Death, dignity and eternal life

One way to look at the difference between the deaths of humans and brute animals is to say that the death of a human typically deprives the human of goods of rational life that the brute animal is not deprived of. While it is indeed an important part of the evil of typical cases of death in humans that they are deprived of such goods, however, focusing on this leads to a difficulty seeing what is distinctively bad about the death of humans who are not deprived of such goods by death, say elderly humans who have already lost the distinctive goods of rational life.

Sure, one can say that the death of a human is the death of a being that normally has the goods of rational life. But it is unclear why the death of a being that normally has the goods of rational life but actually lacks them is worse than the death of a being that actually and normally lacks the goods of rational life.

(Of course, not everybody shares the normative view that there is something distinctively bad about the death of a human being even when the goods of rational life have already been lost. A significant number of people think that euthanasia in such cases is morally licit. But even among those who think that euthanasia in such cases is morally licit, I think many will still think that there is something particularly morally bad about killing such human beings against their clear prior wishes, and those may find something plausible about what I say below.)

How, then, do we explain the distinctive bad in the death of human beings, even ones that lack the distinctive goods of rational life? In the end, I think I would like to invoke human dignity here, but to a significant degree that’s just giving a name to the problem. Instead of invoking and trying to explain human dignity, I want to explore a different option, one that I think in the end will not succeed, but perhaps there is something in the vicinity that can.

Here is a hypothesis:

• It is the nature of human beings to live forever and never die, but the nature of brute animals is to have a finite life.

If this is true, then death always constitutes a mutilation of the human being. It is what directly deprives the human being of the normative diachronic shape of its life. And killing a human mutilates the human being.

Objection 1: If a murderer didn’t kill her victim, the victim would still have died at some later point.

Response: The murderer is still the proximate cause of the victim’s not living forever. And such proximate causation matters. Suppose that my brother murdered Sally’s brother, and to avenge her brother, in true Hammurabic fashion, Sally seeks to kill me. When she finally comes upon me, I am already falling off a cliff. A moment before I would have hit the ground, Sally shoots and kills me. Sally has murdered me, a grave evil. She is the proximate cause of my death. And that matters, even though it would make little difference to my life if Sally hadn’t killed me.

Objection 2: Even if it is the nature of brute animals to have a finite life, it is not the nature of brute animals to die young. But it is not wrong to kill a brute animal when it is young, even though doing so mutilates the brute animal in much the same way that killing a human mutilates the human by causing her life to be finite if the hypothesis is true.

Response: Agreed: it does mutilate the brute animal to kill it when it is young. But to foreshorten the life of a human being from infinity to a finite amount is much worse—in a sense, infinitely worse—than to foreshorten the life of a brute animal from a longer finite length to a shorter finite length.

Objection 3: Christian faith holds that humans will be resurrected. Thus, killing a human being does not succeed in causing the human being to lose infinite life.

Response: Yes, but according to the hypothesis it is not only the nature of human beings to have an infinite future life but it is also the nature of human beings to have a death-free infinite future life.

Objection 4: Imagine an otherwise unremarkable shrub which has a very special nature: it is supposed to live forever, undying. Destroying this shrub would feel distinctively bad as compared to destroying an ordinary shrub, but still not bad in the same way that killing a human being is. Hence, reference to the normativeness of an infinite future life is not enough to explain the distinctive badness of killing humans.

Response: I think that this objection is decisive. Mere invocation of the normativeness of an infinite deathless life is not enough to solve the problem of the distinctive badness of human death. One still needs something like a story about the special dignity of human beings. But it might be that the hypothesis still helps: it multiplies the synchronic dignity of the human being by something like infinity. So less needs to be accomplished by the dignity part of the account.

Are we all seriously impaired?

When I taught calculus, the average grade on the final exam was around 55%. One could make the case that this means that our grading system is off: that everybody’s grades should be way higher. But I suspect that’s mistaken. The average grasp of calculus in my students probably really wasn’t good enough for one to be able to say with a straight face that they “knew calculus”. Now, I think I was a pretty rotten calculus teacher. But such grades are not at all unusual in calculus classes. And if one didn’t have the pre-selection that colleges have, but simply taught calculus to everybody, the grades would be even lower. Yet much of calculus is pretty straightforward. Differential calculus is just a matter of ploughing through and following simple rules. Integral calculus is definitely harder, and exceling at it requires real creativity, but one can presumably do decently just by internalizing a number of heuristics and using trial and error.

I find myself with the feeling that a normal adult human being should be able to do calculus, understand basic Newtonian physics, write a well-argued essay, deal well with emotions, avoid basic formal and informal fallacies, sing decently, have a good marriage, etc. But I doubt that the average adult human being can learn all these things even with excellent teachers. Certainly the time investment would be prohibitive.

There are two things one can say about this feeling. The first is that the feeling is simply mistaken. We’re all apes. A 55% grade in calculus from an ape is incredible. The kind of logical reasoning that an average person can demonstrate in an essay is super-impressive for an ape. There is little wrong with average people intellectually. Maybe the average human can’t practically learn calculus, but if so that’s no more problematic than the facts that the average human can’t practically learn to climb a 5.14 or run a four-minute mile. These things are benchmarks of human excellence rather than of human normalcy.

That may in fact be the right thing to say. But I want to explore another possibility: the possibility that the feeling is right. If it is right, then all of us fall seriously short of what normal human beings should be able to do. We are all seriously impaired.

How could that be? We are, after all, descendants of apes, and the average human being is, as far as we can tell, an order of magnitude intellectually ahead of the best non-human apes we know. Should the standards be another order of magnitude ahead of that?

I don’t think there is a plausible naturalistic story that would do justice to the feeling that the average human falls that far short of where humans should be at. But the Christian doctrine of the Fall allows for a story to be told here. Perhaps God miraculously intervened just before the first humans were conceived, and ensured that these creatures would be significantly genetically different from their non-human parents: they would have capacities enabling them to do calculus, understand Newtonian physics, write a well-argued essay, deal well with emotions, avoid fallacies, sing decently, have a good marriage, etc. (At least once calculus, physics and writing are invented.) But then the first humans misused their new genetic gifts, and many of them were taken away, so that now only statistically exceptional humans have many of these capacities, and none have them all. And so we have more geneticaly in common with our ape forebears than would have been the case if the first humans acted better. However, in addition to genetics, on this story, there is the human nature, which is a metaphysical component of human beings defining what is and what is not normal for humans. And this human nature specifies that the capacities in question are in fact a part of human normalcy, so that we are all objectively seriously impaired.

Of course, this isn’t the only way to read the Fall. Another way—which one can connect in the text of Genesis with the Tree of Life—is that the first humans had special gifts, but these gifts were due to miracles beyond human nature. This may in fact be the better reading of the story of the Fall, but I want to continue exploring the first reading.

If this is right, then we have an interesting choice-point for philosophy of disability. One option will be to hold that everyone is disabled. If we take this option then for policy reasons (e.g., disability accommodation) we will need a more gerrymandered concept than disability, say disability^*, such that only a minority (or at least not an overwhelming majority) is disabled^*. This concept will no doubt have a lot of social construction going into it, and objective impairment will be at best a necessary condition for disability^*. The second option is to say only a minority (or not an overwhelming majority) is disabled, which requires disability to differ significantly from impairment. Again, I suspect that the concept will have a lot of social construction in it. So, either way, if we accept the story that we are all seriously impaired, for policy reasons we will need a disability-related concept with a lot more social construction in it.

Should we accept the story that we are all seriously impaired? I think there really is an intuition that we should do many things that we can’t, and that intuition is evidence for the story. But far from conclusive. Still, maybe we are all seriously impaired, in multiple intellectual dimensions. We may even be all physically impaired.

Reasons for non-disclosure

Until today I thought that non-disclosure was only justified in reference to our sinful condition. The psychologist doesn't disclose her patients' problems because sinful humans are likely to treat her patients wrongly if they know about the problems. And so on.

But I was mistaken. First, there are cases not referring to our present sinful condition but a potential future sinful condition. For instance, even an unfallen human can be swayed by temptation, as the story of the tree of knowledge of good and evil shows, and a person can be tempted by the disclosure of benefits.

Second, there are cases where it is good to fail to disclose information either because the order of disclosure is important or because because it is better that the information be discovered by someone on her own. This is an important part of sound pedagogy, and this does not seem to be an aspect of the Fall. God did not, as far as we know, disclose Pythagorean Theorem to Adam and Eve before the Fall, and it was better that humans discover it on their own.

Death and the Fall

It is an evil that we die. The badness of death is constituted by the cessation of the good of life. But not every cessation of a good is an evil. If I have a good conversation for several hours with a friend and then we go our separate ways, the cessation of the conversation isn't an evil. Only the cessation of a due good is an evil.

But how is it due to us not to die? Is it not a part of our very nature as human beings that we die?

Here's an argument:

1. If the empirical manifestation of our nature matches our real nature, what we are supposed to be, then death as such is not an evil, just a cessation of a good.
2. Death as such is an evil.
3. So, the empirical manifestation of our nature does not match our real nature, what we are supposed to be.

Claim (3) is already on its own a kind of doctrine of the Fall. And it calls out for explanation. The story of the Fall of Humankind provides such an explanation. The naturalist, on the other hand, cannot provide an explanation for (3). I think the naturalist should perhaps deny (2), but that is quite an implausible move.

A just-so story for Genesis 1-3

Consider this argument:

1. If Christianity is right, every assertion of rightly interpreted Scripture is true.
2. Genesis 1-3 is rightly interpreted literalistically.
3. The approximate truth of our best relevant science contradicts the assertions of Genesis 1-3 when these texts are interpreted literalistically.
4. Our best relevant science is approximately true.
5. So, Christianity is not right.

Liberal Christians reject (1), and often (2) as well. Young Earth Creationists either engage in revisionary science and deny (3), or they simply deny (4).

The right way out of the argument is, of course, to reject (2). But in this post I want to undercut the argument in a very different way. Basically, I will argue against (3) by offering a just-so story that is compatible with both our best science and a literalistic reading of Genesis 1-3, without scientific revisionism, scientific irrealism, or invocations of divine or demonic deception.

I am not claiming the story is true. In fact, I think it's false. It is in tension with the Thomistic view of the soul which I hold (but I think it may be logically compatible with it—but that's a longish story). As I said, the right way out is to deny (2).

The story is simple. First, everything happens exactly as it is described in Genesis 1-3 interpreted literalistically. Everything, including a light-studded dome ("firmament"), with waters above and below, creation in six days, vegetation without any sun or moon. Eve is literally taken from Adam's side, and so on. Then Adam and Eve sin, exactly as described in Genesis 3. All this happens in a universe ("Paradise") where all of this is possible by the laws of nature.

God then kicks them out of this universe. In the process, he destroys their bodies and puts their souls in stasis. But in Paradise, there was a law of nature that when the forbidden fruit is eaten, a Big Bang will occur (or this could be a miracle), initiating a 14 billion year process leading to some pretty clever apes in a universe better suited to sinners like Adam and Eve. God then takes the matter of two of these clever apes (if animals have souls, he de-souls them first, or perhaps he simply miraculously ensures that these two don't get souls) and instills Adam and Eve's souls in this matter.

And so all the science as to what has happened in the material universe since the Big Bang is right. Of course, science doesn't talk about souls.

A materialist Christian could also run a variant of this story of Adam and Eve being asleep for fourteen billion years, but it would involve some miracles in the physical world and maybe disagreement with science at one point. (Maybe Adam and Eve's brains are put in the bodies of some apes. Or maybe God is capable of so guiding indeterministic processes that there develop two apes that are just like Adam and Eve, and God can replace them with Adam and Eve.)

Of course, I don't believe these stories. But they do show that premise (3) of the anti-Christianity argument is false.

Naturalism and injustice

1. (Premise) All instances of severe suffering of small children are unjust.
2. (Premise) Only things agents are responsible for are unjust.
3. So, all instances of severe suffering of small children are things that agents are responsible for.
4. If (3), then naturalism is false.

A quick argument for (1): all unfair things are unjust, and all such instances are unfair. The naturalist will, I think, in the end want to deny (1) if she is to remain a naturalist. However I do think a lot of people have a strong intuition that such suffering is not just really bad, but that it is unjust.
Premise (2) is very plausible.

I think (4) is plausible, as well. For while some cases of severe suffering of children are things agents are responsible for even if naturalism is true—say, suffering directly imposed by agents—there will be many cases which are not like that. Say, a couple lovingly procreates in order to share their good life with a child, and the child has a congenital disease that causes severe suffering. There is no naturalistically-acceptable agential explanation.

What sort of non-naturalistic agential explanation could be given of these injustices? Here are the three most obvious options:

• An evil deity.
• A devil.
• The Fall.

Moreover, there is a special non-naturalistic story that could be given as to (1) is false: one could hold to reincarnation and say that all instances of severel suffering of small children are fair punishments for a life of wickedness.

Which is the right story? Well, it's not an evil deity and it's not reincarnation.

The recalcitrance of matter

When I work with material objects, I am sometimes annoyed at things just not working. The cord of the mower gets caught on a bush. The wood I am drilling into splits. The phenomenology of annoyance is no doubt complex, but I think the following is right: when one is annoyed at x doing A, one is (emotionally) treating x as if x were functioning improperly in doing A. Consider, then, the following argument:

1. (Premise) It is sometimes appropriate to be annoyed at matter failing to serve one in some way even when no human being designed the matter to serve us in this way.
2. (Premise) It is only appropriate to be annoyed at something insofar as it is functioning improperly.
3. Therefore, matter can be functioning improperly in failing to serve us in some way even when no human being designed the matter to serve us in this way. (1 and 2)
4. (Premise) If x functions improperly in failing to do A, then it is a function of x to do A.
5. Therefore, matter sometimes has the function of serving us in some way even though no human being designed it to do so. (3 and 4)

All of this coheres with, and suggests, the Christian story of the Fall: matter does have the function of serving us in all kinds of ways, but after the Fall it fails to do so.

But now this failure can be understood in two mutually non-exclusive ways: (a) the matter fails to do "its job" narrowly defined; and (b) we fail to make use of the matter in the way we should thereby making it impossible for the matter to do "its job" broadly defined (it can't serve us if we don't use it rightly). The argument above fits well with (a), but it may well be that (b) is the right story in a lot of cases, and maybe even in all of them. Now, if (b) but not (a) is the right story in a given case, then premise (1) will not exactly be true in that case: annoyance might be appropriate, but not annoyance at the matter. The annoyance should be directed at oneself, or at humankind, or at Adam and Eve. However, this objection presupposes that to be annoyed at x doing A entails being annoyed at x. But I do not know that this entailment holds. It may be that there is a difference between being annoyed at x doing A and being annoyed at x for doing A. If there is such a difference, then one can hold that (1) is compatible with (b) being the right story even in all cases. (Perhaps there is an argument similar to the above that can be formulated that fits with this. The conclusion will be that we are sometimes appropriately annoyed with ourselves for not having skills for working matter, skills that it is not our function to have unless some story about how we were given mastery over matter but then fell is true.)

Actually, theologically, I find both (a) and (b) plausible. The Fathers do think the Fall extends both to the human being and to the rest of nature. If so, then (1) is true, and the argument is probably sound, but of course to base the soundness of (1) on the theology of the Fathers would beg the question.

For a better justification of (1), I would note that I am drawn to the thesis that every basic distinct kind of emotion is sometimes appropriate, but I do not know how to make that precise, not knowing how to define "basic" and "distinct". If the thesis is true, and if there is a basic distinct kind of annoyance at "dumb matter" (i.e., at matter not designed by a human being for anything), then we will be able to have (1) be true.

In any case, the argument I gave strikes me as not very strong. It is very easy to deny (1) by saying that in the cases of annoyance at dumb matter, one has misplaced the proper object of annoyance. Nonetheless, that move is a sceptical move, and sceptical moves should be epistemically costly. So while one can get away with denying (1), this adds to the cost of any position that forces that denial.

The post is triggered by frustrations with converting the Coulter 13.1" telescope that I bought into a split tube (else it wouldn't fit in our Taurus, and would break my back). Or, more precisely, frustrations with reassembling it. Alas, I've learned that plywood splits and that cross dowels need to be pretty close to exactly at right angles to the bolt. Fortunately, there is always JB Weld, my favorite adhesive for projects where Duck tape just isn't good enough. Hopefully the scope will be ready for the Philosophy Department Star Night tonight, assuming the weather cooperates (oddly, though, I don't get annoyed at the weather in the way I get annoyed at objects).

Did God act unjustly by kicking us out of paradise?

One might be worried--as a commenter recently has been--that the idea that God kicked Adam and Eve out of paradise, thereby ensuring that their descendants would grow up in our vale of tears, is unjust. Since the focus is on Adam and Eve's descendants, let us grant for the sake of argument that God was just in punishing Adam and Eve with death. The question, then, is whether God was just in having us live outside paradise.

Now, if God was unjust in acting as Genesis says he did, then whom did he wrong? He did not wrong Adam and Eve, for their punishment was deserved. Presumably, he wronged their descendants, namely us. But now consider a sequence of three possible worlds:

1. God kills Adam and Eve on the spot, and the human race gets no further.
2. God kicks Adam and Eve out of paradise, and prevents them from reproducing.
3. God kicks Adam and Eve out of paradise, but does not prevent them from reproducing.

We've granted for the sake of argument that God was right to punish Adam and Eve. So, world 1 is a world where (as far as these sketches go, at least) God does not act unjustly. What about world 2? Does God wrong anybody there? Not at all. He doesn't wrong Adam and Eve: he treats them somewhat less harshly than in world 1. Does he wrong us, Adam and Eve's descendants? Surely not--for we don't exist in world 2, and one cannot wrong the non-existent.

So, in 1 and 2 there is no injustice. What about world 3? If we say that in world 3 there is injustice, then it seems that God's failure to prevent Adam and Eve from reproducing was an injustice--for we have granted that there is no injustice in world 2 which is like world 3, except that Adam and Eve are prevented from reproduction. In other words, if we say that there is an injustice in world 3, we have to say that once God decided to kick Adam and Eve out of paradise, he acted unjustly towards their descendants by letting Adam and Eve have these descendants. But that, I think, is absurd. If we grant it, then by the same token any of us who choose to reproduce in this vale of tears are doing wrong. (Yes, there is a recent book arguing just for the wrongness of reproduction. Few absurdities are such that no philosopher could be found to defend them.)

But that's too simple an argument. After all, maybe the wrong in 3 is not just in the point where 2 and 3 branch off from each other (the prevention of progeny). God is omnipotent after all, and that makes a difference. I think the most plausible alternative way of salvaging the argument for God's injustice is the suggestion that God did wrong in not transporting Adam and Eve's children miraculously back to paradise, perhaps immediately after their conception. However, I do not think that God owed them, as a matter of justice, such miraculous transport, especially given that there were unique kinds of goods that would be available to them outside of paradise that wouldn't be available in paradise, goods such as sacrificial love, forgiveness, and courage.

An argument form in ethics

Consider the following argument form:

1. It would be good if A were forbidden (respectively, permitted).
2. Therefore, probably, A is forbidden (respectively, permitted).

For instance, it would be bad if one were forbidden to fail to fulfill (apparent) promises made under duress. For then people could place one under duress, and force one to promise to serve them for life, and one would be obliged to keep to that. So, probably, it is permitted to break such (apparent) promises. On the other hand, it would be good if one were obliged, ceteris paribus, to fulfill promises to self, since such promises would be a useful tool for self-mastery. Therefore, probably, one is obliged to keep such promises.

As a technical point, we probably want to boost the antecedent in (1) to say not just that A is forbidden (permitted) but that it is additionally known or at least believed to be such.

Consequentialists will be friendly to a version of the argument form, assuming that there is an inference to be made from something's being believed forbidden to its being less likely to be done.

The interesting question is whether there is anything non-consequentialists can make of this argument. I think divine command theorists can. A good legislator, makes prohibitions that are good for his subjects. So divine command theorists will accept this argument form, and this counts in favor of divine command theory.

Natural law theorists will have to accept the argument form when "good" is restricted to mean "good for the agent", because of the tight link between the right and the perfective of the agent. It takes a little bit more work for natural lawyers to accept the argument form when "good" is not restricted to the agent's own good. If the agents are people, some work can be done by the fact that flourishing in a flourishing community is one of the basic goods. But to get the argument form in all generality, one might need to add theism to natural law (and a sociological matter of fact, natural lawyers overwhelmingly seem to be theists)—for theism will give one reason to think that the natures of the existent beings are in some significant degree of harmony.

What about other non-consequentialist theories? Social contract ones will probably respect this argument form. Kantian ones? Here, things are much less clear. The historical Kant's theory is theistic or at least deistic, and Kantianism plus theism or deism does make this argument form plausible: it is likely that God would arrange things such in the Kingdom of Ends that acting well is connected with flourishing. But a non-theistic Kantianism might be unable to give us good reason to think the argument form is right. That is an argument against non-theistic Kantianism.

One worry. The argument form may suffer from some circularity. After all, as Socrates taught, it's bad to do what is forbidden, simply because it is forbidden. So in evaluating what is good in (1), one needs to avoid taking the mere fact of the action's being forbidden into account.

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.