Copleston & Russell (1948) "THE BBC DEBATE"
Part 1
Part 1
Sound recording of this part of the debate
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The BBC Debate was between religious believer F.C. Copleston and agnostic non-believer Bertrand Russell. The debate was in three sections, but only the first two form the extract in the Edexcel Anthology.
In this section, Copleston proposes an argument for the existence of God based on contingency and necessity. Russell responds by arguing that expecting the universe to have a cause doesn't make any sense. |
Copleston isn't alone in drawing this conclusion. Karl Marx felt the same way. It's a common idea in Marxism that the ruling classes impose their own (selfish and self-serving) ideas about morality on the rest of us, with the help of their cronies in politics, education and the media. Marxists call this ruling class notion of good and evil "ideology" and they use it to explain why poor people who are oppressed by rich people still think it's morally wrong to steal, rebel or even question their bosses.
Copleston is laying another little trap for Russell here. Russell famously held some Left-wing views (he was a pacifist and a conscientious objector during the First World War) so he might be tempted to agree with Copleston (and Karl Marx) that a world where the ruling class could impose their values on everyone else would be a bad idea. |
In Back To The Future (1985), Marty McFly (Michael J. Fox) must go back in time to make sure his parents meet and fall in love, otherwise he will be "erased from existence" - a great illustration of contingency.
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This video illustrates contingency in another way: what would happen if all the oxygen in the world disappeared for just 5 seconds? Your inner ear exploding would be the least of your problems....
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if a + b = c
then c - b = a
Hesperus is Phosphorus - Saul Kripke Hesperus is the Evening Star that appears in the night sky after sunset; Phosphorus is the morning star that appears in the night sky before sunrise. People used to think they were two different stars, but we now know they are both in fact the planet Venus.
So "Hesperus is Phosphorus" is an a posteriori statement that tells the listener a fact (the two 'stars' are really Venus) but it's also analytical (they're both different names for the same thing). This would seem to be a good example of a statement which is analytic but not a tautology. |
Colorless green ideas sleep furiously - Noam Chomsky
Alfred North Whitehead was famous for his philosophy of logic and mathematics, but also for proposing Process Theology, which is the belief that God is an evolving part of the world rather than a transcendent Creator. It's a bit odd for Copleston to bring Whitehead in as an ally. Although Whitehead believes in God, he believes in a very different sort of God from the God of Roman Catholicism that Copleston (a Catholic priest) believes in. In fact, Whitehead's Process God isn't a Necessary Being at all, doesn't explain the contingent universe and isn't transcendent.
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Russell is trying to turn this into a debate about the Ontological Argument. This makes philosophical sense.
If Russell can show that the concept of aseity (Necessary Existence) is contradictory or senseless, then Copleston's argument from Contingency collapses.
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Copleston thinks that would NOT be a sufficient explanation. It would only be a "partial explanation" although he admits it would work "for practical purposes".
A Sufficient Reason would have to involve explaining who struck the match and why, where they got the matches and the matchbox from - and perhaps why sulphur reacts to friction the way it does by producing a flame. That would be "a total explanation to which nothing further could be added". |
You're looking for something which can't be got, and which one ought not to expect to get - Bertrand Russell
nothing takes place without a sufficient reason - Gottfried Leibniz
As a student, you must make up your own mind about whether Russell is right to dismiss the search for a "total explanation" for things. Of course, we can 'get by' with proximate explanations. If you asked me how my flatscreen TV works, I could mutter a few things about digital signals but I'd soon have to shrug and say, 'Well, I point the remote at it and press a button!' I'm clueless about microwave ovens and mobile phones too. I settle for very proximate explanations of these things and I get by just fine with proximate explanations. But maybe I should be more curious. Maybe I should find out how these things actually work. Maybe I should be more like Copleston and seek a sufficient explanation.
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OK, this isn't a Sufficient Reason - it's just a complicated proximate reason for TVs and I'm already confused.
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Then there's food. If you ask me where my food comes from, I'd probably say, 'The supermarket!' which is a very proximate explanation. Perhaps I should be more curious.
Should I 'source' my food, find out where it comes from, the farming practices that go on there, how much the farm workers are paid, whether its ethical and humane? Some people do this: they are 'ethical consumers' or believers in healthy nutrition and they seek a sufficient explanation of where their food comes from... and they often stop shopping at supermarkets as a result. |
Copleston repeats his idea that 'the universe' is just the sum total of all the things in existence. He uses the analogy of chocolates. He suggests that can ask where a piece of chocolate comes from. We can also ask where an entire box of chocolates comes from. If we had an infinite amount of chocolates, we could ask where THEY come from. This means, we can ask where the universe comes from: what is its Sufficient Reason?
Wait - what? Infinite chocolates?
If that made your heart beat faster, check out the infinite chocolate trick in the video - and how it doesn't really give you infinite chocolates after all. |
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Russell and Copleston briefly discuss the French philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre. Sartre was an EXISTENTIALIST who believed that, in a world without God, humans had to create their own meanings for things. Sartre describes the universe as "gratuitous" - a word that means 'unnecessary' but Sartre is using it to mean 'pointless' as well.
Russell is reluctant to agree entirely with Sartre's existentialist views, but he puts it in his own way with a very famous line: |
I should say that the universe is just there, and that's all - Bertrand Russell
Jean-Paul Sartre is one of the 20th century's more baffling philosophers. He seemed to delight in making his writings poetical and obscure, often using words in odd, new ways. Sartre describes the universe as "absurd" and human existence as "forlorn" and "abandoned". To Sartre human life is an "unhappy consciousness," a "useless passion".
You can imagine why Russell might be a bit reluctant to come out and say 'I agree with Sartre'. Sartre's views sound really gloomy and he's never been popular (or well-understood) by English-speaking philosophers. Nonetheless, Russell does agree with Sartre about the universe as a brute fact. He just wouldn't go as far as Sartre in saying that all life is absurd and useless.
'Would you agree with Sartre...?' is another one of Copleston's little traps, but Russell has avoided it. |
What I miss from Russell's response to Copleston is any sense of his ever having wondered at the existence of the universe - any sense of his ever having been deeply moved by the fact that anything exists at all - Peter Coghlan
Critics of Russell say he is making a mistake too: his mistake is the "Taxicab Fallacy". What Russell is doing is accepting the principle that you can look for explanations of things all the way - until we get to the universe itself. Then Russell changes his mind and jumps out, like a taxi customer jumping out of the cab before being asked to pay the fare. But why not go all the way?
Science is not a taxi-cab that we can get in and out of whenever we like - Arthur Schopenhauer |
Russell replies to Copleston's claim that scientific research ASSUMES the existence of causes or explanations. Russell thinks that scientists HOPE to find causes or explanations, but they don't assume that they are there. He gives the example of a gold-prospector looking for gold in the mountains. This person might find gold or might not, but he doesn't assume there's got to be gold there.
Russell suggests a scientist may look for a cause or explanation, but might not find one and must then give up. He doesn't think that being a scientist involves assuming that there must be a cause or explanation out there somewhere. |
You might find Russell's argument a bit strained here. Copleston's point about always assuming there is a cause or rational explanation for things sounds like common sense. You might remember those old episodes of Scooby Doo where the ghostly goings-on look supernatural but somebody (usually Velma) says, "There must be a rational explanation for this!" - and she's right, there always is a rational explanation and the 'ghost' turns out to be a man in a mask.
Russell seems to be saying Velma has no business expecting a rational explanation. She can look for a man in a mask - but it could be a ghost and she should be prepared to accept that. This doesn't sound like what Velma (or any self-respecting scientist) does in a situation like this. |
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Copleston later commented on Russell's argument like this:
If one refused to sit at the chess board and make a move, one cannot, of course, be checkmated - F.C. Copleston If you support Copleston's argument, then it does seem as if Russell is refusing to engage with the argument at all. This supports the idea that Russell is being 'dogmatic' by clinging to a rather extreme position on logic and science and refusing to discuss alternatives.
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