Lecture 3 – Paley’s argument from design
20 September 2005

Paley:  The order, complexity, etc. of a watch would lead one who found it to ask two questions:  Who made it? And, What’s its purpose?  The order, complexity, etc. of the universe should, by parity of reasoning, lead us to ask the same questions about the universe.  That is, the similarities between watches and universes should lead us (if we’re being consistent) to treat the universe as the product of design.

8 objections/responses given by Paley:
1.	Obj.:  We are ignorant of how the world could have been made.  Reply:  We are also (most of us) ignorant of how watches are made, but this doesn’t lessen our conviction that they’re made.
2.	Obj.:  The universe cannot be an artifact because it is imperfect.  Reply:  A poorly-designed or broken watch is no less obviously an artifact that a well-designed/intact one.
3.	Obj.:  The universe has parts that don’t seem to have a function.  Reply:  If we found a watch with some useless parts, we should be no less inclined to regard it as an artifact.
4.	Obj.:  The universe could be the product of chance events/chance variations (think:  statistical mechanics or the biological theory of evolution).  Reply:  We wouldn’t venture an explanatory hypothesis of this kind about a watch, so why do so about the universe?
5.	Obj.:  The universe could immanently contain its own “principle of order” (think:  Aristotle’s formal cause).  Reply:  I (Paley) don’t even know what you mean when you say this.
6.	Obj.:  The apparent order in the universe is no proof that the universe actually is orderly, purposeful, etc.  All it proves is that we perceive it to be that way.  Reply:  Paley doesn’t give much of a reply to this.  He just says that one would be surprised to hear this said of a watch.
7.	Obj.:  The universe could be orderly because of the laws of nature.  Reply:  Laws themselves are not agents or causes.  They can’t bring about order in the universe.  They are just descriptions of regularities, those regularities caused by something more robust than laws.
8.	Obj.:  We can’t begin to understand anything at all about the matter.  Reply:  This is disingenuous.  We may be ignorant of much, but we also know much that is relevant to the question.  “The consciousness of knowing a little need not beget a distrust of that which [one] does know.”

Two larger and more difficult objections that Paley does not here address:
1.	Anthropomorphism.
•	We need to be careful that we are not just projecting human experience onto a universe that is in many ways unlike that experience.
•	Related to this:  the dangers of teleological thinking.
2.	Analogy.
•	Analogy more suitable for illustration than for proof.
•	Some analogies are stronger than others.