Kantian

Thank you ICB. However, i must point out that I do not consider it a sacrifice because what i stand to gain from the experience will outweigh any perceived "sacrifice" on my part. It will only help broaden my privileged perspective as a philosophy student in America, and add some kind of weight to my personal status.

So by no means do i think am i committing a sacrifice in assisting others, because that would be giving up an object of value for another of lesser value in return. Plus the fact that they pay off your college debts doesn't hurt much

Philip Osborne

"I agree that there are logically possible evils that would not be morally justified. But my position is not that every evil I logically could do would be...."

Actually, if we assume realism about the future, and suppose that God comprehensively knows the future (at least as it pertains to humans), then God knows which evils will occur and which will not. Thus, the evils that will occur are morally justified, because God foreknows (or simply knows, if one holds to divine timelessness) them and has incorporated them into His plan.

"A huge number of the empirically acquired beliefs we take to be knowledge are not formed by pure sensory perception, but by some indirect form of inference...."

The argument of the UPD is that the claim "Evil event x is gratuitous with respect to God's plan" is a particularly ambitious sort of claim with respect to man's cognitive faculties. Consider the following principle, which, if sound applies not to pure sensory experiences (due to the Principle of Credulity) but to inferential and cognitive processes: Person x is epistemically entitled to say "it appears that p" iff were not-p to obtain, it would be different from p in some way discernible by x. We might also add the qualification that x would have to know that not-p is different from p in some way knowable by him. Now, take an instance of supposedly unjustified suffering, for instance, a child drowning. Is the average person able to discern an instance of child-drowning which is unjustified from an instance of child-drowning which isn't. The UPD says that this is probably not the case. It is not immediately clear that this line of reasoning casts doubt on all of our cognitive-epistemic experiences.

"This misses the point. In the case at hand, it is assumed for reductio that your transworld identity (TI) depends on whether your mother happened to suffer...."

This seems to be your argument:

1. If the thesis of origin essentialism is true, then a) whether or not the mother of x has cancer is, in some form, an essential property of x.
2. It is not the case that (a).
3. Hence, origin essentialism is false.

However, (1) does not seem true. You may have actually created a straw man by focusing on one counterexample. The fact that there are properties involved in x's origin which are not essential properties of x does not entail that there are no properties of x's origin which become essential properties of x. As far as whether or not origin essentialism is true, I could present Kripkean arguments in favor of that thesis, although that might deserve another thread altogether. Space doesn't allow me to get into them here.

"It is obvious that whichever people God creates will be the people who he loves. But what we want to know is why God created the people who happen to exist (call us the humans-1) rather than a bunch of very...."

One possible reason that God did not create very similar people to us goes back to my thesis that there is no best possible world; we might say that there is no best possible set of creatures God could create. Thus, God could create any possible set of creatures, so long as they fulfilled His purpose in creation in some respect.

Another answer derives from uniquely Christian assumptions. Suppose that God's paramount purpose is to bring about Salvation (this might answer traditional "Why did God have Adam eat the apple?" arguments; Salvation may be of such great moral value that it was morally justified to allow original sin to plague man), whether it is for everyone (as Arminians say) or for a select group (as Calvinists say). In this case, there is a plausible sense in which if humans-2 were created instead of humans-1, then humans-2 would not be affected by Original sin. They would thus have no need of Salvation, and not fulfill God's purpose in any way at all.

Sincerely,

Philip

Thomas Metcalf

"Actually, if we assume realism about the future, and suppose that God comprehensively knows the future (at least as it pertains to humans), then God knows which evils will occur and which will not. Thus, the evils that will occur are morally justified, because God foreknows (or simply knows, if one holds to divine timelessness) them and has incorporated them into His plan."

It seems that realism about the future adds support to my position, by entailing fatalism. And if the evils that will occur are morally justified, then again, my position seems to be correct, that we can't proscribe any actions and that every action we successfully commit will produce a net zero or good effect.

"Is the average person able to discern an instance of child-drowning which is unjustified from an instance of child-drowning which isn't. The UPD says that this is probably not the case. It is not immediately clear that this line of reasoning casts doubt on all of our cognitive-epistemic experiences."

I would say it is in fact more likely that we can distinguish whether a child-drowning is morally justified than we can distinguish whether, say, in the classic example, the earth being really 10,000 years old would be morally justified. When it appears that a child has drowned, we can observe whether there are immediate good effects, and we feel that we have a better idea of how morality connects to prevention of drowning than morality connects to making earth appear older than it is.

"One possible reason that God did not create very similar people to us goes back to my thesis that there is no best possible world; we might say that there is no best possible set of creatures God could create. Thus, God could create any possible set of creatures, so long as they fulfilled His purpose in creation in some respect."

But there is a logical minimum of suffering: zero. Only if suffering itself, divorced from all its effects, is part of God's goals, must suffering exist. This is the heart of my objection to UPD. I think you deal with this next...

"Another answer derives from uniquely Christian assumptions. Suppose that God's paramount purpose is to bring about Salvation (this might answer traditional 'Why did God have Adam eat the apple?' arguments; Salvation may be of such great moral value that it was morally justified to allow original sin to plague man), whether it is for everyone (as Arminians say) or for a select group (as Calvinists say). In this case, there is a plausible sense in which if humans-2 were created instead of humans-1, then humans-2 would not be affected by Original sin. They would thus have no need of Salvation, and not fulfill God's purpose in any way at all."

In this case, it still does not seem that suffering is logically tied to the fact that Adam sinned. God could save humans-1 and humans-2 equally if He can bring about any logically possible state of affairs (with some exceptions, of course). God only needs to allow the suffering which is required for suffering to exist, and for suffering to exist (independently) cannot be part of God's goals. Perhaps humans-2 would not be in need of salvation from suffering, but all of the non-suffering effects of salvation could still be brought about by God.

Essentially, God wants salvation from suffering (or in fact any theodicy reason)to happen for reasons X, Y, and Z. If X, Y, or Z = "humans had suffered," then God is not completely good. If "humans had suffered" is not among those reasons, then God can just satisfy X, Y, and Z, without humans' suffering.

[ August 18, 2002: Message edited by: Thomas Metcalf ]</p>

Philip Osborne

"It seems that realism about the future adds support to my position, by entailing fatalism. And if the evils that will occur are morally justified, then again, my position seems to be correct, that we...."

There are two ways to avoid fatalism being derived from divine foreknowledge: compatibalism, which involves a weaker construal of free will, and Molinism, which suggests there are true propositions called "counterfactuals of freedom." For instance, there are true propositions of the form, "Given circumstance C, S will always and freely do x."

Your analysis concerning realism about the future, I concede, may be correct. However, I think your fundamental objection to the UPD is based on consequentialist ethics, which are not obviously true, and certainly not true on the basis of Christian theism, or most forms of theism, for that matter. Your argument assumes that an action cannot be proscribed if it furthers God's goals; this seems prima facie plausible, but is unacceptable for theists because it only takes into account what the consequences of an action are, with no regard to the person's intentions. While there is a sense in which Smith being murdered brought about a greater good, there is still a sense that we can proscribe the murderer's actions, because he had the intention to commit an immoral act.

"But there is a logical minimum of suffering: zero. Only if suffering itself, divorced from all its effects, is part of God's goals, must suffering exist. This is the heart of my objection to UPD. I think you deal with this next..."

God will not necessarily create a set of people which do not undergo any suffering. If we construe having a surplus of good over evil (i.e. suffering) as a great-making property of sets of possible creatures, we see that there are many sets which contain suffering but have greater surpluses of good over evil than worlds with no suffering. One must remember that God does not seek the absence of evil as an end in itself.

"In this case, it still does not seem that suffering is logically tied to the fact that Adam sinned. God could save humans-1 and humans-2 equally if He can bring about any logically possible state of affairs...."

It is not possible for God to save humans-2, because humans-2 do not need salvation. This is so if we believe, as seems consistent with Biblical tradition, that suffering is a logically necessary consequence of original sin.

Sincerely,

Philip

HRG

Why do you claim tha an evil is morally justified because it is incorporated in someone else's plan ?

It was incorporated in Stalin's plans of collectivizing agriculture that many so-called "kulaks" should die (and they did). Does this mean that this evil was justified ?

Regards,
HRG.

"

Thomas Metcalf

"There are two ways to avoid fatalism being derived from divine foreknowledge: compatibalism, which involves a weaker construal of free will, and Molinism, which suggests there are true propositions called 'counterfactuals of freedom.' For instance, there are true propositions of the form, 'Given circumstance C, S will always and freely do x.'"

Well, fatalism supports my position not by providing evidence against free will, but by indicating that every evil we successfully commit was unavoidable. It is strange to tell people not to do what they must do.

"Your analysis concerning realism about the future, I concede, may be correct. However, I think your fundamental objection to the UPD is based on consequentialist ethics, which are not obviously true, and certainly not true on the basis of Christian theism, or most forms of theism, for that matter. Your argument assumes that an action cannot be proscribed if it furthers God's goals; this seems prima facie plausible, but is unacceptable for theists because it only takes into account what the consequences of an action are, with no regard to the person's intentions. While there is a sense in which Smith being murdered brought about a greater good, there is still a sense that we can proscribe the murderer's actions, because he had the intention to commit an immoral act." (Italics original.)

So those who accept a consequentialist ethical theory are vulnerable to this objection to UPD. I would say, further, that it seems rather strange for God to tell us not to do actions that increase the greater good. God's morality appears very arbitrary in this case. How is it that Christians decide what is immoral, and how is it that God decides what is immoral?

"God will not necessarily create a set of people which do not undergo any suffering. If we construe having a surplus of good over evil (i.e. suffering) as a great-making property of sets of possible creatures, we see that there are many sets which contain suffering but have greater surpluses of good over evil than worlds with no suffering. One must remember that God does not seek the absence of evil as an end in itself."

But my objection to UPD claims that none of this evil is ever necessary to produce this amount of good, unless evil itself is considered a good. I claim that if it is a logically possible state of affairs that good exists in amount x, independent of how much evil exists, then this evil is unnecessary. I can't see a possible way evil would logically be tied to good. You do offer a possible way next.

"It is not possible for God to save humans-2, because humans-2 do not need salvation. This is so if we believe, as seems consistent with Biblical tradition, that suffering is a logically necessary consequence of original sin."

I don't see how it could be. For suffering to be a logically necessary consequence of original sin, it would be self-contradictory to say "original sin happened but suffering does not exist." There is nothing explicitly contradictory in that sentence, so I wonder where the implicit contradiction is. If original sin is defined as something that causes suffering, my original objection to UPD applies, that God should have allowed original sin-2, the original sin that does not cause suffering.

Essentially, my original objection to UPD would say here that necessity for salvation consists of some good points and some evil points, and suggest that there is no way to describe the evil points that makes them logically necessary for the good points, unless they are defined as required for good -- and in this case, God should have chosen different evil points.

Philip Osborne

"So those who accept a consequentialist ethical theory are vulnerable to this objection to UPD. I would say, further, that it seems rather strange for God to tell us not...."

This objection only works against those who hold to the divine command theory of ethics. Those who hold that moral values are properties of things, rather than properties of God making them so, do not seem vulnerable to this objection. If things have moral values, it seems we are obligated to proscribe those actions which violate those properties, even if a higher being has a purpose in allowing such things to happen.

"But my objection to UPD claims that none of this evil is ever necessary to produce this amount of good, unless evil itself...."

Suppose that Set 1 comprises the set of all possible worlds which contain no instances of suffering. Suppose Set 2 comprises the set of all worlds which contain at least one instance of suffering, but where the amount of suffering is outweighed by the amount of good. Your objection seems to rest on a mistaken premiss: that every member of Set 1 is better than any given member of Set 2. It seems prima facie plausible to suppose that this is false. It seem intuitively true, at any rate, that there can be world in which at least one instance of suffering occurs but which is better than a world in which only God exists.

I will assume the following premiss without argument:

For all worlds w and all worlds k, if God is morally justified in creating w, and k is a better world than w, then God is morally justified in creating k.

Suppose w is a world which contains no suffering and k is a world that contains suffering, but is better than w. I will assume that God is morally justified in creating w, which is true by hypothesis. For your argument to go through (that God is never morally justified in allowing evil to be instantiated, since it is never logically tied to good), we would have to assume that God cannot create k. But this violates the premiss I have stated above. One might respond that God would have to create k1, which contains the same amount of good as k but no suffering, but it still seems an unacceptable violation of God's omnipotence to suppose it is impossible for God to create k.

"I don't see how it could be. For suffering to be a logically necessary consequence of original sin, it would be self-contradictory to say "original sin...."

I did not say that original sin is analytically tied to suffering, although there may be a construal of it in which it is. What I meant was that in every possible world in which original sin obtains, suffering obtains also.

My original "there is no best possible world" argument can apply to your objection from original sin-2. Instead of creating original sin-2, God might create original sin-3, which is better since it brings about salvation and causes everyone to get a free toy, or original sin-4, which is better than 3 because it brings about salvation and gives everyone two toys for free, ad infinitum. The conclusion would be the same; God can create any original sin, so long as it fulfills His purposes. At any rate, it does not seem to be the case that suffering is in direct contradiction to the goal of salvation.

Sincerely,

Philip

[ August 19, 2002: Message edited by: Philip Osborne ]</p>

SRB

PO
Consider the following principle, which, if sound applies not to pure sensory experiences (due to the Principle of Credulity) but to inferential and cognitive processes: Person x is epistemically entitled to say "it appears that p" iff were not-p to obtain, it would be different from p in some way discernible by x.

SRB
The principle mentioned is no good if you wish to evade the skeptical challenges posed. Consider the hypothesis that God created the world only 100 years ago. There are lines of evidence we normally suppose count against this claim, but it seems possible that God has some justifying but unknown reason for creating the world 100 years ago in such a way that we are misled into thinking it is older. If God did this then there is no reason to think we would notice, yet the given hypothesis is clearly very implausible. So I reject your principle.

In any case, your point is moot since we do have excellent reason to suppose we would know that there exist unknown purposes on God's part if they in fact existed. God desires that believers love him maximally. That provides a good reason to deny that God would allow divine secrecy to be an obstacle to such love. If God existed, we should expect a clear proclamation in the Bible (for example) that God has some good reason beyond our ken for allowing the apparently pointless suffering in the world. The best explanation for the absense of this (or something similar) is that God does not exist.

PO
This seems to be your argument:

1. If the thesis of origin essentialism is true, then a) whether or not the mother of x has cancer is, in some form, an essential property of x.
2. It is not the case that (a).
3. Hence, origin essentialism is false.

SRB
No, I reject this formulation. I stand by my claim, though, that it should not be controversial that one's TI does not depend upon one's mother having cancer. Due to space and time constraints I will only defend matters that are the most important, and this is not one of them.

SRB
"It is obvious that whichever people God creates will be the people who he loves. But what we want to know is why God created the people who happen to exist (call us the humans-1) rather than a bunch of very...."

PO
One possible reason that God did not create very similar people to us goes back to my thesis that there is no best possible world; we might say that there is no best possible set of creatures God could create. Thus, God could create any possible set of creatures, so long as they fulfilled His purpose in creation in some respect.

SRB
It is not clear why this response requires that humans-1 and humans-2 be numerically distinct. You could just as well say that there is no best set of circumstances God could put humans in. So why you made such an effort to show that humans-1 and humans-2 could plausibly be numerically distinct is hard to understand.

In any case, what you say offers a possible reason, but not a plausible one. Just because there is no best possible set of creatures God could create, that does not negate the fact that if God existed he would probably create a set the members of which suffer less than the actual set. Compare: a farmer strikes his mule a certain number of times. If the farmer loves his mule we shall consider ourselves justified in supposing that he would probably strike it fewer than 100 times. It might well also be true that the farmer will probably strike his mule fewer than 99 times. We shall feel justified in making both claims, even if we do not know exactly how many times a loving farmer would have struck his mule. It would be absurd to suppose that because we are unable to specify exactly how many times a loving farmer would strike his mule, the farmer might strike his mule 100 times and plausibly still love it.

PO
In this case, there is a plausible sense in which if humans-2 were created instead of humans-1, then humans-2 would not be affected by Original sin. They would thus have no need of Salvation, and not fulfill God's purpose in any way at all.

SRB
This response seemingly leaves behind the TI theodicy you were developing, since this objection does not require that humans-1 and humans-2 be numerically distinct. In any case, it is most implausible that a loving deity would create a world such that the stability and safety of the natural order is very sensitive to the actions of the first humans. Why would he do that?
If such sensitivity is logically required for people to go to heaven, how and why should that be so?

SRB

Philip Osborne

"The principle mentioned is no good if you wish to evade the skeptical challenges posed. Consider the hypothesis that God created the world only 100 years ago. There are lines of evidence we normally suppose...."

In order for God to deceive us into thinking the world was 100 years old, it seems that God would have to alter our sensory experience in such a way as to distort the truth. But the Principle of Credulity breaks the tie here, so I am not convinced your example disproves my principle.

"In any case, your point is moot since we do have excellent reason to suppose we would know that there exist unknown purposes on God's part if they in fact existed. God desires that believers love him...."

It is not obviously true that God's paramount desire is to encourage everyone to love him. As I've mentioned, if one is a Christian, then one sees as God's ultimate purpose to bring about salvation. Having hidden purposes does not seem in any way to contradict this purpose.

"In any case, what you say offers a possible reason, but not a plausible one. Just because there is no best possible set of creatures God could create...."

Your example fails to note the important qualification I made in my argument; that the world God creates must somehow fulfill God's purposes. Presumably, it is counter-productive to the farmer's purposes that he hit mule 100 times.

Consider the premiss I named in my previous post, with an important qualification: If God is morally justified in creating a world w, and k is a world that is just as good or better than w, then God is justified in creating k. I will assume that God is morally justified in instantiating the world q, in which nothing exists but God (and perhaps abstract objects, if one holds to Platonism). This is another way of saying that God is not morally obligated to create, which seems consistent with the idea of creation as a free act. If this is so, then it immediately follows that if the actual world, @, is either just as good or better than q, God is morally justified in creating it. So the evidential argument from evil has a higher burden of proof than previously thought; it must show that the amount of evil in the actual world is such as to make the actual world worse than q. Since presumably the atheist is unable to find all of the cosmic goods and evils that exist in the actual world and weigh them against q, it does not seem that he is able to reach that burden of proof.

The point of the TI theodicy is that God allowing suffering is not inconsistent with what is traditionally thought the reason He cannot allow such suffering, which is that God loves everyone. The reason is that there may be certain instances of suffering which are logically necessary conditions for certain persons to exist, such as Smith. You argued that God could create someone such as Smith-1, who is very similar to Smith, except that no suffering is required to bring his existence about. However, you have given no reason to think God is obligated to instantiate Smith-1 rather than Smith. So long as the presence of evil is consistent with God's love for people, it seems God is justified in allowing it. And if such suffering is a logically necessary condition for many such people's existence, then clearly it seems consistent.

"In any case, it is most implausible that a loving deity would create a world such that the stability and safety...."

The whole point of the UPD is that we don't know why God would do that. But my argument at least provides a reason; God did this so that the possibility of salvation could be realized. After all, one cannot be saved if one has not sinned.

"If such sensitivity is logically required for people to go to heaven, how and why should that be so?"

No theodicy is required to demonstrate this point. The question is whether it is consistent with God's plan to allow such sensitivity; it clearly does seem consistent with God's plan to bring about salvation. In order for your argument from evil to work, you must show that God is not morally justified in instantiating the said sensitivity in the world with respect to His plan. This you have not done.

-Philip

[ August 19, 2002: Message edited by: Philip Osborne ]

[ August 19, 2002: Message edited by: Philip Osborne ]</p>

Thomas Metcalf

"This objection only works against those who hold to the divine command theory of ethics. Those who hold that moral values are properties of things, rather than properties of God making them so, do not seem vulnerable to this objection. If things have moral values, it seems we are obligated to proscribe those actions which violate those properties, even if a higher being has a purpose in allowing such things to happen."

So we have eliminated consequentialism and divine command theory. I would then respond that an ethical theory that requires certain actions to have intrinsic moral worth, I suspect, would be rather hard to justify without an appeal to some principle that would be vulnerable to my objection. Why is murder bad, if it's better that murder happen than that it not happen, whenever it happens? The idea that some actions themselves have some intrinsic moral worth also goes against our intuitions; most of us would say that every action might conceivably be morally acceptable in some circumstances. Even "to murder an innocent person" would be commendable if her murder saved the lives of 10,000 innocent people.

"Suppose that Set 1 comprises the set of all possible worlds which contain no instances of suffering. Suppose Set 2 comprises the set of all worlds which contain at least one instance of suffering, but where the amount of suffering is outweighed by the amount of good. Your objection seems to rest on a mistaken premiss: that every member of Set 1 is better than any given member of Set 2. It seems prima facie plausible to suppose that this is false. It seem intuitively true, at any rate, that there can be world in which at least one instance of suffering occurs but which is better than a world in which only God exists." (Italics original.)

That's a useful formulation. Assume that there is a one-to-one correspondence between all members of Set 2 and all members of Set 1, where each member corresponds to a member wherein the amount of goodness is equal. Thus, we have a group of worlds where 1.x and 2.x have the same amount of goodness, but there is some amount of suffering in 2.x that does not exist in 1.x. It seems rather plausible that it is just as easy for God to create 1.x as it is to create 2.x, for any x, because 1.x and 2.x are both logically possible states of affairs. All we need is not that every member of 1 is better than every member of 2, but that for every member of 2, there is a member of 1 that contains an equal amount of goodness.

"One might respond that God would have to create k1, which contains the same amount of good as k but no suffering, but it still seems an unacceptable violation of God's omnipotence to suppose it is impossible for God to create k." (Italics original.)

I claim that k1 is better than k, and therefore to create k1 is morally better than to create k, and so God will create k1, if He exists. It is indeed impossible for God to create k, because God is unable to bring about logically possible states of affairs that consist in part of Him making a morally poor decision. These are logically impossible states of affairs.

"My original 'there is no best possible world' argument can apply to your objection from original sin-2. Instead of creating original sin-2, God might create original sin-3, which is better since it brings about salvation and causes everyone to get a free toy, or original sin-4, which is better than 3 because it brings about salvation and gives everyone two toys for free, ad infinitum."

But I'm not asking that God create the best possible sin; God only need create the sin that requires no suffering. There is a logical minimum of suffering for every possible type of sin. For every sin-x, there is a sin-y where sin-y produces as much good as sin-x but requires no suffering. This is true only if it is not the case that suffering itself is part of the good of sin-x, and this is hard for me to accept.