Swinburne’s Argument from Beauty

The main business of natural philosophy is to argue from phenomena without feigning hypotheses and to deduce causes from effects, till we come to the very first cause, which certainly is not mechanical: […] whence is it that nature does nothing in vain; and whence arises all that order and beauty which we see in the world?
—Isaac Newton, Opticks 1730, Query 28.

The concept of beauty has always left me in awe. When confronted with beauty, inevitably my mind begins to meditate on things beyond that which is present during said experience. It’s not so much beauty prima facie that leaves me in wonder (although it does), but that there even is such a thing. However, as mysterious as beauty is, it is perhaps a bigger mystery to me how, given certain beauty, one cannot find it within him or herself to do likewise—begin thinking of something much more vast; something to which such aesthetic marvels owe their existence.

In his book The Existence of God, Oxford philosopher Richard Swinburne lays out several “principles for assessing the explanatory power of theism” and thereafter applies them in “[probabilistic (P)] arguments to the existence of God (h) from various phenomena (e)” (with k representing background knowledge) using Bayes's Theorem. From the nature of the principles of explanation involved, Swinburne goes on to consider the “states of affairs which we can expect to find in the world, if there is a God,” and lists seven possibilities for explaining said observed phenomena. The goal of which is to “show that it is likely that the phenomena would occur if there were a God (that [the probabilistic value of] P(e/h.k) is high).”

Among his teleological arguments, Swinburne proposes his own form of the argument from beauty wherein he entertains principle 6 of the aforementioned principles:

...[T]hat God might have reason to bring about e, and reason to allow the occurrence of e or ~e to depend on processes outside his control, but overriding reason not to bring about ~e. In this case again [the probabilistic value of] P(e/h.k) will be intermediate between 1 and 0, but, intuitively, closer to 1 than under the third, fourth, and fifth possibilities—since there is, as it were, more bias in favour of e. Finally, God may have overriding reason for not allowing ~e to occur. In that case he will himself bring about the occurrence of e; P(e/h.k) = 1.

The value of P(e/h.k) in the intermediate cases will depend, more precisely, on exactly what e is, and in cases where God allows other processes the opportunity to bring about e, how many such other processes have this opportunity, and whether, although their actions are not fully dependent on God's will, they are in any way biased in favour of e or ~e. For example, the less specific is e (i.e. the more distinct states of affairs involve e), the more probable it is a priori that e occur—whether as a result of the action of God or of some creature given by God the opportunity to determine whether or not it occurs. Thus clearly a priori it is more probable that God bring about a universe with regular laws, than that he bring about a universe with the particular laws which our universe has. Or, if e is a state of affairs which any free agent can bring about, and God allows to each free agent the opportunity to bring e about, P(e/h.k) will be greater, the more free agents there are.

Accordingly, in Swinburne’s argument from beauty, k represents ‘an orderly physical universe', e represents ‘a beautiful universe', and h, the hypothesis 'there is a God' (in full, P(e/h.k)). The thrust of the argument is that it is more probable that God exists (h) given the existence of beauty (e) (when e is in conjunction with k) than not. He states, “A priori...there is no particular reason for expecting a basically beautiful rather than a basically ugly world. In consequence, if the world is beautiful, that fact would be evidence for God's existence.” Thus, invoking the existence of God is more probable an explanation than one that doesn’t when accounting for observed beauty in the cosmos: P(e/h.k) has a greater value than P(e/k). Therefore, as Swinburne demonstrates, the argument from beauty serves as a good C-inductive argument (where the premises add to the probability of the conclusion. i.e. make the conclusion more likely or more probable than it would otherwise be) for the existence of God.

I can humbly agree with Hume’s quip that “Beauty in things exists in the mind which contemplates them," but insofar as we agree beauty does in fact exist, what then is left for he who disbelieves but to deny beauty exists at all? Along with Swinburne (as I'm sure even apart from the rigors of philosophical reasoning), I also am therefore inclined to agree with Jean Anouilh that “Beauty is one of the rare things that do not lead to doubt of God.”