Where the Conflict Really Lies: Science, Religion, and Naturalism (31 page)

Paley devotes special attention to the eye, which he compares in detail to a telescope.

Now there are several ways in which this argument can be taken. Hume, for example, in his famous criticism of the argument in his
Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion
, sometimes seems to take it as an argument from analogy: the “contrivances of nature” resemble the contrivances of human beings; the latter are designed; therefore probably the former are too. At other times Hume seems to construe it as a straightforward inductive argument: all the things that exhibit “that curious adaptation of means to ends” which are such that we have been able to determine whether they are the product of design,
are
the product of design: therefore probably all things that exhibit that feature are the product of design; the contrivances of nature exhibit that feature; therefore probably they are the product of design.
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It can also be formulated as a so-called inference to the best explanation; roughly speaking, the argument taken this way claims that design, perhaps divine design, is the best explanation for various features—in particular biological systems—of the natural world. Paul Draper understands it this way, and states it as follows:

1. Some natural systems (e.g., the human eye) are mechanically ordered (i.e., they exhibit the same sort of order as watches and other machines produced by human beings).

2. Intelligent design is a very good explanation of mechanical order.

3. No other explanation (or no equally good explanation) of mechanical order is available.

4. Every instance of mechanical order has an explanation.

So,

5. Some natural systems were (probably) designed.
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There are still other ways of putting the argument. In the last chapter we saw that fine-tuning arguments can be stated in Bayesian fashion, as employing antecedent probabilities, but also as likelihood arguments, which eschew antecedent probabilities; Paley’s argument too can be stated these two ways.

Taken any of these ways, however, what we have is a discursive argument, something with premises and a conclusion. But there is a wholly different way of thinking about this alleged argument. To appreciate this different way, suppose we make a brief detour. Consider our knowledge of other persons, in particular our knowledge of their mental states. I sometimes know of another that she is bored, resentful, or euphoric, that she believes that Berlin, Michigan is smaller than Berlin, Germany, that she intends to go to graduate school, believes in God, accepts Darwinism, and the like. How do I know these things? One traditional suggestion is that I know them by way of inference or argument of some kind. Perhaps I know about others by way of an analogical argument (note the connection with Paley’s argument taken as an analogical argument): when I’m in a certain mental state, for example, pain, I behave in a certain way—writhing and screaming, perhaps.
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I see someone else, more exactly
another human body, writhing and screaming, and conclude that there is a self connected with that body, a self that is in pain. Alternatively, perhaps the argument is an inference to the best explanation; the best explanation I can think of for the bodily phenomena I perceive is that the body is animated by a mind with the mental properties in question.

The fact is, though, we don’t come to believe these things in those ways. As Thomas Reid puts it,

No man thinks of asking himself what reason he has to believe that his neighbour is a living creature. He would be not a little surprised if another person should ask him so absurd a question; and perhaps could not give any reason which would not equally prove a watch or a puppet to be a living creature.

But, though you should satisfy him of the weakness of the reasons he gives for his belief, you cannot make him in the least doubtful. This belief stands upon another foundation than that of reasoning; and therefore, whether a man can give good reasons for it or not, it is not in his power to shake it off.
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Surely Reid is right? We don’t in fact come to hold these beliefs by way of argument. I look at Paul and say to myself “Oh, oh, he’s furious again—what have I done this time?” thus forming the belief that he is furious again. Do I form this belief by way of a quick but tacit induction, or an application of an analogical argument from premises involving the proposition that he looks a certain way, and when
I
look that way I am ordinarily furious? Clearly not. First, it seems that I don’t ordinarily form any belief (any explicit belief, anyway) at all as
to how Paul is looking: I move directly to the view that he is furious. Perhaps I
could
form such a belief: but typically I don’t. I don’t form a belief about how Paul looks and sounds (“his brow is knit; his eyes are narrowed to slits; his mouth is wide open; loud noises of such and such timber and pitch emanate therefrom”). And even if I did form such a belief, it would be far too crude to play the role of a premise in a decent analogical argument: any such description would fail to distinguish the way he looks from a thousand other ways which do not warrant the belief that he is furious.

Further, I sometimes ascribe to others emotions I have seldom if ever experienced myself; I could hardly do this on the basis of simple analogical reasoning from correlations between behavior and mental states in my own case. Moreover, much of the relevant behavior is such that I
can’t
observe it in my own case: facial expression, for example, is extremely important, and I typically can’t observe what sort of facial expressions I am presenting to the world. Of course we have mirrors; but our ancestors, prior to the advent of mirrors, no doubt sometimes knew that someone else was angry or in pain.
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And we ourselves form these beliefs without adverting to mirrors; how many of us carry a mirror, or (when in the grip of strong emotion) remember to consult it in order to establish correlations between mental states and facial expressions?

No doubt we come to beliefs about the mental states of others on the basis, somehow, of perception of their behavior: but not by way of an analogical or inductive inference from what we have observed
about the connection between those bodily states and those mental states in our own case; if we did, our beliefs would not be well-founded and would certainly not constitute knowledge.
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Small children apparently form beliefs about the mental states of their parents long before they come to the age at which they make inductive inferences. The capacity for this sort of belief formation is not something one gains by inductive learning; it is instead part of our native and original cognitive equipment.
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We might put it by saying that we form beliefs of this sort in the basic way, not on the evidential basis of other beliefs, other propositions we believe. That is to say, we don’t form these beliefs on the basis of inference. It is rather that we are hard-wired, as they say, to form these beliefs in certain experiential circumstances.

This account of belief formation is not, of course, restricted to beliefs about other minds. The same goes for beliefs about the past. I remember what I had for breakfast: Irish oatmeal; and of course I take it that my having breakfast was in the past. I don’t form this belief—that it was in the
past
that I had breakfast—on the basis of any arguments: I simply remember it, which automatically involves the idea of the past, and automatically refers the event in question to the past. Indeed, it is exceedingly hard to see how I
could
acquire the thought that there are past events by way of an argument. What would be the premises? The same goes for perception: I look out the window and form the belief that the trees in my backyard are turning green. I don’t ordinarily form this belief on the basis of an inference (the
trees look as if they are turning green; usually, when things look that way they
are
turning green; therefore…). Instead, I form this belief in the basic way; I have been forming perceptual beliefs in this way ever since I was a small child, and the same, I daresay, goes for you.

How we form these beliefs is important along several different dimensions, but it is particularly relevant to the question how much warrant, or justification, or positive epistemic status the beliefs in question have. Based on a tenuous analogical inference or a speculative explanatory conjecture, these beliefs wouldn’t have anything like the degree of warrant or positive epistemic status they actually do have; this basis wouldn’t warrant anything like the degree of confidence we actually invest in them. They would then be more like risky conjectures or guesses than beliefs that are solidly grounded and can indeed constitute knowledge. On the other hand, if they are formed in the basic way, then they might very well constitute knowledge. For suppose (as seems to me to be true) that a belief
B
has
warrant
, that property or quantity enough of which is what distinguishes mere true belief from knowledge, just if
B
is formed by cognitive faculties functioning properly in the sort of environment for which we were designed (by God or evolution) according to a design plan successfully aimed at the production of true beliefs.
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Then if these beliefs about external objects, or the past, or the mental states of others are formed in the basic way, they could certainly constitute knowledge. And this is so even if there aren’t any very good arguments for them. This sort of belief formation is not a result of movement from one set of beliefs (premises) to another (conclusion), but from a set of circumstances (being appeared to a certain way, for example) to a belief.

Now suppose we return to Paley’s so-called design argument. Hume takes such arguments to be inductive or analogical; Draper
takes Paley’s version to be an argument to the best explanation. But there is a quite different way of interpreting it: this so-called design inference isn’t a matter of inference or argument at all. I encounter something that looks designed and form the belief that it is designed: perhaps this isn’t a matter of argument at all (anymore than in the case of perception or other minds). In many cases, so the thought goes, the belief that something or other is a product of design is not formed by way of inference, but in the basic way; what goes on here is to be understood as more like
perception
than like
inference
.
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Paley himself suggests something along these lines: “When we come to inspect the watch,” he says, “we perceive—what we could not discover in the stone—that its several parts are framed and put together for a purpose.”
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We
perceive
this, he says: we don’t
argue
to this conclusion, or infer it. William Whewell (1794–1866) makes a similar proposal: “When we collect design and purpose from the arrangements of the universe, we do not arrive at our conclusion by a train of deductive reasoning, but by the conviction which such combinations as we perceive, immediately and directly impress upon the mind.”
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We don’t arrive at the conclusion by a train of deductive reason; rather there is an immediate and direct impression. Whewell speaks of “deductive reason” here; no doubt he wasn’t thinking of deductive arguments in particular, but of arguments more generally, whatever their form. Indeed, Darwin himself sometimes seems to acquiesce in the same conclusion. The Duke of Argyle recounts a conversation he had with Darwin a year before Darwin died:

I said to Mr. Darwin with reference to some of his own remarkable works on the
Fertilisation of Orchids
,… and various other
observations he made of the wonderful contrivances for certain purposes in nature—I said it was impossible to look at these without seeing that they were the effect and the expression of Mind. I shall never forget Mr. Darwin’s answer. He looked at me very hard and said, “Well, that often comes over me with overwhelming force; but at other times” and he shook his head vaguely, adding “it seems to go away.”
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This idea comes over him “with overwhelming force”: that sounds more like something in the neighborhood of perception than the result of an argument.

This is a sensible (perhaps even compelling) way to understand Paley.
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Taking him this way, we should no longer think of what he writes in these chapters as the provision of an argument, whether inductive, or analogical, or an inference to the best explanation, or whatever. But then what
is
he doing? At least two things. Sometimes he is calling attention to the sorts of beliefs we do in fact find ourselves forming, or inclined to form: “When we come to inspect the watch,” he says, “we perceive—what we could not discover in the stone—that its several parts are framed and put together for a purpose.”
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In this context he then asks us to note or remember that there is that same movement of the mind in the case of “the contrivances of nature.”
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Other times what he seems to be doing can perhaps be described as putting us in the sorts of situations in which design beliefs are in fact
formed, as when he describes the exquisite and enormously articulate structure of the eye, with its many parts that fit together in such a way that they cannot function without each other:

Knowing as we do what an eye comprehends, namely, that it should have consisted, first, of a series of transparent lenses—very different, even in their substance, from the opaque materials of which the rest of the body is, in general at least, composed, and with which the whole of its surface, this single portion of it excepted, is covered: secondly, of a black cloth or canvas—the only membrane in the body which is black—spread out behind these lenses, so as to receive the image formed by pencils of light transmitted through them; and placed at the precise geometrical distance at which, and at which alone, a distinct image could be formed, namely, at the concourse of the refracted rays: thirdly, of a large nerve communicating between this membrane and the brain; without which, the action of light upon the membrane, however modified by the organ, would be lost to the purposes of sensation.
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