Theism entails that evil is not a positive reality, since all positive reality either is God or is continually sustained in existence by God. Augustine thinks that evil is a privation of good. A privation is more than a lack. Leglessness in a dog is a privation, but in a snake is just a lack. If evil were just a lack, then the problem of evil would be easily solved by the consideration that, of necessity, everything other than God is lacking, since only God is infinite. I want to argue, however, that seeing evil as a privation of good still helps vis-a-vis the problem of evil. This argument continues two earlier posts of mine which discuss an Augustinian theodicy (Part I; Part II).
Imagine two closely related alien species, the flerts and the grents. Both are four-legged, and have basically the same habits. Flerts and grents are solitary and reproduce asexually, never knowing their parents (e.g., the parents produce spores which mature away from them), but the flerts have wings in addition to their four legs and can fly away from predators, while the grents are confined to the ground. Suppose now that Gribby is a normal grent, while Flibby is a flert that, due to a genetic defect, never developed wings.
Winglessness is a lack in Gribby and a privation in Flibby, but unless Gribby and Flibby observe their conspecifics, they are not going to know this. It is not an evil that Gribby is stuck on the ground, but it is an evil that Flibby can't fly. But Gribby and Flibby look and behave in pretty much the same way. They eat the same food, they have to run from predators and cannot fly from them, and so on. They have the same joys and the same pains, and they live pretty much the same lives. All this makes plausible the following:
Claim: Flibby is not worse off than Gribby.
I think this claim is plausible. One might think that Flibby is worse off because he suffers from an evil from which Gribby does not suffer. But "suffers" here is a tendentious choice of word. There is no conscious suffering here, we may suppose. We could imagine that when Flibby is faced with a predator he feels an urge to fly and the inability to fly is painful to him; but we can also suppose--and let us do so--that Flibby also has a second privation, namely that his instincts to fly are missing. Flibby suffers from an evil merely in the sense that he is subject to an evil. But his life is just like Gribby's, and the concrete goods that Gribby's life instantiates are also instantiated by Flibby's life. Another way to see this is to imagine some minor concrete good that Flibby has but Gribby does not. Maybe, Flibby happens to be a slightly better at fishing than Gribby is. Then, if per impossibile we were choosing whether to be Flibby or to be Gribby, we would be very reasonable in choosing to be Flibby. But if Flibby is worse off than Gribby, he is significantly worse off--winglessness is not a minor evil. So if Flibby is worse off than Gribby, it wouldn't be all that reasonable to choose to be Flibby just for some minor concrete good.
Still, it's undeniable that Flibby is subject to an evil, while, as far as the story goes, Gribby is not. We now have two conflicting intuitions: first, that Flibby is no worse off than Gribby, and, second, that Flibby is worse off than Gribby, because Flibby is subject to an evil that Gribby is not subject to. I want to argue that the second intuition is mistaken. For Flibby has a more distinguished nature--by nature he has the dignity of being a winged creature. This good that he possesses, the good of being by nature winged, is a good that Gribby does not have. Because he has this good, he is capable of being subject to an evil that Gribby is not--viz., the evil of being deprived of wings. The additional good outweighs or cancels out the additional evil. Hence, we can consistently say that Flibby is no worse off than Gribby even though Flibby is subject to an evil that Gribby is not.
I want to suggest, now, that if Gribby would have no right to complain to God about being created a grent, likewise Flibby would have no right to complain to God about being created a flert without wings.
Evil is not just a lack but a privation. However, possessing an evil also means one possesses a certain good, namely the dignity of being such as to naturally have the good that the evil deprived one of.
In particular, it follows that while an adult whose intellectual functioning is like that of a child thereby is subject to an evil, the developmentally challenged adult is not thereby less well off than the child. (She may be thereby worse off if she compares herself to others, or if others treat her poorly.)
How far one can take these thoughts in the direction of a theodicy, I do not know.
Alex, I read through this twice. I'm having a difficult time following. I don't think evil is either a lack or a privation. Evil is something bad happening to one. But setting that aside, I understand the idea that, intuitively, we would say that lacking eyesight (being blind) is bad for a human, but lacking X-ray vision is not. Lacking "normal" vision makes one worse off, but lacking X-ray vision does not. I don't share this intuition, but I get it.
This may be had because, though I'm not endorsing this, one is not worse off than one would otherwise have been for lacking X-ray vision. For, intuitively, one could have been sighted, but one could not have had X-ray vision. There is no accessible world, on the most plausible semantics, according to which one has X-ray vision in that world. That's one story. Another story is that we contextualize "being made worse off". We are made worse off by being made worse off than had some relevant altertnative obtained. One alternative would include being sighted, but no alternative that is relevant includes having X-ray vision. That's another story.
But where does privation come in? Is the idea that some X is an evil for one only if one is made worse off for having X happen to one? Then, if X is more like lacking vision, it is an evil, but if it is like lacking X-ray vision, it is not an evil for a human?
This may be had because, though I'm not endorsing this, one is not worse off than one would otherwise have been for lacking X-ray vision. For, intuitively, one could have been sighted, but one could not have had X-ray vision.
Suppose I necessarily am not X-ray-visioned, why is lacking it not bad for me? Let X and Y be exactly alike except that X has X-ray vision and Y necessarily does not. I think I'd want to say that X is better off than Y. But if lacking X-ray vision is not bad for Y and X and Y are otherwise the same, then X is not better off than Y.
But consider in general the claim that simply lacking a good property is not bad for one. I lack the property P of being ambidextrous. There is a world w in which I have P, I am otherwise the same, and (let's assume) it is a good property to have. We cannot say all three of the following: (i) P is good, and (ii) other things equal, I am better off with P than without it and (iii) lacking P is not bad for me. Since there are properties that I lack satisfying (i) and (ii), I don't see how (iii) can be denied.
I don't see how (iii) can be affirmed, that is.
Alexander:
You write: "How far one can take these thoughts in the direction of a theodicy, I do not know." If you can explain how this example relates to the experience of a three month old being raped then maybe you can extend it to a theodicy.
It seems to me that the three month who is raped is certainly being deprived of being treated as she ought to be treated. However, is it sufficient to our understanding how we ought to understand and react to evil? It seems superficial to merely claim that evil is a privation of the good. Certainly the three month old who is raped is deprived of being treated a she ought to be treated, but to simply claim this is to claim the obvious. How does it really explain evil? Put this problem in terms of God's (alleged) foreknowledge. If God knows that the three month old is going to be raped and is the only one capable of stopping this from occuring but does not do so then does this three month old have a complaint against God? Certainly we can say she can forgive the rapist; that she may become a stronger person because of it, but is this sufficient to excuse God from not acting? Her forgiving the rapist or becoming stronger is consistent with there being no God , as well as there being a God, so this cancels each alternative out as far as a theodicy is concerned; if by theodicy who mean an explantion and not merely a defense.
Mike, I share your worry. Here is a kind of solution that accepts that (iii) should be affirmed if (i) and (ii) are affirmed.
We distinguish between something's being good and something's being good for one as well as something's being bad and it being bad for one.
Next, we accept that someone is better off for having G only if having G is good for X. X is worse off for lacking G only if X lacks G and having G is good for X.
Next, we accept that lacking X-ray vision is not good for X since we accepting the following view:
View: G is good for X iff G is some good the possession of which God aims for individuals with X's nature to possess.
Thus, possessing X-ray vision is not good for X since, let us assume, that X-ray vision is not one of those goods the possession of which God aims for individuals with X's nature to have. And thus, lacking X-ray vision is not bad for X. Finally, lacking X-ray vision, by virtue of not being bad for X, does not make X worse off.
Suppose that this is right and suppose also that Y is different from X in that Y has a nature for which God aims that individuals of Y's nature have X-ray vision. Moreover, suppose that Y has X-ray vision.
Question: Is Y better off than X, all else equal?
Answer: No.
The reason why is simply that, in general, Y is better off than X, all else equal, only if there is some good G that is a good for X and Y, such that Y possesses G and X lacks G. Since this is not the case, Y is not better off than X.
Now, I'm not endorsing this view, but I wonder what you see its weakness to be? For supposing something like it is correct, we would have some non-arbitrary way of restricting those "lacks" that count as evils. The idea being that lacking X-ray vision, for example, is not an evil for some individuals although possessing X-ray vision might still be a good for other individuals.
Hi Christian,
I guess I'd deny View.
View: G is good for X iff G is some good the possession of which God aims for individuals with X's nature to possess
I've no reason to believe anything like View is true (and I'm guessing you don't either--since you seem to be playing devil's advocate here). This seems like a serious weakness in the argument. God's aims don't mean much (keeping in mind Euthypho worries) unless there is some good reason for those aims. And I can't see how he might have some good reason given the hypothesis that there are goods (such as being ambidextrous) that I lack and that are (for all the world) consistent with my nature and also good for me (no matter who has what aims for me). Consider that it does not follow from my nature that I always be a bit happier than I happen to be. But it is consistent with my nature that I am so. So this too is a lack the possession of which would be good for me. Or, so it seems to me.
John:
Well, one might still be able to take what I say as contributing to a theodicy for certain kinds of physical evils. It's less plausible to take what I say as very helpful in the case of moral evils.
I should say that theism and atheism may not be explanatorily neutral vis-a-vis the forgiveness or strengthening. For it might well be God is miraculously helping to make the forgiveness and strengthening possible.
Christian:
Privation is the lack of a "due" good. X-ray vision is possible to a human with enough bio-engineering, but is not due to a human, and hence a human lacks it is not deprived.
It seems likely to me that making a distinction between privation and lack requires either a designer with particular plans, or a metaphysics that includes natures or Forms.
But we do need a distinction between lack and privation. We surely don't want to say that oak trees are unfortunate for lacking sight or worms for lacking intelligence.
Alex:
I don't know the dialectic, but I thought the idea was that privations are evils, but lacks are not. Insofar as we can give a theory according to which lacking some goods count as mere lacks, rather than privations, we restrict the kinds of evils that would pose a problem for God's goodness. That is, only privations pose a problem, not lacks.
You introduce the idea of "due". That's a different concept than I was talking about, but nonetheless just as interesting. I think we could run my point with "due" rather than "God's aims". But then I would suggest blindness should get counted as a privation, though not a lack. X-ray vision would get counted as a lack. And earthworms would merely lack intelligence. But I still don't see, in the end, how these distinctions will purchase anything interesting in a world full of blind people.
Mike: Agreed. "God's aims don't mean much (keeping in mind Euthypho worries) unless there is some good reason for those aims." We could take Alex's suggestion and change View1 to
View2: G is good for X iff G is some good the possession of which is due to X.
View1 might explain why something is due to one.
But again, many of us are blind.