382 NOTES21 The strategy here is called Conditional Proof. You assume that P, show that P plus a set
of truths entails Q, and conclude If P then Q.
22 Let P = possibly,P; Cx = x corrupts. Then another way of stating the criticism is this:
Aquinas shifts quantifiers illegitimately, going from: A = (x)Cx to B = *(x)Cx.
23 Let Ex/t = x exists at t; (Et) = there is a t. Then the criticism is that Aquinas illegitimately
goes from: D = (x)(Et) not-Ex/t to E = (Et)(x) not-Ex/t.
24 The Fourth Way is a variety of the moral argument for God’s existence, and we will look
at it briefly when we consider religion and morality.
25 It does not follow that being morally perfect is, like being omnipotent and omniscient,
an essential property of God. One might (Noel Hendrickson did) suggest that only
always wanting very badly to exist would be just as good for these purposes as being
morally perfect. This is a property a morally imperfect being might well have. I leave
working out the answer to this objection as an exercise for the reader.
26 Here, “God” is being used as a name, not a definite description.
27 ST Ia 15 2 suggests the possibility of the reading that we do not give here.
28 Aquinas is criticized for making an inference from A to B below:
A. Every generable thing is such that an intelligent agent directs it to seek its
own flourishing.
B. There is an end that all generable beings together are directed to seek.On the present reading, no such inference is required.
29 Sacred Books, Vol. 48, pp. 170–1.
30 Ibid., 165 – cf. p. 171 that notes that intelligent agents whom we observe to cause things
also have emotions – “are connected with pleasure and the like.”
31 Ramanuja thinks of the world as God’s body, but a body that depends on God for its
existence, in contrast to human bodies in relation to human minds.
32 Ibid., p. 173.
33 Ibid.
34 After an introductory first section, sections 2 through 8 of the Dialogues deal with a
dialogue concerning the argument from design. Section 9 deals with an argument that
is a mix of the ontological and cosmological arguments, sections 10 and 11 with the
problem of evil, and section 12 with natural religion. The present author has discussed
all of these issues in Hume’s philosophy in Hume’s “Inexplicable Mystery”: His Views
on Religion (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1988).
35 Two points: there is also a version of the argument that has as a premise the orderliness
of the physical world as a whole, rather than the orderliness of particular sorts of natural
objects; the fact that we can change the sort of order we find in nature by selective
breeding in no way discounts the fact that we did not bring about the order that makes
such breeding possible. Both varieties of the argument are discussed further in Hume’s
“Inexplicable Mystery.”
11 Monotheism and religious experience
1 Using “a holy, powerful being” as a brief description of the content of monotheistic
religious experiences.
2 For other examples, see Sir Alister Hardy, The Spiritual Nature of Man (Oxford: Clarendon
Press, 1979).
3 And, of course, claims logically entailed by those claims.
4 A fact that is curiously ignored by those who have discussed the similar principle.