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Logic problem (First Cause)

protovack

protovack

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This was a question on my logic homework last night, but it's kinda interesting anyway so I thought I'd ask how people would do this:

Hume makes an analogical argument against Paley's "Watchmaker" argument (That the universe had a maker).

He says, "True, the universe may be like a watch in that they both appear perfectly designed, but the universe is also like an animal. Both the universe AND animals are constructed in an orderly manner which preserves a cycle, for example, a animal lives and dies, and so does a star. Animals can create themselves, and thus, the universe probably created itself."

The task is, to refute Hume's analogy of the universe and animals in the strongest way possible. I thought that the best way to do this would be to find some crucial difference between animals and the universe which makes Hume's conclusion highly improbable...I.E the universe did not create itself.

Another problem is that the statement, "Animals create themselves" isn't explained. "Animals creating themselves" may not follow from the similarities Hume pointed out. Would this be an example of a false analogy?

The other problem (and I don't know why they do this in exercise problems), is that the analogical analysis of these types of arguments leads only to an unsolvable problem, that of infinite vs finite causation.
 
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Animals didn't create themselves. There's nothing more really to it. It's evolution from 1 celled organisms and bacteria and such.
 
Animals are a byproduct of plants. Plants are a byproduct of amino acids, the thermal radiation, and various other forms of radiation pelting the outer layers of these amino acids. In other words the Universe created us, and we couldn't possibly know what created the Universe, as there is evidence showing that the Universe never went through a "Big-Bang", and is much older than 13 billion years. We'll never know of course, until we can develop a computer powerful enough to do the calculations required.

Until then, make yourself a sandwich, you'll be here for a while.;)
 
Ok so howabout this:

There is a crucial difference between the universe and animals. We aren't comparing two concepts within the universe (itself a created concept), we are comparing one concept within the universe (the single universe we know of), to that universe itself. Therefore, the universe and animals are so totally different in that regard, that the comparison is ridiculous.
Animals arose from the universe's order and thus an animal obey's the same rules that everything else *within* the universe does. That is to say, animals are part of the causal chain of the unvierse. But surely the universe is not part of the causal chain of an animal. It is far more reasonable to assert that the universe caused the animal, than to say the animal caused the universe. For every animal that "creates" itself, a prior animal is required for the creation. Thus it is a contradiction to claim that for every universe that creates itself, a prior universe is required for the creation.
 
That was confusing. I'm not sure what you're looking for, but I think you are trying to say that a Universe can not create itself. I won't think it couldn't, but I'm not aware of what else there could be. I don't think anyone is. Perhaps the Universe has always existed. Just so massively large, that we couldn't even fathom the time with a Beowulf cluster of CRAY's in a thousand years, working exponentially with technological improvements.
 
I'm going to pretend I'm Hume here.
All of you have misinterpreted my argument. I did not mean to argue that each animal creates herself, but rather that, as we take a step back, nature shows itself to be cyclical in nature, animals reproducing each other. The individual elements of the universe, such as the stars, are locked in this cycle of being, of mutual determination through causal chains and of birth and death. thus, the universe is an agregate phenomenon wrought out of this continual cycle of being in much the same way as an ecosystem is wrought out of eating, fucking, and dying.

ebola
 
And now for something completely different...

Immanuel Kant was a real pissant
Who was very rarely stable.
Heidegger, Heidegger was a boozy beggar
Who could think you under the table.
David Hume could out-consume
Schopenhauer and Hegel,
And Wittgenstein was a beery swine
Who was just as schloshed as Schlegel.
There's nothing Nietzsche couldn't teach ya
'Bout the raising of the wrist.

John Stuart Mill, of his own free will,
On half a pint of shandy was particularly ill.
Plato, they say, could stick it away
Half a crate of whiskey every day.
Aristotle, Aristotle was a bugger for the bottle,
Hobbes was fond of his dram,
And Rene Descartes was a drunken fart:
"I drink, therefore I am"
Yes, Socrates, himself, is particularly missed;
A lovely little thinker but a bugger when he's pissed!
 
I'll accept that God is like a watch-maker. But a watchmaker surely does not produce a watch from pure reason or thin air. He relies on generations of watch-makers before him who have, over time, perfected the construction of the watch. The problem is then: what about unskilled watch-makers? Or perhaps watches that don't work very well? It seems to me that the product of your fascination, a watch, came about through trial and error. You claim that watches and universes are so similar as to warrant your conclusion that the universe was intelligently designed. Yet shouldn't the universe owe it's existence to trial-and-error as well?
 
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^^
I think you're extending the watchmaker analogy a little further than was intended :D The watchmaker analogy originally postulated that the existance of a watch implies a watchmaker since nothing as purposeful and organised could have arisen out of chaos.
The problem with the watchmaker analogy is that it over simplifies the development of the watch. There is no room for a stepwise development, only the spontaneous combination of materials to give a working timepiece.
Life didn't arise like that, of course. It started with simple, self replicating molecules, no more lifelike than a polystyrene cup. Through mutative cycles... most likely caused by lightning and cosmic rays, some of these molecules became better at replicating than others and so the story continues. Even now, all life is is the manifestation of these replicating molecules (called DNA). Everything but the DNA is there purely to help the DNA replicate. The fact that this 'everything' can have sex, build stuff, fly, grow shells and breathe water is purely because these abilities improve the possibility of its DNA replicating.
 
^^^ So is there something smaller or uknown to us, that could be just using the DNA to replicate *itself*? Or are we just pointing to something that quantum physics may discover?
 
That would be making statements you simply can not prove, and years from now they'll think of you as a drug induced idiot, and a fool.
 
Once a human clone is made, the jesus lovers won't have a purpose unless they start saying that the clone has a soul too.
 
ummm...why wouldn't a clone have a soul (assuming a person does)?
We already have tons of human clones-- they're called monozygotic twins.

ebola
 
If the christian god gives souls to clones, consider that his approval of cloning and stop bitching about it.
 
There's very little of value in western philosophy, but I can't resist...

The analogy really doesn't hold water. Animals are not their own creators. They arise from the rest of the universe and pass away into the rest of the universe. At no phase does the causal free will (if we allow that) of the animal cause itself to come into being; at best it causes it to remain in being. If we get causally recursive, we go to cells, then genes, then atoms, then subatomic particles, then energy. This animal-causing universe could easily be caused by an omnipotent creator lying outside creation who produces or injects this energy.

(Not that there is one, of course... much more accurate to say that both creator and experiencer are the energy if you ask me, though every description will ultimately fall short).
 
I think that hume wasn't talking about an animal creating itself out of its own free will but rather in the sense that evolution designed the animals according to what they did and what they needed. This would equate to the animal designing itself. It did what it does and by doing that it evolved into what it is. In that sense the universe is much like an animal, or life-form rather.

A good way to refute hume argument is to not refute it directly but simply point to the lack of evidence/knowledge of there even being an end or outside to the universe and then state that due to this lack of evidence/knowledge it is just as rational and possible that the universe is indeed "a watch" and it just had an immature or lesser creator who did not put enough effort into making it that great or perfect as it could have been.

Granted the universe seems to be pretty amazing and ordered, it still is not nearly as ordered as it could have been. Therefore if there was a "watchmaker" he would have had to be an amateur at best. This seems to be just as plausible as comparing the universe to an animal if not more.
 
Animals are created by the enviroment. Different traits and characteristics are adopted by animals and new animals evolve to suit their needs in enviroments.
 
Not quite. Creatures evolve not to suit their needs, but because occasionally a chance mutation will increase the animal's chance of survival.
The difference may seem purely semantic, but it's there nevertheless.
 
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