Putting Afterlives on a Par

One popular strategy for answering the argument from evil against theism imposes what are called sufferer-centric conditions on a successful response. Dustin Crummett defines the term as follows: a sufferer-centric condition on a successful response to the argument from evil imposes requirements not just for the world as a whole, but for how the response addresses the particular sufferings of particular people.

An example of this distinction in action. Nelson Pike set the standard for responses to the argument from evil with the following condition: any evil that God allows must be logically necessary to secure a greater good or to avoid a greater evil. Pike’s Condition is an example of a ‘global’ approach to responding to evil. It says something about how the world as a whole must turn out in order for a certain evil to not disconfirm theism. But it does not say much beyond that. Suppose Alice contracts a wasting disease as a baby and dies. So long as Alice getting the disease was logically required to block some greater evil or bring about some greater good, for all Pike’s Condition says, those things might not have anything else to do with Alice.

Partially in response to Pike, and with instances of horrendous suffering squarely in view, Marilyn McCord Adams proposed a different condition: that whatever evil God allows, in order for God to be good to someone, their life must be an overall great good to them, and the suffering they endure must contribute to the goodness of that life. Adams’s Condition is much stronger than Pike’s. Return again to Alice. If Pike’s Condition is sufficient, then maybe Alice’s illness enabling more elegant laws of nature is a good reason to allow it (this is roughly Leibniz’s suggestion, once you unpack what he means by ‘best of all possible worlds’). But that would not suffice under Adams’s Condition.

The second clause of Adam’s Condition is worth a close look. Roderick Chisholm distinguished between an evil being ‘defeated’ and an evil being ‘balanced off.’ An evil that is ‘balanced off’ is part of an overall whole that is on-balance good, but the evil detracts from the goodness of whole. It would be better without the evil. Imagine a symphony where the orchestra screws up the first movement. They nail movements 2-4, so the concert is overall a good concert. But it would have been better without the mistake. The errors of the first movement are balanced off in the context of the piece as a whole, but they are not defeated. They remain a source of regret.

Now imagine a symphony that includes discordant parts, such that if you listened only to them, it would be a bad experience. But as they contrast and intermingle with the rest of the music, it produces a more beautiful whole. We can think of these discordant parts as like evils. Their intrinsic quality is bad. But they are incorporated into a greater whole where they make a positive contribution. The piece is better for their presence. This is how Chisholmnian defeat works, and this is what Adams requires of lives touched by horrendous suffering.

Plausibly, the only way to fulfill Adams-style conditions will invoke an afterlife. We see enough people whose earthly lives involve horrendous suffering whose lives were not a great good to them and whose suffering was never incorporated into that goodness die that that’s the only realistic hypothesis around. From this, we can draw two claims. First: sufferers must have a good afterlife. Second: that afterlife must be enhanced somehow by the suffering they endured, so that their life overall is better than it would have been.

So far so good. If God can pull this off, it would be pretty cool. Yet, nevertheless, there remains a fly in the ointment. The need for horrendous suffering to be incorporated into an overall improvement creates perverse incentives. First: if, in general, lives touched by horrendous suffering end up better overall than lives that are not so touched, then anyone who does not suffer horrendously ‘misses out.’ Second: this removes the incentive for those of us down here to prevent horrendous suffering, or even to not inflict horrendous suffering on others. After all, their life will be better for it. A thoroughly non-consequentialist ethics might be able to help with the second problem, on general ‘the ends don’t justify the means’ grounds. But without welfarist reasons, it’s going to be really hard to ground a duty to prevent horrendous suffering.

This leaves a dilemma. Either you require that horrendous suffering be defeated and so undermine a lot of common-sense morality by undermining welfarist reasons for preventing horrendous suffering, or you require something weaker like balancing off, and then you are stuck with lives still being marred by horrendous suffering, even if they end up overall good. Either result is a disappointment.

Fortunately, there is a way out. Recent work in axiology has put pressure on what is known as the ‘trichotomy thesis,’ which says roughly: for any two options, either they are equally good, or one is better than the other. This pressure has largely come from what Ruth Chang calls ‘hard choices.’ A canonical example: suppose a bright 22-year-old, recently graduated from college, is choosing between law school and graduate school in philosophy. Suppose they are equally likely to be successful in either career. Different factors might tell in favor of one or the other – law pays more, academia allows for more autonomy, etc. Neither option has the upper hand. According to the trichotomy thesis, then, they must be indifferent between the two. If that’s true, you should be able to help them decide by offering a dollar to take one option or the other. But that seems silly. The dollar shouldn’t make a difference.

While trichotomists do have strategies for handling cases like this (e.g. by invoking vagueness), the thing of interest to us here are the other axiological relations that have been posited to explain what is going on. Two in particular stand out. Chang (whose case this originally was) suggests one she calls ‘parity.’ Two options are on a par if the difference between them has magnitude but not direction. That is to say: they are different, but the difference does not tell in favor of one or the other. Parity behaves differently from strict equality, because slight sweetenings make no difference (that is: if two options are on a par, I can’t pay you a dollar to make one better). But options on a par are nonetheless comparable. A large enough sweetener can make a difference. Maybe I can’t pay our sharp graduate a dollar to choose law school, but if I offer to pay all of their tuition that would make it the better option.

The second is incomparability. Alex Pruss analyzes a similar case and argues that (under certain circumstances), it shows that the options are incomparable. Unlike options on a par, incomparable options remain incomparable no matter what sweetening you add to them. The choice between them is purely subjective; there can be no decisive reason for one over the other.

If we say that potential afterlives are either all incomparable or all on a par, we can escape the dilemma. In either case, the afterlife the victim of horrendous suffering receives is different from what they would have received otherwise, but this difference does not tell in favor of one or the other. This restores the welfarist reasons to prevent horrendous suffering and undermines any welfarist reasons to inflict it. It also means that people who do not suffer horrendously are not ‘missing out.’ What they receive is different. But that difference does not underwrite a judgment of ’better’ or ‘worse.’ This removes any pressure to weaken Adams-style conditions and let balancing-off count as good enough to redeem horrendous evil.

Note: for those interested in this kind of topic, my primer on infinity in Christian Ethics may be of interest.