• ToothyMaw
    1.3k
    A couple of terms before I present my arguments:
    Unknowable = unable to be comprehended regardless of scientific or technological progress in this life
    Perfect selector = hypothetical being with a quasi-human mind that can sort and remember discrete hell events without knowledge of what they actually contain

    In this post, I contend that guesses at an earth-like afterlife are more likely to be true than guesses at what might make up many possible hells - that is, hells in which the torturous events inflicted on us are fundamentally unknowable both in the ways that the suffering is inflicted and, inevitably, the qualities of that suffering, e.g. what it means to get hexed by voodoo magic is not explicit to a human mind: why or how praying to an effigy causes a hex or what it means to be hexed per se is not known, or perhaps even knowable, to the person being hexed, but they ought to notice the effects of being hexed because it causes perceivable, bad outcomes - or it isn’t a hex. Thus, there is no limit to the qualities of the possible torturous events that might make up an unknowable hell even if the pain - likely new kinds of pain - resulting from such events can always be perceived in one form or another. I’m going to start with the necessary discussion of hell to get the most unpleasant part out of the way.

    I am not including hells that are made up of eternal, never-ending torturous events for reasons that will be provided shortly.

    The hells that will be discussed in this post are made up of what I have termed discrete hell events. To discern a discrete hell event we need to know that it includes pain that begins and ends, that the unique causes of this pain are qualitatively unidentifiable and unknowable, and that it is qualitatively different from any other hell event. Certain qualities across discrete hell events could repeat; a discrete hell event merely needs to be holistically unique. That the causes are qualitatively unidentifiable means it is open-ended as to what unknowables could be causing any given discrete hell event based on its inherent qualities, and it is also unknown what the relevant unknowables truly consist of by virtue of them being unknowable. So, any cause that is unknowable is possible, and it is unknown or perhaps even unknowable how many of these unknowables there are, as there are no constraints on what is unknowable other than that we can’t know it, which - in terms of events and experiences - could be anything outside the bubble of what we could ever know could ever happen in this life. That the pain resulting from the unknowable causes ends merely indicates that the event can be distinguished from others based on its content - if a hell event were never-ending, it could have any content whatsoever over the course of its infinite existence.

    Thus, we could potentially distinguish between all discrete hell events and count them based merely on whether they are qualitatively different from each other and by whether or not the associated pain ends. This means that, from the point of view of a perfect selector that can differentiate between different combinations of causes of discrete hell events and thus the different inherent qualities of the pain contained within those events, we can distinguish between and count the hell events in a never-ending hell in which the pain never ends by virtue of an unending number of discrete hell events, a hell in which we are tortured in various novel discrete ways, a hell in which we are only sparsely tortured in repetitive ways, etc. All of the distinct hells that can be made up of discrete hell events will be represented in the forthcoming thought experiment as possibilities.

    But all of these possibilities are precisely that - possibilities, and a perfect selector, given they can distinguish between the starting and stopping of pain and different causes that are qualitatively unknowable, that is to say, without any understanding of what those causes entail, can guess at any of the possibilities that make up these infinite different hells; a perfect selector need only be able to sort and remember hell events arbitrarily to form valid guesses at the contents of an UH. Furthermore, if it would be much more difficult to guess at a correct combination of discrete hell events based on a selection of all possible discrete hell events than to guess at a correct combination of earthly events based on all possible earthly events then we can conclude that the guesses associated with an Earth-like afterlife have more predictive power.

    There is the question of how many discrete hell events there are. This question can be answered by exploring the relationship between unique causes and the qualities of the associated pain. There is a fulcrum, open-ended with an unknown number of unique causes of pain on one side and the infinite (and almost certainly unknowable; it is an unknowable hell) different possible qualities of the pain inflicted on the other. Without violating this fulcrum, we can posit that there is an unknown number of unique causes that could tend towards creating an infinite number of hell events that satisfy the quality of being discrete insofar as they are both unique in combination of unique causes and different from each other in terms of the inherent qualities of the associated pain. So, we have determined that the number of discrete hell events is potentially infinite. That might not seem like a very reassuring answer, but I promise this is sort of a good thing.

    As an alternative to the unknowable hell, I present the earth-like afterlife, which could suck - but not nearly as much as an unknowable hell. A predictor (even a biased one), as will be shown, can make relatively good guesses at what might make up an earth-like afterlife, which could consist of many different combinations of earthly events of varying likelihood. The important thing to keep in mind is that predictions about earth-like afterlives would always be confirmed in terms of specific events in the afterlife if they were to turn out to be at least even partially true. Predictions at an UH do not require such a condition: no matter what you guess about whatever UH you might believe in, such a guess can only ever be trivially accurate: if true your guess could satisfy the conditions “the afterlife is not earth-like”, “the afterlife is an unknowable hell”, or “the afterlife includes pain”, but that says nothing about the specific hell events that might occur in such an unknowable hell. So, we need a way to account for those events. Furthermore, our conceptions of what an earth-like afterlife could consist of constantly changes in terms of content and the probability of correct combinations of events guessed as we discover new experiences. Guesses at an UH do not update in a similar way, and we must take this into account if we are to discuss probabilities.

    Before we can get to my thought experiment, there is one other thing I must address: when certain events occur on Earth, they are often followed by other events as reflected by consistent logic determined by the content of those events. For instance: if we mandate a vaccine for everyone in the US, we can expect a reactionary response characterized by vast protests and a general denigration of the medical apparatuses in place. This is because many people view it as a challenge to their autonomy, which is a consistent gripe. There is a clear logic to what might trigger that kind of complaint - in this case being injected against one’s will - and I can only imagine that the logic behind it would apply to a similar schema in an earth-like afterlife. If it would, then we know that certain combinations of certain types of events in the afterlife are more likely than others. I hope that isn't too reductive; I’m not saying we can extrapolate indefinitely far or even far at all from a given event, but rather that they might be able to be connected locally according to some inherent logic. Think something like Marxist critiques but in areas other than history.

    To say that an UH is more likely is to say that the specific hell events included in an UH are more likely - not just that the afterlife is unknowable in terms of the unknowable qualities of the hell events that it might contain. Thus, we have to find a way to balance the details of an earth-like afterlife with those of an UH. That is the purpose of the following thought experiment.

    The experiment consists of this: there exists a perfect selector that can select from a pool of either all possible earthly events or all possible discrete hell events corresponding to their decision to guess at either a correct earth-like afterlife or a correct UH. They can combine the events to make their guesses according to any schema.

    That we are discussing combinations is a necessary simplification; in reality there would probably be many different events happening all over and perhaps at the same time all interacting in weird ways. However, these collections of events could still be expressed as different combinations, with the simplest being one-dimensional strings of events. If we can guess at these one-dimensional strings, we can guess at more complex interactions given we can relate them to each other. Think different dimensions with each dimension representing a line of causes and effects, and the true course of events being an object following a path through those dimensions.

    The theoretical process of selecting from the different possible earthly events by the perfect selector that might make up an earth-like afterlife could be affected by the process of having discovered them on earth; when a fundamentally new event or experience is discovered, it is determined to be of a certain type and can be combined with other events based on that type and, if it is sufficiently fringe, might indicate the bounds of what is possible. Thus, when the perfect selector combines the different earthly experiences, it could be according to a set of rules and boundaries; by finding new experiences before the perfect selector makes a guess, we can whittle down what could comprise the correct earth-like afterlife.

    Alternatively, when the perfect selector selects from the pool of total possible discrete hell events, they are choosing from a pool of events that are potentially infinite in number. Furthermore, as the events are combined in a given guess, it is not according to any conceivable rules and the only bounds on the correct UH is that it is composed of some combination of discrete hell events. So, the correct UH would likely be nigh-impossible to guess; essentially the selector would be attempting to guess at a combination made up of a potentially infinite number of unique events, which is exceedingly unlikely. In fact, the likelihood of doing so approaches zero. This is also exacerbated by a lack of rules regarding the correct combination, meaning each guess is essentially random.

    In the case that there are arbitrary, unknown, and fundamentally unknowable, magical rules that have produced the correct combination of discrete hell events: even if such rules exist and there is an internal logic to these magical rules, they are still undiscoverable via any dialectic and are unable to be comprehended meaningfully - or they don’t correspond to an UH - and, thus, they have no effect on whether or not a given combination is more or less likely from the point of view of any plausible selector. I mean, you could guess at the logic behind such magical rules, but that would be pretty futile. Furthermore, even if you could discern the logic via divine revelation or something, you would still be selecting from a set containing a potentially infinite number of events, and these logical relationships might need to be incredibly, or perhaps even infinitely, complex to be meaningful at all if it turns out there is actually a really large - potentially infinite - number of possible events. Navigating these rules could be impossible, and, even if they could be navigated - against all odds - they still might not be sufficient to produce a good guess.

    What all of this means is that even if we could guess at combinations of discrete hell events, the guesses at an earth-like afterlife would have more predictive power as likely combinations of potential events are recursively added to our conception of what an earth-like afterlife could consist of - a process that tends toward a tangible limit that cannot be found elsewhere. Perhaps most importantly, the existence of this limit implies that it contains bounds for the correct combination of events given the afterlife is earth-like.

    We have, then, specific combinations of events that are more or less likely that exist within this limit, and perhaps even the bounds of what is correct - good guesses.
  • Moliere
    4.8k
    Let's take a practical example.

    Suppose you present your reasoning to a literal fire-and-brimstone Christian where sinners go to hell for eternity unless they are saved by Christ.

    The task for you, as I see it, is to argue how you can know any one afterlife is more likely than another while simultaneously denying others' appeals that likewise do not rely upon evidence.

    Do you think your reasoning here would persuade someone with different good guesses?
  • ToothyMaw
    1.3k
    Suppose you present your reasoning to a literal fire-and-brimstone Christian where sinners go to hell for eternity unless they are saved by Christ.

    The task for you, as I see it, is to argue how you can know any one afterlife is more likely than another while simultaneously denying others' appeals that likewise do not rely upon evidence.

    Do you think your reasoning here would persuade someone with different good guesses?
    Moliere

    As I say in the OP, what makes one earth-like afterlife (even one you might call hellish) any more likely than another is how well it abides by the logical rules we might develop and whether or not it exists within the boundaries of possible human experience. So, if that is what you are talking about, then I would have trouble with that. If instead we are talking about the kind of unknowable hell I expound upon in the OP:

    I would tell this person that it is far more likely that any valid guess at an earth-like afterlife is almost certainly more likely than whatever hell they believe in by virtue of the content of the correct hell being almost impossible to guess even by someone who knows far more than them - a perfect selector. To believe in this eternal hell is arrogant, and they should feel bad about it.

    I mean, when this person says they believe in an eternal hell, they are saying they believe that, out of all the things the afterlife could be, the afterlife would be a certain, likely incredibly complex, combination of a potentially infinite number of possible unique events in that hell, and, as I think I have shown, that is so much less likely than an eternity of Simpsons reruns or something.

    You might say that believing that one needs to believe in Jesus to not go to hell is some sort of anchor for earthly experiences in the afterlife. It isn't. It is a prediction at who goes to an (unknowable if I'm understanding you) hell based on arbitrary criteria and says nothing about what could be the case in the afterlife in terms of earthly experiences. So, it doesn't fit the bill for being a prediction at an earth-like afterlife that is confirmed in terms of events in an earth-like afterlife, which is a criterion for the good guesses I conclude exist.

    This person, if they cling to their beliefs about hell, is not concerned whatsoever with what is probable.
  • Moliere
    4.8k
    As I say in the OP, what makes one earth-like afterlife (even one you might call hellish) any more likely than another is how well it abides by the logical rules we might develop and whether or not it exists within the boundaries of possible human experience. So, if that is what you are talking about, then I would have trouble with that.ToothyMaw

    My interest here is in wondering how it might be possible to rationally think about such imaginings that are widespread in human culture.

    So the more interesting question is where you have trouble. Obviously this is just a hypothetical since neither of us believe -- but I'd encourage you to talk more about where you have trouble in thinking through this thought. That's the best stuff.
  • ToothyMaw
    1.3k
    My interest here is in wondering how it might be possible to rationally think about such imaginings that are widespread in human culture.

    So the more interesting question is where you have trouble. Obviously this is just a hypothetical since neither of us believe -- but I'd encourage you to talk more about where you have trouble in thinking through this thought. That's the best stuff.
    Moliere

    It isn't so much that I have trouble thinking about it, but rather that I don't possess the means to follow the process of discovery through to its end or figure out its details. I could help initiate the process, though. That is, if people actually want to guess at what happens to us after dying or what has happened to all of the people preceding us.

    But then again people have always sought out new, novel experiences via art, psychedelics, music, etc., so we ought to just keep on going the way we are I guess in the meantime.

    Honestly, the most vulnerable part of my argument, as far as I can tell, is that there are, although not infinite, myriad ways of torturing someone by manipulating the chemicals in their brain, which inflates the number of earth-like events to gargantuan numbers if there is no limit to the unique causes of these painful neuro-chemical events. Not to mention the presence of these possible events in this life implies that an earth-like afterlife could consist of many of these painful neuro-chemical events if they are at all likely - although many of the worst ones would probably be very unlikely by virtue of being difficult to produce via events external to whatever is happening in the brain, i.e. even psychiatric medications, which are designed to produce certain mental outcomes, can only produce so many of these reliably.

    That might still sound bad, but even in the worst-case scenario, there is a limit to how much pain you can experience via such manipulations, and there is no limit to how much pain you might feel in the kind of unknowable hell I talk about in the OP. So, the existence of brains kind of complicates things a little, but my argument remains almost totally unaffected.
  • 180 Proof
    15.4k
    Camus says "[Stupidity] is sin without God" and Dostoyevsky says "Hell ... being unable to love" (i.e. perpetual failure to learn from failure).
  • Ciceronianus
    3k
    I must admit this isn't something that I've had the opportunity to consider.
  • ToothyMaw
    1.3k
    Camus says "[Stupidity] is sin without God"180 Proof

    It seems to me Camus was trying to make that utterance's meaning ambiguous, and it comes across as pretentious. I would've just said: "Religion provides cover for and legitimizes stupidity" or something. Unless of course there is some context for it that you are not providing.

    Dostoyevsky says "Hell ... being unable to love" (i.e. perpetual failure to learn from failure).180 Proof

    I like that one more, but I don't know what being unable to love has to do with not being able to learn from failures perpetually. Unless you are saying that people who hate others because of religion, for example, have no ability to learn from their mistakes in hating, and, thus, have made their own hell for themselves?

    So, I guess you are saying that hatred arising from the stupidity inherent to religion leads to hateful people making their own existence a sort of hell for themselves?

    edit: trying to say. That was even more ambiguous in meaning than usual.
  • ToothyMaw
    1.3k


    Coming up with the OP you read (or are still reading) was a difficult process, and I hope it is clear enough to be thoroughly understood by people other than me. I'll admit that when even I read parts of my arguments it doesn't always make sense immediately in terms of a whole.

    For instance, you would think that the number of discrete hell events would be limited by the number of unique causes, when really, since there is both an unknown number of unique causes and an unlimited number of these unique causes that can correspond to a single event, and, since the finite number of qualities corresponding to each event are part of an infinite pool, you end up with a potentially infinite number of discrete hell events. This is already difficult to understand, but when you think about the fact that those events are the totality of what every hell could be made up of - every possible hell is represented - and that that is what the perfect selector is actually selecting from to form a given guess, one gets something very difficult to hold in one's mind as a coherent, reasoned line of thinking.
  • 180 Proof
    15.4k
    I did not mention anything about "hatred" or "religion" so I don't know what you are talking about. My "ambigous" point was only that (at minimum) "hell" also may be conceived of as involuntary self-sabotage.
  • Moliere
    4.8k
    Honestly, the most vulnerable part of my argument, as far as I can tell, is that there are, although not infinite, myriad ways of torturing someone by manipulating the chemicals in their brain, which inflates the number of earth-like events to gargantuan numbers if there is no limit to the unique causes of these painful neuro-chemical events. Not to mention the presence of these possible events in this life implies that an earth-like afterlife could consist of many of these painful neuro-chemical events if they are at all likely - although many of the worst ones would probably be very unlikely by virtue of being difficult to produce via events external to whatever is happening in the brain, i.e. even psychiatric medications, which are designed to produce certain mental outcomes, can only produce so many of these reliably.

    That might still sound bad, but even in the worst-case scenario, there is a limit to how much pain you can experience via such manipulations, and there is no limit to how much pain you might feel in the kind of unknowable hell I talk about in the OP. So, the existence of brains kind of complicates things a little, but my argument remains almost totally unaffected.
    ToothyMaw

    OK so it sounds to me like you have a specific idea about what hell is not, and that this is what you're trying to get at.

    I'm afraid I remain unmoved, though that's common in philosophy.

    The only way we could ...
    possess the means to follow the process of discovery through to its end or figure out its detailsToothyMaw

    ... is if we are alive after we die. To initiate the process of knowing what's after life is to end the process that is life, which makes it rather hard to know about while still alive.
  • ToothyMaw
    1.3k
    OK so it sounds to me like you have a specific idea about what hell is not, and that this is what you're trying to get at.Moliere

    Are you referring to an unknowable hell or a hellish, earth-like afterlife here? If we are talking about an earth-like afterlife: I totally concede that an earth-like afterlife could be hellish, so that might be a misunderstanding. If we are instead discussing an unknowable hell in which cause and effect doesn't break down, then you are wrong: my argument is about guessing, and it doesn't say that the afterlife is not, or could not be, an unknowable hell just because the right one is virtually impossible to guess, but rather that we are much more likely to be right when we guess at an earth-like afterlife.

    I'm afraid I remain unmoved, though that's common in philosophy.Moliere

    I'm not sure what your position is, really, so I don't know what it would mean if you did move. Is it just that since there is no evidence for any afterlife we can't have better or worse guesses at it?

    The only way we could ...
    possess the means to follow the process of discovery through to its end or figure out its details
    — ToothyMaw

    ... is if we are alive after we die. To initiate the process of knowing what's after life is to end the process that is life, which makes it rather hard to know about while still alive.
    Moliere

    Did you read the OP? I specifically say that we could form predictive models for what could be the case in the afterlife from observing the relations between events in this life. In practical terms: when events are found to be likely to follow or precede others, we can take these relationships into account and integrate them into our predictive models, which would be a continuous process until we cannot discover any more relationships, or these relationships become too difficult to ascertain.

    If you mean know all, or even most, of the details before dying, however, then yeah, you are right.
  • Moliere
    4.8k
    Are you referring to an unknowable hell or a hellish, earth-like afterlife here? If we are talking about an earth-like afterlife: I totally concede that an earth-like afterlife could be hellish, so that might be a misunderstanding. If we are instead discussing an unknowable hell in which cause and effect doesn't break down, then you are wrong: my argument is about guessing, and it doesn't say that the afterlife is not, or could not be, an unknowable hell just because the right one is virtually impossible to guess, but rather that we are much more likely to be right when we guess at an earth-like afterlife.ToothyMaw

    I'm referring to any hell at all, earth-like or otherwise. It's the part where you say "We are much more likely to be right..." that gets me. I just don't understand how we could make that claim.

    I'm not sure what your position is, really, so I don't know what it would mean if you did move. Is it just that since there is no evidence for any afterlife we can't have better or worse guesses at it?ToothyMaw

    More or less, yup.

    Only experience justifies knowledge, we don't experience after-life, and so we have not justification to claim knowledge about the afterlife. For less esoteric topics I'd be more willing to give leeway, but for claims about the afterlife I'm less inclined to grant charity because there are so many divergent accounts of the afterlife that cannot all be true, and people tend to insist that their version of the afterlife must be true in spite of this.

    I'd extend this skepticism to guesses about the afterlife: it seems to me that the only way to find out is by dying. So since I am not dead I cannot say much about it. And if I were dead I couldn't say much about it either. So there's just not a good guess either way.

    Did you read the OP? I specifically say that we could form predictive models for what could be the case in the afterlife from observing the relations between events in this life.ToothyMaw

    I did, though there are parts I scratched my head at :D -- it's pretty long.

    You say we can form predictive models about the afterlife from this life, yes. But that's the claim I'm questioning. It doesn't seem to me that we can because we'd have to die in order to do so, and after we die we couldn't make many claims.
  • ToothyMaw
    1.3k
    Are you referring to an unknowable hell or a hellish, earth-like afterlife here? If we are talking about an earth-like afterlife: I totally concede that an earth-like afterlife could be hellish, so that might be a misunderstanding. If we are instead discussing an unknowable hell in which cause and effect doesn't break down, then you are wrong: my argument is about guessing, and it doesn't say that the afterlife is not, or could not be, an unknowable hell just because the right one is virtually impossible to guess, but rather that we are much more likely to be right when we guess at an earth-like afterlife.
    — ToothyMaw

    I'm referring to any hell at all, earth-like or otherwise. It's the part where you say "We are much more likely to be right..." that gets me. I just don't understand how we could make that claim.
    Moliere

    We can make that claim because a perfect selector is selecting from a potentially infinite number of unique events to form guesses at an UH (unknowable hell), and the chances of guessing the right combination from this potentially infinite set of unique events approaches zero.

    Alternatively, there is the earth-like afterlife, which you must be familiar with by now. If we can form predictive models about it, then we have a greater chance of guessing at this afterlife because the guesses can be formed based on these predictive models.

    All that is left is to compare the chances of one to the other via the results of the perfect selector thought experiment, which leads to the conclusion that we are more likely to be right when we make a certain guess at an earth-like afterlife than a guess at a combination generated from a potentially infinite set of unique events - the correct unknowable hell.

    Evidence not needed, as this is a probabilistic argument at its core. As for your contention that we cannot form any meaningful predictive models:

    Only experience justifies knowledge, we don't experience after-life, and so we have not justification to claim knowledge about the afterlife. For less esoteric topics I'd be more willing to give leeway, but for claims about the afterlife I'm less inclined to grant charity because there are so many divergent accounts of the afterlife that cannot all be true, and people tend to insist that their version of the afterlife must be true in spite of this.Moliere

    And I grant that all of these interpretations could be true, but a proliferation of diverse views on a subject doesn't mean that some of those views could not be determined to be more or less likely to be true via inspection and interrogation. And I'm saying we have the means to do such a thing - highly developed brains that can reason both abstractly and statistically.

    In fact, such mechanisms dictate how we live our lives as individuals, so I don't see why we couldn't do it on a larger scale. That some people might be unmoved by these predictive models is their own fault, and they can believe what they want - but that does nothing to change reality.

    I'd extend this skepticism to guesses about the afterlife: it seems to me that the only way to find out is by dying. So since I am not dead I cannot say much about it. And if I were dead I couldn't say much about it either. So there's just not a good guess either way.Moliere

    This is a non-argument at this point. The perfect selector accounts for this uncertainty without violating the properties of unknowable hells insofar as guesses can be made. From there it is about probabilities.

    You say we can form predictive models about the afterlife from this life, yes. But that's the claim I'm questioning. It doesn't seem to me that we can because we'd have to die in order to do so, and after we die we couldn't make many claims.Moliere

    There are two things I think you might be conflating here. First off, the perfect selector is imbued with magical powers that allows them to guess at what might comprise an unknowable hell for the purposes of forming an argument. So, from the point of view of the selector, they can indeed guess at what might comprise hell without dying per se. Second: the issue of predictive models has almost nothing to do with hell, but rather is related to guesses at earth-like afterlives, and, if that is what you are stuck on, here is the relevant paragraph from the OP:

    Before we can get to my thought experiment, there is one other thing I must address: when certain events occur on Earth, they are often followed by other events as reflected by consistent logic determined by the content of those events. For instance: if we mandate a vaccine for everyone in the US, we can expect a reactionary response characterized by vast protests and a general denigration of the medical apparatuses in place. This is because many people view it as a challenge to their autonomy, which is a consistent gripe. There is a clear logic to what might trigger that kind of complaint - in this case being injected against one’s will - and I can only imagine that the logic behind it would apply to a similar schema in an earth-like afterlife. If it would, then we know that certain combinations of certain types of events in the afterlife are more likely than others. I hope that isn't too reductive; I’m not saying we can extrapolate indefinitely far or even far at all from a given event, but rather that they might be able to be connected locally according to some inherent logic. Think something like Marxist critiques but in areas other than history.ToothyMaw
  • Moliere
    4.8k
    We can make that claim because a perfect selector is selecting from a potentially infinite number of unique events to form guesses at an UH (unknowable hell), and the chances of guessing the right combination from this potentially infinite set of unique events approaches zero.ToothyMaw

    How do we know that?

    Using "infinite" in a philosophical argument is always a red flag to me: it's easy to set up antinomies with respect to infinite space and time, for instance, as Kant explored.

    It's his exploration of the question of the afterlife, in particular, that I'm drawing inspiration from.

    He persuades me that such things are unknowable, and so we're free to say anything we like for as long as we like about the afterlife -- we will never know anything about the afterlife while alive in any sense. It is noumenal. We can believe in it for practical purposes, and a reality is, thereby, created by people living together in a community with similar beliefs about the afterlife, but that's not the same thing as to make claims on what makes a good guess on what the afterlife is like.

    For instance, while I believe there is no such thing, I'm being careful in my replies here to claim I know there is no afterlife. (Though, surely, because I believe there is no afterlife, I'd contend that all guesses at an afterlife are simply false -- no probability involved).

    ***
    That is all by way of trying to explain where I'm coming from for communication purposes.

    I reread your OP, and thanks for pointing out the relevant paragraph so I can focus in on something.
    when certain events occur on Earth, they are often followed by other events as reflected by consistent logic determined by the content of those events. For instance: if we mandate a vaccine for everyone in the US, we can expect a reactionary response characterized by vast protests and a general denigration of the medical apparatuses in place. This is because many people view it as a challenge to their autonomy, which is a consistent gripe. There is a clear logic to what might trigger that kind of complaint - in this case being injected against one’s will - and I can only imagine that the logic behind it would apply to a similar schema in an earth-like afterlife. If it would, then we know that certain combinations of certain types of events in the afterlife are more likely than others. I hope that isn't too reductive; I’m not saying we can extrapolate indefinitely far or even far at all from a given event, but rather that they might be able to be connected locally according to some inherent logic. Think something like Marxist critiques but in areas other than history.ToothyMaw

    Let's try to break this paragraph out into a syllogism or at least an informal listing of propositions which imply one another in some informal fashion.

    1. when certain events occur on Earth, they are often followed by other events as reflected by consistent logic determined by the content of those events.

    (Example to support 1)

    2. There is a clear logic to what might trigger that kind of complaint - in this case being injected against one’s will - and I can only imagine that the logic behind it would apply to a similar schema in an earth-like afterlife.

    When you say "the logic behind it", I read "the logic behind that kind of complaint", so it reads "There is a clear logic to what might trigger that kind of complaint, and I can only imagine that the logic behind that kind of complaint would apply to a similar schema in an earth-like afterlife"

    3. If it would, then we know that certain combinations of certain types of events in the afterlife are more likely than others.

    Which I'm reading as an enthymeme, so the implied premise is "it would", and therefore by modus ponens: we know that certain combinations of certain types of events in the afterlife are more likely than others.



    Can you justify "it would" in premise 3?

    Also, can you justify the analogy between government policy and potential afterlives? Why should the logic between those be the same? The logic for the afterlife that I'd choose is the logic of fiction: Bilbo Baggins is a Hobbit, and it's true because that's what the story says.
  • ToothyMaw
    1.3k
    How do we know that?

    Using "infinite" in a philosophical argument is always a red flag to me: it's easy to set up antinomies with respect to infinite space and time, for instance, as Kant explored.
    Moliere

    I did not say "infinite" but rather "potentially infinite", which is different insofar as I when I use that term, I am denoting a set of unique events that are effectively unbounded in number, while if I said "infinite unique events" that would clearly correspond to the concept you are right to be wary of. I do not believe I have set up any antinomies, as I have made no references to anything actually being infinite apart from the potential different ways to be made to feel pain in an unknowable hell - but that is definitional and, thus, essential to any considerations of unknowable hells.

    He persuades me that such things are unknowable, and so we're free to say anything we like for as long as we like about the afterlife -- we will never know anything about the afterlife while alive in any sense. It is noumenal. We can believe in it for practical purposes, and a reality is, thereby, created by people living together in a community with similar beliefs about the afterlife, but that's not the same thing as to make claims on what makes a good guess on what the afterlife is like.Moliere

    While the afterlife is essentially noumenal by virtue of us not being able to directly ascertain its details with our senses, that doesn't mean that what we can ascertain could never occur in the afterlife, or that phenomenal attributes perceivable in this life could not correspond to it. In fact, I argue that it is possible that we can predict some of these attributes, and I'll address your contentions about it further on in this post. But you are, at this point, making an argument against predictive models, not just predictable afterlives; just because we don't, or can't, know for sure, what is actually correct, doesn't mean no good guesses at what might be correct exist.

    Also: my OP compared guesses at earth-like afterlives with unknowable hells and should be considered in that context.

    1. when certain events occur on Earth, they are often followed by other events as reflected by consistent logic determined by the content of those events.

    (Example to support 1)

    2. There is a clear logic to what might trigger that kind of complaint - in this case being injected against one’s will - and I can only imagine that the logic behind it would apply to a similar schema in an earth-like afterlife.

    When you say "the logic behind it", I read "the logic behind that kind of complaint", so it reads "There is a clear logic to what might trigger that kind of complaint, and I can only imagine that the logic behind that kind of complaint would apply to a similar schema in an earth-like afterlife"

    3. If it would, then we know that certain combinations of certain types of events in the afterlife are more likely than others.

    Which I'm reading as an enthymeme, so the implied premise is "it would", and therefore by modus ponens: we know that certain combinations of certain types of events in the afterlife are more likely than others.



    Can you justify "it would" in premise 3?
    Moliere

    If there is an event in this life that is logically related via its content to other events, and the content of that event does not change if it happens in an earth-like afterlife, then we know that the logical connections between that event and others that are similar in this regard are the same as they would be on earth, and we have no reason to think otherwise; therefore, if certain events on earth can be predicted via these kinds of logical connections, they can be predicted similarly in an earth-like afterlife. That leads to my conclusion that, given these kinds of earthly events occur in the afterlife, certain combinations, based on the transcendent logic according to which the events are related, are more likely than others.

    Essentially: the content of an event and, thus, the logic underpinning that event's relationships to other events, transcends whether or not an event occurs in the afterlife. Given this, my argument stands.
  • Moliere
    4.8k
    I did not say "infinite" but rather "potentially infinite", which is different insofar as I when I use that term, I am denoting a set of unique events that are effectively unbounded in number, while if I said "infinite unique events" that would clearly correspond to the concept you are right to be wary of. I do not believe I have set up any antinomies, as I have made no references to anything actually being infinite apart from the potential different ways to be made to feel pain in an unknowable hell - but that is definitional and, thus, essential to any considerations of unknowable hells.ToothyMaw

    No I don't think you've set up antinomies -- I just mean any use of "infinite" in a philosophical argument -- "potentially infinite" would count from my perspective. Outside of mathematics it's a pretty fuzzy term. (EDIT: I ought say that I don't believe this means we should never use it outside of mathematics. Levinas uses "infinite" at times, and I think it works. But it's not like he's making analogies to calculus with it either)

    The part where you seem to be relying upon the mathematical notion is where you say:

    a perfect selector is selecting from a potentially infinite number of unique events to form guesses at an UH (unknowable hell), and the chances of guessing the right combination from this potentially infinite set of unique events approaches zero.ToothyMaw

    We can take the limit of a function as it's variable approaches some number, and sometimes we can take the limit of a function as it approaches infinite.

    But how is that applicable to guesses being right? Are guesses a function?

    The way I see it we either say something true, false, or nonsensical when making assertions about the likelihood of things.

    So we can truthfully say "If I push the boulder it will likely roll down the hill" -- that's a true sentence. "Likely" here is not the "likely" of probability, but an assertion that, as long as we understand the situation correctly, then this is what is going to happen. It could be the case, perhaps, that the boulder is too heavy for me to push it and it does not roll down the hill. But we could still retain the belief that "If I push the boulder it will likely roll down the hill" as true, perhaps because we've pushed many boulders down the hill before and we just didn't realize that this one was particularly heavy (or, perhaps, not even a boulder -- but a boulder-looking jut)

    A good guess isn't about evaluating the chances of being right. I'd say it's based upon what we know.

    When we know about stuff we can make predictive models -- no problem. But when we don't I have a hard time judging one or another prediction as better or worse. On what basis? Why?

    While the afterlife is essentially noumenal by virtue of us not being able to directly ascertain its details with our senses, that doesn't mean that what we can ascertain could never occur in the afterlife, or that phenomenal attributes perceivable in this life could not correspond to it. In fact, I argue that it is possible that we can predict some of these attributes, and I'll address your contentions about it further on in this post. But you are, at this point, making an argument against predictive models, not just predictable afterlives; just because we don't, or can't, know for sure, what is actually correct, doesn't mean no good guesses at what might be correct exist.ToothyMaw

    I'm more arguing for when a predictive model is appropriate. Sometimes they are appropriate, and sometimes they aren't. One of the times they aren't is when we know nothing on a subject. It's not so much that there's an infinite amount of possibilities here as we are simply unable to adequately create a predictive model.

    It could be the case that an afterlife exists, that said afterlife is earthlike -- but that "could" is also true of an afterlife that is not-earthlike. Here I'd de-emphasize the "hell" aspect and focus more on the "afterlife" aspect. Since we are ignorant about the afterlife we cannot say which guesses are better. What we believe could be true, but we lack justification, and so cannot claim to know.

    At least, this is my perspective.

    ***

    If there is an event in this life that is logically related via its content to other events, and the content of that event does not change if it happens in an earth-like afterlife, then we know that the logical connections between that event and others that are similar in this regard are the same as they would be on earth, and we have no reason to think otherwise; therefore, if certain events on earth can be predicted via these kinds of logical connections, they can be predicted similarly in an earth-like afterlifeToothyMaw

    I can grant all of this.

    I'd be a little picky in other contexts with respect to "logic", but right now I'm just trying to wrap my head around what you're saying and I understand and have little problem here.

    That leads to my conclusion that, given these kinds of earthly events occur in the afterlife, certain combinations, based on the transcendent logic according to which the events are related, are more likely than others.ToothyMaw

    It's the "given these kinds of earthly events occur in the afterlife" that's snagging me, though now I think it doesn't matter to you whether or not they do?

    I suppose I'd say a good guess has a chance at being true -- that is, if we make a good guess about the afterlife, and that good guess happens to be correct, then we'd also be saying what happens in the afterlife.

    But I would not agree with the supposition "these kinds of earthly events occur in the afterlife".
  • ToothyMaw
    1.3k
    No I don't think you've set up antinomies -- I just mean any use of "infinite" in a philosophical argument -- "potentially infinite" would count from my perspective. Outside of mathematics it's a pretty fuzzy term. (EDIT: I ought say that I don't believe this means we should never use it outside of mathematics. Levinas uses "infinite" at times, and I think it works. But it's not like he's making analogies to calculus with it either)

    The part where you seem to be relying upon the mathematical notion is where you say:

    a perfect selector is selecting from a potentially infinite number of unique events to form guesses at an UH (unknowable hell), and the chances of guessing the right combination from this potentially infinite set of unique events approaches zero.
    — ToothyMaw

    We can take the limit of a function as it's variable approaches some number, and sometimes we can take the limit of a function as it approaches infinite.

    But how is that applicable to guesses being right? Are guesses a function?

    The way I see it we either say something true, false, or nonsensical when making assertions about the likelihood of things.
    Moliere

    When I say that the likelihood of guessing the correct UH approaches zero, I mean that any possible guess instantiated by the perfect selector has an almost zero percent chance of being correct because they are randomly guessing at a combination formed from a tremendously large number of unique events. Additionally, the larger this number of events the less likely random selection and combination would yield anything correct because it's a relatively unsophisticated, brute force algorithm.

    So, no, I'm not saying guesses are functions, and I don't think the term "approaches" must always denote limits of functions or concepts in calculus.

    The way I see it we either say something true, false, or nonsensical when making assertions about the likelihood of things.Moliere

    And I'm saying that it is true that it is almost impossible that even a perfect selector could guess the correct hell. That I said the likelihood of making such a correct guess approaches zero was a convenient way of saying what I just said earlier in the post. So, I'm not making a mathematical statement on whether or not something could be said to be likely or unlikely to exist, but rather that it might be incredibly difficult to ascertain the qualities of that thing, and, thus, guesses at those qualities are probably doomed.

    I'm more arguing for when a predictive model is appropriate. Sometimes they are appropriate, and sometimes they aren't. One of the times they aren't is when we know nothing on a subject. It's not so much that there's an infinite amount of possibilities here as we are simply unable to adequately create a predictive model.

    It could be the case that an afterlife exists, that said afterlife is earthlike -- but that "could" is also true of an afterlife that is not-earthlike. Here I'd de-emphasize the "hell" aspect and focus more on the "afterlife" aspect. Since we are ignorant about the afterlife we cannot say which guesses are better. What we believe could be true, but we lack justification, and so cannot claim to know.
    Moliere

    Would you agree that if an earth-like afterlife exists, we could indeed make guesses at its contents? I should have called the "good guesses" I talk about in the OP "better guesses", it seems, and we should keep in mind that I was comparing the likelihoods of earth-like afterlives to others - namely unknowable hells. So, there isn't a whole lot of reason to belabor this point if you at least agree that the afterlife could be earth-like and, if so, could be guessed at if only via the kinds of connections between events we can perceive in this life.

    Your issue with my assertions about useful, relevant predictive models existing is that I am presuming that earthly events that can be logically connected have no particular reason to occur in the afterlife. Well, I admit that. But if we know that guesses at certain afterlives are probably more correct than guesses at others, we know that any given guess at an earth-like afterlife is probably far more likely to be even partially true than one at hell. So, while the guesses don't indicate any hard probabilities with respect to which afterlife is actually right, they do indicate the possibilities within the different potential afterlives.

    I would not agree with the supposition "these kinds of earthly events occur in the afterlife"Moliere

    You are twisting what I said. I said "given these kinds of earthly events occur in the afterlife", not "these kinds of earthly events occur in the afterlife." And what I meant was that my argument would hold if it were the case - and if it weren't the case, I grant that my argument would be faulty or incoherent. This is clearly a red herring.
  • Moliere
    4.8k
    Would you agree that if an earth-like afterlife exists, we could indeed make guesses at its contents?ToothyMaw

    Yes.

    Your issue with my assertions about useful, relevant predictive models existing is that I am presuming that earthly events that can be logically connected have no particular reason to occur in the afterlife.ToothyMaw

    Yup, that's pretty much my contention.

    If I grant the premise then sure I see a basic modus ponens and the logic works fine.

    I suppose my thought now is -- OK, so what?

    And what I meant was that my argument would hold if it were the case - and if it weren't the case, I grant that my argument would be faulty or incoherent. This is clearly a red herring.ToothyMaw

    M'kay. Then I think I've been misunderstanding you and just stuck on the part after -- let's grant the logic. Why would I believe it to be the case at all? If there's no reason then sure the argument works, but only at the level of a modus ponens rather than at a level that would persuade people who believe the afterlife to be different.
  • ToothyMaw
    1.3k


    You presume that I am trying to persuade people to believe in a certain account of what the afterlife is. What I might try to persuade people of is more specific, such as: you are more likely to be correct in guessing at whatever earth-like afterlife you might believe in than believing that there is a correct unknowable hell that might ever be guessed. People who believe in unknown hells might reconsider their beliefs with this knowledge - or so I hope.
  • 180 Proof
    15.4k
    What benefit to this life does anyone get from believing there is any "hell" (or afterlife) at all? Even if there is, Toothy, that doesn't change or impact here and now any more than the fact of Andromeda galaxy affects Earth today (or a billion years from now, long after all sentient species on Earth are extinct).
  • Moliere
    4.8k
    You presume that I am trying to persuade people to believe in a certain account of what the afterlife is. What I might try to persuade people of is more specific, such as: you are more likely to be correct in guessing at whatever earth-like afterlife you might believe in than believing that there is a correct unknowable hell that might ever be guessed. People who believe in unknown hells might reconsider their beliefs with this knowledge - or so I hope.ToothyMaw

    Yes, I presume so.

    I suppose I'm not the target, then, and I'm sorry for causing you frustration. I was just stuck on that point.
  • Moliere
    4.8k
    Yup. This speak to my doubts, though I'm trying to be as charitable as I can.

    Oftentimes beliefs in an afterlife are harmful to this life; if you believe your kid will go to hell for sinning then you'll not care so much about the happiness of the kid in the here-and-now, but the long-term afterlife future -- and so they'll need to be taught, even if they are made unhappy by the teaching, how to behave properly. (Justification for all sorts of emotional manipulations that will yield the correct beliefs and behaviors)

    And oftentimes a belief in an afterlife causes anxiety more than it helps anxiety -- especially because the belief does nothing to alleviate the fear of death. Most fear death regardless of their beliefs, yet people will also go against what makes them happy in order to appease the afterlife (and so they get both the anxiety of death and the anxiety of not doing the right things to alleviate death).

    Though I think I'm preaching to the choir here.
  • ToothyMaw
    1.3k


    My argument should reduce anxiety, actually: it should be comforting to know that one's beliefs and guesses about a potentially comfortable, earth-like afterlife are more likely to be correct than any given guess a magical supercomputer could make about a correct hell. If people know that, then there is less to worry about concerning what might happen when we die, and we can all focus on the important stuff.

    You might argue that most people have never considered the kind of hell I have potentially brought to the forefront of hundreds of people's minds, but humanity at large will eventually be exposed to such an idea anyways. Not to mention I think this hell exists in the minds of many Christians in one form or another.

    We need to take that cold plunge eventually, so why not get it over with?
  • Moliere
    4.8k
    it should be comforting to know that one's beliefs and guesses about a potentially comfortable, earth-like afterlife are more likely to be correct than any given guess a magical supercomputer could make about a correct hell. If people know that, then there is less to worry about concerning what might happen when we die, and we can all focus on the important stuff.ToothyMaw

    One part of knowledge is belief. In order for someone to know something they also have to believe it, at least with respect to propositional knowledge.

    That's what the "persuasion" part is about -- it justifies the belief such that a person is persuaded to believe it for such-and-such a reason.

    But if a Christian believes in an eternal hell because this is what they learned at Church, and that's where you go to learn truths about the afterlife, and your argument is not persuasive, then they'll continue to believe in an afterlife that's not-earthlike, and thereby would not claim to know that earth-like afterlife guesses are more likely than non-earthlike ones. They'd claim to know, instead, that hell is an eternal torture, and you ought not do the bad things else you'll go there. (Basically, the magic supercomputer won't come into their reasoning at all -- it seems like a diversion from the truth)
  • ToothyMaw
    1.3k
    One part of knowledge is belief. In order for someone to know something they also have to believe it, at least with respect to propositional knowledge.

    That's what the "persuasion" part is about -- it justifies the belief such that a person is persuaded to believe it for such-and-such a reason.
    Moliere

    Yes, I get that, I was just operating on the assumption that we were talking about people with beliefs about the afterlife, or people that might have beliefs about the afterlife at some point. I get that my argument is only persuasive if you have some sort of belief about the afterlife already and are open to being reasoned with.

    if a Christian believes in an eternal hell because this is what they learned at Church, and that's where you go to learn truths about the afterlife, and your argument is not persuasive, then they'll continue to believe in an afterlife that's not-earthlikeMoliere

    Is my argument the last line of defense against erroneous religious beliefs? Because you really seem to want me to come up with a rigorous philosophical argument that can convince religious people that they shouldn't believe in hell, and I don't know if it's possible to do such a thing unless their faith has already been eroded significantly.

    In fact, beating someone over the head with the fact that going to hell for rebelling against tyranny in the form of the more extreme religious institutions - which can be exposed as structures that largely maintain power through consent from those who thereby allow themselves to be controlled by those structures - is fundamentally inhumane, might be one of the few ways to open someone up for some sort of philosophical argument on the subject.

    They'd claim to know, instead, that hell is an eternal torture, and you ought not do the bad things else you'll go there.Moliere

    Once again, purely theoretical, abstract arguments are not the way to do it: someone must be convinced that the bad parts of believing in hell could outweigh the good parts, and from there we can make persuasive, abstract arguments about likelihoods and logically connected events and so on and so forth.
  • ToothyMaw
    1.3k


    Thinking about it some more: I suppose that if someone like William Lane Craig that claims to be a rational Christian or whatever couldn't contend with this, or any other reasoned argument and regressed to dogma, such a shift could be pointed out as evidence that Christian apologetics as a whole is ad hoc insofar as it is necessary at times for obfuscating the space that religion and religious arguments should occupy. Whether or not that would be enough to convince anyone else of anything other than that what they believe in is dogma regardless of how it is dressed up, I'm not sure. But, from a tactical standpoint, opportunities to point that out should be seized when they arise.
bold
italic
underline
strike
code
quote
ulist
image
url
mention
reveal
youtube
tweet
Add a Comment

Welcome to The Philosophy Forum!

Get involved in philosophical discussions about knowledge, truth, language, consciousness, science, politics, religion, logic and mathematics, art, history, and lots more. No ads, no clutter, and very little agreement — just fascinating conversations.

×
We use cookies and similar methods to recognize visitors and remember their preferences.