Second Dialogue Between Philonous And Hylas
In the Second Dialogue between Philonous and Hylas, Philonous defends his philosophy that there is no such thing as matter and concludes that God is the ultimate cause of all our ideas. However, I have different opinions on Philonous’ claim that all ideas come from God. Philonous concludes that since our sensations come to us without us willing it to, we are the ones that causes those sensations. Thus, there must be some other being that controls our sensations. Philonous then assumes that one being is God and that God is necessary for anyone to perceive anything. From here, I disagree that there necessitates a God in order for anyone to perceive anything. Just because our sensations come to us involuntarily, it does not mean that someone
else is causing all sensations. Our sensations may have just developed naturally by chance. Feeling sensations may just be a tool that living beings developed to keep on surviving. For example, vision may have been developed gradually to help living beings survive. Since the ability to detect light and how light reflects off of different objects helps creatures detect their surroundings, beings that had the ability to see survived more frequently than those without, thus being able to reproduce. Just because we cannot control when we are feeling a sensation does not mean that something else is controlling that.
else is causing all sensations. Our sensations may have just developed naturally by chance. Feeling sensations may just be a tool that living beings developed to keep on surviving. For example, vision may have been developed gradually to help living beings survive. Since the ability to detect light and how light reflects off of different objects helps creatures detect their surroundings, beings that had the ability to see survived more frequently than those without, thus being able to reproduce. Just because we cannot control when we are feeling a sensation does not mean that something else is controlling that.