Editing Joseph Butler (section)

==Philosophy==
[[File:Memorial to Bishop Joseph Butler, Durham Cathedral.jpg|thumb|Memorial to Bishop Joseph Butler, [[Durham Cathedral]]]]

===Attack on deism===
During his lifetime and for many years after, Butler was best known for his ''[[Analogy of Religion|Analogy of Religion, Natural and Revealed]]'' (1736), which according to historian [[Will Durant]] "remained for a century the chief buttress of Christian argument against unbelief."<ref>Will and Ariel Durant, ''The Age of Voltaire''. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1965, p. 125.</ref> English deists such as [[John Toland]] and [[Matthew Tindal]] had argued that nature provides clear evidence of an intelligent designer and artificer, but they rejected orthodox Christianity due to the incredibility of miracles and the cruelties and contradictions recorded in the Bible.

Butler's ''Analogy'' was one of many book-length replies to the deists, and long believed to be the most effective. Butler argued that nature itself was full of mysteries and cruelties and so shared the same alleged defects as the Bible. Arguing on empiricist grounds that all knowledge of nature and human conduct is merely probable, Butler appealed to a series of patterns ("analogies") observable in nature and human affairs, which in his view make the chief teachings of Christianity likely.

Butler argued that "because nature is a mess of riddles, we cannot expect revelation to be any clearer".<ref>Livingston, ''Modern Christian Thought'', p. 51.</ref> Today, Butler's ''Analogy'' is "now largely of historical interest,"<ref>Stephen L. Darwall, "Introduction" to Joseph Butler, ''Five Sermons''. Indianapolis: Hackett, 1983, p. 1.</ref> with the only part widely read being the section which deals with his criticism of John Locke's theory of personal identity.<ref name=ip/>

===Ethics and moral psychology===
{{Primary sources|date=July 2019}}
A Butler scholar, Stephen Darwall, wrote: "Probably no figure had a greater impact on nineteenth-century British moral philosophy than Butler."<ref>Darwall, "Introduction<" p. 3.</ref> Butler's chief target in the ''Sermons'' was [[Thomas Hobbes]] and the egoistic view of human nature he had defended in ''Leviathan'' (1651). Hobbes was a materialist who believed that science reveals a world in which all events are causally determined and in which all human choices flow unavoidably from whatever desire is most powerful in a person at a given time. Hobbes saw human beings as being violent, self-seeking, and power-hungry. Such a view left no place for genuine altruism, benevolence or concept of morality as traditionally conceived.<ref>Darwall, "Introduction," p. 1.</ref>

In the ''Sermons'', Butler argues that human motivation is less selfish and more complex than Hobbes claimed. He maintains that the human mind is an organized hierarchy of a number of different impulses and principles, many of which are not fundamentally selfish. The ground floor, so to speak, holds a wide variety of specific emotions, appetites and affections, such as hunger, anger, fear and sympathy. They, in properly organized minds, are controlled by two superior principles: self-love (a desire to maximize one's own long-term happiness) and benevolence (a desire to promote general happiness). The more general impulses are in turn subject to the highest practical authority in the human mind: moral conscience. Conscience, Butler claims, is an inborn sense of right and wrong, an inner light and monitor, received from God.<ref>Butler, ''Five Sermons'', p. 37.</ref> Conscience tells one to promote the general happiness and personal happiness. Experience informs that the two aims largely coincide in the present life. For many reasons, Butler argues, unethical and self-centred people who care nothing for the public good are not usually very happy.

There are, however, rare cases where the wicked seem for a time to prosper. A perfect harmony of virtue and self-interest, Butler claimed, is guaranteed only by a just God, who in the afterlife rewards and punishes people as they deserve.<ref>Butler, ''Five Sermons'', p. 45.</ref>

===Criticism of Locke===
{{Primary sources|date=July 2019}}
In Appendix 1 of the ''Analogy'', Butler offers a famous criticism of [[John Locke]]'s influential theory of "personal identity", an explanation of what makes someone the "same person" from one time to the next, despite all the physical and psychological changes experienced over that period. Locke claimed that personal identity is not from having the same body or the same soul but from having the same consciousness and memory. According to Locke, memory is the "glue" that ties the various stages of our life together and constitutes sameness of person. This section of the ''Analogy'' is the only widely read part of it today.<ref name=ip>{{cite web | url=https://iep.utm.edu/joseph-butler/ | title=Butler, Joseph &#124; Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy }}</ref>

More precisely, Locke claims, Person A is the same person as Person B only in a case where A and B share at least some of the same memories. Butler said that the way "real" memories can be distinguished from false ones is that people who had the experiences that are truly remembered. Thus, Butler claimed, memory presupposes personal identity and so cannot constitute it.<ref>Joseph Butler, ''The Analogy of Religion''. Cincinnati: Jennings and Graham, 1847. p. 324.</ref>