Aither is a double-blind peer review, Open Access online academic journal. It is indexed at ERIH+ and Scopus. It is published by the Faculty of Arts of the Palackż University in Olomouc in cooperation with the Philosophical Institute of the Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic. It comes out twice a year. Every second issue is international and contains foreign-language articles (mainly in English, but also in German and French). The journal is registered under the number ISSN 1803-7860.

Aither 26/2021 (International issue no. 9):42-59 | DOI: 10.5507/aither.2022.002

David Hume on the Deductive Proofs of the Divine Existence in the Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion

Sanchari Bhowmik
Palackż University Olomouc

The article aims at critically exploring David Hume’s analysis of the divine being with respect to the widely accepted cosmological argument. Part IX of Hume’s work in the Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion reflects the formulation of the cosmological argument in the form of a deductive proof through the voice of a character named Demea. The author then counters Demea’s version of this argument through the voice of his next important character named Cleanthes. The main purpose of the paper is the reconstruction of the proofs in a form amenable to logical analysis in propositional logic which demonstrates that all of the proofs can be given a valid form. This
reconstruction enables one to glean some of the similarities and differences between the arguments to obtain some
insight into their workings. The paper does not concern the soundness of the arguments. Neither does it discuss the truth of the premises and the philosophical principles behind them.

Received: December 20, 2021; Revised: December 20, 2021; Accepted: April 4, 2022; Published: May 4, 2022  Show citation

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Bhowmik, S. (2021). David Hume on the Deductive Proofs of the Divine Existence in the Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion. Aither, 13(26), 42-59. doi: 10.5507/aither.2022.002
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