Tuesday, October 7, 2014

Mersenne's supreme bad vs. supreme good argument

In his 1624 The Impiety of Deists, Atheists and Libertines of This Time... (dedicated to Cardinal Richelieu, by the way), Mersenne gives this fascinating little argument:

Nobody fails to acknowledge that if there is a supremely good being [un estre souverainement bon], it merits the name of God, since we don't mean anything by that name other than that which has all [the] sorts of perfections, and which lacks nothing. Now I will show that this supreme good exists. If it didn't exist, its privation would exist, which would be a supreme bad [mal], and consequently the supreme non-being, since the bad and the non-being are the same thing: but it doesn't in the least seem that the privation exists more than its actuality, which must necessary precede it. Thus one must confess that there is a supreme goodness, and then that there cannot be a supreme badness. So we have a supreme being, since we deny a supreme non-being, it being necessary that the one or the other exist....
There is actually more than one argument here. There is an interesting and deeply metaphysical argument based on evil as the privation of a good. But there is also the kernel of a rather interesting and simple argument:
  1. It would be supremely bad if God doesn't exist.
  2. The world doesn't exemplify a supreme bad.
  3. So, God exists.
My son suggests using the goodness in the world to argue for (2). That would be an interesting hybrid design argument.

11 comments:

Eric Steinhart said...

(1) It would be supremely bad if X doesn't exist.
(2) The world doesn't exemplify a supreme bad.
(3) So, X exists.
But X = God? Nah. There's plenty of other options. And X = the Christian God? Lots of us think it would be really really great if that God didn't exist.

Eric Steinhart said...

I like this argument, it makes me think of an even better anti-theistic argument:
(1) If God exists, then many people will suffer infinite torment in hell.
(2) It would be supremely bad for many people to suffer infinite torment in hell.
(3) So, it would be supremely bad if God exists.
(4) the world doesn't exemplify a supreme bad.
(5) Therefore, God does not exist.

Alexander R Pruss said...

1. Remember that Mersenne is taking God to be that which has all perfections. It's hard to deny that that's a being that it would be very, very good to have in existence.

2. Whatever the sufferings in hell are like, they are such that nonetheless it is better to exist than not to exist--I think this follows from core Christian views. If that requires that the total suffering in hell is finite, then the total suffering in hell is finite.

Eric Steinhart said...

1. It would be better to have an infinite series of beings, each more perfect than the earlier beings, with no maximum at all, rather than one maximal being which has all the perfections. It might be very easy to deny that it would be good to have a being which has all perfections in existence. It might be maximally evil to have such a being in existence. (If "God" exists, then everything else is imperfect, hence defective and suffering; so the existence of "God" entails maximal evil, etc.)

2. Of course there are ways for Christians to try to mitigate the problem of hell; but it would be better if there were no such problem to mitigate. A suitable theory of progressive karma (as in Kardec or some Wiccans) could avoid all such problems.

What strikes me as unphilosophical about all these theistic arguments is how easy it is to just ignore all the non-theistic alternatives, and to fall right into the well-worn patterns of theistic (esp Xian) inference. There are other patterns which ought to be philosophically explored. (Back to the problem of Christian hegemony.)

Alexander R Pruss said...

1. The infinite series would still be a series of imperfect beings. It seems better that there be one perfect being, and all others imperfect, than that there be no perfect beings at all.

Also, being imperfect, in the sense of falling short of perfection, is not the same as being defective.

2. The problem of hell doesn't affect theism unless there is a good argument that if God exists, there is a hell. I happen to think there is such an argument, but I strongly suspect that you wouldn't buy the argument I have in mind. (It goes through historical Christian apologetics.)

3. There is a difficult judgment call to be made as to what options are intellectually live. It is hard to say exactly how one should make this judgment call. For me personally the intellectually live options to be chosen between are Catholicism, Orthodox Judaism and reductionistic naturalism equipped with a plethora of error theories. I have arguments as to why other options that I have heard of are less compelling than these three, but you are apt to disagree with some of these. And then I have arguments as to why the first of the three is more compelling than the other two. :-)

Eric Steinhart said...

1. Perfection is a very interesting concept for anyone, theist or not, interested in religious ideas. I think there are increasable degrees of perfection, and no maximal degree. I suppose this puts me in line with process theology. (And the arguments I've been making can probably be derived from Hartshorne, whom I admire very much.) There should be more thought about perfection in PoR. It's a key concept everybody uses somehow.

2. As for hell, of any kind, it's surely an imperfection of some kind. (Cue problem of evil, theodicy, etc. But all this, on my view, is merely an unfortunate sequence of errors.)

3. Your points about "intellectually live" options are interesting. Sure, right now, the Christian options are dominant in the US. But that's changing fast (see the recent ARIS study on the religious beliefs of Millenials). New and other options are waking up, and becoming alive. They'll have their own problems, but they won't be those of Christianity, because they won't be Christian. Philosophers (as opposed to apologists or theologians) ought to be exploring those new options.

Jakub Moravčík said...

Whatever the sufferings in hell are like, they are such that nonetheless it is better to exist than not to exist--I think this follows from core Christian views.


I think that this is far from being any clear. From Christian point of view it is even explicitly denied in Matthew 26,24. Maritain in Three reformators even applies this implicitly from Judas to all the people.

unless there is a good argument that if God exists, there is a hell

You mean that if God exist there NECESSARY is a hell? Being things like that, I think it would a) manifest the moral evil as absolutely necessary, which in the end denies free will b) enstrength some quasi-dualist thesis

I happen to think there is such an argument, but I strongly suspect that you wouldn't buy the argument I have in mind. (It goes through historical Christian apologetics.)


But maybe I would buy it. So if you´d be so kind, you could write it here, please ...

Alexander R Pruss said...

I don't see where Matthew 26.24 says that hell is worse than nonexistence. First, it's much worse to sin than to suffer. So it could be that instead of talking about the consequences of sin, Matthew 26.24 is talking about the disvalue of the sin itself. Second, the comparison in Matthew 26.24 isn't between non-existence and sin/hell, but between non-birth and sin/hell. Non-birth is not the same as non-existence. Birth is already the culmination of nine months of existence. Third, the text could simply be describing hell from the subjective point of view of the sufferer who may prefer non-existence (but what one prefers is not the same as what is better for one).

Do you have a quote from Maritain? It's a very strange thing for him to say given the centrality of the idea that evil is a privation of being in the Thomistic tradition.

Alexander R Pruss said...

The argument I had in mind was just standard historical apologetics for the claim that Christ is who he claims to be, that Tradition is doctrinally solid and that Scripture is inspired. I think this historical apologetics works best if one comes to it already with the belief in God.

Jakub Moravčík said...

Second, the comparison in Matthew 26.24 isn't between non-existence and sin/hell, but between non-birth and sin/hell. Non-birth is not the same as non-existence. Birth is already the culmination of nine months of existence.


Thanks, this is really interesting. It never came to my mind, but, to be honest, I am really not sure if the verse is meant in this sense. But I do not know if there is any "official" catholic interpretation of this verse or what classic catholic Bible commentators say about it.

Do you have a quote from Maritain? It's a very strange thing for him to say given the centrality of the idea that evil is a privation of being in the Thomistic tradition.

HA, I've found it. But only in an short excerpt which is, furthermore, slovak translation, so I do not know the page in original. Anyway, its from Three reformators (of which I have only polish translation) in Luther part. I'll try to translate from slovak: "Controlled by deep melancholy, which is undoubtedly his greatest and the most human trait - melancholy of Saul, which is so horrific to meditate, because haven´t we known that both the Saul´s and Luther´s eternal destination is up to inscrutable God´s judgement, we would have been under the temptation to see it as the melancholy of those for whom it would be better not to have been born".

So Maritain speaks about multitude. But the decisive thin here is whether your differentiation between existence and birth is essential here.

Alexander R Pruss said...

I am inclined to speculate that the most likely reading of the verse is that it simply states the agent's subjective preference: Judas will wish he hadn't existed.

But of course that doesn't mean it would be better, or even better for Judas (whatever exactly that would mean--this is a big issue in the antinatalist literature), if Judas didn't exist.