Greater good theodicy, toy worlds, invincible arguments

Discuss philosophical questions regarding theism (and atheism), and discuss religion as it relates to philosophy. This includes any philosophical discussions that happen to be about god, gods, or a 'higher power' or the belief of them. This also generally includes philosophical topics about organized or ritualistic mysticism or about organized, common or ritualistic beliefs in the existence of supernatural phenomenon.
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Re: Greater good theodicy, toy worlds, invincible arguments

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Astro Cat wrote
In this case, the theist is acknowledging that suffering exists, but rejecting the idea that any physical suffering is gratuitous suffering. Classically, "gratuitous suffering" is defined as suffering that is just suffering and not there for some greater purpose. The very term requires an omniscient view to use though, and that's the heart of the problem: I have an intuition that cancer is gratuitous suffering, but I can't know that without being omniscient, for instance. Vice versa, the greater good theodicy is to suppose in the strong form that cancer definitely isn't gratuitous (because God has some unknowable greater purpose for it that ultimately makes creating cancer congruous with being benevolent in the same way a doctor is ostensibly benevolent despite stabbing a patient with a vaccine needle) or in the weak form that we must at least be agnostic about whether any suffering is gratuitous (which is widely regarded to be a defeater for the strong/logical PoE, which I'm inclined to agree that it is).

I think the evidential PoE is still quite strong, one of the strongest arguments against classical theism though. So my interest in this theodicy stems from these interesting interplays.
Sure, but interest reasonably fails where these interplays are shown to be vacuous, no? I mean, you are, I assume, interested in something substantive.

You mention "gratuitous" suffering, and I agree with most of what you say accounting for the issue. God, I am arguing, is reducible to the problem of a metaphysical moral deficit, meaning, when we try to construct an understanding about suffering, we face moral nihilism, a "nothingness", for this is a dimension of our existence: We are, at the level of the most basic questions, confronted with a pervasive indeterminacy, and when it comes to our ethical lives, it is an ethical indeterminacy.

If the Good is understood in terms of this kind of indeterminacy, then why opt for ethical nihilism? What is it about the world that would suggest this? Surely we face a world that requires a, if you will, metaethical affirmation.
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Re: Greater good theodicy, toy worlds, invincible arguments

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JackDaydream wrote: February 3rd, 2023, 3:58 pm I am not saying that suffering is beneficial. I have known people who have committed suicide and that was what led me to question Christianity more than anything else. That was partly because one of my friends, who was 19 killed himself through jumping out of a college winter. I am sure he had a number of issues but he had become unwell after giving his life to Jesus at an evangelical event. The last time I saw him he was talking about being evil and not being able to live up to the writings in St Paul's writings. He was admitted to psychiatric hospital briefly after I last saw him but jumped from a college window the next day. Mental suffering and emotional, including worry over religious ideas, can do so much harm. Nevertheless, I am not sure that physical suffering is not just as real. At this stage, I don't have any major physical health problems but when they do come oneday, it may be completely devastating. People with pain and lack of mobility suffer so much. I do have a few eye problems and I have thought that blindness would be one of the worst possibilities. Similarly, I was on the verge of potential homelessness recently and do think that living rough in the streets would be one of the harshest forms of suffering to endure.
I'm sorry to hear about your friend, I have lost friends as well. I wasn't attempting to downplay mental/emotional suffering as being somehow less than physical suffering. I also want to point out that some of our mental/emotional suffering has physical roots (e.g., clinical depression) which would fall under "wouldn't exist in a toy world."
JackDaydream wrote:The one aspect of your thinking which I am confused about though is why you frame the issue in relation to God if you are an atheist and I do wonder if this means you are a bit unsure of atheism. That is because you say that God could do differently and prevent suffering, which is only relevant if you believe in God. Even those who are theists clearly don't raise this as a problem because in order to decide this one would have to be God. Or, maybe that is the point you are making about theodicy. Generally, though, whether one believes in God or specific 'good' and 'evil' the experiences we have of suffering and we can only try to understand, live with and challenge these rather than eliminate them completely. It is only in the Christian dreams of heavenly paradise, especially after the resurrection, that evil would be eliminated into the wastebin of hell. Such is the problem of getting rid of evil entirely and if heaven were to be eternal bliss would life make sense at all?
I am an atheist, and am not unsure. I engage with a lot of theists and sometimes that requires putting on a theist hat to think like they do in order to respond to their arguments in a way that speaks to them. Sometimes it's possible to adopt another position or something like it to show that even within that system, something is untenable.
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Re: Greater good theodicy, toy worlds, invincible arguments

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thrasymachus wrote: February 3rd, 2023, 8:23 pm
Astro Cat wrote
In this case, the theist is acknowledging that suffering exists, but rejecting the idea that any physical suffering is gratuitous suffering. Classically, "gratuitous suffering" is defined as suffering that is just suffering and not there for some greater purpose. The very term requires an omniscient view to use though, and that's the heart of the problem: I have an intuition that cancer is gratuitous suffering, but I can't know that without being omniscient, for instance. Vice versa, the greater good theodicy is to suppose in the strong form that cancer definitely isn't gratuitous (because God has some unknowable greater purpose for it that ultimately makes creating cancer congruous with being benevolent in the same way a doctor is ostensibly benevolent despite stabbing a patient with a vaccine needle) or in the weak form that we must at least be agnostic about whether any suffering is gratuitous (which is widely regarded to be a defeater for the strong/logical PoE, which I'm inclined to agree that it is).

I think the evidential PoE is still quite strong, one of the strongest arguments against classical theism though. So my interest in this theodicy stems from these interesting interplays.
Sure, but interest reasonably fails where these interplays are shown to be vacuous, no? I mean, you are, I assume, interested in something substantive.

You mention "gratuitous" suffering, and I agree with most of what you say accounting for the issue. God, I am arguing, is reducible to the problem of a metaphysical moral deficit, meaning, when we try to construct an understanding about suffering, we face moral nihilism, a "nothingness", for this is a dimension of our existence: We are, at the level of the most basic questions, confronted with a pervasive indeterminacy, and when it comes to our ethical lives, it is an ethical indeterminacy.

If the Good is understood in terms of this kind of indeterminacy, then why opt for ethical nihilism? What is it about the world that would suggest this? Surely we face a world that requires a, if you will, metaethical affirmation.
I'm actually a moral noncognitivist, I don't think the utterance "moral truth" has a referent for its attempted reference. Nevertheless, suffering is still incongruous with benevolence even on moral noncognitivism; this is why I generally pose the PoE in terms of suffering.
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Re: Greater good theodicy, toy worlds, invincible arguments

Post by GE Morton »

thrasymachus wrote: February 3rd, 2023, 3:13 pm
GE Morton wrote
All concepts are human constructs.* The terms "good" and "evil" merely denote someone's desire for, or approval of, something (or for "evil," the desire to avoid or be rid of something, or disapproval of it). They don't denote natural or objective properties of things, and certainly not any transcendental" substances, forces, entities, etc. As such they are idiosyncratic and subjective.
But you have forgotten, as Kierkegaard put it, that you exist.
Er, how do you draw that conclusion?
But first you have to deal with where and if the language connects to the world: Language is not idiosyncratic and subjective, at least, this is not how a responsible accounting talks about contextually grounded centers of meaningful utterances.
A useful language is not idiosyncratic, but it is subjective. It could not serve as a communication tool were it idiosyncratic, but the enormous variety of human languages --- not to mention the individualized connotations people attach to many words --- is conclusive evidence that it is subjective. But there must be consensus on the common denotative meanings of most words within a given speech community. The "connection" of a language to the world is a matter of convention within a speech community; an utterance is meaningful within that community if it adheres to those conventions (by "meaningful" I mean that it succeeds in conveying some information or eliciting some desired action).

The denotative meanings of "good" and "evil," however (and of many other terms expressing judgments or personal reactions to various things and events) are idiosyncratic as well as subjective. A diner in a restaurant may declare, "This is good soup." At another table, a diner opines, "This soup is terrible." "Good" (or goodness") and "evil" are not things-in-the-world, nor properties of things-in-the-world. They only express someone's judgment of something, i.e., whether it is something to be sought or praised, or something to be avoided and condemned. Some things are, to be sure, widely regarded as "good" or evil," because people are similar in many ways, and many things that benefit or injure one, and are thus deemed "good," or "evil," will also benefit or injure others.
Then, as to the terms good and evil, if you were to follow someone like Derrida, you would admit that, yes, indeed, language is not the kind of thing that "point out" affairs and objects in the world apart from context, which is what he meant by "there is nothing outside of the text."
That is a misquote of Derrida. His actual phrase was, "There is no out-of-context." But Derrida is wrong about that, as he was about most things. The terms of a language do indeed "point out things in the world" --- by virtue of the conventions for their use within a speech community. And, of course, the entire universe (excluding the language itself) lies "outside the text" (and any "context").
. . . BUT: human existence IS existence, and regarding what is good, the context of ethical and aesthetical thinking, refers us to our existence, and here, there is a spear in your kidney, a child screaming in a burning car, and so on. If you think this kind of thing is simply dismissible with a metaphysical wave of the hand, you have entered into a no man's land, of sorts.
Now, why would you conclude that the subjectivity of judgmental terms entails that things deemed "good" or "evil" are "dismissible"? It has no such implication. Indeed, their subjectivity must be taken into account in order to correctly pronounce something to be good or evil --- the spear in the kidney and the burning child are evils only because we assume the victims would not welcome those states of affairs, and would prefer to avoid them. That assumption sometimes proves to be unwarranted --- a shamed samurai may deem the spear through the kidney a good.
Remember, Wittgenstein NEVER thought like this.
The early Wittgenstein was mystified by ethics and aesthetics. The later Wittgenstein considered both unamenable to philosophical elucidation. He was wrong on both occasions.
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Re: Greater good theodicy, toy worlds, invincible arguments

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Astro Cat wrote
I'm actually a moral noncognitivist, I don't think the utterance "moral truth" has a referent for its attempted reference. Nevertheless, suffering is still incongruous with benevolence even on moral noncognitivism; this is why I generally pose the PoE in terms of suffering.
Depends on the moral proposition in question. If the reference is to an attitude that issues from an entangled moral view that is accountable in terms of the indeterminacies of culture and attitude, then of course, objectivity is lost. But this has nothing to do with moral realism which looks to the value as such, that is, abstracts from factual matters that are incidental. The point is to ask, what it is that is essential to an ethical issue, and the answer is value. The fact that I owe money or broke a promise or whatever is, in itself, merely a fact (as with Wittgenstein's great book of facts, which is value free) and posseses nothing ethical. Ethicality only enters in the value-in-play, or at-risk. Absent this, and there is no ethics. Realists simply affirm that value is real, and this is evidenced most clearly in the most radical examples of intense suffering or bliss.

It is self evident, and analytic philosophers (see John Mackie's excellent Ethics: Inventing Right and Wrong) are simply ignoring this because they are blind as bats. Stick your hand in boiling water and keep it there for a few moments. Now ask: from whence comes the prohibition against doing this to others? Is this an "attitude"?
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Re: Greater good theodicy, toy worlds, invincible arguments

Post by GE Morton »

Astro Cat wrote: February 3rd, 2023, 11:19 pm
I'm actually a moral noncognitivist, I don't think the utterance "moral truth" has a referent for its attempted reference.
Sure it does! A moral truth is a proposition derivable from a sound moral theory.
Nevertheless, suffering is still incongruous with benevolence even on moral noncognitivism; this is why I generally pose the PoE in terms of suffering.
The main problem with "omnibenevolence" is that what is "good" or "evil" is subjective and idiosyncratic, and thus what is counted as a good by one person may be deemed an evil by another. Hence no "being," even if omnipotent, could do good for everyone (unless, of course, it waved its magic wand and endowed everyone with the same interests and values).
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Re: Greater good theodicy, toy worlds, invincible arguments

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thrasymachus wrote: February 4th, 2023, 12:08 am
Realists simply affirm that value is real, and this is evidenced most clearly in the most radical examples of intense suffering or bliss.
There is no "value." There are only values, which are subjective and idiosyncratic. Those are real enough --- to the extent Alfie pursues X, invests time, money, effort to secure it --- X has value to him. Propositions asserting values are cognitively meaningless unless a valuer is specified, or at least implied. I.e., "X has value V" is meaningless. "X has value V to P" is meaningful.
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Re: Greater good theodicy, toy worlds, invincible arguments

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G E Morton wrote
Er, how do you draw that conclusion?
One has to consider what K had to say. He was complaining about Hegel who wanted to rationalize, literally, our existence, roughly put. The complaint is that when historical movements absorb the individual into "grander" themes, then the actualities that we truly encounter are forgotten, when in fact, those personal episodes are the very foundation for what call real. This applies to any attempt to divest subjectivity of its meaning and gravitas.
A useful language is not idiosyncratic, but it is subjective. It could not serve as a communication tool were it idiosyncratic, but the enormous variety of human languages --- not to mention the individualized connotations people attach to many words --- is conclusive evidence that it is subjective. But there must be consensus on the common denotative meanings of most words within a given speech community. The "connection" of a language to the world is a matter of convention within a speech community; an utterance is meaningful within that community if it adheres to those conventions (by "meaningful" I mean that it succeeds in conveying some information or eliciting some desired action).
Then fine. No issues with this.
The denotative meanings of "good" and "evil," however (and of many other terms expressing judgments or personal reactions to various things and events) are idiosyncratic as well as subjective. A diner in a restaurant may declare, "This is good soup." At another table, a diner opines, "This soup is terrible." "Good" (or goodness") and "evil" are not things-in-the-world, nor properties of things-in-the-world. They only express someone's judgment of something, i.e., whether it is something to be sought or praised, or something to be avoided and condemned. Some things are, to be sure, widely regarded as "good" or evil," because people are similar in many ways, and many things that benefit or injure one, and are thus deemed "good," or "evil," will also benefit or injure others.
But this is not where the ethical realist claim lies, in the opinion, the mood, the attitude. Here is what you wrote:
There is no "value." There are only values, which are subjective and idiosyncratic. Those are real enough --- to the extent Alfie pursues X, invests time, money, effort to secure it --- X has value to him. Propositions asserting values are cognitively meaningless unless a valuer is specified, or at least implied. I.e., "X has value V" is meaningless. "X has value V to P" is meaningful.
which rather cuts to the chase. All very familiar. Let's say Alfie values X (and forget all the rest you have Alfie doing, which is incidental). Let's agree about the valuer being specified, because, well, it is specified that someone values X and it's Alfie. It is your final move where the issue finds its mark: "X has value V" is meaningless. You think like this because you believe it is possible to isolate value from factual existence, but what you really have is the same old thing: Assume there are X's that are free of value, like rocks and fence posts, that sits alone, unattended by any agency of value ascription. So, we have here a world in which value is here, and not there, to put it simply. Let's further reduce the description to just the essentials, for it hardly matter if it is a human's value conferring system. All that matters is that value IS when conditions are such that allow. And the same can be said for, say, the weather: there are storms here and there, but such things are contextually realized only, that is, the solid fact that is it raining requires, just as with value, conditions.

Now, this really doesn't put the case I find most compelling on the table. But I do wonder, given your terms of description, how it is that you would feel the one, that it is raining, to be set apart from the other, X has Value V. Look, ALL facts are contextual, and this is not a reference to Derrida. It is simply for every fact you can name, you also have an objective body of circumstances that make it so. It is not until you get to the universal concepts of the laws of physics (if you want to talk like this) that you encounter what might pass for an unqualified condition of matter-itself. But then, being a responsible philosopher, you must further realize that, as Rorty put it, brain is not a "mirror of nature". This is where it gets interesting.
That is a misquote of Derrida. His actual phrase was, "There is no out-of-context." But Derrida is wrong about that, as he was about most things. The terms of a language do indeed "point out things in the world" --- by virtue of the conventions for their use within a speech community. And, of course, the entire universe (excluding the language itself) lies "outside the text" (and any "context").
But if it is a misquote, it is an extremely popular one. And there is a reason for this: what you call conventions in a speech community is close to what he has on mind, though, of course, his position is radical, and to see this one should read Saussure, then his annoying essay Differance, and the, I think third chapter of Of Grammatology. Then his Structure, Sign and Play, which is easy by comparison. You are right to say we do point things out in the world, and he agrees, of course. He just says pointing out is a manifestation of the system of a language, speaking broadly.

He is right about this. It really isn't such a big deal to admit this, since it is so obvious. Did you really think a word is some stand alone meaning bearing entity?
Now, why would you conclude that the subjectivity of judgmental terms entails that things deemed "good" or "evil" are "dismissible"? It has no such implication. Indeed, their subjectivity must be taken into account in order to correctly pronounce something to be good or evil --- the spear in the kidney and the burning child are evils only because we assume the victims would not welcome those states of affairs, and would prefer to avoid them. That assumption sometimes proves to be unwarranted --- a shamed samurai may deem the spear through the kidney a good
Interesting way to put it. But the matter goes not to the "preferring" on the subjective side. It goes to that which is being preferred. There are two sides to every value judgment. If you would like to conflate them, the welcoming of X and the X itself, then fine, but this grounds the welcoming in something that is solidly there: the pleasure. True, what is pleasurable for one person may not be so for another, but so what: It may be raining in Cincinnati but not in Paris. Is it not raining? Again, there are NO conditions called objective that are free of contingencies.

The shamed samurai would certainly not tell you the spear in the side was a walk through the park. But more importantly, while the context that confers meaning can change the nature of the event, we would simply allow for the modification as we might allow for, say, more salt on a porkchop. Value conditions are not the point. The point is value, its presence, its existence. It is there, in the salted pork more so than in the unsalted park; its presence rises and falls, depends on this and that, just like everything else.

But the real issue of value ha not even been hinted at. This goes to the infamous GOOD and BAD.
The early Wittgenstein was mystified by ethics and aesthetics. The later Wittgenstein considered both unamenable to philosophical elucidation. He was wrong on both occasions.
He understood that the world is a given presence, and this was beyond analysis. Simple as that. Value, the screaming pain, say, is given. We may have invented an entire culture and language AROUND what is given, and this is all too true, but no one invented pain. The notion is patently absurd.
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Re: Greater good theodicy, toy worlds, invincible arguments

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Astro Cat wrote: February 3rd, 2023, 2:03 pm But that was not the main interest of the OP, I’m looking to see whether my analysis of the greater good theodicy is effective
I see and appreciate what you're saying. My problem is that, if you offered a masterful analysis of the idea that Trump's opponents in the last US election were aided by reptilian paedophile aliens, I would still be drawn to your choice of the thing to be analysed. I think the issue you have chosen to analyse is incoherent and wrong-headed. And I'm afraid this devalues your efforts, through none of your own fault. Sorry.
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Re: Greater good theodicy, toy worlds, invincible arguments

Post by Gertie »

GE
The main problem with "omnibenevolence" is that what is "good" or "evil" is subjective and idiosyncratic, and thus what is counted as a good by one person may be deemed an evil by another. Hence no "being," even if omnipotent, could do good for everyone (unless, of course, it waved its magic wand and endowed everyone with the same interests and values).
Theists can make a case for objective morality based on god's omniscience. If god knows everything, then god knows what is right and wrong, good and evil in every instance. And is the moral law maker and arbiter which can never be mistaken. (This eternal perfection of perfect moral law is significant in why Abrahamic religions struggle with changes in how we view what is and isn't moral, tho in practice many people can rationalise and cherry pick their way out of the parts of scriptures they disagree with).

The classical counter is Euthyphro's Dilemma -

''Euthyphro, "Is the pious loved by the gods because it is pious, or is it pious because it is loved by the gods?''

But in the case of monotheism, of one omniscient and omnibenevolent god, such a god would know what is good and love it. It's a philosophical dead end, but I think it works.

What doesn't then make sense is the creation of a world with inbuilt suffering.

When faced with the suffering in the world such a god created, there's usually the Free Will argument which doesn't account for natural harms and our nature to sometimes do bad stuff, and the Mysterious Ways argument, which is looks like a trump card. The prob with the latter imo being it entails the unknowability of god, and if god's nature can't be known/understood, what justifies the claim of god as perfectly good, just, loving, etc?

Well there's divine revelation where god revealed their divine presence to chosen idividuals (Moses, Mohammed, Paul), as holy scriptures attest. From which we learn moral perfection ranges from loving one's neighbour, to not eating shellfish, to not beating your slave too badly.

And people pick and choose which of those is real, because much of it looks silly and icky now, but the act of picking and choosing in itself undermines the authority of revelation.

So if you can't reliably know the inscrutable mind of god via revelation, then you're left with looking to the nature of god's creation for clues. And what we see is... a world beset with unfathomable suffering.
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Re: Greater good theodicy, toy worlds, invincible arguments

Post by GE Morton »

thrasymachus wrote: February 4th, 2023, 2:27 am
One has to consider what K had to say. He was complaining about Hegel who wanted to rationalize, literally, our existence, roughly put. The complaint is that when historical movements absorb the individual into "grander" themes, then the actualities that we truly encounter are forgotten, when in fact, those personal episodes are the very foundation for what call real. This applies to any attempt to divest subjectivity of its meaning and gravitas.
I admit I've not read Kierkegaard, and have only a vague idea of the thrust of his philosophy (he is a traveler on what I consider a rather sterile philosophical sidetrack with little explanatory power or value). But I'm not sure just what (based on your claim above), or who, he is criticizing. Descartes? Kant? Neither of them ignore the "actualities" of personal experience. Indeed, those personal experiences are what all of philosophy strives to explain, and what drives individuals into "grander schemes." (The thread in the forum on Arendt and totalitarianism deals with those issues).

viewtopic.php?f=1&t=18608
Here is what you wrote:
There is no "value." There are only values, which are subjective and idiosyncratic. Those are real enough --- to the extent Alfie pursues X, invests time, money, effort to secure it --- X has value to him. Propositions asserting values are cognitively meaningless unless a valuer is specified, or at least implied. I.e., "X has value V" is meaningless. "X has value V to P" is meaningful.
which rather cuts to the chase. All very familiar. Let's say Alfie values X (and forget all the rest you have Alfie doing, which is incidental). Let's agree about the valuer being specified, because, well, it is specified that someone values X and it's Alfie. It is your final move where the issue finds its mark: "X has value V" is meaningless. You think like this because you believe it is possible to isolate value from factual existence . . .
Er, no. I said it is not possible to isolate value from a valuer. A valuer must exist for there to be any values. Of what or whose factual existence are you speaking there?
. . . but what you really have is the same old thing: Assume there are X's that are free of value, like rocks and fence posts, that sits alone, unattended by any agency of value ascription. So, we have here a world in which value is here, and not there, to put it simply.
Yes indeed. If no one values a certain thing --- a rock, tree, or anything else --- then it has no value. Any proposition asserting such a value would be non-cognitive (it has no determinable truth value).
Let's further reduce the description to just the essentials, for it hardly matter if it is a human's value conferring system. All that matters is that value IS when conditions are such that allow.
Yes --- that condition being that there is a valuer who has assigned a value to some X.
Now, this really doesn't put the case I find most compelling on the table. But I do wonder, given your terms of description, how it is that you would feel the one, that it is raining, to be set apart from the other, X has Value V.
That is easy: "It is raining" has publicly-verifiable truth conditions. "X has value V" does not (though "X has value V to P" might).
Look, ALL facts are contextual, and this is not a reference to Derrida. It is simply for every fact you can name, you also have an objective body of circumstances that make it so.
The latter sentence is true by definition (unless you have an objective body of circumstances, you don't have a "fact"). But that is a rather eclectic construal of "context."
It is not until you get to the universal concepts of the laws of physics (if you want to talk like this) that you encounter what might pass for an unqualified condition of matter-itself.
If by "the universal concepts of the laws of physics" you mean the physical constants, e.g., the speed of light, Planck's constant, etc., they are cognitively speaking no different from "It is raining" (and unless specified otherwise, such claims always include a "here and now" presumption). I'm not sure what point you're trying to make there.
But then, being a responsible philosopher, you must further realize that, as Rorty put it, brain is not a "mirror of nature". This is where it gets interesting.
No, it is not. Nor do I know of any modern philosopher who would so claim (well, perhaps some "naïve realists").
You are right to say we do point things out in the world, and he agrees, of course. He just says pointing out is a manifestation of the system of a language, speaking broadly.
Of course it is. Who disagrees with that? (we're speaking of "pointing out" via speech here, of course --- one can also communicate quite a bit by physically pointing, silently).
Did you really think a word is some stand alone meaning bearing entity?
Certainly not. What did I say to lead you to to think otherwise?
Now, why would you conclude that the subjectivity of judgmental terms entails that things deemed "good" or "evil" are "dismissible"? It has no such implication. Indeed, their subjectivity must be taken into account in order to correctly pronounce something to be good or evil --- the spear in the kidney and the burning child are evils only because we assume the victims would not welcome those states of affairs, and would prefer to avoid them. That assumption sometimes proves to be unwarranted --- a shamed samurai may deem the spear through the kidney a good
Interesting way to put it. But the matter goes not to the "preferring" on the subjective side. It goes to that which is being preferred. There are two sides to every value judgment. If you would like to conflate them, the welcoming of X and the X itself, then fine, but this grounds the welcoming in something that is solidly there: the pleasure.
Nope. Some external things may give rise to affective responses (confirmable by third parties via behaviors and perhaps neural tracings), but whether they are pleasurable or not is a judgment, and subjective. For some people, the taste of cilantro is pleasurable. For others it tastes like soap, nasty, unpleasant. (There is actually a specific gene responsible for this).
True, what is pleasurable for one person may not be so for another, but so what: It may be raining in Cincinnati but not in Paris. Is it not raining? Again, there are NO conditions called objective that are free of contingencies.
Those are three separate propositions ("It is raining in Cincinnati," "It is raining in Paris," "It is raining somewhere." They have different truth conditions. All are objective. (An objective proposition is one which has publicly-verifiable truth conditions). "It is raining" simpliciter (no time or place specified or implied by context) is also non-cognitive. It says nothing.
But more importantly, while the context that confers meaning can change the nature of the event, we would simply allow for the modification as we might allow for, say, more salt on a porkchop. Value conditions are not the point. The point is value, its presence, its existence. It is there, in the salted pork more so than in the unsalted park; its presence rises and falls, depends on this and that, just like everything else.
No, the value is not "there," if you mean, "in the porkchop." It acquires no value until someone tastes it and deems it "good." Until then that value does not exist. The pork chop, salted or unsalted, is just a bunch of chemicals. No analysis will reveal any component or ingredient answering to "value."
But the real issue of value ha not even been hinted at. This goes to the infamous GOOD and BAD.
Yes, it does. "Good" means, "I (or someone) likes it." "Bad" means, "I (or someone) dislikes it."
We may have invented an entire culture and language AROUND what is given, and this is all too true, but no one invented pain. The notion is patently absurd.
True, we didn't invent pain. What we did invent are terms for expressing our opinion of it.
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Re: Greater good theodicy, toy worlds, invincible arguments

Post by Astro Cat »

GE Morton wrote: February 4th, 2023, 12:35 am
Astro Cat wrote: February 3rd, 2023, 11:19 pm
I'm actually a moral noncognitivist, I don't think the utterance "moral truth" has a referent for its attempted reference.
Sure it does! A moral truth is a proposition derivable from a sound moral theory.
Well, you can make truths on hypothetical imperatives (if I value x then I ought to do y), but I suppose what I meant is that I doubt there are moral truths outside of such hypothetical imperatives: it amounts to saying that there are oughts without considering idiosyncracies.
“GE Morton” wrote:
“AstroCat” wrote:]Nevertheless, suffering is still incongruous with benevolence even on moral noncognitivism; this is why I generally pose the PoE in terms of suffering.
The main problem with "omnibenevolence" is that what is "good" or "evil" is subjective and idiosyncratic, and thus what is counted as a good by one person may be deemed an evil by another. Hence no "being," even if omnipotent, could do good for everyone (unless, of course, it waved its magic wand and endowed everyone with the same interests and values).
On personal brands of theism isn’t that exactly what God has done, though: endowed everyone with the same interests and values (or at least the interests and values they “ought” to have, moral values and interests?) Of course, you know I think this is nonsense in the literal sense of being nonsense, but it seems that’s the common position on personal theism).
"The first principle is that you must not fool yourself and you are the easiest person to fool."
--Richard Feynman
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Re: Greater good theodicy, toy worlds, invincible arguments

Post by Astro Cat »

Pattern-chaser wrote: February 4th, 2023, 9:39 am
Astro Cat wrote: February 3rd, 2023, 2:03 pm But that was not the main interest of the OP, I’m looking to see whether my analysis of the greater good theodicy is effective
I see and appreciate what you're saying. My problem is that, if you offered a masterful analysis of the idea that Trump's opponents in the last US election were aided by reptilian paedophile aliens, I would still be drawn to your choice of the thing to be analysed. I think the issue you have chosen to analyse is incoherent and wrong-headed. And I'm afraid this devalues your efforts, through none of your own fault. Sorry.
Lol 😂

I do get it (though I clearly disagree on the usefulness of the PoE; I think it is meaningful). I never meant that I didn’t want people to be able to shuffle around in the topic; I was more bemoaning that at the end of the day I usually don’t get responses that are direct to the topic, usually a lot that are just adjacent. And I might have been hangry
"The first principle is that you must not fool yourself and you are the easiest person to fool."
--Richard Feynman
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Re: Greater good theodicy, toy worlds, invincible arguments

Post by value »

Interesting topic!

My answer would be that suffering shouldn't be taken as an example.

As Spinoza once said "an attempt to escape evil with good results in evil". According to Spinoza, good only follows from reason.
Spinoza wrote:He who is led by fear, and does good in order to escape evil, is not led by reason.
...
Corollary.--Under desire which springs from reason, we seek good directly, and shun evil indirectly.
https://ethics.spinozism.org/text.php

It would mean that one should adhere to reason and not be led by suffering. Similarly, one should not reflect on perceived cruelty in nature to justify cruelty. A moral being would reflect on reason to become reasonable.

It would explain Henry David Thoreau's vision on the natural gradual moral enhancement of the human specie:

Whatever my own practice may be, I have no doubt that it is a part of the destiny of the human race, in its gradual improvement, to leave off eating animals, as surely as the savage tribes have left off eating each other when they came in contact with the more civilized.

Negligence, laziness and barbarianism are possible. An asteroid can strike earth. A moral life is not a given life. A moral life involves an eternal effort on behalf of 'good'. A moral life, according many wise people, requires that one first gives before one receives.

It is respect that lays at the foundation of all that is good in the world. The concept respect is the source of intelligence and of the concepts good and evil. Space and time are a form of respect. Everything in the cosmos stands in respect.

This might be a lead for explaining the position within religions to seek a 'greater good' explanation for perceived evils. It is only with fundamental respect that good can be served.

Surely, one is to prevent evil and suffering, but as the logic of Spinoza has shown, it is not done by fear and by shunning evil but by reason.

To conclude: Evil is corruption of good and within the context of reason there is no place for evil. One should enhance humanity's potential for moral reasoning to prevent evil fundamentally.

According to Aristotle a state of philosophical contemplation (eudaimonia) is the greatest virtue (highest human good). It is a strive to serve life: the discovery of 'good' from which value follows. It is the path to reason and a moral life.
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Re: Greater good theodicy, toy worlds, invincible arguments

Post by value »

Astro Cat wrote: February 3rd, 2023, 1:54 amI submit that it's possible for an omnipotent and omniscient being to have created a universe where the physics simply doesn't allow for the existence of physical suffering...

it follows that if the world is that way instead of otherwise, then it has to be because the omnipotent/omniscient being deliberately chose it to be that way. God is culpable for *all* physical suffering, in other words: every last bit of it; even in instances where He didn't pull the proverbial trigger, He had to have set the laws of the universe in such a way that it was possible to happen.
thrasymachus wrote: February 3rd, 2023, 2:10 am Of course, this is not to say God is a meaningless concept, or that suffering isn't a meta-ethical issue. It is. It just means the problem you are looking at is wholly invented.

My pending and unanswered question in topic Omniscience and Omnibenevolence is applicable:
value wrote: January 18th, 2023, 1:25 am
Astro Cat wrote: January 14th, 2023, 11:32 pm It is logically impossible for God to have created people with omnipotence because there can only be one omnipotent being (lest you run into the immovable object/irresistible force paradox).

However, there isn’t anything illogical about making other omnibenevolent or omniscient beings.
How can that what 'created' (fundamentally underlays) Being be a Being?

I've asked this question several times but you did not answer and your current topic is again based on the idea. Could you please answer the question?
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