Good Enough

Mike
Interesting argument. Let us agree with your stipulation that God must create a world that is at least good enough with a positive value of N. It follows then that no existing world has less positive value the N unless it was created by someone other then God. The questions is, why should we think that this world is one of these worlds that has a positive value of N? It seems that we have to assume that God is of a particular nature and that he exists as so conceived and would not create any world with less positive value of N. We also have to assume that there exists no one else capable of creating worlds. But why should we accept that this world was create by God unless we have independent verification that this world contains at least a positive value of N?

Hi Mike,
Doesn't the problem of evil still present a worry if: (i) there is a possible world that is good enough for God to actualise; but (ii) this world is not such a world?
Yujin

MIke
"Not many people object to the overall value of this world."

But the fact that someone does object, or might object - as I think many existentialists and evidentialists would - means that an argument is needed to show that this world has the value of N. I think we do need to attach some data of N so that we can define N in terms of good versus evil assuming that some evil is morally permissible. Besides, I have an issue with 'good enough' being the criterion that God has to meet in order to avoid the problem of evil. Why should we not hold him to a higher standard. Would you, as a teacher, accept 'good enough' as the criterion to get an A, or would it be worth only a C. Now, I think there becomes a point where blaming God for the quantities of evil may be nit-picking if we want to maintain that he is not God because he could have done better by, say, one unit of less evil. But I do want to think of God as being more the a C student.

I do think that your move of separating the good from the idea of evil being a necessary condition for good to exist may have some merit. But I do think some meat needs to be put on the argument to show that this world does meet the criterion of having N so that evils that do not lead to greater goods can be accounted for from a moral point of view. Not that I believe this to be true, but if we do not have any moral duty (as many so argue) to save children who are starving in far away lands then why does God?

Hey Mike,

Very interesting argument.

The initial supposition seems quite plausible. It's not obvious that God is required to actualize any world, so I don't think you can say that it's obvious that God is required to actualize a world that exceeds some positive value N.

Isn't this consistent with the further claim that in any world that has a value greater than or equal to N, God violates the rights of one of its inhabitants in creating that world?

I guess you might think that it's just implausible to think that this will be a necessary feature of all such worlds, but if it's a feature of the actual world, a version of the argument from evil is back even though this world is good enough in the sense that it contains as much good (if not more) as some world God is permitted to create. Is the thing to say in response that every rights violation has some finite negative deontic value so that we've already folded all the rights violations in when we start comparing the values of various worlds thought to be at least as good as the value that attaches to a world God is permitted to create?

Hey Mike,

I don't have it in front of me, but I vaguely recall some passage from Swinburne's "Some Major Strands of Theodicy" where he suggests that we can deal with some cases of natural evil by saying that it is permissible for God to put certain groups in peril (e.g., those who are suffering the effects of famine) if it gives others the opportunity to act beneficently, develop their virtue, exercise their free will in morally significant ways, etc... [Maybe Swinburne doesn't think a famine, flood, earthquake, forest fire is an instance of God putting creatures in peril so much as allowing events to unfold in such a way that creatures will be in peril, but grant the atheologian the use of the premise that God is treating some creatures as mere means to some end. (I think Scanlon thinks there are cases where an allowing is also an instance of treating someone as a mere means, so I'm probably running a few things together here)]

One reaction is just to say that this sort of response to the POE fails because it assumes that God is permissibly treating some as a mere means to bring about some good. Whether the resulting good is greater than the goods that could/would be brought about without the natural disasters is irrelevant if you think there are side-constraints that make it impermissible for God to pursue goods in certain ways.

That sort of problem is quickly dissolved if we assign some finite negative value to all (relevant) rights violations. The objection to the 'good enough' response seems to assume that when comparing values between worlds, the violation of rights isn't part of the calculation of the value of these worlds.

MIke
I think that the problem that I have with separating good from evil being a necessary condition for (some) goods to exist is that I cannot come up with a good that we find worthwhile that does not require some amount of evil either as a cause or a contrast. But I not so sure you need to separate the two for your argument regarding 'good enough' to go thru. Even if evil were a necessary condition for good it is not a sufficient condition therefore you could argue that N = x amount of good and evil and any left over evil does not count against the world being good enough. The world could even start out good enough and slid downward in value and this would not count against God.

I think if you assume a certain kind of consequentialism, and you assume that God is only required to create a world above a certain level of value, and we have reason to think that our world is above that level of value, then you have an answer to the problem of evil, provided the assumption was OK.

You might question this kind of consequentialist view, which is what Clayton appears to be doing. Here's another way to question things. You might think that there are many respects in which a world can be worthy or unworthy of creation. Some of these respects, like aggregate happiness, may not admit of perfection. Other of these respects, like minimizing suffering, violation of rights, inequality, or use of people as means do admit of perfection. You might think that if God could make a world as excellent in one of these respects as possible, without sacrificing anything of comparable significance, he would. And you might think that God could create a world without gratuitous suffering, gratuitous violation of rights, gratuitous inequality, or gratuitous use of people as means, that was as excellent as ours in the respects that do not admit of perfection. And you could plausibly think that since God did not create one of those worlds, he does not exist.

Shoving everything about the world into a number representing its goodness might be a reasonable thing to do (I often think that it is). But many people understandably think that the world contains a lot of bad gratuitous features that make it unworthy of creation, and God wouldn't have allowed these gratuitous features to obtain. You need to argue that this kind of picture of what God would do is wrong.

Mike,

Suppose that you're right that God is not required to actualize a world with an overall value greater than N. Suppose that, for all we can tell, our world has a value at least as great as N.

I think these suppositions, if right, would go some way towards answering the problem of evil. But one could still object to God's creating our world on different grounds.

For example, suppose that I have two alternatives A1 and A2. Both are permissible. However, were I to choose to perform A1, I would make things much, much better than if I chose to perform A2. Maybe this involves creating much more happiness or maybe it involves relieving much more suffering.

We are supposing that I'm not required to perform A1 rather than A2, i.e. that both alternatives are permissible since they involve increasing value beyond N. Nevertheless, it seems to me anyway, we can still find fault with someone who chose to perform A2. It wouldn't be that they flouted a requirement. Instead, they chose a worse option for no good reason. I think that's sufficient to make their choice deserving of criticism.

If you could manage to explain why such a choice was made for good reason, then this may not be a problem. I don't see how that story is going to go yet.

It is unfortunate that I phrased the first paragraph the way I did. I didn't mean to implicate that you, or anyone else, was assuming a certain kind of consequentialism, only that I could easily agree with your argument if you were. Then I went on to argue that your argument was open to reasonable doubts without this assumption.

Here's the gist of the point. You might think there are various respects in which various possible worlds might be worthy of creation. Some of these respects do not admit of perfection, some do. Call the respects that admit of perfection "perfection-admitting respects". The world might be perfect in some of these respects by: containing no suffering, containing no violations of rights, containing no inequality, containing no use of people merely as means, etc. (I'm not claiming that each of this is important, I'm just explaining a view.) Then say that a world W has gratuitous badness in a perfection-admitting respect R if God could have created another world W' such that W' is at least as good as W, but is better in respect R.

Argument:
1) If God existed, he would not create a world with gratuitous badness in some perfection-admitting respect.
2) Probably, our world has gratuitous badness in some perfection-admitting respect.
3) So, probably, God does not exist.

This is very similar to many arguments from evil. And this argument can be sound even if God has no obligation to create a world greater than value N. The argument only assumes that God would not create a world with value N or greater that had gratuitous badness in some perfection-admitting respect.

Mike,

Why is what matters the fact that God doesn't run afoul of requirements, rather than whether God could do better?

My 2cents on Clayton and Mike: It seems the metric could make a difference. Suppose you think that worlds are ranked in terms of intrinsic goodness. You might also think that the structure of goodness is such that the fact that x is good gives you a reason to bring x about. But then you could further think that not all reasons are like goodness-based reasons--not all reasons are reasons to bring about. So I guess I too think that it's at least not-implausibly possible that God be susceptible to reasons in these contexts that can weigh against overall-world-value-considerations.

I'm willing to agree that God 'only' needs to make a world that is good enough, and that, in principle, a gratuitous or purposeless or unjustified evil could be part of such a world. I just don't see how there could be morally significant purposeless evils.

If something like the Mutilation is really gratuitous a defence along the lines of 'well, the value of the world is pretty high' doesn't strike me as a good enough defence. Maybe if I thought better I'd think differently, but I'd say that any world with morally significant gratuitous evil isn't 'Good enough' to be God's handiwork. Now, I'm not sure when a gratuitous evil becomes significant, but I'm confident the Mutilation, the other 'theodicial nasties' and the sort of traumatic evils that drive someone to lose their faith or hate God definitely are.

I think distribution of evils is important. I think the God as advertised by Christian Theism is one who is devoted not only to the general value of the world, but to the value of each and every life lived within it. So, a bit like Daniel Howard-Snyder said, if God has an opportunity to eliminate an unnecessary evil of the sort that really matter (horrors, for instance, although I think any 'big enough' undefeated evil counts too) I can't for the life of me see why he wouldn't take it.

Apologies if I'm not really understanding the argument.

While I can agree that if God exists there is a world that is good enough for him to create, I think your argument is weakest where it needs to be strongest - you need to define what the value of N is. I am really sympathetic to what you are trying to achieve with your argument. We can agree that if God exists he must create a world that does not have a value less the N, and that it is permissible, but not obligatory, for Him to create a world with N+ value. It seems that we can agree that the obligation of God is to create N and that it might have been better for God to create N+, but that not creating a world with a value of N+ is not a valid criticism of God or His goodness if His obligation is only to create a world with a minimum value of N. The issue is that we can disagree as to the value of N. Is it not possible for someone to define N as good + no gratuitous evil?

It does not follow that if God created our world that our world has a value of N. Thus would presume that God is completely good where completely good has as a criterion that the creator of a world must create a world with a value of at least N. A less then completely good being who had the power to create a world could create a world with a value of G (N+gratuitous evil) which would be a world that a being who was obligated to create a world with a minimum value of N would not create (even if He could). So it seems that what you need to do to demonstrate the soundness of your argument is to present reasons why our world has the minimum value of N. Unfortunately, I do not see haw this can be done without begging the question.

I think the premise

(R) God is not required to actualize a world that exceeds positive value N

is ambiguous.

Here are some readings:

R1. To actualize a world exceeding value N is not a duty God has.
R2. There is no world w whose value exceeds N such that God has a duty to actualize w.
R3. There is no world w whose value exceeds N such that God has a duty whose fulfillment entails actualizing w.
R4. There is no set (or class or collection) S of worlds such that each member of S has value exceeding N and God has a duty to actualize a member of S.
R5. There is no set (or class or collection) S of worlds such that each member of S has value exceeding N and God has a duty whose fulfillment entails actualizing a member of S.

Depending on your views of duty, you might not think there is a difference between R2 and R3, or a difference between R4 and R5. Suppose I owe you ten dollars. Is it automatically the case that I have a duty to pay you at least five dollars? If yes, then you're probably going to say there is no difference between R2 and R3, or between R4 and R5. But you might go with the idea that duties should not be multiplied (Mark Murphy defends this) and distinguish between duties and what would need to be done in fulfilling a duty.

Anyway, which of these premises are enough for your argument? Clearly neither R2 nor R3 is going to give you your conclusion. For maybe God has a duty to actualize some world or other of value N+1, without there being any particular world of value N+1 that God has a duty to actualize.

R5 entails R1, so if R5 is insufficient to yield the conclusion, R1 is also insufficient.

R5 is sufficient to establish the claim (1) that "it constitutes no objection to the existence of God that he might have actualized W’ whose overall value is N - E". Just let S be the set of all worlds whose value is at least N-E.

Note, however, that R1 is not sufficient to establish (1). For it might be that God has a duty to create some particular world of value at least N-E without God having a duty to create a world of value greater than N as such. Moreover, I think our intuitions support R1, nor R5.

In any case, R5 is insufficient to establish the claim (2) that "it constitutes no objection to the existence of God that he might have actualized W’ that contains less evil than W but whose overall value is also N". In fact, R5 is irrelevant to (2), since R5 concerns duties to actualize a world of value greater than N, while (2) concerns the complaint that God could have actualized a world of value N.

The argument you give for (2) is: "It is true that God might have actualized a world with less evil, but only if he actualizes a world W’ that is (by hypothesis) no better than the world he did actualize."

The implicit argument seems to be this:

i. If a state of affairs X is no better than a state of affairs Y, then one is not required to actualize X instead of Y.
ii. W' is no better than W.
iii. Therefore, God is not required to actualize X instead of Y.

But premise (i) requires some form of consequentialism. The deontologist will deny (i). Indeed, the deontologist insists that one can have a duty whose performance entails actualizing a less good state of affairs than some state of affairs that it would be impermissible for one to actualize.

Here's a different kind of objection. When computing the value of a world W, we either include in the value the value/disvalue of God's actualizing of W or we don't.

Suppose we do include it. Then the argument trivializes. God's doing something he is not permitted to is infinitely bad, and infinitely bad in a way that outweighs all other possible bads or goods. God is the perfect being--the perfect being's acting impermissibly is something truly cosmically awful (and impossible, too). Then, yes, for any positive N, it is true that any world of value N is a world God would be permitted to actualize. But that's only because a part of what makes the world have value N is that God is permitted to actualize it--if God were not permitted to actualize it, then the world (which presumably would be an impossible world then) would have negative infinite value.

Suppose we don't include the value of God's actualizing of the world. Then the argument leads to the absurdity that God can actualize a world where there is a planet where people suffer intensely for eternity, with sufferings proportional to their virtue, as long as there is enough good stuff elsewhere. (Assuming incommensurability doesn't wreck the argument here. But I am not sure how well the argument works given incommensurability.)

Finally, consider the following as a general principle of action:

(Q) If in circumstances C one is not required to actualize a state of affairs of value exceeding N, then as long as one has in C actualized a state of affairs of value N, one is not to be criticized morally.

It seems to me that the argument commits you to this in the special case of God's actualizing a world, and it's not clear that the special case is all that different from the general case in Q. But I don't see any reason to believe Q.

Mike

"What I need for the second conclusion is widespread agreement that our world is on balance a world that is suffciently valuable for God to actualize. I have that."

How do you have that? You may have it among theists, but how does this square with the results of the recent poll where theists are in a distinct minority? I also take it that if there is disagreement as to the facts then one of the sides is wrong.

"Whatever N is it follows that the existence of gratuitous evil presents no objection to God's existence."

How does this follow? I think you need to demonstrate that your hypothesis is in fact the way things are for you to be able to make this assertion. I am not trying to be snarky about this, but if you are simply just working out the implications of a 'if-then' argument,' then so be it, but I would certainly like to see more. I would like you to explain what the value of N is. What does having 'some positive value' mean and positive value for whom? A person living in great wealth and excess while others are starving might think that the world has positive value because he is not suffering. Or, maybe the positive value of N is that God makes His grace available to all so that all who knowingly and freely accept Him as their savior will be saved. (Given your recent paper in Faith and Philosophy, this seems a reasonable move on your part.)

MIke - there is no need to patronize me. I am capable of following your argument which I think I have done. All I am asking for is for you to defend your hypothesis that "we take it as settled that God is not required to actualize a world that exceeds positive value N." My question is why should I accept this stipulation when I do not understand what constitutes 'positive value N.' Maybe this is not an issue for you, but it is for me. Again, you do not owe me an answer, but please do not patronize me.

Mike,

The overall value of W might be some function that takes deontic and non-deontic values.

I'm not sure whether you can iron everything out like that. There might be certain views where different types of values have different structures, and demand different responses. I think a version of buck-passing might make trouble for people who want to consequentialize everything, and it might make a difference here too.

Mike,

I didn't mean to be appealing to PSR. Like you, I'm not impressed by arguments that appeal to it. Take, for example, Thomson's view of abortion. She claims that a woman that has an abortion simply to go on a cruise, to avoid a hassle, has a right to have an abortion in those circumstances. Having an abortion wouldn't involve killing the fetus unjustly so what she does is permissible. Nonetheless, says Thomson, she would be positively indecent for doing so.

My idea is something like hers. One can perform some action permissibly, but one could still deserve criticism for performing it. As a number of others have pointed out above, I think this could be true of God were God to create a world with value at least as great as N. The claim is that if God fails to prevent suffering in creating such a world, then even if it is permissible for him to so fail, he could still deserve criticism if he fails to prevent the suffering without having a justifying reason for so failing.

At any rate, I can see this line being pushed. It doesn't strike me as being terribly unreasonable.

Assuming some moral ordering among the worlds does not entail consequentialism.

Right, I didn't mean to imply that it did (just that there might be an analogous issue). There could be facts about God's desires (or what-have-you) that ground the ordering--in terms of divine moral preferability. But I take it that's not what you're after.

It seems POE can coexist with incommensurability, at least so long as it's not global incommensurability. Just so long as there are some pockets of commensurable worlds, and some are better than others, it seems you can get it going.

Mike,

The idea would then be that actualizing a world from amongst the set that he could permissibly actualize, would be incompatible with his nature. Thus, he couldn't actualize a world with a value at least as great as N even though he could permissibly actualize a world with a value at least as great as N. So, it's not true that he possibly actualizes w.

That it's permissible to do A doesn't show that a perfect being could do A. I'm not sure how this affects your argument. If you're assuming that God possibly actualizes w, then this would be a reason to think that's false.

Mike,

Thinking some more about what would and would not make your view consequentialist--it seems to me that the view will turn out consequentialist if you think that:

(1) Intuitively deontic values (justice, agent-relative ones, etc) can be adequately expressed by genuine consequentialisms

and

(2) The better the world, the better the world-creating act.

Many people seem to think (1) true. As for (2), nothing I can see in your post rules it out. But this comes back to my earlier question about why we should care merely about God doing his duty (rather than the 'supererogatory').

Mike, fair enough. I guess I have questions about getting 'rightness' out of goodness of outcomes (mostly because I have questions about rightness generally). And so I like what seem to me to be less loaded definitions of consequentialism. But why couldn't I agree that a world-creator has no requirement to actualize an above-N world, but nonetheless think that moral perfection requires its bearer to consistently go above and beyond the call of duty?

BTW--and I promise I'll stop posting after this--one implication of your definition is that theories that make goodness of acts a function of goodness of outcomes, but eschew talk of rightness/wrongness, not only aren't consequentialist, they can't be consequentialized at all. That's a bit strange.

I think that there is a problem in how you take "not many people object to the overall value of the world." The sense in which this seems to me true is that most people think the actual world is a good world and would not think it a better state of affairs that the world not exist. But even if most people think that this a very good world, which also seems likely, it doesn't follow that most people think that the world is good enough to have been created by God. Having no problem with the overall value of the world is consistent with thinking that the value of the world is below N.

Mike:

I think now I see better what you're up to.

What if someone says: "God has a duty to ensure there are no gratuitous evils. Any world with gratuitous evils is a world where God violates his duty, and hence has value negative infinity, and in particular has value less than N. Therefore no world of positive value that contains God has any gratuitous evil."

"If your view entails that any world with gratuitious evil is unactualizable and some world with no gratuitous evil is actualizable, you're going to run into the reductio at December 16, 2009 8:17 AM above."

I don't follow that argument. There are too many big words in it for me. But I do think it is obviously analytic that a world with gratuitous evil cannot be actualized by a perfect being.

Nothing I said above, in my previous comment, entails that though.

Mike
I apologize for misreading your comment. I believe you have a valid argument - I question its soundness. I hope you will write more on this topic and this approach to 'solving' the problem of evil. I do learn a great deal from trying to understand with your various arguments.

A question to think about: If the concept of 'good enough' can be worked out regarding the world we live in as the criterion that God must meet to meet His moral duties, then can we rethink the goodness of God in terms of His being good enough to warrant praise and thanksgiving. Does God need to be all-knowing, all-powerful, and completely good to warrant our understanding of our relationship with Him as one of being a child to a parent?

Mike,

Feel free to ignore if I'm saying nothing worth responding to, but:

I think God has more to worry about than a global concern to make an N-world. I think, being morally perfect, he also has commitments (I hesitate to say 'duty') to each person in a world he actualizes. I don't think it would be a commitment to not inflict gratuitous evil (minor instances like finger-scratching seem unproblematic), but it would cover to the other side of the scale, to things like the Mutilation and other horrors. So I think God would be commited to ensure no one suffers these sorts of significant evils without it being needed.

A commitment like this seems reasonable, and I think it escapes your reductio above: God would actualize a world W without a significant gratuitous evil but not a infinitely better world W' with such an instance because the latter doesn't fulfil the commitment I sketched above. After all, providing both are N worlds, I don't see how W' being much better than W really matters (after all, there might be a W'' much better than W', etc.)

Maybe I'm reporting a jejune intuition, but it seems this argument runs into a fairly strong reductio itself. Take an N-world A, and another N-world A', the world that would result if a particular instance of the Mutilation was added to A (if the mutilation isn't bad enough, pretend something widespread and horrible is in fact gratuitous, like AIDS, famine, or sexual abuse.) If I understand the argument right, God can decide that instead of actualizing A, he'll actualize A' instead because either is good enough. That, to me, seems crazy.

Apologies if I've written a lot and said very little.