Philosophy 1

First Paper Assignment

The Argument from Design

Suppose you and Max are walking across a heath in an unknown area and stumble over a brand-new radio still in the box. Batteries are included. Without turning the dial at all, you switch on the radio and immediately the sweet sound of bluegrass music comes out. As you try turning the dial, however, you find that you can’t pick up any other stations at all but only static. Max concludes that the best explanation of the current evidence is that there must be a great number of other radios like this one, though unseen by you, with their dials all randomly set and that the radio you picked up was set to the bluegrass station just by chance. He defends this claim by arguing that this hypothesis is more likely than the hypothesis that this is the only such radio and that it was set only by chance. In 500 words, (1) state Max’s argument precisely, (2) offer the best criticism you can of Max’s argument, and then (3) offer the best response you can on Max’s behalf.

Paper is due at the start of discussion section, Friday, April 11.