I’m surprised to see this dialogue make so little mention of the material evidence* at hand with regards to the specific claims of Christianity. I mean; a god which was omnipotent and omnibenevolent would surely create a world with less suffering for humanity than what we conjecture an FAI would orchestrate, yes? Color me old-fashioned but I assign the logically** impossible a zero probability (barring of course my being mistaken about logical impossibilities).
See Plantinga’s free will defense for human and the variant for natural evils; it defuses the logical argument from evil. (Of course it does this by postulating ‘free will’, whatever that is, but I don’t think free will is nearly as clear cut a p=~0 as the existence of evils...)
There are other arguments too, that I haven’t seen made in the theology literature. Like, God instantiated all possible universes with net positive utility, because that’s more utility than just instantiating the universe with the most utility. This is an extremely basic idea, I really don’t know why I haven’t seen it before.
I’ve seen this argument but didn’t manage to find the paper. It goes further: imagine that the space of possible universes looks like a sphere in R^n centered at the origin and one axis represents a utility function that encodes God’s preferences about whether a universe should exist(1) or not and the 0 on the axis is just where God’s preferences switch from “would rather exist than not” to “would rather not exist”(2). Then the vast majority of universes that God instantiates are just barely worth existing, and you should expect to find yourself in a universe where the problem of evil is not resolved by “actually things are pretty great, good job God!” or by “we live in a hell dimension, God is the worst”.
(1) Assume “should exist” makes sense. I realize none of us knows what this means. (2) Luckily? For an underlying reason? Anyway it’s one plausible shape, more likely than any specific squiggly blob, and the argument works for lots of other shapes like a cone with its point in the +util direction.
It’s only somewhat related, but do you know of any good rebuttals to Plantinga’s evolutionary argument against naturalism? I find his argument really quite clever. I couldn’t immediately think up a refutation, but I haven’t looked at the literature.
It’s been a while since I was reading about it, but my reaction was bullet-biting: “Sure. Does anyone actually think our faculties are perfectly reliable? I sure don’t, and I’d nominate religion itself as a perfect example of how evolution-molded psychologies can go horribly epistemologically wrong.”
You seem to be at the wrong meta level. (Er, sorry, social norms dictate that now I have to explain why I think that, but really I’m too lazy. Just interpret this comment as saying that you might want to look at the argument again to make sure you’re appreciating its meta-level points.)
So, by “meta level” I assume Will just means “the rest of Plantinga’s argument” which is that if beliefs aren’t reliable than there is no reason to believe naturalism (not a reliable belief).
The key of course is the phrase “perfectly reliable” which Gwern uses and Plantinga does not. Plantinga admits that beliefs are not perfectly reliable- when he says reliable he means something like “the vast majority of the time”. He has a specific argument that a belief causing adaptive behavior is not an indicator of its truth. It goes something like this: behavior is caused by combinations of beliefs and desires. But many (most?) beliefs and belief-desire combinations that would cause adaptive behavior are false. For instance, a hominid would behave adaptively if he desired to get eaten by a lion but falsely believed that any lion he saw would try to protect him from other lions. Similarly, there is nothing to keep evolution from selecting from beliefs that are false but don’t impact survival behavior (like, say believing trees are trees vs. believing they are witch trees.
This argument is weak: evolution acts not on the set of possible beliefs but on the set of available beliefs. Plantinga has to argue that evolving the false-but-adaptive beliefs is just as likely as evolving true beliefs. Opponents of Plantinga need to develop this argument into something more robust and explain specifically why beliefs about practical things like simple observations are reliable. (Having a single method for forming new beliefs about evolutionary unprecedented threats seems a) more parsimonious and evolutionarily available and b)likely to produce reliable beliefs.
That there are cases of routinely false belief that are ruled false only by reference to beliefs we have reason to trust is just icing on the cake: theism doesn’t have a good explanation for the existence of cognitive biases if it is being using to explain reliableness. Don’t bite the whole bullet; just half of it, catching it with your teeth.
What exactly is the “net positive utility”? Where exactly is the zero? For example if we assume that existing is always better than not existing, then all existing universes automatically have net positive utility.
If we assume a Christian model where people will get most of their utility in afterlife, this model would put a limit on Heaven : Hell population ratio. The exact numbers would depend on how many people in Heaven plus how many people in Hell give a total zero utility. For example assuming that positive utility of one person in Heaven is greater in absolute value than negative utility of all people in Hell, this model would say that all worlds where at least one person gets to Heaven will be instantiated. Assuming this, the exceptionality of Jesus in our universe is an evidence for all other people going to Hell.
(Just joking. With proper definitions and priors you can prove anything.)
An omnipotent omnibenevolent being would have no need for such “shorthand” tricks to create infinite worlds without suffering. Yes you could always raise another aleph level for greater infinities; but only by introducing suffering at all.
I don’t buy it. A superhuman intelligence with unlimited power and infinite planning time and resources could create a world without suffering even without violating free will. And yet we have cancer and people raping children.
A superhuman intelligence with unlimited power and infinite planning time and resources could create a world without suffering even without violating free will.
Oh, it did try. Unfortunately, Adam exercised his free will in the wrong way. Better luck next universe.
I’m surprised to see this dialogue make so little mention of the material evidence* at hand with regards to the specific claims of Christianity. I mean; a god which was omnipotent and omnibenevolent would surely create a world with less suffering for humanity than what we conjecture an FAI would orchestrate, yes? Color me old-fashioned but I assign the logically** impossible a zero probability (barring of course my being mistaken about logical impossibilities).
* s/s//** s/v/c/See Plantinga’s free will defense for human and the variant for natural evils; it defuses the logical argument from evil. (Of course it does this by postulating ‘free will’, whatever that is, but I don’t think free will is nearly as clear cut a p=~0 as the existence of evils...)
There are other arguments too, that I haven’t seen made in the theology literature. Like, God instantiated all possible universes with net positive utility, because that’s more utility than just instantiating the universe with the most utility. This is an extremely basic idea, I really don’t know why I haven’t seen it before.
I’ve seen this argument but didn’t manage to find the paper. It goes further: imagine that the space of possible universes looks like a sphere in R^n centered at the origin and one axis represents a utility function that encodes God’s preferences about whether a universe should exist(1) or not and the 0 on the axis is just where God’s preferences switch from “would rather exist than not” to “would rather not exist”(2). Then the vast majority of universes that God instantiates are just barely worth existing, and you should expect to find yourself in a universe where the problem of evil is not resolved by “actually things are pretty great, good job God!” or by “we live in a hell dimension, God is the worst”.
(1) Assume “should exist” makes sense. I realize none of us knows what this means.
(2) Luckily? For an underlying reason? Anyway it’s one plausible shape, more likely than any specific squiggly blob, and the argument works for lots of other shapes like a cone with its point in the +util direction.
I’ve seen that before; somewhere in Luke’s collection of papers dealing with the FWD.
Okay, that’s good to know.
It’s only somewhat related, but do you know of any good rebuttals to Plantinga’s evolutionary argument against naturalism? I find his argument really quite clever. I couldn’t immediately think up a refutation, but I haven’t looked at the literature.
It’s been a while since I was reading about it, but my reaction was bullet-biting: “Sure. Does anyone actually think our faculties are perfectly reliable? I sure don’t, and I’d nominate religion itself as a perfect example of how evolution-molded psychologies can go horribly epistemologically wrong.”
You seem to be at the wrong meta level. (Er, sorry, social norms dictate that now I have to explain why I think that, but really I’m too lazy. Just interpret this comment as saying that you might want to look at the argument again to make sure you’re appreciating its meta-level points.)
So, by “meta level” I assume Will just means “the rest of Plantinga’s argument” which is that if beliefs aren’t reliable than there is no reason to believe naturalism (not a reliable belief).
The key of course is the phrase “perfectly reliable” which Gwern uses and Plantinga does not. Plantinga admits that beliefs are not perfectly reliable- when he says reliable he means something like “the vast majority of the time”. He has a specific argument that a belief causing adaptive behavior is not an indicator of its truth. It goes something like this: behavior is caused by combinations of beliefs and desires. But many (most?) beliefs and belief-desire combinations that would cause adaptive behavior are false. For instance, a hominid would behave adaptively if he desired to get eaten by a lion but falsely believed that any lion he saw would try to protect him from other lions. Similarly, there is nothing to keep evolution from selecting from beliefs that are false but don’t impact survival behavior (like, say believing trees are trees vs. believing they are witch trees.
This argument is weak: evolution acts not on the set of possible beliefs but on the set of available beliefs. Plantinga has to argue that evolving the false-but-adaptive beliefs is just as likely as evolving true beliefs. Opponents of Plantinga need to develop this argument into something more robust and explain specifically why beliefs about practical things like simple observations are reliable. (Having a single method for forming new beliefs about evolutionary unprecedented threats seems a) more parsimonious and evolutionarily available and b)likely to produce reliable beliefs.
That there are cases of routinely false belief that are ruled false only by reference to beliefs we have reason to trust is just icing on the cake: theism doesn’t have a good explanation for the existence of cognitive biases if it is being using to explain reliableness. Don’t bite the whole bullet; just half of it, catching it with your teeth.
There is also the matter of methodological naturalism vs. metaphysical naturalism. The former renders Plantinga’s argument useless and is a more reasonable position than the latter anyway.
Aw, man! I don’t doubt that you’re right, but I can’t figure out how.
What exactly is the “net positive utility”? Where exactly is the zero? For example if we assume that existing is always better than not existing, then all existing universes automatically have net positive utility.
If we assume a Christian model where people will get most of their utility in afterlife, this model would put a limit on Heaven : Hell population ratio. The exact numbers would depend on how many people in Heaven plus how many people in Hell give a total zero utility. For example assuming that positive utility of one person in Heaven is greater in absolute value than negative utility of all people in Hell, this model would say that all worlds where at least one person gets to Heaven will be instantiated. Assuming this, the exceptionality of Jesus in our universe is an evidence for all other people going to Hell.
(Just joking. With proper definitions and priors you can prove anything.)
An omnipotent omnibenevolent being would have no need for such “shorthand” tricks to create infinite worlds without suffering. Yes you could always raise another aleph level for greater infinities; but only by introducing suffering at all.
Which violates omnibenevolence.
I don’t buy it. A superhuman intelligence with unlimited power and infinite planning time and resources could create a world without suffering even without violating free will. And yet we have cancer and people raping children.
Oh, it did try. Unfortunately, Adam exercised his free will in the wrong way. Better luck next universe.
Perhaps betting huge amounts of other people’s suffering on Adam’s ability to resist eating an apple was a really stupid idea.
“If it weren’t for my horse, I never would’ve graduated college.” >_<
Plus the dubious moral view that the seemingly incoherent variety of free will is of immense axiological importance.