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>It seems we should grant [that "Our world is not the best of all possible worlds"], since we can easily imagine our world being better – more happy people, les

>It seems we should grant [that "Our world is not the best of all possible worlds"], since we can easily imagine our world being better – more happy people, less suffering. Only if you define "better" in those terms. I'm sure that Romeo and Juliet would have preferred a world in which they remained alive as lovers -- but would that be a better story?

adbachman 10y ago
The counterargument to "this is not the best of all possible worlds" from the perspectives of the people experiencing it (the world) would be to show that every single person experiencing suffering believes it to be "best." That there is no better outcome than that they suffer. This seems unlikely to be true.
- samirillian 10y ago
  Huh?
- nemo1618 10y ago
  >the perspectives of the people experiencing it (the world) Well, a lot of things rest on that equivocation. Personally I consider the world to be more than just the sum of the experiences of individuals. To me, it is more like a story in which everyone plays a part.
samirillian 10y ago
I mean, also, it's just silly to emptily claim that you could imagine a better world. The trick is to imagine it in all its detail. I mean, what if pain is simply a concomitant of consciousness. Would a better world be devoid of consciousness? The trick is not to see the stupidity in the formulation (the stupidity is obvious), but to see the less obvious intelligence in the formulation. It's extremely rational, almost apodictically true.
- boomboomsubban 10y ago
  > I mean, what if pain is simply a concomitant of consciousness. Would a better world be devoid of consciousness? If I'm imagining a new world, pain is whatever I want it to be. That it seems to be a necessary part of consciousness in this world isn't important.
  - samirillian 10y ago
    To reiterate: imagining a better world does not mean "emptily declaring it to be so." Like, if I said that in my better world triangles were no longer slavishly limited to having 3 sides, a reasonable person would think I was missing something about what imagination can and can't do. If pain can conceptually be whatever you want it to be, and there's no matter of logical necessity, then why don't you just imagine pain as something different in this world--in which case, this world is back in the running for "best of all possible worlds"? Why do you need a new world for pain to be other than a negative force?
    - boomboomsubban 10y ago
      You are putting the constraints of this world on any possible world, and we have no reason to expect these things to be necessary truths. On the triangle. It differs from pain because the sensation of pain is real, while the triangle is a concept we use to simplify the actual world we interact with. There are no two dimensional objects that I am aware of, and changing it to a pyramid still runs into the problem of needing continuous mass in that shape. A four sided triangle may be impossible, but at the same time a three sided triangle seems impossible and we accept it. The world that I'm imagining where it is this world except pain is something different is a new world.
      - samirillian 10y ago
        Ahem. I feel that you're talking around my points entirely. There are two possibilities: 1) all things are only accidentally so in our world (including triangles, according to you). In which case, we will never have enough information to say if the sum of accidents is "better" or "worse" than the sum of accidents in any other world. The only "proof" of such a world would be experiencing it, in which case it wouldn't be an "other world," it would be our world. 2) some things are "necessarily so," in our world, in which case they would be necessarily so in all worlds we can possibly "image-ine," (that is, conceptualize). Thus with respect to pain, the "bad-ness" of pain either follows from its definition, or it doesn't. If it follows from its definition, then there is no possible world in which pain will be "good." If it does not follow from its definition, then pain need not be bad in this world either. edit: this is why I said Leibniz's theodicy is "nearly apodictic": his argument is essentially deductive, flowing from the very nature of reason and experience. Now, whether or not this constitutes an acceptable theodicy is a different question entirely. My point is that anybody can see the unacceptability of the argument; it takes a philosopher to see the cleverness of the argument.
lisper 10y ago
> Only if you define "better" in those terms. No, you can define "better" in pretty much any way and still be able to imagine possible worlds that are better than the one we live in. In fact, pretty much the only way you can define "better" that does not admit better possible worlds is to define this world as the best possible one. But that's a vacuous definition. BTW, you do know that Romeo and Juliet are fictional characters, yes? They cannot prefer anything because they didn't actually exist.
- nemo1618 10y ago
  I am aware of that, yes. I was making an analogy. The point of the analogy is that, even though Romeo and Juliet would likely not have considered their world "the best of all possible worlds," we (the readers) do consider their world to be much better than they do (albeit not "the best"). In other words, the reason Romeo and Juliet do not consider their world to be "the best" is because they are only experiencing their localized part of the story, not the story as a whole. Likewise, even though individual humans suffer, that does not preclude the possibility that this is still the best possible story for us to be collectively experiencing.
  - griffinmmahon 10y ago
    Nah, it does preclude that possibility, because some of the suffering of those individual humans is entirely unnecessary.
    - nemo1618 10y ago
      How can you judge whether someone's suffering is unnecessary? Only the author of the story knows that, because only the author knows how the story ends and how the individual arcs tie together.
    - randcraw 10y ago
      Is it unnecessary? Can you invent a tale of "star-crossed lovers" in a world that is "best" for the characters? I think their suffering is essential to the narrative. If so, perhaps their world is indeed "best" toward serving that purpose, at least for the audience.
eli_gottlieb 10y ago
The world isn't a story.
- nemo1618 10y ago
  I completely disagree, so I don't expect we will find much common ground :P
dTal 10y ago
Also, who is to say that any world we can imagine is possible? I mean, from a strict realist perspective, only one world is "possible" - this one. This also exposes hidden meaning in the word "world".

adbachman 10y ago

The counterargument to "this is not the best of all possible worlds" from the perspectives of the people experiencing it (the world) would be to show that every single person experiencing suffering believes it to be "best." That there is no better outcome than that they suffer. This seems unlikely to be true.

samirillian 10y ago
Huh?
nemo1618 10y ago
>the perspectives of the people experiencing it (the world) Well, a lot of things rest on that equivocation. Personally I consider the world to be more than just the sum of the experiences of individuals. To me, it is more like a story in which everyone plays a part.

samirillian 10y ago

I mean, also, it's just silly to emptily claim that you could imagine a better world. The trick is to imagine it in all its detail. I mean, what if pain is simply a concomitant of consciousness. Would a better world be devoid of consciousness? The trick is not to see the stupidity in the formulation (the stupidity is obvious), but to see the less obvious intelligence in the formulation. It's extremely rational, almost apodictically true.

boomboomsubban 10y ago
> I mean, what if pain is simply a concomitant of consciousness. Would a better world be devoid of consciousness? If I'm imagining a new world, pain is whatever I want it to be. That it seems to be a necessary part of consciousness in this world isn't important.
- samirillian 10y ago
  To reiterate: imagining a better world does not mean "emptily declaring it to be so." Like, if I said that in my better world triangles were no longer slavishly limited to having 3 sides, a reasonable person would think I was missing something about what imagination can and can't do. If pain can conceptually be whatever you want it to be, and there's no matter of logical necessity, then why don't you just imagine pain as something different in this world--in which case, this world is back in the running for "best of all possible worlds"? Why do you need a new world for pain to be other than a negative force?
  - boomboomsubban 10y ago
    You are putting the constraints of this world on any possible world, and we have no reason to expect these things to be necessary truths. On the triangle. It differs from pain because the sensation of pain is real, while the triangle is a concept we use to simplify the actual world we interact with. There are no two dimensional objects that I am aware of, and changing it to a pyramid still runs into the problem of needing continuous mass in that shape. A four sided triangle may be impossible, but at the same time a three sided triangle seems impossible and we accept it. The world that I'm imagining where it is this world except pain is something different is a new world.
    - samirillian 10y ago
      Ahem. I feel that you're talking around my points entirely. There are two possibilities: 1) all things are only accidentally so in our world (including triangles, according to you). In which case, we will never have enough information to say if the sum of accidents is "better" or "worse" than the sum of accidents in any other world. The only "proof" of such a world would be experiencing it, in which case it wouldn't be an "other world," it would be our world. 2) some things are "necessarily so," in our world, in which case they would be necessarily so in all worlds we can possibly "image-ine," (that is, conceptualize). Thus with respect to pain, the "bad-ness" of pain either follows from its definition, or it doesn't. If it follows from its definition, then there is no possible world in which pain will be "good." If it does not follow from its definition, then pain need not be bad in this world either. edit: this is why I said Leibniz's theodicy is "nearly apodictic": his argument is essentially deductive, flowing from the very nature of reason and experience. Now, whether or not this constitutes an acceptable theodicy is a different question entirely. My point is that anybody can see the unacceptability of the argument; it takes a philosopher to see the cleverness of the argument.

lisper 10y ago

> Only if you define "better" in those terms. No, you can define "better" in pretty much any way and still be able to imagine possible worlds that are better than the one we live in. In fact, pretty much the only way you can define "better" that does not admit better possible worlds is to define this world as the best possible one. But that's a vacuous definition. BTW, you do know that Romeo and Juliet are fictional characters, yes? They cannot prefer anything because they didn't actually exist.

nemo1618 10y ago
I am aware of that, yes. I was making an analogy. The point of the analogy is that, even though Romeo and Juliet would likely not have considered their world "the best of all possible worlds," we (the readers) do consider their world to be much better than they do (albeit not "the best"). In other words, the reason Romeo and Juliet do not consider their world to be "the best" is because they are only experiencing their localized part of the story, not the story as a whole. Likewise, even though individual humans suffer, that does not preclude the possibility that this is still the best possible story for us to be collectively experiencing.
- griffinmmahon 10y ago
  Nah, it does preclude that possibility, because some of the suffering of those individual humans is entirely unnecessary.
  - nemo1618 10y ago
    How can you judge whether someone's suffering is unnecessary? Only the author of the story knows that, because only the author knows how the story ends and how the individual arcs tie together.
  - randcraw 10y ago
    Is it unnecessary? Can you invent a tale of "star-crossed lovers" in a world that is "best" for the characters? I think their suffering is essential to the narrative. If so, perhaps their world is indeed "best" toward serving that purpose, at least for the audience.

eli_gottlieb 10y ago

The world isn't a story.

nemo1618 10y ago
I completely disagree, so I don't expect we will find much common ground :P

dTal 10y ago

Also, who is to say that any world we can imagine is possible? I mean, from a strict realist perspective, only one world is "possible" - this one. This also exposes hidden meaning in the word "world".