Theism and emotional attitudes to adversity

Here are two three possible emotional attitudes towards great adversity:

1. Judaeo-Christian: hope

2. Stoic: calm

3. Russellian: anger/despair.

Now consider this argument:

1. The appropriate attitude towards great adversity is Judaeo-Christian or Stoic.

2. If naturalism is true, the appropriate attitude towards great adversity is Russellian.

3. So, naturalism is false.

The reason for (1) is the obvious attractiveness of the hopeful-to-calm part of the emotional spectrum as a way of dealing with diversity.

The reason for (2) is that emotions should fit with reality. But as Russell argues, a naturalist reality does not care about us: we came from the nebula and we will go back to the nebula, and the darkness of our life makes Greek tragedy the supreme form of human art. The most we can do shake our fist at the injustice of it all.

Ataraxia

The stoics, the academic sceptics and the epicureans all to various degrees basically agreed—or at least largely lived as if they agreed—that happiness was ataraxia, imperturbable calm and tranquility. This is a useful and important corrective to our busy work and busy “leisure”. But at the sme time, it’s really a quite empty and negative picture of life’s fulfillment. It’s more like a picture of how to get done with life without too much misery.

Perhaps they had a part of the truth: perhaps what is truly worth having is imperturbably, calmly and tranquilly doing certain things, such as enjoying the companionship of those we love—God above all. But the ataraxia is just a mode of the worthwhile activity rather than the center of it.

Furthermore, perhaps these ancients were extensionally right: for perhaps the only way to have ataraxia is by being with God, since our hearts are restless apart from him. In that case, ataraxia isn’t happiness, or worth pursuing for its own sake, but is a sign of happiness.

Pain

I have a strong theoretical commitment to:

1. To feel pain is to perceive something as if it were bad.
2. Veridical perception is non-instrumentally good.

On the other hand, I also have the strong intuition that:

3. Particularly intense physical pain is always non-instrumentally bad.

Thus, (1) and (2) commit me to veridical pains being non-instrumentally good. But (3) commits me to particularly intense physical pain, whether veridical or not, being non-instrumentally bad. This has always been very uncomfortable for me, though not as uncomfortable as intense physical pain is.

But today I realized that there is no real contradiction between (1), (2) and (3). Rather than deriving a contradiction from (1)-(3), what we should conclude is:

4. No instance of particularly intense physical pain is veridical.

And I don't have a very strong intuition against (4). And here is a story supporting (4). We systematically underestimate spiritual goods and bads, while we systematically overestimate physical goods and bads. Arguably, the worst of the physical bads is death, and yet both Christianity and ancient philosophy emphasize that we overestimate the badness of death. It is not particularly surprising that our perceptions suffer from a similar overestimation, and in particular that they typically present physical bads as worse than they are. If so, then it could well be that no merely physical bad is so bad as to be accurately represented by a particularly intense physical pain.

One difficulty is that the plausibility of my position depends on how one understands "particularly intense". If one has a high enough standard for that, then (4) is plausible, but it also becomes plausible that pains that just fall short of the standard still are non-instrumentally bad. If one has a lower standard for "particularly intense", then (4) becomes less plausible. I am hoping that there is a sweet spot (well, actually, a miserable spot!) where the position works.

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)