Limiting Possible Evils

1. Multiverse Theodicies

Why would God, assumed to be omniscient, omnipotent, and omnibenevolent, create a world which is suffused with gratuitous suffering? There are many responses given by theists, but I’ve thought the most persuasive one was an appeal to a theistic multiverse. I was reminded of this strategy by reading Bradley Monton’s draft paper titled “Against Multiverse Theodicies” (warning – Word document). It was a helpful paper to review because in it he describes various approaches that have been taken in the literature, on his way to formulating an argument against them. There are many variants, but a typical version of the theodicy says that God maximizes total value by creating infinite universes, not just the one we observe, and all we need to accept about our own world is that it is minimally worth creating by the deity -- perhaps the good it embodies just barely outweighs the bad. Then can imagine that the countless superior worlds of which we can conceive also exist. Terrible worlds unrelieved by sufficient good would not be created.

Now, Monton’s paper argues the strategy doesn’t work: The key to his argument has to do with God’s ability to create duplicate and near duplicate universes (without end). To greatly simplify, he says that instead of creating a world with a given amount of suffering, God could create duplicates of better worlds and create more aggregate good. (A counterargument, he says, would have to involve a successful defense of Leibniz’ principle of the Identity of indiscernibles).

I recommend the paper, although I’m not going to engage his argument here. Rather I bring this up because, while I’m not a theist, the issues raised in this discussion bear on concerns I have about my own views.

2. The Modal Realist’s “Problem” of Evil
Modal realism is the view that possibilities share in reality alongside the actual. In David Lewis’ conception of modal realism, possibilities are accounted for by a collection of static concrete worlds (“actual” refers to things in our local world). If this picture is true, and assuming metaphysical possibility is as broad as logical possibility, then reality includes countless worlds WORSE than our own: the totality of suffering boggles the mind.

I’ve endorsed a bit different type of modal realism. I think actual events arise from a background web of possibilities through an ongoing creative process (actualization). We don’t live in a static space-time block world, rather the “world” is a causal nexus of actualization events (events are the basic unit here, not worlds). Unlike Lewis, then, I don’t think everything in modal space is concrete. The unactualized possibilities may be thought of as abstract. On the other hand, I don’t see a way to know how extensive the concrete realm is. As long as the space of metaphysical possibilities includes countless instances of terrible things, they might be realized as concrete in the absence of a reason to the contrary. The end result could be little different than Lewis’ when it comes to the existence of a plenitude of terrible events.

So while modal realism doesn’t generate a logical or evidential “Problem of Evil” in the manner of theism, I’m simply troubled by its potential inclusion of infinite gratuitous suffering. Or, to put it another way, I’m motivated to see if there are principled arguments for a modified model that would include a reduced amount of suffering.

3. How might evil be restricted without God?

In the multiverse theodicies mentioned above, we assume God is good, and this is how we know creation is (on balance) good as well. If there is no traditional deity, and reality consists of the sum of all possibilies {plus} an impersonal creative actualization process, is there any reason to think evil could be limited relative to good? It appears such a limitation would have to result from either restricting the scope of metaphysical possibility itself, or having the creative process include a bias toward the good.

On the first strategy, perhaps one could reason from the existence of the moral facts of our world, including our own moral impulses, to a view that the metaphysical multiverse is skewed to the good. On the second strategy, creation is considered a positive force which leads to an ultimate bias toward good. I’d note that John Leslie, in his model of pantheism, inverted this equation by invoking the Platonic idea of the Good as a creative principle. I have to say, however, I didn’t find his arguments to be compelling upon first encountering them.

I’ll be continuing to work on this.