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Couldn't that be a misreading of Voltaire though? I didn't interpret Candide as "there is suffering", I interpreted it as "this is obviously not the best possible world and no logical gymnastics can convince me it is"

(With the collorary that logic is pretty useless in moral philosophy if it's only used to find contrived justification for the status quo.)

> My question has rather been that, if suffering is required and a child getting bone cancer and dying at five is the best of all possible worlds, maybe the whole project should have been scrapped at the planning phase.

Is that better? it would also require not having all the good things from creation.

I can’t see the good being contingent on a five year old getting bone cancer.

In that case you have rejected Leibniz's argument anyway so the argument in the comment I was replying to does not arise.

You don't know that the child wouldn't have grown up Hitler.

The argument seems similar - not exactly, but similar - to the question "if global warming is real, why is it snowing here". A function describing the maximum global integration over happiness could very well contain many local minima.

Yes, but an omnipotent God could presumably just make Hitlers not exist. The argument rests on the assumption that there are hidden dependencies in the laws of the universe, such that it was logically necessary that Hitler (or insert whatever other evil here) had to exist to make the best possible world. That's hard to swallow.

Consider that many people today, who live better than the kings of centuries past, are depressed. One could conclude that happiness is a state of improvement over past experiences, not necessarily an absolute scale. If this is true (and I personally believe that it is), then evil is in fact a necessary baseline against which happiness can be improved upon.

This seems to be assuming omnipotence is not just a fantasy?

More likely they were operating under significant constraints…

> an omnipotent ... could

The Architect in Leibniz is not omnipotent, and can only make the best out of what is possible.

I think you are just restating what I said. Yes, Leibniz and any of his defenders must assume that there are hidden constraints to what is possible that lie beyond human understanding that made Hitler (just to use a very salient example, but insert whatever evil you like), necessary to achieve a greater good. It is ultimately an argument from faith (just trust in God, he had the best for the world at heart) that can only be accepted by those who already believe.

I meant that it is explicit, not just an assumption but the very metaphysics. A Logos is thought as predominant over the Agent that uses it. (Otherwise, it would be logical to have perfection and only perfection immediately.)

> an argument from faith

I think it remains (it was intended to be) a logical argument from the very definitions (not from devotional faith).

--

Edit: sorry, but I realize I misremembered a few important details, that could make the above quite misleading...

Leibniz speaks of full omnipotence. So, that Logos is not "above" Divinity in an ontological sense, but in a purely logical sense. I.e. it was impossible to do differently as this is "the best possible plan", not "the best achievable".

> we are not well enough acquainted with the general harmony of the universe and of the hidden reasons for his conduct; and that makes people recklessly judge that many things could have been improved [... // ...] to know in detail his reasons for ordering the universe as he has, allowing sin, and granting his saving grace in one way rather than another, is beyond the power of a finite mind

~~ Leibniz, Discourse on Metaphysics(1686)

Apologies, re-reading this - which is literally false -, in view of a quick re-read of some salient paragraphs:

the Architect in Leibniz is omnipotent, and his project is regarded as the best possible; only, the project involves a limited humanity that cannot understand it.

(In the original writing above I meant 'omnipotent' in an oblique way (including "clarity" and "satisfying all" as "perfections"), which is too stretched and rhetoric not to mislead.)

I might be misinterpreting Leibniz’s central argument, but doesn’t the idea of the best of all possible worlds not depend on how humans (or any kind of life really) perceive it? This is similar to the idea that an unaligned AI agent could get its own idea of “best world”.

Also, I get the impression that in modern times, people fall away from religion because they can’t explain why God allows evil in a satisfactory way. But in the distant historical past, they were more motivated to reason or figure out why God intentionally causes evil things to happen.

> "if global warming is real, why is it snowing here". A function describing the maximum global integration over happiness could very well contain many local minima.

Love that answer. its a really good analogy.

Of course plenty of people I (probably most people) do not understand it with regard to global warming....

Nah, just create the world at a state where modern medicine can cure cancer, like we're on the slow road to doing.

In the 1800s someone might have asked "if suffering is required and a child is going to die of a systemic infection, maybe the whole project should have been scrapped at the planning phase".

To me it's clear that human flourishing without much suffering is possible in this universe and it's more about knowledge and power to prevent suffering being hard to come by. The kind of knowledge that e.g. could have been written down in ancient religious books or whatever if we had a best possible world.

> Nah, just create the world at a state where modern medicine can cure cancer, like we're on the slow road to doing.

We would have cures for every illness if not for human selfishness and evil. Look at all the money and effort spent on war during the last 10,000 years, on legal fees and disputes for the last 5,000 years. Rather than love our neighbors as ourselves, too many of us in our hearts say, "This land is MINE! This money is MINE! This patent is MINE! The credit is MINE!" If all this effort went to instead cultivating gifted individuals to research and cure diseases we'd have all our cures.

> My question has rather been that, if suffering is required and a child getting bone cancer and dying at five is the best of all possible worlds, maybe the whole project should have been scrapped at the planning phase. I assume God was not forced to create a world?

It is not really possible to answer these questions when one does not know the spiritual infrastructure. Eg, say reincarnation of the soul is real, and in a previous life a soul has been in the body of an industrialist on whose account cancer causing pollution was spewed out. In the next incarnation, it seems valid for that soul to experience the effect of the earlier incarnation's actions. If that is it, the soul may in fact be learning and growing, which may be the point of the exercise.

I know that this is all conjecture, but I hope I am relaying my point - that without understanding the spiritual domain, these sorts of moral appraisals are moot.

That is a really excellent point and in fact gets at the difficulty of arguing any rational point about religion. I'd guess that every rational argument that appeals to religion at all can be made to work or not work depending on this background "spiritual infrastructure". This is one reason why rationalists often feel like religious thinkers are moving the goalposts.

Maybe the 5-year-old who died of bone cancer was just playing Roy on the hardest difficulty.

However, this shiftiness also undermines every religious platitude as well. God loves you, everything happens for a reason, etc. etc. etc. -- maybe, or maybe God is trapped in a human coma patient and Loki is just fucking with us. If you have degrees of freedom over this "spiritual infrastructure" then it's completely impossible to reach any conclusion.

I think you and Voltaire are thinking along the same lines. Both are a rejection of a bloodless utility maximisation creed on the simple basis that human morality just doesn’t work that way.

> maybe the whole project should have been scrapped at the planning phase.

This is an argument made by one of the Dostoevsky characters, a famous "tear of a child" argument.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fyodor_Dostoevsky

"Their first child, Sofya, had been conceived in Baden-Baden, and was born in Geneva on 5 March 1868. The baby died of pneumonia three months later, and Anna recalled how Dostoevsky "wept and sobbed like a woman in despair"."

So Dostoevsky suffered the pain of losing a child.

Despite that, an argument about "tear of child" was put into antagonist's mouth.

> and Voltaire responding with

Like a very long joke, which builds and builds and builds and builds, the punchline in the end arrives.

It's in the last sentence: "Yes, but you have to work for it". (I.e. he intended to stress an outer point.)

Unsong has a pretty novel take on it.