Socrates' harm thesis

Socrates famously held that a wrongdoer harms themselves more than they harm their victim.

This is a correct rule of thumb, but I doubt that it is true in general.

First, Socrates was probably thinking of the harm to self resulting from becoming a vicious person. But one can imagine cases where a wrongdoer does not become any more vicious, because they have already maxed out on the vice. I don’t know if such cases are real, though.

But here is a more realistic kind of case. It is said that often abusers were themselves abused. Thus it seems that by abusing another one may cause them to become an abuser. Suppose Alice physically abuses Bob and thereby causes Bob to become an abuser. Then Alice has produced three primary harms:

1. Bob’s physical suffering

2. Bob’s being an abuser, and

3. Alice’s being an abuser.

It seems, then, that Alice has harmed Bob worse than she has harmed herself. For she has harmed herself by turning herself into an abuser. But she has harmed Bob by both turning Bob into an abuser and making him suffer physically.

Objection 1: If Bob becomes an abuser because he was abused, then his responsibility for being an abuser is somewhat mitigated, and hence the moral harm to Bob is less than the moral harm to Alice.

Response: Maybe. But this objection fails if we further suppose that Alice herself was the victim of similar abuse, which mitigated her responsibility to exactly the same degree as Alice’s abuse of Bob mitigates Bob’s responsibility.

Objection 2: One does not cause another to become vicious: one at worst provides an occasion for them to choose to become vicious.

Response: Whether one causes another to become vicious or not is beside the point. One harms the other by putting them in circumstances where they are likely to be vicious. This is why corrupting the youth is so wicked, and why Jesus talks of millstones in connection with those who make others trip up.

Teaching virtue

A famous Socratic question is whether virtue can be taught. This argument may seem to settle the question:

1. If vice can be taught, virtue can be taught.

2. Vice can be taught. (Clear empirical fact!)

3. So, virtue can be taught.

Well, except that what I labeled as a clear empirical fact is not something that Socrates would accept. I think Socrates reads “to teach” as a success verb, with a necessary condition for teaching being the conveyance of knowledge. In other words, it’s not possible to teach falsehood, since knowledge is always of the truth, and presumably in “teaching” vice one is “teaching” falsehoods such as that greed is good.

That said, if we understand “to teach” in a less Socratic way, as didactic conveyance of views, skills and behavioral traits, then (2) is a clear empirical fact, and (1) is plausible, and hence (3) is plausible.

That said, it would not be surprising if it were harder to teach virtue even in this non-Socratic sense than it is to teach vice. After all, it is surely harder to teach someone to swim well than to swim badly.

Socrates and thinking for yourself

There is a popular picture of Socrates as someone inviting us to think for ourselves. I was just re-reading the Euthyphro, and realizing that the popular picture is severely incomplete.

Recall the setting. Euthyphro is prosecuting a murder case against his father. The case is fraught with complexity and which a typical Greek would think should not be brought for multiple reasons, the main one being that the accused is the prosecutor’s father and we have very strong duties towards parents, and a secondary one being that the killing was unintentional and by neglect. Socrates then says:

most men would not know how they could do this and be right. It is not the part of anyone to do this, but of one who is far advanced in wisdom. (4b)

We learn in the rest of the dialogue that Euthyphro is pompous, full of himself, needs simple distinctions to be explained, and, to understate the point, is far from “advanced in wisdom”. And he thinks for himself, doing that which the ordinary Greek thinks to be a quite bad idea.

The message we get seems to be that you should abide by cultural norms, unless you are “far advanced in wisdom”. And when we add the critiques of cultural elites and ordinary competent craftsmen from the Apology, we see that almost no one is “advanced in wisdom”. The consequence is that we should not depart significantly from cultural norms.

This reading fits well with the general message we get about the poets: they don’t know how to live well, but they have some kind of a connection with the gods, so presumably we should live by their message. Perhaps there is an exception for those sufficiently wise to figure things out for themselves, but those are extremely rare, while those who think themselves wise are extremely common. There is a great risk in significantly departing from the cultural norms enshrined in the poets—for one is much more likely to be one of those who think themselves wise than one of those who are genuinely wise.

I am not endorsing this kind of complacency. For one, those of us who are religious have two rich sets of cultural norms to draw on, a secular set and a religious one, and in our present Western setting the two tend to have sufficient disagreement that complacency is not possible—one must make a choice in many cases. And then there is grace.

Socratic perfection is impossible

Socrates thought it was important that if you didn't know something, you knew you didn't know it. And he thought that it was important to know what followed from what. Say that an agent is Socratically perfect provided that (a) for every proposition p that she doesn't know, she knows that she doesn't know p, and (b) her knowledge is closed under entailment.

Suppose Sally is Socratically perfect and consider:

1. Sally doesn’t know the proposition expressed by (1).

If Sally knows the proposition expressed by (1), then (1) is true, and so Sally doesn’t know the proposition expressed by (1). Contradiction!

If Sally doesn’t know the proposition expressed by (1), then she knows that she doesn’t know it. But that she doesn’t know the proposition expressed by (1) just is the proposition expressed by (1). So Sally doesn’t know the proposition expressed by (1). So Sally knows the proposition expressed by (1). Contradiction!

So it seems it is impossible to have a Socratically perfect agent.

(Technical note: A careful reader will notice that I never used closure of Sally’s knowledge. That’s because (1) involves dubious self-reference, and to handle that rigorously, one needs to use Goedel’s diagonal lemma, and once one does that, the modified argument will use closure.)

But what about God? After all, God is Socratically perfect, since he knows all truths. Well, in the case of God, knowledge is equivalent to truth, so (1)-type sentences just are liar sentences, and so the problem above just is the liar paradox. Alternately, maybe the above argument works for discursive knowledge, while God’s knowledge is non-discursive.

The value of knowledge

Here’s a curious phenomenon. Suppose I have enough justification for p that if p is in fact true, then I know p, but suppose also that my credence for p is less than 1.

Now consider some proposition q that is statistically independent of p and unlikely to be true. Finally consider the conjunctive proposition r that p is true and q is false.

If I were to learn for sure that r is true, I would gain credence for p, but it wouldn’t change whether I know whether p is true.

If I were to learn for sure that r is false, my credence for p would go down. How much it would go down depends on how unlikely q is. Fact: If P(q)=(2P(p)−1)/P(p), where P is the prior probability, then if I learn that r is false, my credence for p goes to 1/2.

OK, so here’s where we are. For just about any proposition p that I justifiedly take myself to know, but that I assign a credence less than 1 to, I can find a proposition r with the property that learning that r is true increases my credence in p and that learning that r is false lowers my credence in p to 1/2.

So what? Well, suppose that the only thing I value epistemically is knowing whether p is true. Then if I am in the above-described position, and if someone offers to tell me whether r is true, I should refuse to listen. Here is why. Either p is true or it is not true. If p is true, then my belief in p is knowledge. In that case, I gain nothing by learning that r is true. But learning that r is false would lose my knowledge, by reducing my credence in p to 1/2. Suppose p is false. Then my belief in p isn’t knowledge. In the above setup, if p is false, so is r. Learning that r is false, however, doesn’t give me knowledge whether p is true. It gives me credence 1/2, which is neither good enough to know p to be true nor good enough to know p to be false. So if p is false, I gain nothing knowledge-wise.

So, if all I care about epistemically is knowing the truth about some matter, sometimes I should refuse relevant information on the basis of epistemic goals (Lara Buchak argues in her work on faith that sometimes I should refuse relevant information on the basis of non-epistemic goals; that’s a different matter).

I think this is not a very good conclusion. I shouldn’t refuse relevant information on the basis of epistemic goals. Consequently, by the above argument, knowing the truth about some matter shouldn’t be my sole epistemic goal.

Indeed, it should also be my goal to avoid thinking I know something that is in fact false. If I add that to my goals, the conclusion that I should refuse to listen to whether r is true disappears. For if p is false, although learning that r is false wouldn’t give me knowledge whether p is true, in that case it would take away the illusion of knowledge. And that would be valuable.

Nothing deep in the conclusions here. Just a really roundabout argument for the Socratic thesis that it’s bad to think you know when you don’t.

Virtue versus painlessness

Suppose we had good empirical data that people who suffer serious physical pain are typically thereby led to significant on-balance gains in virtue (say, compassion or fortitude).

Now, I take it that one of the great discoveries of ethics is the Socratic principle that virtue is a much more significant contributor to our well-being than painlessness. Given this principle and the hypothetical empirical data, it seems that then we should not bother with giving pain-killers to people in pain—and this seems wrong. (One might think a stronger claim is true: We should cause pain to people. But that stronger claim would require consequentialism, and anyway neglects the very likely negative effects on the virtue of the person causing the pain.)

Given the hypothetical empirical data, what should we do about the above reasoning. Here are three possibilities:

1. Take the Socratic principle and our intuitions about the value of pain relief to give us good reason to reject the empirical data.

2. Take the empirical data and the Socratic principle to give us good reason to revise our intuition that we should relieve people’s pain.

3. Take the empirical data and our intuitions about the value of pain relief to give us good reason to reject the Socratic principle.

Option 1 may seem a bit crazy. Admittedly, a structurally similar move is made when philosophers reject certain theodical claims, such as the Marilyn Adams claim that God ensures that all horrendous suffering is defeated, on the grounds that it leads to moral passivity. But it still seems wrong. If Option 1 were the right move, then we should now take ourselves (who do not have the hyptohetical empirical data) to have a priori grounds to hold that serious physical pain does not typically lead to significant on-balance gains in virtue. But even if some armchair psychology is fine, this seems to be an unacceptable piece of it.

Option 2 also seems wrong to me. The intuition that relief of pain is good seems so engrained in our moral life that I expect rejecting it would lead to moral scepticism.

I think some will find Option 3 tempting. But I am quite confident that the Socratic principle is indeed one of the great discoveries of the human race.

So, what are we to do? Well, I think there is one more option:

4. Reject the claim that the empirical data plus the Socratic principle imply that we shouldn’t relieve pain.

In fact, I think that even in the absence of the hypothetical empirical data we should go for (4). The reason is this. If we reject (4), then the above reasoning shows that we have a priori reasons to reject the empirical data, and I don’t think we do.

So, we should go for (4), not just hypothetically but actually.

How should this rejection of the implication be made palatable? This is a difficult question. I think part of the answer is that the link between good consequences and right action is quite complex. It may, for instance, be the case there are types of goods that are primarily the agent’s own task to pursue. These goods may be more important than other goods, but nonetheless third parties should pursue the less important goods. I think the actual story is even more complicated: certain ways of pursuing the more important goods are open to third-parties but others are not. It may even be that certain ways of pursuing the more important goods are not even open to first-parties, but are only open to God.

And I suspect that this complexity is species-relative: agents of a different sort might have rather different moral reasons in the light of similar goods.

The Euthyphro

I’ve realized today that I read the Euthyphro dilemma differently from how some other people do. I think some people read it as meant to be a real dilemma—a real philosophical question—whether the gods love the holy because it’s holy or whether things are holy because the gods love them.

Maybe it is a real philosophical question, but I don’t think that’s how the text intends it. I suspect that Plato (along, I expect, with Socrates) just straightforwardly thinks:

1. The gods love the holy because it is holy.

2. If the holy were defined as what is loved by the gods, then the holy would be the holy because the gods love it.

3. There is no circularity in explanation. (Implicit premise)

4. So, the holy is not defined as what is loved by the gods. QED

It is more blessed to give than to receive

On the one hand, Jesus tells us that it is more blessed to give than to receive. On the other hand, Socrates tells us in the Gorgias:

And what sort of a person am I? One of those who are happy to be refuted if they make a false statement, happy also to refute anyone else who may do the same, yet not less happy to be refuted than to refute. For I think the former a greater benefit, in proportion as it is of greater benefit to be oneself delivered from the greatest harm than to deliver another. No worse harm, it is true, can befall a man than to hold wrong opinions on the matters now under discussion between us.

We thus have two plausible and apparently conflicting claims: it is better to give than to receive and yet it is better to receive a refutation than to give it. If the conflict is real, then of course we go with Jesus. But is the conflict real? After all, Jesus' saying has the form of a proverb, and we know that proverbs, biblical and otherwise, are not meant to have universal applicability. Wisdom is needed to figure out which proverb applies when.

Jesus' saying seems to me to apply to cases where the giving is a sacrifice, either of the thing given or of one's time and energy in giving it. Socrates, however, is clearly not talking of that sort of giving. Socrates obviously finds it fun to give refutations. There is no sacrifice for him in refuting another. Well, at least in the Gorgias. Eventually, his practice of refuting others costs him his life. At that point it seems that Jesus' proverb applies: giving refutation to others becomes a sacrifice, and it is better for one to make that sacrifice than to be on the receiving end of another's sacrifice.

Maybe a similar thing can be said about another case. We tend to feel that it is better to work on one's own virtue, and to receive virtue from others, than to work on the virtue of others. I think this is because working on one's own virtue tends to be costlier personally, tends to be more of a sacrifice. It is often easier to preach than to do. (And while preaching without doing is often ineffective, that's not universally true. There are many people whose lives have been turned to virtue by the preaching of people whose own lives turned out to be a fraud. One must, though, remember that the preaching is not all that was going on--there was also grace.) So giving virtue to others need not be a sacrificial gift of the sort that Jesus is talking about on my interpretation. But it also can be, in which case the proverb seems to apply.

Speculation on the virtuous person's emotions

Take seriously the Socratic idea that emotional awareness is a kind of perception of normative states of affairs: pain is a perception of actual ill-being, fear of potential future ill-being, joy of present good, and so on. Aristotle seems to think that the virtuous person's emotions will be perfectly in tune with reality. The courageous person will only fear what is genuinely fearsome, and so on.

But if we take the Socratic view of emotional consciousness, then we will have reason to doubt Aristotle. For the virtuous person's emotional awareness is going to be properly functioning. But it is false that properly functioning perceptions are always veridical. Indeed, sometimes, a sensory perception must be non-veridical to be properly functioning. As Descartes notes in the Meditations, any cause that produces the same effect in our body will result in the same perception. A barn and a barn facade (seen face on) produce the same effect on our retinas, and result in the same perceptions. Moreover, when this happens, our perceptions are properly functioning, and were we to see these same effects differently, our perceptions would be improperly functioning. If the barn facade didn't look like a barn, your sense of sight would be malfunctioning. (Our senses might always produce veridical results in heaven. If so, then that is a sense in which our nature is somehow transformed in heaven.) Most of the time, we see barns, not barn facades, and our senses' proper functioning is adapted to what gets us to truth for the most part (much as according to Aquinas, the proper functioning of the reproductive faculties is adapted to what leads to the good for the most part, which is why he thinks fornication is wrong even when it does not harm children, since for the most part, fornication is bad for offspring, and therefore our nature is such that fornication is not a part of our proper function.)

It would be surprising indeed if the same weren't true of emotional awareness. Sometimes, this is true simply because of sensory illusions. If you grew up happily on a farm, the convincing barn facade gives you the same nostalgic feeling as a real barn, and if you failed to feel nostalgia, something is wrong with you. But the same can be true even where there is no sensory illusion. Sometimes, virtue requires one to to knowingly (maybe even intentionally) cause pain to another. But the knowledgeable causing of pain to another quite properly makes one feel bad about what one is doing, and this should happen even when one knows that one ought to be doing what one is doing. In such a case, the emotional awareness may be non-veridical, but it is, nonetheless, properly functioning. If one did not feel bad, then one would have a malfunctioning emotional awareness, and one would not be fully virtuous.

I remember reading that St Catherine the Great Martyr, when young, was puzzled by Christ's suffering in the garden. Wouldn't Christ welcome suffering for righteousness' sake? So she supposed that his suffering was a kind of display for our benefit. But no: It wasn't a show. A virtuous person suffers fear when contemplating a terrible death, even if the virtuous person knows that this death should not be avoided. The feeling may be non-veridical, but why should Christ have been exempt from non-veridical emotions? After all, we do not think he was exempt from visual illusions: Surely a stick in the water looked broken to him. Of course, he might well judge the emotion non-veridical, much as we judge the one about the stick, but just as the stick still looks broken, Christ would still suffer.

But perhaps this is all wrong. It all depends on just how teleological proper function is.

Another start on the problem of evil

According to Socrates the greatest goods and evils are moral ones. Call this the "Socratic thesis". On the Socratic thesis, the worst thing that can befall one is to act culpably wrongly. Now, we may divide up the evils of the world into three classes:

1. Culpable wrongdoings.
2. Harms other than culpable wrongdoings resulting from culpable wrongdoings.
3. Harms neither identical with culpable wrongdoings nor resulting from them.

For instance, if Jones tortures Smith, then Jones suffers a Class 1 evil while Smith suffers a Class 2 evil.

Each of these three classes of evils is very large. I think we can say that if we confine ourselves to evils happening to humans (bracketing the problems of animal suffering and angelic fall): Class 1 is roughly as large as the Class 2 (granted, some culpable wrongdoings result in many harms; but many culpable wrongdoings stay at the level of an evil thought that leads to no harmful action) and also roughly at least as large as Class 3. So roughly, about a third of the evils of the world are in Class 1.

Next notice that we have a theodicy for Class 1 evils: the free will theodicy, in its different versions (straight free will theodicy, soul-building, autonomy, need for love to be a free response, etc.) By the Socratic thesis, we thus have a theodicy for the greatest evils that occur, and these evils are roughly a third of all the evils that occur to humans. This provides us with some inductive reason to think that there is a theodicy for the rest of the evils: if a theodicy can be found for the greatest evils, and indeed for about a third of the evils happening to humans, then the existence of a theodicy for the rest seems more plausible.

Moreover, some versions of the theodicy for Class 1 evils extend to theodicies for many Class 2 evils. First, our free will would be a bit of a sham if it wasn't effective—if evil choices never resulted in in the chosen state of affairs. (This is less plausible for the worst Class 2 evils.) Second, while terribly harms do befall undeserving people, most of the evils that befall are, I suspect, quite deserved. Those evils, then have a justice theodicy, given a freedom theodicy for the actions that deserved them. (This might shift our count of some evils from Class 3 to Class 2, though we might also say that there are evils in Class 3 that do not result from our culpable wrongdoings, but that on account of our culpable wrongdoings weren't prevented by God.)

No one but you yourself can reliably make you be evil

This argument for incompatibilism is inspired by an excellent paper by Patrick Todd that I just heard. I don't know if Patrick would endorse the argument I give, though.
Start with this principle:

1. No one but you yourself can reliably make you be evil.

Explanation is needed. Evil isn't just a bad here—it is a particularly serious kind of bad. Nor is being evil just a matter of having an evil character. For I could, through no fault of my own, be brainwashed into having an evil character, but that wouldn't make me be evil. If I were brainwashed into having a seriously bad character, my actions and my character would be worthy of condemnation, but I would be deserving of pity, and not the kind of condemnation that evil people deserve.
Now, people can cause you to be evil. For instance, they can present you with the temptation to do an evil, and if you fall prey to it your character becomes distorted and they have successfully caused you to be evil. But this temptation was either one that you were very likely to fall prey to or it is not on that you were very likely to fall prey to.
If it was a temptation that you were very likely to fall prey to, then you already had an evil character. For a character that makes one very likely to fall prey to a temptation to do an evil seems to be an evil character. So, the tempter did not make you have an evil character. This may seem to show that the tempter did not make you be evil, but that's not right—it leaves out one possibility, which is that previously you had an evil character but were not evil, because you were not sufficiently culpable for the evil character, but now that you've falled into this temptation, that made you be evil. But I think this can't be so. For if an evil character that you were not sufficiently culpable for made the evil action very likely, then you were not very culpable for the evil action—you were only somewhat culpable for it—and that isn't enough to make you be evil. So if the temptation was one that you were very likely to fall prey to, then either you were already evil, or else you lacked sufficient culpability, and you still lack sufficient culpability.
Oone might worry about boundary cases. Let's say you're pretty bad, but not quite evil. You're just one micromoriarty short of being evil. In that case, maybe, the tempter can produce a temptation such that very likely you'll take it, and then it'll push you over the edge, giving you that micromoriarty, and make you be evil. But I think it's not correct to say then that the tempter made you evil. The tempter only helped you a little bit—you already were almost all the way there.
On the other hand, suppose that the temptation was one you were not very likely to fall prey to. Then quite possibly you did become evil, but because you were not very likely to fall prey to the temptation, the tempter's method by which he made you evil wasn't a reliable method, and so we still do not have a counterexample.
One might have another worry about the argument. There may be some temptations that only a moral hero would have much chance at withstanding. Let's say that only a moral hero would have much chance at failing to betray her friend given some particularly nasty torture T. But we can imagine that if she betrays, she will acquire an evil character. So if you're not a moral hero, it will be very likely that the torture will make you betray, and hence will become evil. But I deny that in this case you will become evil—only your character will. The reason is that temptation that only a moral hero would have much chance at withstanding makes you only slightly culpable, and that isn't enough to make you be evil, unless you were already just a shade short of being evil.
What I said above about single temptations generalizes to long-term plans of temptation. If the plan is pretty sure to work, you already have an evil character, or else you don't become culpable when you fall prey to the plan.
Suppose that (1) is correct. Then we can have the following argument against compatibilism:

2. If compatibilism is true—i.e., if freedom is compatible with all one's mental life being determined—then by setting up appropriate environmental and genetic conditions, one can reliably make someone be evil.
3. Therefore, compatibilism is false. (By 1 and 2)

Horrendous evil and moral development

Suppose I end up at a concentration camp for a significant amount of time. Here are some possible moral development outcomes:

1. becoming really bad (e.g., informer, kapo)
2. becoming heroically good (e.g., Viktor Frankl, Maximilian Kolbe)
3. becoming bitter
4. remaining non-bitter

Obviously there can be overlap—you can become really bad and stay non-bitter. And they're not exhaustive because you might come in bitter. But nevermind all that. The above will be a classification of the most common cases of the most notable aspects of resultant moral development. (Thus, for the person who remains non-bitter but becomes really bad, we classify them just as becoming really bad, because that's more notable than remaining non-bitter.)

Now, I think we have no reason to think that A's outnumber B's. (It would be great to have empirical data.) Moreover, the average A is less morally bad than the average B is morally good. The reason is that there is an asymmetry here: the pressures that A's and B's are under in the camp decrease the culpability of typical A's but increase the praiseworthiness of typical B's. (There will be partial exceptions, like maybe the person who becomes needlessly cruel or the person who becomes virtuous because he's St Maximilian's cellmate. But even these exceptions are not going to be complete exceptions.) Furthermore—and again data would help—I suspect that some of the A's repent of their badness afterwards (some never do, and for some there is no afterwards), while few of the B's repent of their goodness afterwards. So, if all we know about x is that he is going to be an A or a B, the expected value of x's moral development hange will be positive.

What about the C's and D's? This is, I think, the really important case, as they'll probably be a larger group than the A's and B's. Now, it is a much greater virtue to remain non-bitter through a concentration camp than it is a vice to become bitter through the concentration camp. Part of the reason is the culpability point from the previous paragraph. Making one bitter is the "natural" tendency of horrors, and it is not a great vice to fall into that. So, unless there are way more C's than D's, we have positive expected value of moral development.

Now, add the following thesis: In terms of value, a moderate amount of positive moral development trumps a very large amount of suffering. (Socrates would say—and I think he'd be right—that any amount of positive moral development trumps any amount of suffering.) If this thesis is right, even when we add the amount of suffering, we may still have positive expected value for a random individual who suffers horrors like those of a concentration camp.

The real problem of evil, I think, is not about expected values, utilities and the like, however. The real problem is deontological. Does God have the right to allow someone to suffer so much given the expected value of moral development? I think the answer is positive. Suppose I knew that by preventing a great suffering to myself I would be losing an opportunity for significant positive moral development. Would prudence permit me to refrain from preventing the suffering? I think it would. Nor would such a refraining from prevention be morally wrong. But God is closer to me than I myself am, in some relevant sense. If I would not be imprudent or immoral to permit a suffering to myself, it would likewise not be wrong of God to permit it to me.

A dialogue on Calvinism

Ari: Consider this horrific theology: God forces Sally to sin, in a way that takes away her responsibility, and then he intentionally causes eternal torment to her.

Cal: I thought you were smarter than that. That isn't Calvinist theology! Calvinism holds that God intentionally causes people to sin in a way that retains their responsibility, and then punishes some of them.

Ari: I didn't say it was a Calvinist theology. You agree that this is a horrific theology, I take it?

Cal: Yes, of course.

Ari: Why?

Cal: Because God is punishing an innocent.

Ari: I said nothing about punishment. I said God intentionally caused eternal torment. I didn't say that the torment was a punishment.

Cal: How does that make it not be horrific?

Ari: I agree it's horrific. I just want to get clear on why. It's horrific because eternal torment is intentionally imposed on an innocent, right?

Cal: Right.

Ari: And why is that horrific?

Cal: Huh?!

Ari: It's obvious, isn't it? It's horrific because eternal torment is an extremely great harm, and it is being imposed on an innocent.

Cal: Yes. But I said: that theology isn't mine.

Ari: And I didn't say it was. But now, you agree that eternal torment is deserved for sin or at least some sin.

Cal: For all sin.

Ari: Very good. And punishment should be proportionate to the crime?

Cal: Yes. And sin is a rebellion against God. Every sin is horrendous.

Ari: Right. And do you agree with Socrates that it is better to suffer wrongdoing than to act wrongly?

Cal: There is eternal punishment, after all.

Ari: Would it be true even if there were no hell? Socrates thinks it is in itself better to suffer wrongdoing than to act wrongly.

Cal: I guess he's right.

Ari: And the worse the wrongdoing, the worse it is to for the wrongdoer?

Cal: Yes.

Ari: And so, if sin is an extremely great evil, it is an extremely great harm to the wrongdoer, right?

Cal: That sounds right.

Ari: But now let's go back to your theology. Your theology is that God intentionally causes some innocent people to sin...

Cal: ... in a way that retains their responsibility.

Ari: Exactly. It wouldn't be sin in the full sense without the responsibility. But we also agreed that it is an extremely great harm to the sinner to sin.

Cal: I guess so.

Ari: And we agreed that the horrific theology is horrific precisely because it has God intentionally imposing an extremely great harm on an innocent person. Yet according to your theology God intentionally imposes an extremely great harm on an innocent person—the harm of sinning. Moreover, this harm appears to be of the same order of magnitude as eternal torment, because the sin deserves eternal torment and punishment needs to match the crime.

Cal: I'll need to think about this. But one quick thought comes into my mind: God causes people to sin in order to glorify himself through redeeming some and punishing others.

Ari: But my horrific theology wouldn't be a good theology if we added that God somehow makes use of the eternal torment of the innocent person to glorify himself. Maybe the innocent person is so good that she sings praises to God for eternity, and such singing of praise, despite eternal torment, has extremely high value. Now maybe you don't buy that it has such great value. But I submit that even if it did, intentionally imposing eternal torment on an innocent would not be justified. And for the same reason, intentionally imposing sin on an innocent is not justified.

Socrates and the problem of evil

Consider Socrates' thesis: any amount of external evils (i.e., anything other than vice or loss of virtue) is worth suffering for any gain in virtue. So if twenty years in the Gulag made one slightly less selfish and did not make one more vicious in any way, then it was all worth it.

As far back as I remember thinking about these things, something like Socrates' thesis seemed obvious to me (not that you could tell from my behavior). The man on the rack isn't happy, but if one were to choose between being on the rack and slightly more courageous and not being on the rack, one would be prudent in choosing being on the rack.

Suppose Socrates' thesis is true. This makes some aspects of the problem of evil rather easier to handle. For rarely are we in a position to know that some evil did not either make the person slightly more virtuous or at least offer the peson a reasonable opportunity to become slightly more virtuous. Even if the evil is something like dying in one's sleep, it is not crazy to think that dealing with this death in purgatory might not have made the person more virtuous.

Of course, there is still the question whether the gain in virtue couldn't have as well been produced in other ways. But perhaps this precisely kind of gain of virtue couldn't have been—and different kinds of gain of virtue are incommensurable.

This is not meant to give a theodicy. Rather, it is meant to be one of those posts where I try to identify yet another tool for the theodicist's toolbox.

The liar paradox and desire

The standard desire version of the liar paradox is to consider a person whose only desire is to have no satisfied desires. But that's a weird enough desire that one might wonder if it's possible to have it. Here is a version of the liar paradox using desires that are more imaginable.

Malefa has only one desire: That none of Bonnie's desires be satisfied. Bonnie has only one desire: That all of Malefa's desires be satisfied. Whose desire is satisfied? If Malefa's is, then Bonnie's isn't, and Malefa's isn't. If Malefa's isn't, then Bonnie's is, and Malefa's is, too.

What assumptions does this paradox depend on?

1. It is possible that Malefa and Bonnie both have the above desires.
2. The following disquotational schema for desire satisfaction is correct: A desire that p is satisfied iff I(p) (where I(p) is p rewritten with the subjunctive mood replaced by the indicative; thus, I("he eat ice cream") is "he eats ice cream"; to be more precise in the schema, I need to put in quotation marks of the right sort, but I'm not going to bother);
3. Classical logic.

In regard to (1), one might worry that it's not possible to have only one desire. But that's easily handled by modifying the cases. Maybe Malefa's strongest (or most intense or latest acquired) desire is that Bonnie's strongest (or most intense or latest acquired) desire not be satisfied, and Bonnie's strongest (or ...) desire is that Malefa's strongest (or ...) desire be satisfied.

Moreover, there is nothing absurd about having desires that someone else's desires be or not be satisfied.

One could do what I did in my Monday post and argue that whether Malefa actually manages to have the indicated desires depends on what Bonnie desires (or vice versa or both). Somehow, I find this less plausible in the case of desire—I guess I feel a pull of a certain internalism about desire.

A different move would be based on the Gorgias. In the Gorgias, Socrates argues at length that the tyrant, though he is able to put enemies to death and all that, gets less and less of what he wants the more powerful he is. The reason for that is that he does not really desire to put enemies to death and all that—what he really wants is happiness. There are a couple of ways of taking Socrates' point. One way is to say that there are no instrumental desires. If the tyrant had a desire to have enemies put to death, that would be merely instrumental. Another way (I think Heda Segvic took this view) is to make desire have a normative dimension, such that to desire is to desire appropriately, so that the tyrant does not desire the deaths of his enemies.

Both of these two readings undercut the view that everything that can be put in a (subjunctified) "that clause" can be an object of desire. Moreover, they in particular make questionable the possibility of one person desiring that another's desires not be satisfied: that desire seems too much akin to the tyrant's desire that so-and-so die.

The paradox gives support for the thesis of the Gorgias. But there is something uncomfortable in using a paradox to give support to a substantive philosophical position.

Moreover, one might think that the solution in the case of the desire-satisfaction form of the paradox should be the same as in the case of the truth form. I am not completely sure. (Here is a consideration to back up my uncertainty: the complements of desires are subjunctified that-clauses, while the complements of beliefs and assertions are indicative that-clauses. This observation weakens—ever so slightly—the standard view that the object of a desire is a proposition. But the object of belief and assertion is a proposition. (I say this without committing to a realism about propositions.))

Spiritual sickness and spiritual death

There is a temptation for Catholics—also present for non-Catholic Christians but with different terminology—to settle for avoiding mortal sin. After all, if one has living faith and does not reject Christ's salvific grace through mortal sin, one will be saved. So why should one worry about venial sin?

Leaving aside the question of purgatory—for that is not the heart of the issue, but something more in the way of an effect of it—here is one thing that is wrong with this. In a state of mortal sin, one is bereft of living faith, of charity and of Christian hope. One is spiritually dead. If one is not a state of mortal sin, then one is spiritually alive. But surely we are not merely satisfied with being alive.

It would be silly to say: "I shall not go to the doctor. Yes, I have a great big ulcer, but after all, I am alive, and that is all that matters." While there may be contexts where it is appropriate to shout with joy "I am alive!" as if that was all that mattered—for instance, right after one's life (spiritual or physical) has just been saved. But as regards the body, we do not just want life. We want a life of health. One can be alive, but very ill, close to death. There is still reason to have the joy of life—there is a qualitative difference between that life and death—but that is not what we aspire to. (Here, of course, one recalls what Socrates says about how happiness is thought to require health of body and in fact requires health of soul.)

But there is a disanalogy between the physical illness of those who are physically alive and the spiritual illness of those who are spiritually alive. For while this particular physical illness may not win out, our mortal body is after all heading for the grave—perhaps unless the eschaton intervenes.[note 1] But while spiritually ill though in a state of grace, there is reason to hope—not just hope to overcome that particular illness, but to overcome them all, by the grace of Christ living in us. Thus we do have more reason to rejoice over being spiritually alive than over physically alive—but this rejoicing cannot lead to idleness, since after all, how much do we want to prolong our ill health?

Pleasure and pain

In experiencing a pleasure (or pain, but let's start with the nice side), one is aware. But what is one aware of in the pleasure? We could say that one is aware of the pleasure. However, that seems mistaken. For there is indeed such a thing as being aware of a pleasure--a second order perception--and that second order awareness need not be pleasant at all. One might with horror realize that one is taking pleasure in the sufferings of another, for instance. So an awareness of a pleasure need not be pleasant. But a pleasure is, of course, always pleasant. This suggests that a pleasure is more than the awareness of a pleasure. Now maybe it is a certain kind of such awareness, say a particularly vivid one. But I don't think this is going to work.

Let's try a different tack. Pleasure isn't some kind of unitary mental ingredient. Rather, there are different kinds of pleasure, and there is no single common feel between them. There is the pleasure of solving a difficult mathematical problem and the pleasure of eating a chocolate cake. It would be really odd if one had these two feelings reversed! Moreover, one takes pleasure in something, such as an activity.[note 1] It is quite possible to take pleasure in something unreal, for instance being glad that someone has done one a good turn, when in fact the person has sneakily betrayed one.

So in pleasure we are taking pleasure in something distinct from the pleasure itself, and pleasure comes in different kinds corresponding to the kinds of things we take pleasure in. What, then, are we aware of in having a pleasure? It is the thing we take pleasure in. But to be aware of something is to be aware of it as a something. So in having a pleasure, we are aware of some x as an F. Often, x is an activity. But what is F? If we say "something pleasant", we have gone in a circle in trying to understand pleasure. Rather, I suggest, we are aware of an x as a particular kind of good. When we take pleasure in camping we are aware of the camping as a particular kind of good. Is this the whole story? Maybe not--maybe we need to say something about the sort of awareness this is, the kind of awareness that is involved in perception rather than in figuring out that something has some property. But we've got, I think, at least a part of a story.

Nor is this story very new. It is not very far from Aristotle's account of pleasure as completing a good in the Nicomachean Ethics, and is the view of pleasure that we get by analogy to Socrates' account of fear in the Protagoras.

This story has several merits:

1. The account is uniform between spiritual or psychological pleasures and physical pleasures. It is clear that spiritual or psychological pleasures are the taking of pleasure in something--that they have intentionality. This is less clear for physical pleasures. But it seems implausible that some pleasures would be intentional mental states and some would be non-intentional mental states.
2. The account neatly explains what an "empty pleasure" is. An empty pleasure is one divorced from the good being taken pleasure in. I could inject myself with chemicals, perhaps, that will make me feel the satisfaction of having done a job well, but if I do so when I've botched the job, my pleasure will be empty.
3. The account explains why it is that taking pleasure in bad things (e.g., bad things happening to others) is particularly bad. It is particularly bad because it is self-deceptive: one is having oneself perceive something bad as good. And this kind of deception makes one deficient at love, since love requires getting right what is good and what is bad for others.
4. The account explains why it is that many instances of pleasure are good. They are good because they are veridical perceptual states.

There is an analogous story about pains: pains are perceptions of something as bad in a particular way. However, some of the advantages of the account of pleasure are harder to see in the case of pain. One consequence of this account of pain is, after all, that veridical pain--i.e., pain in which we see something as bad in a particular way which is indeed bad in that particular way and where we are rightly connected to that bad state of affairs--is intrinsically good. And it might strike us as odd to suppose that some pains are intrinsically good. But observe that this is the right thing to say about many spiritual pains. As Johannes de Silentio says in the Sickness unto Death, the worse sickness is not to have that sickness. Many spiritual pains are such that it would be a defect not to have them. To fail to feel guilt for a bad action and to fail to grieve for a friend's suffering is bad: conversely, to feel guilt when one has done ill and to grieve rightly are intrinsically good. The uniformity between spiritual and physical pains seems a theoretical merit. And for a theist the fact that the question why God allows there to be pain is not intrinsically a problem--that it is good that God allows there to be pain--is definitely an advantage of the account.

But we still need to explain why it seems to be a good thing to relieve even veridical physical pains (pains that correctly represent an injury as bad), even though these pains according to the theory are intrinsically good. At least things can be said on this point. First, even if something is intrinsically good, it can be instrumentally bad. Pains often distract us, drawing our attention to facts that we do not need our attention drawn to. If we have a gaping wound, and have seen a doctor, we don't need further reminder of the wound, though the reminder is veridical. Second, I wonder whether our physical pains are often veridical even in cases where a genuine injury is causing the pain. They might be excessive, disproportionate vis-a-vis the injury, especially in light of our eternal destiny. I suspect that we tend to underappreciate moral bads and overappreciate physical bads, so we tend not to suffer enough spiritually and to suffer too much physically (on the other hand, Christ on the Cross had both a full appreciation of moral bads, and our excessive, fallen pain perceptions, so he suffered doubly). This seems to be a part of the Fall.

I also suspect we tend not to take enough pleasure in things; if we saw God manifested in everything around us, every pleasure would be heightened. But while excess renders a pain non-veridical, shortfall does not automatically render a pleasure non-veridical. This disanalogy is due to the fact that even if we do not see all the good in a state of affairs, the good that we see in it is there, and as far as the pleasure goes, it is veridical--though more pleasure would also be veridical.