Wait, hold up - when did anybody accept this assumption, even in a hypothetical sense? I would argue that an omnibenevolent god would be unable to resist intervening, in the unlikely even that he chose to make a world that allowed there to be suffering therein that could be then mitigated by his intervention.
If we’re positing that the God is artificially limiting himself in ways that then stymy his own omnibenevolent urges, I would say that the hypothetical is inherently broken. That “omni” in “omnibenevolent” states that he can’t accept any limitation on his behavior that would result in a suboptimal world - he simply can’t. So, any world he allows to exist would either be devoid of suffering on its own without intervention, or necessarily riddled with authorial edits to correct the deficiencies. And in either case, the result would be that there would be no unnecessary suffering at all.
I’m sorry I don’t have the time to address this in detail right now, and probably won’t be able to log on for a couple of days, but this is your main misunderstanding: It’s true that the argument shows us to be in one of the worlds A to Z; that is all it sets out to. This means it is possible for us to be in world A. This shows that it is possible for god to be omniscient, omnipotent, and omnibenevolent while there still is evil in the world. It’s what I’ve pointed out to Czarcasm earlier: for the argument to work, it need only be possible for us to live in the best of all possible world. Hence, to refute it, you’d have to show that from the assumption of omnimaxness, it would necessarily follow that we live in a non-evil (or at least less evil) world. The modality’s the important thing here.
This may be true, but it doesn’t make your actions good, nor absolve you of moral responsibility. Necessary evil is still evil.
I’m likewise confident that you’ll never manage to conceive of a world in its totality, with its complete and possibly infinite history, much less know for certain whether it is logically consistent or not. I know at least that I can’t.
Sorry if I’m being dense, but I still don’t get it. Do I not have the choice between sitting here in front of the computer and going outside or eating ice cream or combing my hair or myriad other possible choices? Is it just that we’re genetically predisposed to react to specific circumstances a certain way?
No, it’s the problem the universe is composed of things that are deterministic, and some other things that are random; but nothing that is neither. Nor can anyone even meaningfully describe what such a thing would be like. We can choose between actions the way a computer can choose between two branches of programming, but we don’t have some mystic ability to “choose” without our choice being determined by our preexisting brain state. Nor can anyone meaningfully describe how such an ability would actually work.
You’re confusing yourself; you meant I would have to show from the assumption of omnimaxness that we necessarily live in an non-optimal world, or that there is some other possible world with less evil in it. Which I did, at the end of that very post. Explicitly, based on what “omnipotent” means. Did you see that part?
And I misunderstand nothing about your argument - hence the final unstated conclusion in the pool-ball hypothetical:
There is ample other evidence that we are not in the best possible world - if we are able to imagine a better world that is not literally logically incoherent, then we’ve just proven that we’re not in the best. I proceeded to provide two separate proofs of why our current world cannot be the optimal one in the very post you’re quoting.
The argument you present is explicitly based on ignoring or excluding additional information. Consider the following argument:
P1) begbert2 is in the set of humans/aliens/talking dogs/artificial intelligences.
P2) Half Man Half Wit is in the set of humans/aliens/talking dogs/artificial intelligences.
C1) It is not impossible that begbert2 is Half Man Half Wit, based on their status as being or not being in the set of humans/aliens/talking dogs/artificial intelligences.
This argument is logically sound and valid, and functionally identical to the one you’ve been presenting. (And just about as informative.) Are you now convinced that you are me? Would it be logically correct to say that the existence of this argument makes it impossible to prove that you are not me?
Because if this argument doesn’t exclude the possiblity that other arguments could be made to prove that we are different people, then the Leibniz argument doesn’t exclude the possibility that other arguments could be made to prove that we are not in the best possible world.
Like, watching the news for five minutes. That’s an excellent and nigh irrefutable argument proving that we are not in the best possible world. QED.
Mostly. We’re genetically predisposed to usually react to specific circumstances a certain way, except occasionally, when our brains tell us differently. It’s advantageous to evolution to not be a robot, because then we’d be making the same bad decisions all the time when we hit a bottleneck. Our huge intelligence allows us to take this path, yet discard our idiosyncracies once it becomes apparent that they aren’t working.
So Joe the Caveman who doesn’t like blueberries lives when the rest of the tribe dies from eating infected blueberries and passes on his genes. Or Joe and Ogg get into a big argument over which hill to settle on, and split up their tribe, and one of them lives when the other happens to get hit with a volcano eruption. Having individualized tastes isn’t even free will but rather a way of diversification allowing better chances for reproductive success.
Well, I don’t need to conceive of an alternate san francisco or what have you for my point to stand.
For this universe to not be optimal for a property X, all I need to do is conceive of a single reality with more X.
Note that I’m saying reality; there’s no reason why we should limit ourselves to an alternate earth or even an alternate spacetime universe.
Omnimax god can create any logically-consistent reality.
Conceiving of simple, logically-consistent realities is trivial.
I will expand on my prior post - the argument in the OP was created based on a fundamental misunderstanding of how logical arguments generate knowledge. The entire point of it is to argue towards the conclusion, “Based on what we’ve considered so far in this argument, we don’t know whether or not we’re not in the best possible world”. The thing is, though, that point of ignorance was a ‘fact’ from the start. You always start with an infinite sheaf of unknowns and a finite (and often small) set of knowns, and then based on combining the things you know in organized ways, you extrapolate more things you know, eliminating a few related unknowns in the process. That is how logical thinking works, and is its entire purpose and function.
Regarding the question of whether we are in the best possible world, the possible “knowns” that one could work towards are “Yes, we’re in the best possible world”, “No, we’re not in the best possible world”, and “We are more probably in some particular kind of possible world.” Such statements are additions of information which one could make arguments to support. “It’s not impossible that we are in the best possible world” is not such a peice of information. It’s a statement of ignorance - the same sort of ignorance we start with by default.
Consider the following argument:
Premise) 1+1=2
Premise) green is a color
Conclusion) It is not impossible that we are in the best possible world.
This is actually a valid logical argument! Wanna know why? It’s because “A or ~A” is axiomatically true for any A. So “We are in the best possible world or we are not in the best possible world” can be written at any point in any argument at any time. This is mostly done to provide a syntatically correct path towards disproving one or the other in an argument by cases, as it’s useless on it’s own, but it’s still allowed regardless. Because the assertion of complete ignorance is always logically allowed - as part of stating the obvious. It’s not like it contradicts a positive determination of fact or anything.
The persons who devised the argument in the OP didn’t understand this about logic - or they did understand and are deliberately ignoring it in favor of a rhetorically persuasive but logically fallacious approach. Essentially the OP is being asked if we are in the best possible world and answering “I don’t know”. Presuming that one is not dedicated to cultivating this ignorance to support ulterior motives, there is certainly no reason to ask somebody else the question to see if they can use different arguments to come up with a better, less useless and uninformative answer.
Why is evil, and not good, the objective function? Why did you set up the argument so that SimGod wants the total amount of evil to be as small as possible, rather than wanting the total amount of good to be as large as possible?
Are you assuming that SimGod could not or would not have included elements beyond his control in the simulation (e.g. human free will), that could the same simulation, run repeatedly, give different results?
Does it make a difference if you change the wording to “Without the conditions that make this act of evil possible…?”
You originally postulated the “fourth solution” to the PoE:
But in this thread, it is obvious you aren’t dealing with a “fourth solution” but with the second solution he/she mentioned–“the god could be weak or bound by unbreakable rules that prevent him from aiding us.”
Your counter argument (well, let’s call it an argument for the moment) consists of an underlying presumption that you know what could have been, and would have been, and what balance of consequences would be better or worse, and that agony and insanity are beyond the realm of things over which a soul might triumph. This “argument” offers nothing else, but serves as in introduction to sarcasm unrelated to the point that I suggested.
I will not bother with the absurd contention that your understanding of infinite complexity and ethical relativity is sufficiently greater than all others that it should be accepted without question, except to note that it stands without perceivable logical significance.
No, as matter of fact, you don’t have a choice, because something has to cause your choice. That cause has to be either determoned or random. Either way, it’s not a choice. it’s logically impossible for the will to determine itself. That leads to an infinite regress, Free will is bullshit.
Deterministic doesn’t have to mean pre-determined, by the way. I’ve found that a lot of people misunderstand this objection to free will that way. Deterministic variables can be constant and ongoing.
Although I guess in the really big picture, every single thing that anyone saiys does or thinks is determned by the Big Bang. Everything after that just follows inexorable physical laws, however complex those effects may become.
No, I’m pointed out that either that soul is going to be insane forever, cured somehow and be extremely angry that it was created just to be a torture victim for your self righteous god, or it’s going to be brainwashed into a happy god-slave. None of which is “good”. There’s nothing noble and uplifting about suffering; it warps and destroys.
As one of the supposed victims of this god my opinion is of “logical significance” whether you like ti or not. You also presume that this is all that morally complex. Did someone force your supposedly omnipotent god to make the universe? if not, then all suffering is unnecessary and could have been avoided simply not by doing so.
I think part of the problem with free will is that people think there are only two positions.
Either you believe in free will. This is a requirement for many religions because somehow god, despite being omnimax, cannot be held culpable for human actions.
Unfortunately, it’s an absurdity. I’ve never even seen a coherent definition of this free will, let alone any reason to suppose it exists.
Otherwise, you believe we’re on rails. I may think I decided to have a coffee just now, but really that choice was pre-determined and my choosing was an illusion.
The reality is that if we use the analogy of being on rails, our minds should correctly be part of the rails, not the train.
When I made the choice to make myself a coffee, my decision-making process was real. No-one could predict what I was going to do with 100% certainty without simulating my brain perfectly.
And although all that could be traced to physical interactions in theory, this can be a misleading way of looking at things as my brain abstracts out from its inputs and reflects on them.
IOW, it’s true that the sum of my experiences, and my brain’s properties, determine what I do. But a reductionist account, where we attempt to calculate the contribution of individual inputs to behaviour, say, is doomed.
Well, seems like I’ve got my work cut out for me! I didn’t expect this thread to generate that much responses… This is gonna be a long one (and if I forget somebody, I’m sorry, I try to include everything that seems relevant, so just say a word if you feel left out).
Omnibenevolence requires a definitions of good and evil; but I can live with leaving open where it comes from. Six isn’t false, per se, it’s just that in this cases, god would not be omnibenevolent. He only is if he lets the best possible world be the only one that becomes ‘actual’.
They only assert this if the best possible world is one in which in fact evil exists. If it bothers you terribly, you can change the ‘can’ in 11 to a ‘could’, both that ‘could’ and the ‘would’ in 12 being predicated on 8: if there is evil in the best possible world, they could ask… etc.
Now on to the point I addressed previously:
As I said, if you grant me that the argument shows that we may live in one of the worlds A-Z, then you grant me that the argument is correct. However, there seems to be a somewhat widespread confusion as to why exactly this is so, so let’s go back to basics.
First, the problem of evil. Its form is that of modus tollens:
If god is omnimax, there is no evil.
There is evil.
Hence, god is not omnimax.
To show this argument wrong, one can, for example, show either of the premises wrong. That there is evil I do not contest (and neither did Leibniz, who as we remember came up with the whole shebang). Thus, I have to show the first premise wrong (which trivially amounts to showing its negation true).
Now, what does this premise assert? It asserts that from gods omnimaxness, the absence of evil follows necessarily. Again, note the modality; if it were merely the case that omnimaxness implied the possibility of the absence of evil, then there would be no problem of evil, since gods omnimaxness would equally well be consistent with the presence of evil. The negation of this premise then reads:
!1) There is a set of circumstances such that god is both omnimax, and there is evil.
The somewhat awkward qualifier merely expresses that while for the premise to be true, and the argument to work, the absence of evil needs to be necessary, while for it to be false, the presence of evil needs only be possible; in other words, it needs only to be possible that god is both omnimax and that there is evil in order to show the argument faulty.
Thus, if it is possible that there exists a best possible world, and if it is possible that there is evil within this world, and it is possible that we live in this best possible world, and all of this is possible while god is simultaneously omnimax, then omnimaxness and the presence of evil are logically compatible, and the problem of evil is solved.
In other words, if you grant me that Leibniz’ argument shows that we live in one of the worlds A-Z, where A is the best possible one, then you grant me that Leibniz argument correctly does away with the problem of evil. That’s really the key point: in order to show premises to be logically compatible, I merely need to exhibit a logically consistent possibility for them to be simultaneously valid, while in order to show their incompatibility, one has to show that they can not be simultaneously valid in all possible circumstances.
This should not be in dispute, as it’s an elementary fact of logic; however, knowing you, you’d dispute that your house was on fire if all that’s left are the smoking foundations if you’d set your heart against it, so here’s a cite (pdf) from mathematician and philosopher James Franklin:
Again, I challenge you and everybody else to imagine a whole world (of nontrivial complexity).
Can he make a world in which triangles are square, and pi = 7? If not, there are obviously some properties such that he can’t create a world that have them, and hence, zero evilness is possible such a property; if yes, he is outside of the rules of logic, such that one cannot logically reason about him. In particular, even if omnimaxness and the presence of evil are inconsistent, he can still make it so that both are true, if he is not bound by logic, and there is no problem of evil.
As I’ve said, necessary evil is still evil.
If you don’t think omnipotence is only omnipotence if it is not limited by logic, he may still be; and, as before, that may is all that’s needed.
It’s implausible as anything, but still possible.
This is true, in principle. But it may be that the existence of sentient being is a great good in itself, as has been pointed out.
As for that afterlife thing, somebody said that the OP seems like it should be incompatible with an afterlife; I don’t see that at all, an afterlife may be a consistent part of the world that is merely hidden from the part we currently reside in. And again, it may be necessary for things to be laid out this way. So Chronos’ argument is perfectly appropriate to the situation.
Again, I only need the possibility for the ball to be no. 15.
As you say, this argument proves exactly what it sets out to prove: that begbert2 and Half Man Half Wit are not necessarily different, hence disproving the analogue of the problem of evil in this case, that begbert2 and Half Man Half Wit are necessarily different.
It’s entirely possible that other arguments against us living in the best possible world can be made, however, repeat after me: it need only be possible that we do for the argument to be sound.
“It’s not impossible that we are in the best possible world” is exactly the needed piece of information: it’s equivalent to “We don’t necessarily not live in the best possible world”. The problem of evil amounts to saying “We necessarily don’t live in the best possible world”, and is thus refuted.
There’s no particular reason it’s set up that way; as I already said, god couls optimise towards maximum goodness, or optimise towards more than one parameter. However, it was formulated as a response to the problem of evil, so that makes it a natural choice.
Not sure what you’re saying there; I explicitly assume that the same simulation could give different results, possibly infinitely many. SimGod stores all of them on his infinite harddrive, and then erases all the non-optimal ones (however, let’s not get too hung up on the SimGod metaphor).
I don’t see that it does.
No, god’s fully omnipotent in this case; he can’t do anything logically impossible, but that’s I suppose common to most ideas of omnipotence. Besides, as I already mentioned, if he weren’t thus bound, then there would also not be a problem of evil, as even if omnimaxness and the existence of evil were in contradiction to each other, both could be true with respect to an extra-logical god.
There certainly can be something noble and uplifting in human response to suffering.
I don’t agree with your claim that an afflicted soul must be either afflicted forever, angry and resentful, or brainwashed. There’s plenty of anecdotal evidence of people who have suffered, and who later come to accept or even embrace that suffering with an “I wouldn’t have traded it” attitude because of what it resulted in. For example, people who have had to struggle and suffer to achieve something often find that it increases their feeling of satisfaction when they achieve it. For another example, some people find that having suffered makes them more compassionate toward the suffering of others.
Would it be logically possible to achieve the same goods without the suffering (or with less suffering), in all cases? I don’t know. (If this is in fact the best of all possible worlds, it wouldn’t be.)