertheless
yield truth if properly used and/or understood?
- (An ``anti-topic.'') I recommend against writing on
freedom of will, and in particular on the possible conflict between
freedom and divine foreknowledge and/or divine causation. However, if
you feel you must write about this, either on its own or as part of
one of the above topics, I urge you to think carefully about the
following (by which I mean, about our authors' views on the
following). (1) What exactly is supposed to happen in a rational being
when it ``freely chooses'' to do something? In particular, what, in
that case, is supposed to be the relationship between its prior state
(of belief, desire, etc.) and the action that follows? (2) What, if anything, is the relationship between acting freely and (a)
acting without outside influences; (b) possibly acting in one of two
different ways; (c) possibly acting wrongly? (3) What, if
anything, is the relationship between acting freely and knowing or
believing or understanding some good reasons for acting, and why? (4)
What, if anything, is the relationship between acting freely
and being responsible and/or potentially culpable for one's action,
and why?
Next: About this document ...
Up: HUMA 11600, Winter 2004,
Previous: Instructions
Abe Stone
2005-09-28