Week 9 · Readings & resources

Week 9 — Readings & Resources

Introduction to Philosophy Free sample edition

Your primary reading is Chapter 9 (in this module). Everything below is the optional, go-deeper layer — pick what helps, skip the rest.

How to use this page

This page has 9 items (5 readings and 4 videos). Allow 72–92 minutes for everything. Each group points back to the matching chapter section and class-session segment, so use the full menu when you want more depth, or take the quick path below.

Every video here has captions: turn them on with the CC button in the player. The chapter covers the same ideas in text.

Pick-one quick path (20–24 min total)

① Proving God from an idea

Chapter 9, Section “State the ontological argument from an idea” · Session 1, Segment 2, “The ontological argument and the island” · Remember: the ontological argument starts from an idea alone, so it is a priori, and the island tests whether its pattern proves too much.

Proslogium, Chapter II, by Anselm, translated by Sidney Norton Deane — Wikisource — the short chapter where the argument appears, in Deane's public-domain English; the words are the translator's, since Anselm wrote in Latin. It is written as a prayer, and it borrows a line from the Psalms about someone who denies that God exists; the course calls no one a fool, so read it for the steps. Find the line about a being than which nothing greater can be conceived, then the painter who has a picture in mind before painting it, and match each step to the chapter's standard form. This builds on Week 5's work with a priori and a posteriori: no step reports an observation. (reading, 3–5 min)
The Ontological Argument (Argument for the Existence of God) — Philosophy Vibe — a seven-minute animated debate in which one speaker sets out Anselm's argument by comparing a pencil that exists only in the mind with a real one, and the other presses it with the lost island, which the video credits to a monk named Gaunilo. The first speaker replies that an island could fail to exist while the greatest possible being could not, and then adds a version the video credits to Descartes, which compares God's existence to a triangle's three sides. The objector answers with a point the video credits to Kant, that existence is not a predicate, and one it credits to Aquinas, that no one can be sure of having the right idea of God; treat those names as the video's own, since Chapter 9 states the objections without crediting them. Early on a speaker repeats the line Anselm borrows from the Psalms, calling anyone who denies God a fool; the course calls no one a fool. The video ends with one speaker's verdict that the argument does not prove God's existence, which is his view; the course keys no verdict. (video, 7 min) (captions: automatic)

② A first cause for a chain of causes

Chapter 9, Section “State the cosmological argument from Aquinas's first three ways” · Session 1, Segment 3, “The cosmological argument from Aquinas's first three ways” · Remember: the cosmological argument starts from observed change and causes, so it is a posteriori, and its defenders and critics dispute whether a chain of causes could go back forever.

Summa Theologica, Part I, by Thomas Aquinas, translated by the Fathers of the English Dominican Province — Project Gutenberg — the whole First Part in the Dominican translators' English, free to read online. Search it for the words five ways to find the passage where they begin, then read the first three of them, from motion, from causes, and from possibility and necessity; notice the staff that moves only because the hand moves it. Right before the five ways, the text raises an objection from evil, which you meet again this week as the problem of evil. The fourth and fifth ways, and everything after them, go beyond this week. (reading, 10–15 min)
The Cosmological Argument (Argument for the Existence of God) — Philosophy Vibe — an eleven-minute animated debate between two speakers that sets out Aquinas's ways from motion, causation, and contingency, adds a principle of sufficient reason it credits to Leibniz, and then presses the argument with two objections it credits to Hume and Russell, that what holds for the parts need not hold for the whole and that the universe may be a brute fact. A later section on whether the past can be infinite goes beyond this week. The video ends on the defender's side, and its claims that science has proven the universe began, and that the ways prove God, are the speakers' own; the course keys no verdict. (video, 11 min) (captions: automatic)

③ Does order show a designer?

Chapter 9, Section “Judge the design argument for strength, then meet Hume” · Session 2, Segment 4, “The watch on the heath, Hume's objections, and the problem of evil” · Remember: the design argument is an argument from analogy judged for strength, and Hume presses it with a weak analogy and with order that would not show one perfect, living designer.

Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion, Part 2 — Hume Texts Online — Hume's own text, in a free scholarly edition, published after his death. In this part one speaker, Cleanthes, compares the whole world to one great machine and argues by analogy to a designer; another, Philo, answers that the analogy weakens the further the cases differ, and asks whether we can learn about a whole from one of its parts, as from the growth of a hair to the birth of a person. Read from Cleanthes' machine paragraph to the end of Philo's reply, and keep in mind that the speakers' views are characters' views in a dialogue. The opening exchange about the nature of God goes beyond this week. (reading, 15–20 min)
Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion, Part 5 — Hume Texts Online — a shorter part in which Philo pushes the analogy further: if like effects prove like causes, the world's maker need not be infinite, perfect, single, or still living, since a ship may be built by many hands and improved over many failed tries. Match each of Philo's points to Hume's second objection in Chapter 9. Use it while working through the Week-9 module overview. The Latin lines quoted from older writers can be skipped. (reading, 8–12 min)
Hume's Objections to the Teleological Argument — Carneades.org — a five-minute explainer on Hume's objections to the design argument, which it calls the teleological argument: that the world is more like a living thing than a machine, so the analogy is weak; that chance could also explain order; that even a successful argument would show a designer of great but limited power, perhaps one of several, with natural evils such as disease pointing to an imperfect one; and that a designer with a humanlike mind would by the same reasoning need a designer too. Match the first and third points to Hume's two objections in Chapter 9; the others go beyond this week. The speaker's own view, that the step from a designer to God is poorly supported, is one side of an open debate, and the course keys no verdict. (video, 5 min) (captions: automatic)
Design Argument for the Existence of God EXPLAINED — Philosophy In Use — a seven-minute narrated explainer that starts with Aquinas's fifth way and an archer directing an arrow, then gives Paley's watch analogy, and then the main criticisms, including evolution, Hume, and the objection that design is an argument from ignorance, before a reply from the design side. It calls Paley an eighteenth-century writer; Chapter 9 dates Natural Theology to 1802. Its summary of Hume, that natural causes could produce complex order, is not the pair of objections Chapter 9 gives from the Dialogues, so use the chapter's two. In its middle section, on fine-tuning and DNA, the narrator argues the design side in their own voice; that is one side's case, it goes beyond this week, and the course keys no verdict. (video, 7 min) (captions: automatic)

Optional one-stop reference (free online reference)

The Problem of Evil, sections 1.1 and 1.2: Relevant Concepts of God; Incompatibility Formulations versus Inductive Formulations — online Encyclopedia of Philosophy (reference entry) — read section 1.1, on the concept of God the argument targets, and section 1.2, which separates the deductive version, that God and evil cannot both exist, from the evidential version, that evil makes God's existence unlikely; this matches Chapter 9's logical and evidential problems of evil. Stop here before the later sections on theodicies and religious responses; next week turns to whether morality depends on God. (reading, 6–10 min)

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