Philo's Argument Analysis

On June 6th 2015, Lee Siegel wrote an op-ed piece titled "Why I Defaulted on My Student Loans" which should cause one to wonder how the New York Times allowed such an irresponsible article to be published. Siegel encourages impressionable young students to take loans with the intent of defaulting. He gives advice, based off of a "moral" argument, to accumulate large debts and effectively steal from the government in order to pursue your dreams. Since when did pursuing one's dreams validate committing crimes? Siegel attempts to validate his irresponsible behavior through these types of faulty arguments.

The three main arguments that Crito said to convince Socrates to escape jail are Socrates’ responsible for his sons, the situation where his friends will help him escape, and the just and unjust. Crito argued that if Socrates’ decides to die, he’s just going to betray his sons. If Socrates’ won’t escape the jail, he will hurt Crito’s reputation.(Crito, 47c)

William Paley’s teleological argument (also known as the argument from design) is an attempt to prove the existence of god. This argument succeeds in proving that while existence was created by an aggregation of forces, to define these forces, as a conscious, rational, and ultimately godlike is dubious. Although the conclusions are valid, the argument makes several logical errors. The teleological argument relies on inductive reasoning, rendering the argument itself valid, but unsound. The argument fails to apply its own line of reasoning to itself, resulting in infinite regression. Beyond the scope of its logical flaws, the arguments content lacks accurate comparisons. The argument hinges on a

Due to the fact that A causes B then it is reasonable to infer that A causes C. Philo then offers an objection to Cleanthes’. He first states “If we see a

As an institutionalist, Steinmo has reflected his many perspectives on how the American government is reliant on institutions. While Steinmo does have a strong argument on how institutions impact the government, I believe culture plays a major role in the way our country runs. Steinmo’s argument that, “Much of American history can be and has been interpreted as a conflict over which set of values would hold force.” (Steinmo 1--) I believe this is a very accurate depiction of how conflicts have been resolved throughout history. Culture play a huge part into how people form their values, especially when noticing the differences between America and other countries.

In his third argument about arguing from mind to design, he states that using the mind as a representation is only a small part of universe (Paley, 1802, 197). For example, a watch must have had a watchmaker because such a complex idea and mechanism could not have just come from nature. A creator with prior knowledge of the watch must have created it. Therefore, the universe must have had a creator. This creator was God.

Some, such as Paley, aimed to defend this idea using teleological arguments. Such arguments insist on the existence of God by “attempting to identify features of the world that constitute evidence of intelligent design and inferring God’s existence as the best explanation for these features.” Paley compares a watch to living organisms by analogizing: “Watches are complex and good at doing their job (i.e. keeping time). Therefore, it is a result of intelligent design. Living organisms are complex and good at doing their job (i.e. surviving and reproducing). Therefore, they are a result of intelligent design.” Paley believes that if a watchmaker made a watch, then an intelligent designer made other elaborate things, such as the eye or flowers. A problem with this reasoning is that analogies are comparisons, not evidence. Comparing two not identical, but similar things does not make their conclusions equivalent; if one conclusion is true for one argument, it is not guaranteed to be true for the other. In this situation, concluding that a watch has an intelligent designer does not validate the notion that living organisms do as well. In rebuttal, theists attempt to thwart this with the theory of irreducible complexity, or the belief that some traits are too complex to have been produced by evolution’s slow step-by-step process. Similar to the watch, theists believe life is too complex to have been affected by evolution, and the best explanation for living organisms is that they are a result of intelligent

In this paper, I will examine the two arguments Socrates presents—the “mixed sensations” and “equal pleasures” arguments—and determine whether they succeed against Callicles’ position of what makes a person’s life “good”. My first argument reasserts Socrates’ conclusion that pleasure and “good” are independent of each other. My second argument contends that doing well cannot be quantified by balancing pleasure and pain. I will defend the arguments that Socrates utilizes against Callicles’ overly-hedonistic position.

The strength of this argument is how it uses god to explain the unexplainable since, we can never know for certain the beginning of time []. This argument however has a few flaws. The argument states that odd are initial cause and self-creating but, the premises stated nothing is self-creating; therefore god must have a cause. Rationally we should conclude if nothing is the cause of its own existence, god itself cannot just come into existence creating a finite four-dimension universe. This created some controversy and lead debates.

A design argument is more commonly know as a Teleological one, which is an argument for the existence of a creator or god “based on perceived evidence of deliberate design in the natural or physical world”.The argument has been discussed all the way back to the time of Socrates and Plato. In my essay I will be evaluating one argument put forward by a famous philosopher, in this case William Paley, an English clergyman born in 1743, in which he tries to show similarities in the design of nature and the design of man made artefacts.

In this essay I will argue what is Cleanthes’ strongest and most convincing argument in favour of Natural Religion. I will critically analyse each section of the argument and the responses made by Philo. I will also be evaluating the successfulness of both characters’ arguments and responses in order to arrive at a definitive conclusion on what is Cleanthes’ most convincing argument and whether or not I am in favour for it after considering Philo’s objections.

Some Abrahamic theists claim that the harmony of the universe is proof of an intelligent designer. This argument is known as the teleological argument and has evolved from classical philosophy to modern theology. In addition, subscribers of the Abrahamic religions also hold that God has attributes that include omniscience, omnipotence, and benevolence. Fundamentally, God is all knowing, all-powerful, and all good. In contrast, God created a perfect universe that is in harmony, but occasionally practices miracles. Can the teleological argument, miracles, and God’s attributes coexist in a rational universe? This essay’s goal is to demonstrate that

The article by Michael Binyon and the cartoon by Tom Toles make the claim that President Obama did not deserve to win a Nobel Peace Prize at the beginning of his presidency. Toles and Binyon share similar viewpoint, so they approach the subject in similar ways. Both of the speakers describe President Obama’s lack of accomplishments at the time he received the award. They both appear to pose strong arguments about this subject; however, the article by Michael Binyon seems to be stronger than the cartoon. Even though both provide effective arguments about the topic, “Comment: Absurd Decision on Obama Makes a Mockery of the Nobel Peace Prize” seems to pose the strongest argument because Michael Binyon was able to develop his claim and effectively impact his audience using background information, evoking strong emotions, and comparing President Obama to deserving winners of the past.

Firstly, we shall focus on the Design (or to use its philosophically technical term, the teleological argument). There are numerous variants of the Design argument, however we shall be focusing on Paley’s version (reference 1) of this theory. Paley’s version of the Design argument is based upon the idea that by looking around at certain features of the world (for example an inanimate object like a rock or say a living creature like dolphin or a person like myself) and theorising that they are too complex and intricate to randomly just manifest. They must have been created by a higher, more intelligent power and thus, if this is accepted as being so, then this proves beyond doubt that God exists.

Sir Thomas Aquinas and William Paley present two arguments for the existence of God. Aquinas defines God as omnibenevolent (all good) for his argument, and he continues in “The Five Ways” to present arguments to prove God’s existence (Rosen et al. 11). Paley, on the other hand, primarily defines God as a designer worthy of our admiration for his work (Rosen et al. 27). During class discussion, defining God involved three major qualities: omnipotence, omniscience, and omnibenevolence. Both Aquinas and Paley are attempting to prove the existence of the (Christian) God associated with these qualities. Although Aquinas’s “Cosmological Argument” and Paley’s “Argument from Design” have different premises, both have a similar logical gap in their