Satisfied Pigs and Dissatisfied Philosophers: Schlesinger on the Problem of Evil |
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Authors: | Stephen Graver |
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Affiliation: | All Souk College, Oxford |
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Abstract: | I argue that George Schlesinger's proposed solution to the problem of evil fails because: (1) the degree of desirability of state of a being is not properly regarded as a trade-off between happiness on the one hand and potential on the other; (2) degree of desirability of state is not capable of infinite increase; (3) there is no hierarchy of possible beings, but at most an ordering of such beings in terms of preferences; (4) the idea of such a hierarchy is anyway morally repulsive. Schlesinger is right that the problem of evil disappears, but what makes it vanish is a recognition of the limits of our concepts of satisfaction and happiness, not the incoherent claim that satisfaction or happiness is capable of unlimited increase. |
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