You're welcome. If you are referring to the thread on a different forum, beware that it may be a bit hard to follow. I was tailoring it to individuals rather than to a general audience. In any case I think a thread like that would shed more light on justice than a discussion of Hell. Hell is a hard case, and it is better to begin with easy cases ("Hard cases make bad law"). — Leontiskos

OK, thanks. Anyway, yes, probably using hell to make a discussion about justice isn't the best idea.

That's fair, and I appreciate that you are taking care with this conversation. — Leontiskos

Thank you!

Sticking with Aquinas, to fix one's end in sin is not to form an intention towards evil (or in an extreme case, an oath towards evil). For example, adultery is a sin, but when a man commits adultery he is not doing it for the sake of evil. He is doing is because he desires the romance and sex, and chooses to pursue it. He values the romance and sex more than he cares about not-committing adultery. — Leontiskos

But one should have the sufficient awareness that is making is wrong, right? Maybe not an explicit 'oath to evil' but still a deliberate decision to be 'faithful' to a lesser good.

The problem that I see with how the notion of 'mortal sin' is formulated is that it is legalistic. The view you presented here isn't.

Specifically, if we say that no one ever moves beyond the possibility of repentance, then Balthasar's position is secured, but Hart's is not. So what you say is right: if no one ever moves beyond the possibility of repentance, then hopeful universalism is rationally permissible. — Leontiskos

I did read Balthasar's book BTW. But I could have missed the reference about post-mortem repentance (if I am not mistaken, in a quote of St Edith Stein there is that suggestion, however, but I have also read that she later expressed reluctance about the 'hope for all'...).

Anyway, I still am not convinced that 'universalism' proper is rejected if the necessity of repentance is affirmed. Maybe, the direct encounter with God triggers a response in the hearts which makes repentance inevitable and/or maybe it is the suffering itself that does at a certain point. Of course, however, if one still says that in any case freedom involves the power of 'contrary choice' then, yes, the 'hopeful' position still stands and the 'universalist proper' doesn't.

BTW, I do find weird that among Christians the 'hopeful' position is quite rare. Either some are irrevocably damned/annihilated or all will be saved. The 'middle way' seems not to be accepted.

Sure - I think you are technically correct. But I don't find the psychology and anthropology convincing. To make the point quickly, we could say that a man who has been addicted to opium for 70 years is logically permitted to stop using opium, but this is undue "logicalism." Although it is logically possible, that's just not how reality works. Human acts form the habits and the soul towards an end. There may be creatures who do not move towards fixity in an end, but they are certainly not humans. I take it that these claims are much more empirically sound than the idea that reversal of one's fundamental orientation is always possible, no matter what has come before. — Leontiskos

Ok! The more one is addicted, the more is difficult to heal from the addiction. I also believe that addiction is a very good analogy for evil/sin.

But what traditionalists do not seem to allow is the possibility that experiencing the painful consequence of having remained in sin might not lead to repentance. In a sense, we see it even in this life. It's much more difficult to change their mind for those who do not experience painful consequences of their choices. So, I don't agree that experience suggests one outcome over the other. I get your point, but again I am not persuaeded by it.

The universalist has no more ultimate reason to evangelize than the man has a reason to buy a ticket to Brazil. Buying the ticket is irrational. I think this argument actually destroys the notion of universalism in the Christian context, hook, line, and sinker. Folks who accede to universalism literally act this way, and that's perfectly logical. They become uninterested in pursuing the inevitable end. The Unitarian Universalists are a great historical example of this. — Leontiskos

Well, here you seem to assume that the 'ultimate reason' is necessary for evangelize. But as I said before, a universalist has many other reason to share his or her views.

Also, your example of the travel to Brazil is misleading IMHO. A better analogy would be that if I don't buy the ticket, I can't take the plane and I have to go there without a plane. The point is that you seem to neglect that most universalist would still say that there is very painful process for the damned which while finite it's presumably far worse than one can imagine.

A better analogy is one of an illness where you are presented two choices. If you take a painless drug now, you are healed without much suffering. But if you wait, you have to undergo a very painful treatment, where both the pain from the illness and the treatment is hard to bear. So, even if the final result is the same (being healed), the process might be very, very different. In this case, the doctors would have a very good reason to try to convince the patients to take the first medication.

It's just like how drunkenness might explain crimes but need not absolve them, since people generally choose to impair their judgement in this way. We still hold drunk drivers accountable in a way we do not hold people accountable if they have a stroke while driving. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Agreed!

But to me, this suggests that motion must also stop in the other direction. Eventually there is nothing good left to impel motion and one has stasis in nothingness, which would seem to me to track with a sort of annihilation, a will and intellect oriented towards nothingness, and so contentless. — Count Timothy von Icarus

As I see it, the classical notion that evil is 'privation of the good' and not a substance seems to lend itself in a universalist or annihilationist direction.
Evil is parasitic on the good, and evil can't exist without the good. Being a corruption, without the corrupted substance it can't exist, just like a parasite can't live if the host dies or if it is eradicated from the host.

If someone destroys the good in itself in an irrevocable way (as Pope Benedict put it in the case of the damned in hell), it seems that there is a kind of annihilation as you say. The 'imago Dei' is destroyed. But if it is destroyed, how can evil remain if its existence is parasitic?
On the other hand, even the universalist can use the annihilationist language without much problems: the sinner is destroyed and the 'image of God' is healed.

That the "Outer Darkness" is a place of wailing and gnashing of teeth suggests an appetite for Goodness though. Talbot reads this as the maximum withdrawal of God from the creature, leaving them to experience the absence of Goodness as a final (but in his view remedial) chastisement. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Yes, I remember that part. If God is truly omnipresent, however, there can be no situation where God is absent. Maybe it should be understood in this way: in their refusal to acknowledge God, the damned try to ignore God and seek the good for them elsewhere. But once finite goods end and each damned is totally alone, there is an intolerable feeling of loneliness and privation that impels a response in their heart.

Also the universalist could use the view of St Isaac of Niniveh that 'hell is regret' to explain repentance. The definitive encounter with God removes all kind of ignorance and mistaken beliefs one had. The damned, then, acknowledge their errors and experience a painful, but remedial regret that eventually leads to their healing. The direct confrontation with the truth can't be resisted, maybe.

St. Maximus is sometimes read as a universalist (it's really his grand metaphysical vision that most suggests this IMHO), but some of his work suggests that the damned are reformed and at rest, but not deified. From Questions and Problems: — Count Timothy von Icarus

Interesting, thanks. But if they are at 'rest', I would argue that they have lost their innermost desire for communion with God. Are still, then, the same entities after this 'restoration'?

As St. Augustine put it, if our heart is restless until is united with God, it would seem that the damned should be restless.

Whether St. Maximus was a universalist or not, it would seem that St. Gregory was. IIRC, he even speaks about a 'universal feast' after the purgation is complete and other statements that all beings do not fall out from the Kingdom of God. It would not make any sense to call a 'universal feast' something were a part of the participants is actually suffering.
But maybe the term 'apokatastasis' doesn't necessarily mean 'salvation' and Maximus was only making a lexicographic point here. TBH, I did not read the works of St. Maximus, only secondary literature.

This makes more sense if we recall that in the Ad Thelassium Maximus says that experience of God (union with God) is beyond knowledge (building off I Corinthians 13), just as St. Gregory Palamas seems to have direct experience of God occuring above any sort of separation of intellect and will. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Ok, thanks. Probably the universalist reading here is that the 'direct knowledge' would trigger a repentance.

You don't really need to think about the brain in a vat scenario. You just need to concede the possibility that the 'independent reality' might not be be describable by using our conceptual frameworks, mathematical structure and so on. The structure of our mental models might not 'mirror' that of reality, even in principle.

On the other hand, yes, I can agree with you that pragmatic knowledge is knowledge. But it's not a knowledge that most realists would consider as 'true knowledge of the world'.

You think it can be useful without having any correspondence to reality at all? Note that correspondence isn't like direct realism. You can say "my experience corresponds to things in reality" without saying "I'm experiencing reality raw, as it truly is, without any intermediary processing". — flannel jesus

Probably there is correspondence, but I don't think that we can know how the correspondence is. So, if the indirect realism you are positing is true (which I have no problem with), I am still in no position to know how the world appears to me relates with how the world is in itself.

If we can't go outside our perspective, we can't know how the world seen in my perspective relates to how the world is independent from it.

Yet, I also believe that there are good grounds to posit an independent reality as I explained in my posts. What I am questioning is how we can make claims of knowledge about it.

No argument here since I did a whole topic on that (2 topics ago). But similarly, you, as 'a thing' is also just a mental imputation. — noAxioms

I disagree, from my immediate experience I recognize that I have a private experience. Having a private experience strongly suggests to me that I am differentiated from the environment enough to be considered a distinct entity. I still do not see convincing arguments that refute this immediate phenomenological intuition.

Again agree. While there are some objective constants, physical quantities and units don't seem to be among them. — noAxioms

Note that constants are objective because their values are valid in all perspectives. They are not 'beyond' them.

Lock is unimportant. The hypothetical lab needs to be a box from which zero information can escape. We presume this, but in reality, and such box would kill its occupants. — noAxioms

Ok, point taken.

The friend, as described here, seems to serve no purpose since he simply reports what the device does, and the device alone would have sufficed. The friend perhaps only serves a significant role in the 'consciousness causes collapse' interpretations. — noAxioms

'Consciousness causes collapse' is to be interpreted as a phrase though. If collapse is merely an epistemic oupdate of a conscious agent, I don't see anything controversial. Of course, if consciousness causes a physical change, then things are different. So, let's not confuse these two distinct interpretations.

You can always put another observer outside, perhaps outside a box containing Wigner and the inner box. What is demonstrated by doing this? — noAxioms

That according to the external observer, let's call her Alice there is a superposition of Wigner, the Friend, the experimental device and the physical system. Not sure why you made this point however.

I don't know what you mean by 'truly' here. This is a relational view. There is no objective truth going on anywhere. Nobody notices anything weird. — noAxioms

I think that this view is problematic, however. For instance, the relational view expressed here still has to make the assumption that the 'perspective-bearers' have their existence independent from the perspectives. Also, it makes the assumption that its truth is perspective-independent. If my knowledge is restricted to what I can know from my own perspective, how can I know that?

The friend who notices spin up has a perspective, as does the friend noticing spin down. Those are two perspectives in superposition (relative to Wigner). Wigner knows this. What he doesn't know is which state things will collapse to relative to him when the box is opened. That part is a counterfactual. — noAxioms

Ok. But what about the ontological status of the two Friends? Also, he can't go outside his perspective, so what he can know is that he will never find inconsistencies. He can't in any way know that the Friend has his own perspective.

That I will agree with. It is an epistemological statement, not worded in an ontic manner. RQM is not about epistemology. — noAxioms

I agree with the first part. I do believe that RQM leads implicitly to an epistemology that is in tension with its ontology (I am not sure it is a contradiction, but still I am not sure it isn't for the reasons stated above).

I'm not. The pen has no awareness of that which it measures. The interaction definition has nothing to do with consciousness or people at all. — noAxioms

But you are still treating the pen as a 'perspective-bearer', i.e. something differentiated and something relative to which one can define a state of 'everything else'. And the state of 'everything else' is described via concepts that have practical usefulness in our perspective. Both these assumptions are not 'obvious'. Futhermore, if one adopts a relational standpoint, one can't never know that they are valid.

Those are straight out of wiki. The former has arguably been solved. The latter as well, but arguably less so. Copenhagen doesn't derive it: It is just postulated up front. MWI could have done that.
Objective collapse interpretations also seem to do this. I can't think of one that derives it.
Apparently any counterfactual definition like Bohmian just postulates an initial state compatible with the Born rule, and from there it has foundational principles that preserve this distribution property. — noAxioms

Ok, good point. But I am not sure that the 'preferred basis' is truly solved in a non 'for all practical purposes' way. Just like decoherence IMO isn't enough to explain collapse. But anyway the problem is tangential.

That's a valid reason to prefer some other interpretation, but not a valid critique of it. The critique I quoted just above are valid critiques, and are or are not solved, depending who you ask. — noAxioms

Ok! I can agree with that!

We always build internal models, and while my model in some ways has correspondence to states in my world, I don't call my model 'knowledge' like it is some kind of accurate representation.
There is matter near me in my world and I cordon off a subset of that matter and designate it 'chair' despite the fact nothing in the physical world is a function of that subset.
Look at a person, which changes its component parts every second. Nevertheless, I designate a boundary to what I consider to be that person — noAxioms

A person is differentiated in a way that a chair isn't. I, as a conscious human being, have a private conscious experience that strongly suggests to me that I am differentiated enought to be a distinct entity. I would say that other humans are like me in this respect. This is also probably true for animals, assuming that they are conscious beings.

A chair, however, doesn't seem to have a degree of differentiation to be considered a distinct entity.

Everything (not just humans) does this. It has pragmatic utility. — noAxioms

I am not sure everything builds internal models.

There's no exact match, and there's no check if by insane chance you got one actually right. The purpose of the model is not to be accurate. The purpose is to be useful, and to be useful, it merely needs to be accurate enough to predict what will actually be observed. — noAxioms

Agreed.

The intersubjective agreement seems compelling enough. — noAxioms

Bernard D'Espagnat distinguished two senses of objective. 'Strongly objective' is something that is independent from any cognitive perspective (a property of the 'world in itself'). 'Weakly objective' is something that every cognitive agent can agree upon. Nothing weakly objective can be assumed to be strongly objective.

I do believe however that intersubjective agreement leads to the assumption that, indeed, there is a world-in-itself.

Well, my reply would be that if this were not the case, then it would suggest a picture of the world and metaphysics which is much more inflated than I currently believe, where there is some kind of conspiratorial aspect of nature that deceives our senses. Even though this could be the case, I don't see any positive evidence to believe this over a simpler story of how the world works and how we relate to it like the one that has been built up through physics, biochemistry, neuroscience, etc. — Apustimelogist

Actually the conspirational nature is not to be invoked here. One might still assume that our cognitive functions are useful, i.e. have a pragmatic goal. Practical usefulness does not lead to accuracy.
The problem I see here is that one can't claim knowledge about the 'mind-independent world' if one doesn't make some assumptions that can't be proven empirically.

I don't think that anyone believes that newtonian mechanics gives us a literal picture of the world nowadays. Still, it is still immensely useful and in a sense a source of valid knowledge, if knowledge is interpreted in a pragmatic way.

I think Wittgenstein’s Tractatus may offer a solution here. That is in order for us to make sense of the world, that is to avoid speaking non sense, our language, mental construct, and the world must be isomorphic. This is not an outcome of empirical verification but of logic analysis. — Richard B

Ironically, Wittgenstein's Tractatus can also be invoked to support the view that one can't go outside one's perspective (see TLP 5.6-5.641...here a link). And in fact, one can cite the later Wittgenstein's view that sense can be pragmatic in nature. Even if my picture is wrong, then, if it still has pragmatic use, I don't see why it would be 'nonsense'.

I would say that it would be rational if this man is reasoning in accordance with Reason’s principles; and it is a ‘rationally free choice’, to use your term, if this man’s rational choice is in accordance with what he sincerely believes. None of this per se negates the possibility that one sincerely believes that killing innocent people at the exchange of their well-being is the best option. I agree it would be ‘irrational’ in the colloquial sense of the term, but it meets the criteria you set out for ‘rational freedom’. — Bob Ross

Yes, we can say that one can be rational and evil, in the sense that if one sincerely believes that evil actions are 'right', then doing them is consistent.

BUT if one believes in an objective morality, then one must assume that here the 'rational evildoer' is mistaken in their belief.

So, if 'rational choice' merely means 'act according to one's belief', this would mean that one can do evil acts rationally if he or she is mistaken about what is good and what is evil. So, there is ignorance here that might decrease the culpability.

I see what you mean. But my point is that even if one allows the possibility to make and commit to a 'definitive oath to evil' this alone doesn't preclude the possibility of repentance after death (and salvation if one accepts that God would still save the repentant). So, my point is that even if one accepts that view, one would still have to assume that no one would be beyond hope unless either the possibility to repent is denied or the salvation for the sincere repentants is denied at a certain point.
So, yes, I agree with you that even if that assumption is true, one would still invoke some extrinsic constraints to explain perpetual damnation.

Futhermore, if one assumes that evil is not infinite, one might say that at a certain point the 'restless state' of the will, will exhaust the 'resources' of evil and then turn to the good.

Thanks for the response and the link, I'll read.

As a short premise, I didn't change my mind. I just see more subtlety in the 'free will' defence of semi-traditional hell view. Although I don't consider them convincing, you did make good points.

Anyway, let's say that the sinner does, indeed, have the ability to make a 'oath to evil' (or 'mortal sin') and the ability to commit to it perpetually. Let's consider the following propositions:

• One can make an oath to evil and has the ability to perpetually commit to it
• One can always sincerely repent from the 'oath to evil'
• God saves everyone who sincerely repent

Given that this life is finite, of course, the actualization of the first proposition here cannot be realized in this finite life. But if we assume that after death, life will be infinite, it might be reasonable to make. Anyway, it seems a traditional theological assumption that all three the above propositions are valid in this life.

So, it seems clear to me that the abilities of the first proposition cannot logically exclude the other two propositions. So, the ability to repent is not excluded by having made 'oaths to evil' (or 'mortal sins'). Let's say that Bob dies unrepentant and goes to hell. There are no logical reasons to assume that in the after life he can't sincerely repent and, assuming that God would still save anyone who sincerely repents, Bob can be still saved after death.

So, here at least from a logical standpoint, it seems to me that if some are beyond any hope for salvation, for them, after this life, either the second proposition or the third. Let's John is in this category of the damned. Either John lost the ability to sincere repent or if he still has it, God would not save him even if he sincerely repents.

I believe that there are two problems here.

First, Bob and Jack are given different chances for salvation. If Bob can still repent and be saved, why can't Jack also be saved? There seems to be a lack of impartiality here.

Second, in the case of Jack, if we assumed that the second and the third propositions are valid in this life, this means that repentance and salvation are possible even if one makes an 'oath to evil'. And making an 'oath to evil' doesn't by itself lead to perpetual damnation. Perpetual damnation is possible only if either one at a certain point is not able to repent or if after a certain point God doesn't save someone who makes a sincere repentance. Assuming that God would always save the sincere repentants, this would imply that some cannot make a sincere repentant if there is no hope for salvation for them.

Hence, it seems to me that if 'perpetual damnation' is not an extrinsic punishment but a possible result of our ability to make 'oaths', then no one would be completely beyond hope. Repentance would still be a possibility.

So my contention here is that the hopeless state of (some of?) the damned cannot be explained solely on terms of their ability to make oaths.

BTW, I didn't know that Balthasar allowed the possibility of post-mortem salvation. Interesting.

Regarding your points about evangelization, I think we are talking past each other at this point. I am not really sure why you think that believing in the traditional view of hell is so fundamental for evangelization, if you also agree that universalists would still have their valid reason to evangelize. But it is a tangential discussion.

BTW, I believe that the discussion we are having is also a very interesting way to explore what some concepts of 'justice', 'punishment' etc might imply, a reflection of what abilities we human beings really have and so on.

So, even if we are discussing under these kinds of things in the particular context of a religious doctrine, our reflections can give us interesting food for thought that can be applied in other contexts.

Sure people talk about objects like televisions and cars, but when push comes to shove I think the way people engage with reality is far more fluid and flexible than the idea that we uphold some fixed ontology with lists of well-defined objects. Now you can say this is kind of an anti-realism about objects, which couls be true to some extent, but its also kind of vacuous in a way because ultimately we are talking about different ways to effectively point at arguably veridical information about the world. — Apustimelogist

A problem here, I believe, is that you are assuming that there must be some kind of correspondence of our mental constructs of the world and the world in itself. The structure of the model must somehow reflect the structure of the world. But how can we verify this assumption?

If the assumption here were false, then we would not have knowledge about the structure of the 'mind-independent world', but only of phenomena. In fact, we would not have just ignorance but, in fact, we would be mistaken.

I don't think that scientific knowledge alone can give us a definite answer about this question. This would imply that we have to 'suspend judgment' about how our models can 'reflect' the structure of the world and admit that, in fact, we have no way to make sure claims about our own cognitive perspective.

...
To fix an end of any kind does not entail that one will never change their mind, but it does entail that one can pursue the end without changing their mind. Hence my point about "can" rather than "must." — Leontiskos

Thanks for the clarification, I think that I understand better now.

Well, as I said, "if one can philosophically prove that X is unjust, then X is unsupportable via Scripture/theology/tradition." Truth does not contradict truth, but not all philosophy and theology is true. — Leontiskos

Ok.

I think you are committing logical errors here, primarily modal errors. If one can promise lifelong fidelity then one must be capable of lifelong fidelity. If one is clearly incapable of lifelong fidelity then one cannot promise lifelong fidelity. You actually agreed to this earlier when you agreed that the person who does not think couples can fulfill the marriage vow do not in fact believe in marriage. It doesn't make any sense to say that the marriage vow is impossible to fulfill and nevertheless promote marriage. — Leontiskos

Suppose you make a promise that you know you can't keep. Are you promising or lying? I'd say it is merely lying. — Leontiskos

Good points here! To me this raises an interesting question, though. I believe that most (?) Christians assume that one can't be righteous in an inerrant way without God's help. Our will and our knowledge is impaired and we need God's grace to avoid falling (and not just 'stumbling'). If I am convinced by this thesis how can I make a vow to be rightheous or even to be faithful to God if I am myself aware that I am unable to follow perfectly this vow?

Regarding the couples, I also believe that the couple can ask God's help to be able to commit the vow. So, they might believe that with God's help, they are able to respect the vow even if they themselves are not.

In what follows, I'll concede however that you are right here.

On what basis? Theologically, it is assumed that we can repent in this life. It is also theologically assumed that we cannot repent beyond this life. So I don't see the argument.

Or we could just reify C. S. Lewis' imagery and say that repentance is always logically possible, but some will never repent. That is an orthodox position. It may or may not be a tenable position within Catholicism, but I don't really want to research that minute question.

The broad stroke simply says that humans are eventually capable of definitive decisions. I don't find that claim problematic. — Leontiskos

I see what you mean but even if we assume that we can make definite decisions, the traditional thesis that there is no possibility of repentance after death raises the inevitable question of why it should be so.

If despite being able to make definite choices even in this life we can still repent in this life, it means that having make a definite choice to fix one's will in sin and being able to repent (at least in principle) are not mutually exclusive. Section 1861 of the Catholic Catechism says explicitly that repentance for a mortal sin is possible during life.
If committing a mortal sin is making a definite choice and this doesn't logically preclude the ability to repent, this would mean that in the afterlife the damned are not granted the possibility to repent (either by active punishment by God or by 'desertion' in St. John of Damascus' view).

If, even in principle, the damned could repent, then why we can be sure that some will never repent? If repentance after death is a possibility, then we can't exclude the possibility that all will ultimately repent. Both eternal (self-)damnation of some and repentance of all are possible scenario and we can hope for everyone. This would mean that we can legitimately hope for everyone. So, to me, the view you are expressing here is not logically inconsistent with a hope of universal repentance.

On the other hand, if the damned can't repent, this would imply an infinite retributive punishment of sorts. And in this case, the main question of the thread would arise (how a human being can merit a punishment of unending suffering...)

I don't understand your argument. Are you saying that if the universalist doesn't evangelize someone then that person won't be saved in this life? Hasn't your whole point been that there is no reason to limit our actions to this life? If nothing changes at death then who cares whether they are saved in this life? — Leontiskos

I believe that among the universalists there is no consensus about inclusivism vs exclusivism, for instance. So, I would imagine that on this point there is no agreement.

What I said is that a universalist that believes that 'being evangelized' is a necessary condition to avoid post-mortem purification then the universalist has of course a very rational motive to evangelize.
But even this is not necessary to have a rational motive. An universalist might simply think that 'evangelizing' is a good thing to do, that it can help to avoid the temporary punishment both for him/herself and for others. There are plenty of rational motives that I can see.

Consider, for instance, a patient that suffers from a disease that causes to him suffering but doesn't lead to irreversible damage if left untreated. A doctor sees him and knows that a drug can help him to recover from the illness and to stop his suffering. I highly doubt that anyone can claim here the doctor has no rational motives to prescribe the medication.

If an end is inevitable then it need not be pursued. A necessary means to an inevitable end is already a contradiction, if the means is supposed to be contingent. — Leontiskos

Note that even if the argument were true, this would not exclude the possibility of the redemption of all, if the damned can still repent.

Anyway, if the damned retain their rationality, if they are aware that they can only find peace in God, they would understand that repentance is the better, more rational option. I would say that there is a reason that might explain this apparent determinism and still affirm the necessity of a sincere repentance.

I'd say we are most concerned with the first question, and I am not yet convinced that either of you would be willing to answer that question in the affirmative. If we agree that the answer to (1) is 'no', then it's not at all clear what we are arguing about. — Leontiskos

It depends about what you mean by 'philosophically demonstrable'. I believe that here we are discussing if the traditional view of Hell is consistent with a proportional retributive model of justice. Also, we are discussing if the view that the damned are beyond hope after this life is consistent with a 'free-will defence' of the traditional view of Hell.

As I explained in my posts, I do have my own doubts that there is consistency in both cases.

Considering that Christianity isn't the only theistic religion, I also believe that the discussion we are having here has a wider scope than being a discussion about a specific doctrinal aspect of Christianity.

There's no mind at the JWST, yet it has a perspective that no human has, especially given its far wider range of light sensitivity than our paltry 3 frequencies. — noAxioms

Yes, but you are still thinking within a conceptual framework which has been devised to explain the phenomena of our perspective. For instance, can we truly speak of the JWST as a separate object from its environment? Maybe individuating the JWST as 'a thing' is a mental imputation.

Yes, any selection of units implies a relation to a standard. Physics seems to work without units, so unit selection would qualify as an abstraction. Charge is quantized, so the units there are arguably physical. — noAxioms

Note that my point is that physical quantities are defined in a relational way from the start.

Charge serves as a measure of how much a given charged object interacts with others. Hence, I am not really sure that it can be considered as an intrinsic property of a given object. The same is true for mass.
Both inertial mass and gravitational mass (which appear to be the same) are defined in a relational way. This seems to be the case for all physical quantities.
Hence, a 'particle' (or really any purely physical object) seems not to be understood 'in itself'. You need to consider 'something else' to understand it. And this might imply that the 'division' of the 'external world' into truly existing physical objects is conceptual, not 'real'.

Also think Heisenberg. — noAxioms

Also Boh'r 'indivisiblity of the quantum of action' (note that David Bohm admired the 'relational' aspect of Bohr's interpretation. In fact, when one looks at it, even in the deBroglie-Bohm interpretation relations are very important. Also, Bohm himself abandoned a too 'literal' approach of his own interpretation.).

Nothing beyond seems worded as a positive claim about a counterfactual: it being empty, as opposed to simply unmeasured. I don't approve of that wording. — noAxioms

I am not sure if I am following you, here.

Let's consider the Wigner's friend scenario, where the Friend makes an experiment in a lab which is locked from the outside. Wigner asks to his friend if he saw a definite result and the Friend says 'yes'. According to Wigner, the Friend and the physical system are in a superposition and knows that when he will enter the lab, the Friend will report the same result as he can observe.
Note that this a very weak 'intersubjective' agreement between the Friend and Wigner. When Wigner asks his Friend (who we assume is not a liar) which result he obtained, Wigner can check his claim and verify that, indeed, the result is the same. But all of this happens in Wigner's perspective. Wigner is not 'entilted' to go outside of it and ask himself what the Friend, in the Friend's perspective is seeing.
Assuming that the Friend also has his 'perspective', he would find out that Wigner agrees with him about the experimental result.
Still both of them do not actually know what the other truly observed. Only that, in their own perspective, there are no logical inconsistencies. For Wigner it is as if the Friend sees the same as he sees. But it cannot say what is truly seen by the Friend. This also means that under RQM (and, really, QBism and similar) Wigner can't even say that there are 'perspectives' other than his own with certainty.

Only positing something beyond the 'perspectives' can ground intersubjective agreement.

This implies that one cannot know what is 'beyond' one's perspective.

Y measures Mars, 20 minutes ago. While [the current state of the space where Mars should be, simultaneous with Y] is unmeasured, it does not imply that there's a reasonable probability that some subsequent measurement Z 30 minutes hence, that includes a measurement of Y, would find Mars to not be there. RQM has to support predictions in a way since predictability is something measurable. — noAxioms

As I see it, there is nothing in RQM (and, really, also in QBism and similar) that 'Mars in the perspective of Y' and 'Mars in the perspective of Z' are the same thing. Y will never find inconsistencies.

I personally have no problem with a pen state as something defining a perspective. — noAxioms

The problem with this IMO it is that we are 'anthropomorphizing' the pen. In our own perspective, of course, the conceptual frameworks we use to make sense of our experiences make sense. But how the world appears to a pen is something we have no possibility to know. Even assuming that it makes sense to attribute a perspective to a pen is questionable.

Regarding MWI, I see what you mean. And yes, I share (at least some of) @Wayfarer's qualms about it. To me the idea that at each interaction the universal wavefunction truly 'splits' into two or many 'branches' seems to weird to accept (all these 'branches' being 'worlds' or 'timelines'). Also, I am not sure if the 'preferred basis problem' (i.e. how to explain in MWI that the wavefunction can be decomposed in a way to explain the appearance of the 'classical world') has been solved and, also, it's not clear to me how the Born Rule is explained in this interpretation.

But, yes, in a way the first 'objection' is not perhaps 'scientific' but simply philosophical. I believe that I need more evidence to accept the picture of the world MWI gives us.

Still, I have to say that it is often mis-represented. Oddly enough, it is actually the closest physical theory to a 'ontological monism' that has been proposed (the universal wavefunction being only 'real thing' and subsystems being like appearances...a bit how the Substance and the modes relate in Spinoza's philosophy if you are familiar). Also, I find interesting MWI if it is taken as a way to speak about 'possible alternative histories', i.e. an useful way to reflect on the meaning of 'possibility' (but MWI claims that all possibilities are actual...).

Maybe. He didn't have Bell's proof, restricting what can be demanded of a satisfactory interpretation. He definitely expressed a preference for locality (relativity leans on it so hard) and determinism (the 'God does not roll dice' quip), but he probably didn't want to let go of his counterfactuals either, but you can't have your cake and eat it too. Einstein might not have known that. — noAxioms

Probably, yes.

I would say that said division is a conceptual construct. It being that does not make the world mind dependent, on the division into objects is so dependent. — noAxioms

If the division into physical objects is conceptual and doesn't reflect faithfully the structure of mind-independent world, how can we claim that we do have knowledge of the 'world beyond' our perspective?

No, talking about a weaker assumption, that it corresponds to something in the physical world, not that the concept is an accurate portrayal of the thing in itself. — noAxioms

But this still is based on some assumptions you make about the 'world in itself'. Assumptions that do not seem to be justified in light of scientific knowledge only.

I see no antinomy identified, no contradiction in this description. That there is a mind independent world, and a description of the nature of it (however poorly matching) seem not to be mutually contradictory. — noAxioms

How can you check that the description of the 'mind-independent world' actually matches its structure? It seems a reasonable inference, yes, but can we have compelling reasons to assert that there is this correspondence?

Looking fwd to it. Your answers have at least got me thinking and re-assessing. — noAxioms

Many thanks for this. I hope that this post didn't change your mind:yikes: I also find your anwers very useful

Thanks for the answer. I hope I'll be able to answer you back tomorrow.

What do you think it means to "fix one's end"? Or even to fix an end? Are you familiar with this language? — Leontiskos

To be fair, no. But I think that your example of the wedding made it clear. It is like making a oath. Am I wrong?

One could argue for annihilation from philosophy, but not, I think, from Scripture/theology. — Leontiskos

I see. But can philosophy and scripture/theology contradict each other? If, say, a given interpretation of a scriptural claim is found to be inconsistent with other important doctrines, can we still accept it?

Just to make an example. If one accepts that God doesn't punish people for the sins of something else, can we accept the notion of 'inherited guilt' (I am not going to make a biblical case for the premise, as we in a philosophical forum)? I would say that the latter notion is inconsistent with the former. Philosophy is also helpful to find out these kinds of things.

Again, if one can philosophically prove that X is unjust, then X is unsupportable via Scripture/theology/tradition. That's why universalists like Hart try to prove such a thing. — Leontiskos

Ok.

What you say is of course true, and there is no incompatibility here. The doctrine of Hell does not entail that everyone goes to Hell. You require a much stronger thesis, namely, "One cannot have the will to sin everlastingly." — Leontiskos

But there is a problem, here, I believe. You still have to explain why there is absolutely no hope of break the fixation of the will in sin. I might concede that logically it might be possible for someone to everastingly confirm the choice to sin. But here in this life, it is assumed that we can repent.

If someone makes an oath to be faithful 'as long as he lives' to a terrorist group, he might still break that oath even if when he made the oath he was convinced of the cause. Of course, he might not and we can imagine that the more time he remains faithful to this commitment, the more difficult is for him to renounce it. But he can still change his mind (i.e. repent) at any time and hopefully he does.

So the mere possibility to orient one's view in sin doesn't necessarily imply that the orientation is irrevocable. But if I am not mistaken, it is assumed that at a certain point, this orientation becomes irrevocable.

At most it seems that you are claiming that 'everlasting fixation of the will in sin' is a possibility. But, unless, one is not allowed to repent, then repentance is also a possibility.

If you don't think we have the power to be faithful to oaths then you presumably don't believe we have the power to make oaths, just as the person who does not believe that a couple has the power to be faithful to their marriage vows does not believe in marriage. This goes back to my point that some don't think humans are capable of much (e.g. oaths, vows, eternal consequences, etc.). — Leontiskos

I assumed that it is normal to say, in Christianity, that we 'by ourselves' cannot be morally impeccable, at least without the help of God.

In the case of marriage, I don't see how 'making a sincere oath' necessary implies the ability to remain always faithful to the oath (in fact one can ask God's help to remain faithful precisely because of this). It certainly expresses the sincere intention to respect the oath, but failing to mantiain is also a possibility.
I didn't know that this is controvarsial thing to say.

In general, I don't think that an ability to make a oath implies an ability to remain faithful of it.

I don't see a problem with any of this. I think what you are saying is, "Salvation couldn't possibly depend on human choices," and the Judeo-Christian tradition just disagrees with you on that. — Leontiskos

Sorry, but I think you misunderstood the point I was making. Let me try to explain it again. Let's assume that God desires the salvation of each human being.

Let's assume that 'being evangelized by other people' is a necessary condition for salvation. Let's say that a given person fails to be evangelized because those who could evangelize him or her for some reason could not. Then, this 'missed evangelization' would be a decisive factor in the eternal destiny of the person we are considering, even if he or she did nothing to avoid being evagelized. So, this 'missed evangelization' is the product of external circumstances out of control of him or her. But if 'being evangelized by other people' is a necessary condition for salvation, here we have a person that lost salvation becuase of something that could not control, outside his or her power of choice.

So, if 'being evangelized by other people' is a necessary condition for salvation, it would follow that the salvation of a given person can depend on the choices of others, their abilities or even on circumstances that no one can control. Here it seems that we have a case that one can miss salvation due to factors outside one's choices.

Waht do you think about this? Note that even a proponent of a 'free will defence of hell' (of any kind really) would not accept that one can lose salvation for factors different from one's choices. That's why I believe that this is a problem to at least some 'traditionalist'.

If the essential goal is salvation, then on universalism the essential goal is inevitable, and need not be sought or pursued. — Leontiskos

But universalists still might say that repentance is needed for salvation. One might say that conversion is needed either in this life or after death and being evangelized might be necessary to being able to convert in this life. Not sure why you are insisting that the belief that everyone will be ultimately be saved implies that one can't find rational motives for evangelization, especially if one believes that it is a necessary condition to be saved in this life (I don't believe that all universalist agree on this point, but even if one doesn't believe that being evangelized is a necessary condition for being saved in this life, I would still say that there are rational motives to evangelize...).

In fact it seems downright sinful to mislead someone in that manner, namely to try to persuade them—via an omission—to labor for something that requires no labor. — Leontiskos

Again, not sure how this follows. See the paragraph above. If one still believes that repentance is necessary, them 'it's not something that requires no labor'.

Anyway, I agree with you the pastoral argument is the strongest one. But maybe it is not fatal for universalists.

For me, i think one might be able to say that even though we view the universe from different perspectives, they arguably all procure information about the world that is still mind-independent. If I view a tree from one angle then another, then through a microscope or through infrared goggles, through the echolocation of a bat, through the chemoreception of an insect on the bark; all of these perspectives produce information that maps onto the world consistently due to the way the external world is. It just happens there is a plurality of ways one can engage with the world and extract consistent information about it. — Apustimelogist

I see what you mean, but IMO isn't enough to reject what I am saying.

Consider, say, a chair. A chair certainly appears to us to be a distinct individual phyiscal object. I can look at it from various angles, I can measure its geometrical properties and so on. Those views and measurements are certainly compatible with my mental construct of the chair as a unified object.
Of course, it can be broken and we know that the chair is, in fact, a composite object and as we study it more deeply we do find that its boundaries are not even well-defined and so on. Furthermore, its properties can be explained by studying the properties of its parts and their interactions.
On analysis, the 'chair' seems to be a 'weakly emergent' feature. Labeling it as a chair and considering it as a 'unified thing' seems to be a cognitive mistake. In an important sense, the chair's existence is imputed, a mental construct (note, I am not denying that I can feel pain if my toe hits it...).

This is to say that having a consistent map of different views doesn't necessarily imply that the objects in which we divide reality are 'truly there'.

Again, the importance of some behavior is a projection of your mind and some goal you have — Harry Hindu

Perhaps, but it's one of the cases that the difference is actually relevant.

How is a human more than its parts? Is not a human an emergent feature of its organs and how they work together? Is not a society and culture an emergent feature of a large group of humans and their interactions? You're not making any real distinction between these things — Harry Hindu

Unless you can conclusively show that you can explain consciousness in virtue of the physical parts of our brain in a way that is analogous to how we explain, for instance, the liquid state in terms of how particles move, interact and so on, yes, I believe that there is a difference here.

Regarding human society, I actually believe it is more like the 'weak emergence' of the states of matter (for example).

It seems to me that the ability to strive for self-preservation is an emergent property of the entity's parts. — Harry Hindu

The point is that the hurricane, as far as we know, doesn't strive for self-preservation as a living being does. The way that living beings behave are suggestive of some degree of 'intentionality'. I am not claiming that bacteria are conscious but maybe do have intentionality in some rudimentary forms.

In the current philosophical jargon, I believe that hurricanes, chairs etc are 'weakly emergent'. To me being 'weakly emergent' means that they are actually more like features rather than entities. On the other hand, the degree of differentiation that a human being or even a bacteria has suggests to me that they are not 'features' (yes, I know that this is a controversial claim, but seriously I don't think one can reduce biology to the 'hard sciences').

Where is the "private experience" relative to the the living being itself as seen from the "outside"? — Harry Hindu

This question is IMO problematic. Private experience is an undeniable fact and since it is private it is to be expected that is not 'seen' from the outiside (one can infer, for instance, that someone is in pain by observing the behavior, but it is an inference we can make because we ourselves are conscious or we suspect that that person is conscious). Also, I am not sure how qualitative experience can be explained in purely physical terms. The properties we encounter in physics do not seem remotely like what we know about our conscious experience.

The distinctions are not illusory, they are either relevant or not depending on its integration with goals. The distinctions are there, whether we observe them or not, but which ones are relevant (the ones we focus our attention on) at any given moment is dependent upon the goal. — Harry Hindu

They might no be 'illusory' in the sense that can be discerned by a mind. But these distinctions can still be called 'illusory' because they do not exist in the way they appear to exist, i.e. as separately existing entities. A chair is a mental construct ultimately. This doesn't mean that if I hit its leg with my toe I don't feel pain, of course. But the 'chair' is not an entity - as an 'individual object' seems to exist only as a mental imputation.

(I was just writing this post...so I include it as an aswer to your question)

In general, I think that it should be noted that I don't think here anybody is questioning the existence of a mind-independent reality. The issue here is if we can describe something that is completely independent of our cognitive perspective with concepts, models and so on that were made to understand our experience ('our' in both the individual and in the collective sense).

That's why I keep asking about if, say, a hurricane, a chair etc is really a true physical object, i.e. a separately existing entity that truly is a part of a 'mind-independent physical world'. If these things are more like emergent features rather than objects, this would mean that the division of the 'world' into them is more like a conceptual construct that should not be taken literally. Assuming that it actually 'corresponds' to 'how the physical world' is 'in itself' is a strong assumption - a very useful one but it is questionable. It's very useful to us to make distinctions, divide the world in distinct entities and then assume that is 'truly so' but epistemically it isn't truly justified, I believe.

It's seems obvious to me that this 'assumption' or 'move' is something that is not obvious.

On the other hand, also assuming that we have no access to a mind-independent world seems wrong. After all, what grounds the intersubjective agreement if there is nothing outside our perspectives that is 'somehow' connected to the world as-experienced-by-us?

So, maybe, we are encountering an antinomy here: on the one hand, positing a mind-independent world seems necessary to make sense of our experineces. On the other hand, however, there is no epistemic guarantee that our cognitive faculties can step outside from our perspective and give us a non-mediated knowledge of the mind-independent world. So, it seems that we are stuck in an antinomy here.

So, I guess that the question is: can we really assume that we can make a description of a mind-independent world when we are 'inside' our own perspective and it is not obvious we can really step outside of it?

Ah ok, I think I see. But there are alternative realistic interpretations other than MWI (I doubt that any of them would satisfy Einstein, however)

Let me ask you, if MWI is the solution, then what is the problem? — Wayfarer

Well, I believe that the point made here is that in MWI there is only one physical object which evolves deterministically. In a sense no interpretation of QM enjoys a similar simplicity at least here.

I believe that MWI has its own problems, though. For instance, one can well argue that yes the above simplicity is true, but at the same time the universal wavefunction is an extremely complex object and most of its 'structure' is completely inaccessible to us. The same goes for the incredible number of versions of 'us' that are of course inaccessible. To me this erases the 'simplicity' of MWI but I do understand why others may see the theory as simple. I do disagree with them, though.

Most of this discussion is getting off topic, going on about frame dependency instead of mind-dependency of ontology. — noAxioms

Sorry, that wasn't my intention but I realize that I took the discussion too far. However, I do believe that discussing about 'what is perspective-dependent' and 'what isn't perspective-dependent' can be useful to the main topic of the discussion. The reason being that I actually don't believe it is meaningful to assign a perspective outside the mind. I won't answer to all your points in order to not go too off-topic.

As a starting point, consider how we define and conceptualize physical quantities. Even those which seem an intrinsic property of a physical object is defined in relational terms. Inertial mass, for instance, is defined as a measure of the resistence to be accelerated. Electric charge is a measure of how an object 'contributes' to an electrical interaction and so on. Certainly, you can make all these definitions more subtle. But IMO the point remains. All physical quantities are measurable and this means that they are about how a physical object interacts with other physical objects.

If the above is true, then, this means that all physical quantities are relational, defined in a particular context and, ultimately, are not properties of only the given physical object. In a sense they are properties of the context in which the object is found, interacts and so on (I believe that one of the merits of RQM is actually to point this out in a very explicit way...). Change the measurement context and you change the description (I think I am in full agreement with RQM here...).

But now, consider. We have said that physical quantities are defined when a determinate context is specified. This means that they are perspectival. RQM asserts that any physical object defines a 'perspective', a context in which it is meaningful to make a description of 'the physical world' according to its perspective. And it also asserts that, after all, there is nothing beyond these 'perspectives'. I find both claims problematic TBH.

The second one implies that we can actually 'go outside' the perspectives, and 'check', so to speak, that there is nothing beyond. This would IMO contradict what RQM actually says. Denying something implies that it would be possible to affirm that thing. So, if according to RQM we have to define a perspective to make a description, we can't go 'outside' of it. RQM should be silent on what can or can't be beyond the perspectives (or even asking the question...). MWI hasn't this problem because it explicitly says that the universal wavefunction is what is beyond 'perspectives' from the start (it has its own problems IMO other than the explosion of perspectives, but let's not diverge...).

Regarding the first problem. Note two things here. I concur with Bohr that our physical concepts are way we try to describe our own experience. And, furthermore, while have direct access to our own 'mental' perspective, we can't have the same access to the perspective of, say, a pen or a proton (assuming that they have one). Furthermore, if physical concepts, physical quantities are actually concepts that we have introduced to order our own experience (i.e. our 'perspectival world'), there is no guarantee that they are valid outside our experience.

To make clearer what I am saying here. Consider a hurricane. It certainly seems a separately existing entity. But, in fact, it's more like an emergent feature, completely reducible to its parts. We might certainly say that 'the hurricane is moving from east to west at 15 knots' but in an important sense this is a useful way of describing our experience.
Is the hurricane a real 'object' or the 'hurricane' is more like a construct (or a 'model', if you like) that we use to make sense of what we are observing.

The division of the world in discrete physical objects, the assignment of physical quantities to those objects and so on seems to me something valid to order our cognitive experience. But it's not necessarily something we can safely assume that is valid outside of our cognitive perspective. So when, say, RQM claims that we can speak maningfully of the 'state of a physical system with respect to a pen' I don't think that it is a straightforward move.

I think they do capture mind-independent information though. When you see red, it is generally related to actual structure in the world that is being communicated to. Same with sound or smell, albeit there is probably a lot of nuance. And if toy think about it, all I see is color, or "shades" so in some ways I think color an't be any more remarkable subjectivity-wise than anything else we see. Its more difficult to articulate a deacription about color though, which I think may be part of why it often gets special attention philosophically as a kind of paradigmatic example of qualia. — Apustimelogist

Yes, 'qualia' might well be about mind-dependent objects but they are certainly not mind-independent objects.

Anyway, there is still the second sense of 'mind-dependence' which we are discussing here. In your example, are we to consider the toy as a distinct entity? Or is it an emergent feature which appears to be an entity on its own?

If it's just an emergent feature, completely understandable in terms of its parts and its interactions, separating the 'toy' from 'what is not toy' is a convenient fabrication of the mind. After all, it this is true, why positing a 'toy' at all? Ultimately, there is no 'toy'.
So, in a sense, objects can be as 'subjective' as 'qualia' are and in a sense, they are qualia.

Every thing behaves differently than other things. This does not make living beings special. We are merely talking about degrees of complexity, or causes, of some behavior of some thing. There is an "inner" and "outer" to everything. Open an box to see what is inside. Peel an orange to get at what is inside. Open a skull, and well you get at what is inside - a brain, not a mind. It would seem to me that you, as a living being, would subjectively think of yourself as special, which is a projection of your self-preservation. — Harry Hindu

I disagree. Yes, things behave differently. But how they behave is important.

A washing-machine certainly has a behavior different from a car. But neither of them seem to me to be 'more' than their parts, at least when you consider the interactions.
A hurricane is certainly an impressive feature that is 'identifiable' for various days, can cause a lot of damage and so on. But it's an emergent feature in the atmosphere.

Striving (with awareness of not) for self-preservation implies that there is a meaningful distinction between the 'living being' and 'what is different from it' and that the living being behaves like a separate entity from the outside in a way that a hurricane doesn't.
To me living beings are the best candidates to be individual entities. They are certainly composite objects but their overall behavior suggest to me that they are 'more than the sum of their parts'.

Living and especially conscious beings do not seem to be reducible to their components in a way that other emergent phenomena are. With conscious beings you also have the fact that each conscious being has its own private experience, which strongly suggest that there is a real difference between 'it' and 'everything else'.
In both cases, they do not seem to be 'weakly emergent', to use the usual philosophical jargon.

This seems to coincide exactly with what I am saying. Any individual entity or system it is part of is dependent upon arbitrary goals in the mind. One simply changes one's view by either looking through a telescope or microscope, or by changing one's position relative to the object being talking about. When on the surface of the Earth, you are part of it. You are part of the environment of the Earth and actively participate in it. Move yourself out into space and the Earth becomes an individual entity because you cannot perceive all the small parts and processes happening. They are all merged together into an individual entity, but only if you ignore that the Earth is itself influenced by the Sun and the Moon. The question is, which view is relevant to the current goal in your mind? — Harry Hindu

But if this is true then I do not see any solution outside an ontological monism in the sense that there is one real entity and distinctions are ultimately illusory or that there is no 'entity' at all (there are only appearances of beings, distinctions etc but ultimately, there are entities). In both cases, all distinctions are cognitive illusions.

While I can concede that this might be true for non-living objects, I think that living beings are not completely reducible to their components.

Right.

Very nice joke! :lol:

Mind-independence’ has two levels of meaning. In one sense, of course the world is independent of your or my mind — there are countless things that exist and events that happen regardless of whether anyone perceives or knows them. That’s the empirical, common-sense perspective. — Wayfarer

Well, I believe that some properties we assign to 'external objects' are not mind-independent even in this sense. I am thinking about colours, sounds, smells etc in the way we percieve them.

But in another, deeper sense the very idea of a mind-independent world is something the mind itself constructs. — Wayfarer

Yep! Aye, there's the rub...

We tend to think that the 'physical world' is divided into discrete, separately existent physical objects. But how we 'carve' the world and divide it into separate objects does seem to be at least in part a mental construct.

A chair is of course an individual object... except that when you think more deeply it's not clear that it should be considered that. It is certainly a composite object which seems to be reducible to its parts. In that case, does it make sense to consider it as a 'entity'? Furthermore, when one takes into account, for instance, the fact that it is composed of atoms and so on, the 'boundaries' between the chair and 'what isn't a chair' become fuzzier and fuzzier.
I believe that a chair is more like an emergent pattern, an emergent feature. It's a bit like a whirpool in a current of water or a vortex in the air. Their status as 'entities' is questionable. There is an appearance of a separately existent entity, but not a true entity.

Our minds certainly pre-reflexively seem to percieve discrete objects even when there aren't. It certainly helps us to navigate in an otherwise chaotic world, but we shouldn't take everything literally.

But what about living beings? In this case, it would seem that they are, indeed, individual entities. After all, as I said in another post, they behave as wholes, they strive for self-preservation etc. So, maybe, in their cases their 'distinctivness' isn't a perceptual, but convenient mistake.

And yet, we can never know what that world is in itself, only how it appears under the conditions of our sensibility and understanding. So paradoxically, even the idea of ‘what is independent of mind’ is an idea we arrive at only through thinking about it. That's why he makes the paradoxical remark, 'take away the thinking subject, and the whole world must vanish'. — Wayfarer

I do see this more as an aporia. How we can establish what is 'mind-dependent' from what is 'mind-independent' in the more 'deep' sense, if our knowledge is of course given by a particular cognitive perspective?

Furthermore, when I asked to noAxioms "how does your house look irrespective of any perspective?" that question was a way to ponder about the possibility to make descriptions independent for any perspective ? (although in that post 'perspective' had a different meaning that in this post, I believe the question is pertinent)


BTW, Good Easter to everybody.

Good point. The problem though is why are living beings distinct entities but rocks and chairs are not. If perceive living beings the same way I perceive rocks and chairs then why make a special case for living beings? — Harry Hindu

Living beings, even the simplest ones, behave quite differently from non-living things. They demarcate the 'outer' and the 'inner' space, they have a metabolism, they strive for self-preservation and so on.
So, I would say that in their case, it seems reasonable to assert that they are distinct entities (instead of, say, distinct patterns, emergent features or whatever).

I think that the boundaries are defined based on our goals. It is useful to distinguish humans from other animals and inanimate objects. It is sometimes useful to distinguish individual objects or group them together. Which cause or which effect one focuses on is dependent upon the goal, or intent, in the mind. — Harry Hindu

Is this true in all cases, though? I don't think so. In the case of living beings as I said before, it seems that we can treat them as individual entities.

In the case of a chair, we can of course distinguish it from a table. But maybe they aren't distinct entities as much distinct emergent features that appear to be distinct entities. But is this true for all non-living things (at least if they are composite)? I'm not sure. But I do believe that it is more difficult for inanimate objects to have a level of differentiation from the environment to be considered separately existing things.

Anyway, as an aside, probably the main reason why Albert Einstein was dissatisfied by QM (even by the realistic non-local interpetations like de Broglie-Bohm interpretation) is that the non-locality in QM to him meant that the division of the world into sub-systems (i.e. distinct physical objects) become arbitrary. In a 1948 letter to Born he said:

I just want to explain what I mean when I say that we should try to hold on to physical reality. We are, to be sure, all of us aware of the situation regarding what will turn out to be the basic foundational concepts in physics: the point-mass or the particle is surely not among them; the field, in the Faraday/Maxwell sense, might be, but not with certainty. But that which we conceive as existing (’actual’) should somehow be localized in time and space. That is, the real in one part of space, A, should (in theory) somehow ‘exist’ independently of that which is thought of as real in another part of space, B. If a physical system stretches over the parts of space A and B, then what is present in B should somehow have an existence independent of what is present in A. What is actually present in B should thus not depend upon the type of measurement carried out in the part of space, A; it should also be independent of whether or not, after all, a measurement is made in A.

If one adheres to this program, then one can hardly view the quantum-theoretical description as a complete representation of the physically real. If one attempts, nevertheless, so to view it, then one must assume that the physically real in B undergoes a sudden change because of a measurement in A. My physical instincts bristle at that suggestion.

However, if one renounces the assumption that what is present in different parts of space has an independent, real existence, then I do not at all see what physics is supposed to describe. For what is thought to by a ‘system’ is, after all, just conventional, and I do not see how one is supposed to divide up the world objectively so that one can make statements about the parts. (Born 1969, 223–224; Howard’s translation)

(source: https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/einstein-philscience/)

That is spatiotemporal separation could not anymore be taken as a way to 'carve' the world into separate objects (maybe, ironically, he took the idea by the 'idealist' Schopenhauer who called the principle 'principium individuationis'). I sympathize with him. At least in the case of non-living things, it seems to me that spatiotemporal separation would be a reasonable way to distinguish a thing from another.

Given an interpretation with collapse upon measurement, yes. QM theory doesn't say anything about it, and some interpretations don't require any measurement, such as ensemble interpretation. — noAxioms

Ok for the ensemble. And yes, many interpretations do not involve collapse. I had to be more precise. Anyway, I would say that 'standard QM' has collapse but it is completely silent on how to interpret it.

Agree and disagree. Sure, lots of perspectives, and I don't mean just hundreds. RQM says 'real' is a relation to any one perspective event, none of which is itself real. That makes a lot of sense to me. MWI says there is but the one closed wave function, and it is real, not in relation to anything. That's a lot of real perspectives (more than just the infinite perspectives of the Newtonian world where there is no bound to the number of places/events from which an observation can be made. — noAxioms

The problem I see in RQM is that it doesn't seem to have a 'unifying' ground for these perspectives. Each physical object defines its own perspective and there is nothing in the theory that is assumed to be beyond that. To say that there is nothing outside these perspectives is, in fact, inconsistent with the RQM claim that the world can be described only by assuming a certain perpsective. In other words, one of my problem with RQM is that it seems to make a claim that goes against its own epistemology.

Regarding MWI, it is in fact more consistent on this than RQM IMO. There is the universal wavefunction which is the unifying element (and in a sense the only real 'physical entity').

That's because some have tried to rewrite it as an ontic interpretation from its roots as an epistemic one. So I urged going with the epistemic roots and not what came later. All of science, and the theory itself, can be expressed as what we can know and predict, and to hell with how it actually works under the covers. — noAxioms

I think that Heisenberg himself actually had an ontic interpretation of Copenaghen. At least, he talks a lot about interpreting the collapse as a way to actualize potentialities. And yes the act of observation 'actualizes' these potentialities. Not sure how this isn't a causal explanation of the collapse and how can it be interpreted epistemically. Bohr was more careful. I guess that 'Copenaghen' was a quite diverse field of interpetations even in the earliest days (which is of course normal).
Not that I am against metaphysics tout court, but it goes beyond what QM says.

Maybe it's just showing us that our intuitions are what's being shown to be stranger and stranger. How it really works has no obligation to be something we're comfortable with. — noAxioms

I don't disagree with that. It might well be that our intuitions are completely wrong. In fact, I find the 'trend' of physical theories as becoming 'more and more counter-intuitive' as fascinating: that is the physical reality looks more and more mysterious. While this can be frustrating, it is also awe-inspiring for me.

I have developed a quite 'pragmatic' or even 'phenomenological' view of physical theories, where I think that interpreting them as attempts to make a 'literal description' of 'how the world is' can be a problem. I tend to think that they are first and foremost very powerful tools for predicting observations and describing the regularities in phenomena (and also incredibly useful for practical applications). 'How the world is beyond the curtain' is probably something that physics cannot 'reveal' to us. It's a reason for awe to me as I said before: even physical reality is 'richer', in a sense, than what we can imagine.

Careful. A reference frame is just a coordinate system, an abstraction, and requires neither any object nor observer to be stationary in it in order to be valid. No coordinate system foliates all of spacetime (it can under Newtonian), so any theory that posits an frame that is physical (and not just abstract) necessarily must choose which parts of spacetime are not part of the universe at all. — noAxioms

I had newtonian mechanics in mind. But IMO even in relativity a similar point can be made IMO. The entire spacetime cannot be foliated in a unique way. But still, the world we see with its frame-dependent values of physical quantities is perspectival, frame-dependent, yes?

And I am not sure that reference frames are 'just' coordinate systems. For instance, it can be a way of trying to describe "how the world would look like to an observer in such and such situation". They can also have a clear practical, phenomenological meaning (although I believe that some coordinate systems in relativity can't be interpreted in this way).

No. The experience of any observer is not dependent on an abstraction, and is identical from frame to frame, even under non-relativistic theories. These different frames only cause different calculations of coordinates to be made. — noAxioms

Yes and no. To make a trivial example. Let's say that Alice is in a train that moves at constant velocity and Bob sees her from the station. The velocities that are relative to the 'reference frame at rest with the train' are actually the velocities that Alice would observe. With respect to the station, velocities are different from the ones that those observed by Alice. Yes, you can calculate them even from the station's reference frame, but to me the reference frames here have also a clear phenomenological interpretation.

Don't get you. You mean why does my house look different from the back than it does from the front? Should it not? — noAxioms

No, that's not my point. My point is more like asking: how your house look irrespective of any perspective?

If I may enter in this debate about rocks, there is also the problem of how to define a 'physical object'.

Yes, one can distinguish a rock from a chicken, but how can one assert that the rock is an 'individual entity'?

With living beings, I suppose that one can consider them as distinct entities, but with inanimate composite objects the distinction seems more difficult to make. So, in a sense, no, the rock isn't an idea. But in an important sense, I would say that it probably is an idea, indeed. The way we 'carve' the world into physical objects seems to be in part mind-dependent.

Is a chair an unique entity? Are the parts of the chair distinct entities from the chair? Or is the identification of the chair or its parts as different 'things' a mind-dependent construct?

I am not sure how this is supposed to correspond to "every knee bowing," "all praising God," and "God being all in all," though. It rather suggests the eternal survival of sin, and that some knees will never bow and that some lips will never praise. Whereas visions that involve more extrinsic punishment have knees bowing and lips praising, but only through coercion not sincerity. I suppose God might be "all in all" here, but God is beatitude in some and torment in others (sort of what Pope Benedict says). The difficulty here is that this direct contact with God, experienced as torment, seems incapable of improving the sinner. Hence there is this weird thing where contact with a mortal evangelist might reform man right up to the moment of death, but eternal (painful) union with God Himself is insufficient to ever bring about such change. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Agreed, it seems implausible. But, of course, those who insist in the non-universalistic readings of those passages mention that there are other passages in St Paul's epistles which affirm that some categories of sinners will not enter in God's Kingdom (if we want to restrict ourselves to St Paul's writings, where most apparently universalist statements are to be found). Of course, these can be read as not implying that they will never enter in the Kingdom, but such a reading is already a harmonization.
That's why I don't think one can rely only on exegesis in these kind of discussions.

I do believe, however, that maybe the point you made about equivocation leads to the strongest arguments that one can make regarding this kind of discussions (and one can also support it with various scriptural passages, I think). To make just an example, if one says that any kind of acceptable meaning of 'justice' involves the fact that people cannot be punished due to other people faults, then St Augustine's position of the 'massa damnata', where everyone inherits guilt, is automatically ruled out as a correct description of how divine justice operates. Also, if one says that a 'just judge' must also take into account the capacities of the transgressors when deciding the punishments, then St Anselm's view that any sin is justly punished with an unending punishment is also automatically ruled out or seriously modified (for instance, the current Catholic Catechism explicitly says that in order for a sin to be mortal one has to commit it with sufficient intent and awareness).

Of course, if one insists that divine justice can punish people for the sins of their ancestors and we have no right to question that idea, then any discussion becomes impossible.

Maybe, although Lewis' vision doesn't seem inconsistent. His damned spread out in space more and more over time, moving further and further from others as they become folded more inwards and become more spiteful towards all others. Hell is in some ways an education in vice (although some do leave it, and all are free to leave it). People sit around moping all day in a world much like ours.
... — Count Timothy von Icarus

interesting, thanks. The point you make about the ever expanding space is very good (and BTW yes Poincare's recurrence argument is valid for finite, closed systems). But IMHO it doesn't preclude the possibility of post-mortem salvation. So, my point that nobody is ever 'beyond hope' I think remains valid.

Regarding, Talbott, yes, I would suppose so. But I don't think that defenders of free-will models of hell would find it convincing. Still, if they are consistent they must leave open the possibility of post-mortem salvation. I didn't know that Lewis allowed that possibility for some of the damned.

That seems fair to me, since I have never seen a good argument for why the will must necessarily be fixed in this way. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Same. At the end of the day, most supporters of the traditional view of hell have adopted a retributivist model of some sort where eternal punishment is deserved.

I mentioned Dante avoiding the problem of repetent sinners earlier because he does have souls in Hell (Limbo) who do seem to have repented and live in "hopelessness" despite this. His ultimate vision is somewhat unclear though, because he ultimately makes appeals to divine justice being unknowable, even to the beatified (a voluntarist problem perhaps), but provocatively includes some Pagans in Purgatory and Paradise. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Thanks for that. Despite being an Italian I never read the whole Comedy, only some famous excerpts (I have some difficulties to read poetry, actually).

Regarding the first kind of souls, after all, if one accepts a form of unending torment as a deserved punishment, post-mortem repentace can be irrelevant. If after repentance one is still being punished, one can argue that the punishment is still just.
Of course, if God gives mercy to the repentant and delivers them from the deserved punishment, but the punishment is deserved, so God could refrain to do that and remain just. Of course, if God's mercy requires to deliver the repentant sinners and God's justice requires to punish them eternally, then one has a conflict between God's mercy and God's justice. So, I suppose the 'simplest' way to resolve this problem is to say that the damned can't repent after death.

On the other hand, if one doesn't accept that unending pain can be a deserved punishment for human beings, then things change (IMO the contention about the possibility for humans to justly deserve a punishment of an infinite amount of suffering is the central one in this debate).

Regarding, Dante's choice to include Pagans in Purgatory and Paradise. It's very interesting indeed.

Or perhaps, punishment could consist in the very denial of beatitude and the grief this brings, something like Dante's Limbo. The problem there though is that, unless the will is extrinsically fixed some how, it seems that the damned in Limbo are striving to know and follow the Good as much as they are able. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Great post!

I wanted to make just some thoughts on this.

In some of the strictest 'free-will' conceptions of hell, the unending suffering isn't due to the fact that the will becomes irremediably fixed. The claim is that sinners in hell will continue forever to confirm their choices, even if they are invited in Paradise.

And yet, if St. Augustine was right when he said that our heart is restless until it rests in God, the movements of heart will continue forever. The damned would experience at least perpetual disappointment and forever will seek to rest their heart. So, if unending hell isn't a punishment of God but the result of a perpetual confirmation of one's own choice of being self-excluded from God, one has to leave at least open the possibility that the damned will at a certain point come to sincerely repent (and God in this doctrine of 'eternal hell' would still accept the repentance due to the fact that damnation is purely the result of the choice of the damned). This would not be strictly 'universalistic' as a scenario but certainly if this is the case there would be reason to hope that nobody is forever beyond hope.

If, on the other hand, one assumes that the damned, despite the perpetual disappointment, will certainly never repent, one should explain where this kind of 'fixation' comes from. Personally, in this latter scenario, I believe that the free-will model collapses in a retributive model, where at least the damned is abandoned to his or her fate ('complete desertion' to use the expression of St. John of Damascus term in the Exposition of the Orthodox Faith (Book 2, ch 29 'concerning providence'), who, despite asserting that damnation is due to the stubborn refusal of salvation made by the damned, unending hell is still seen as a form of (retributive) punishment. As an aside, the Damascene has the closest conception of hell of C.S. Lewis that I have encountered in ancient Christian writers). Furthermore, if there is no desire of the Good in the damned in this latter scenario (assuming that the fixation of the will in evil would to just that), would they still experience disappointment? If they do experience disappointment, it would seem that they are still seeking the Good, albeit in the wrong places. If they are still seeking the good, would they be completely beyond hope? So, maybe, disappointment in frustrated desires can't a part of the torment of the damned in this scenario. In any case, if the will is irrevocably fixed, the punishment must be thought as a extrinsical 'deserved' punishment in my opinion.

Some clarification then. I use 'observer' to mean something like people, any entity which can gather information and attempt to glean its own nature. 'Measure' on the other hand comes from quantum mechanics, the most simple interaction between two 'physical' states, say a rock measuring rain by getting wet and getting a jolt of momentum from the drop. That's a measurement, but not an observation. — noAxioms

Ok, I can appreciate that. But in QM the 'collapse' of the wavefunction happens during measurements. If any physical object can cause a 'measurement' by interacting with any other physical object, then my point of the perspectives remain.

Yes, hence there being an incomprehensible quantity of worlds under something like MWI. You list a classical interaction, but the tiny ones are far more frequent. — noAxioms

Absolutely. MWI and RQM share IMO the same problem. They try recover a 'realism' of sorts at the questionable price of implying an explosion of the number of perspectives (though I believe that RQM actually isn't realistic if it doesn't postulate a 'veiled reality' that 'grounds' all the perspectives).

Go Copenhagen then. It's the point of that interpretation. There's no causal role of the observer in any interpretation except the Wigner interpretation, which Wigner himself abandoned due to it leading to solipsism. — noAxioms

Well, I do not generally use 'Copenaghen' as a term to describe my views, due to the fact that there are many flavors of 'Copenaghen'. Some of them are not even epistemic as they go too close to abscribing a causal role to mind/consciousness.

I am sympathetic to QBism and d'Espagnat's view of 'veiled reality'. But sometimes it seems to me that even these authors go too far. To me, the lesson we learned from QM is that we should be careful to take physical theories literally. In fact, there is a trend in physical theories since at least the formulation of special relativity. The mathematics becoming more and more abstract, the fact that if we interpret them as a faithful picture of physical reality it becomes stranger and stranger and so on.

On the other hand, this doesn't mean that now we don't know better the physical world. I like the expression 'veiled reality' because it suggests that we can know something but we cannot know the precise relation of our knowledge and 'how the world really is' and, of course, that our knowledge will probably forever be limited.

Anyway, I believe that even in newtonian mechanics the question of perspective was present, with the notion of reference frames. It's clear what that notion means when one thinks about an observer which is at rest with respect to some kind of object. But the problem is: are these reference frames a way of talking about what an observer would observe/experience in a given situation? Or are reference frames the perspectives of physical object themselves ? And what a 'perspective' of a pen might be?
And what about the reality behind these reference frames? Is it describable by the physical concepts we made by trying to make a picture of our own observations? What remains when one 'takes away' everything perspectival (i.e. everyting that is perspective-dependent)?

IMO QM just made these questions more apparent and more pressing. But an analogous interpretative problem was even present in newtonian mechanics, in fact.

No worries. Good Easter to you!

What do we take away from all this? Perhaps that ontology runs backwards. The existence of a causal thing is not objective, but rather works backwards from the arrow of time. Future measurements cause past measured events to come into existence, at least relative to the measurement done. And by 'measurement', I mean any physical interaction, not a mind-dependent experiment does with intention. — noAxioms

Hi,

The problem here, in my opinion, is that if every physical object is taken to qualify as an 'observer' (which seems to be implied by your assertion that any physical interaction is a measurement), then the number of 'perspective' is probably to high.

If QM could be in principle be applied at all scales, if you consider, say, the fall of a pen on a table, the 'perspectives' are incredibly many.
The impact between the pen and the table could be described with respect to the whole pen, the tip, the cap, the pen casing and so on. Yes, the advantage here might be that the 'mind' has no special role, but there is an explosion in the number of 'perspectives'.

Personally, I prefer to interpret QM epistemically, in which case there is no 'causal' role of the observer. However, it might mean that there is a limit of that we can know about mind-independent physical reality. I do believe that positing a mind-independent reality is simply necessary to do science, however.It seems the best explanation for the regularities in the world we experience, intersubjective agreement and so on. But maybe an accurate 'picture' of it is beyond our capabilities.

Anyway, I also believe that we now have no problems to interpret epistemically classical mechanics. We do not take literally the existence of 'forces' and so on. We now have no problems as interpreting the entities in classical theories as useful abstractions. So why we should take QM as a faithful 'picture' of reality?

Yes, I would agree that the point is to change one's mind and orient it towards the good. But still, I believe that in order to do that, arguably, as a precondition one has to acknowledge one's moral failures and take responsibility for them. I believe that this can be quite a painful and hard experience. This 'purgation' might be the necessary precondition to sincerely change one's mind. — boundless

Please note the words 'can' and 'might'. I am allowing the possibility that for some the repentance could not be accompanied by suffering. But maybe some kind of suffering for the reason stated above is necessary.

Yes, I would agree that the point is to change one's mind and orient it towards the good. But still, I believe that in order to do that, arguably, as a precondition one has to acknowledge one's moral failures and take responsibility for them. I believe that this can be quite a painful and hard experience. This 'purgation' might be the necessary precondition to sincerely change one's mind.

This doesn't mean that one has to indulge in shame and guilt. But certainly, one has to face the awareness of one's moral failures and take responsibility for them, which I believe it is actually a hard thing to do.

The impermanence of emotions and sensations isn't necessarily in conflict with the thought that an emotion or sensation is temporally unbounded. Consider for instance the mood of grief. On the one hand the mood is all absorbing and the grieving cannot comprehend an end to their grief and locate it on a timeline, yet on the other hand the emotions of grief do in fact come to an end, in spite of the inconceivability of the end when in the state of grief. — sime

Ok. But temporal unboundedness is not the same as 'timelessness'. If the mood is unchanging (i.e. the 'flavour' of experiences), experience still seems to remain a process.

I can't imagine a 'timeless' suffering. And I even suspect that an 'eternal bliss' would be an unending process of good experiences. But in contrast to suffering, the experience of 'positive awe' might actually be an approximation of what a 'timeless bliss' might feel like. So, in the case of 'eternal bliss', it may be timeless, after all. I have more difficulties to imagine a 'timeless' negative experience.

Well read what I actually wrote: "If everyone turns out fine in the end, then there is no ultimate need to evangelize or even help others." What do you think about that?

If God wills to save every human being and repentance is necessary for salvation, evangelization is a way to cooperate in the process. If universalism were true, ultimately God's will will be realized, independently of people choices to evangelize or not. But this doesn't make evangelization irrelevant. It would be still a way to cooperate with God for the sake of others.

So yeah maybe you are right here, ultimately the result will be the same, but evangelization would be still important.

BTW, even for an anti-universalist the question of evangelization (or spreading one's theistic religion to make the argument more general) is IMHO no less mysterious. If people need to be evangelized in order to be saved and end up not being evangelized because some believers refuse to evangelize (or live wickedly), these people end up outside salvation which would be a problem if God wants the salvation of every human being. That is, the salvation of a person would then depend also on the choices of others.*

*Edit: note that the argument here also applies if christians are unable to evangelize a given person, despite their efforts. That is if being evangelized by Christians is a necessary condition to being saved, and we assume God wants that all human beings will be saved, then it follows that the accomplishment of God's salvific will for that given person can depend on the actions of others and/or their ability to perform their task to evangelize.
So the question of the role of evangelization in the salvation is IMHO a mysterious topic even in the anti-universalist case, at least if one assumes that God wants the salvation of every human being.

I think the best argument against 'universalism' is what I believe is called the 'pastoral argument', that is at least some people would not bother to strive for salvation if they hear that, eventually, all will be saved (incidentally, I believe that ancient universalists tended to not spread that doctrine exactly for this reason...).

1. A man fixes his end in sin
2. Therefore he has the will to sin, everlastingly [or: he sins in his own eternity] — Leontiskos

I believe that my problem isn't (1) but perhaps (2), but I'm not even sure of what that means. Perhaps you are right that I am misunderstanding, I'll try my best now to clarify.

That is, I believe that one can fix his end in sin/evil (and have the, at least implicit, intention to remain 'fixed' in that end) but I doubt that such a fixation can be irrevocable (at least in this life, where we are obviously in a state of limited knowledge, limited freedom of the will and so on).

If however what (1) says is that one has the power to irrevocably fix his own end in sin/evil, then yeah I have my doubts about it even if the intention is to remain in sin/evil forever.

But note that this doesn't contradict the view that God's help and one's faith (trust) in that help is necessary for salvation. I believe that a human being, no matter how strives to be perfectly good, can't avoid make mistakes, errors and so on. There is a disconnect between how we should be and how we can actually live. So, I tend to believe that human beings can't invariably fix our end in God/good and this is why faith in God's help. If one sincerely strives to be good, one has the intention to be always good but this doesn't imply that such an intention ('fixing one's end in') is irrevocable.

BTW, even if one could fix one's end irrevocably in sin/evil I still can't concede that a finite human being can deserve an infinite amount of suffering as an adequate punishment. I can concede that annihilation can be an adequate punishment in such a case because it involves a finite amount of suffering and annihilation is, in some sense, an irrevocable, unending, punishment. But not 'unending pain' (of some sorts).

So, hoping that I made myself clear and I have now a better understanding, could you please answer this question: assuming that, indeed, a human being mind is invariably fixed in sin/evil, why do you believe that a punishment of unending pain is a deserved punishment? Why not, say, annihilation which is still an 'unending' punishment in some sense?

If you believe that because you have trust in the traditional view of hell, that's ok, I guess. But here we are discussing the matter philosophically. In my opinion, the traditional view has difficulties to be justified even in a retributive proportional understanding of 'justice' for the reason I explained in my previous posts and even in this one, where I argued that even if one's fixation in evil/sin is irrevocable, then, the traditional view of hell doesn't necessarily follow.

Someone who thinks we can't will marriage for life will not get married, or admit that a couple can properly perform the act of fixing their joint, earthly end. Someone who admits that the couple can perform that act must also admit that the end can be willed for the term of earthly life. — Leontiskos

I think I can agree with that. But I believe that, unfortunately, even if one has sincerely that will at the moment of marriage, one's will might not irrevocably set. A 'change of mind' (in this case for the worse) is indeed possible. One might seek help from faith in God's help that this bad change of mind won't occur.

So, I guess that I can say that in the case of 'fixing one's end in sin', my point is similar. While one can will to remain in sin forever, such a will is not necessarily irrevocable. If one's will isn't irrevocable, then there is still hope in repentance, in turning away from sin.

In the former case breaking the oath by failing to love at a certain point the spouse is of course a negative 'change of mind' (just like in the case when one breaks the oath to follow the good, to love etc in general). But in the latter case, the possibility of 'breaking the oath' is actually a good thing.

Do you agree with this?

I'm going to leave it there for now. This conversation is beginning to sprawl and becoming unwieldy, and what is needed is for you to attend to the words and arguments on offer, rather than deviating from those words and arguments. If you don't properly read and interpret the words of Aquinas or myself, then I fear that multiplying words will do me no good. Maybe narrowing the conversation will make it easier to attend to the actual words being written. — Leontiskos

I made my sincere efforts to understand your and St Thomas' words. Probably, I got it wrong again. I admit that it is possible. But I now believe that I have a better understanding. What you (and Aquinas) seem to say here is that can make an 'oath' to evil/sin. Yes, we can make oaths. But for the better or the worse at least in this earthly life I don't think that we have the power to be irrevocably faithful to the oaths.

Furthermore, even if we are able to make irreversible 'fixing of the wills'/'oaths', I still believe that one has not show why such an irreversible 'fixation' deserves a form of 'unending torment' as an adequate, proportional punishment even in a purely retributive framework.

Just a quick, but hopefully adequate, answer

Metanoia (μετάνοια) in Greek literally means a change of mind or a transformative rethinking. It implies an internal shift in perspective—almost existential—a turning toward a new way of being, seeing, or living. It’s often active, forward-facing, and creative. — DifferentiatingEgg

I believe that we have simply different ways to understand what a 'repentance' even in the 'active, forward-facing and creative' sense might imply.

I believe that repentance is also a process of healing and such a healing might involve potentially suffering.

I also believe that acknowledging past mistakes as mistakes, wicked acts as wicked acts etc and take full responsibility for them is part 'repentance'. Of course it doesn't stop at that as it is a re-direction of the will towards the good, which is often 'active, forward-facing, and creative'. But that it doesn't involve suffering it seems to be impossibile (maybe not in all cases, but still).
Of course, suffering here is not 'the point'. It doesn't mean that one must seek to suffer. One should seek healing. Healing and the redirection of the will is the point. But maybe some remedial suffering is necessary for that.

I don't know. This makes totally sense to me. Not sure why you imply that 'metanoia' must involve only positive emotions.

I don't think you understand what Aquinas is saying, because what Aquinas says there does not contradict the possibility of repentance "until the last breath." — Leontiskos

A man is said to have sinned in his own eternity, not only as regards continual sinning throughout his whole life, but also because, from the very fact that he fixes his end in sin, he has the will to sin, everlastingly. Wherefore Gregory says (Dial. iv, 44) that the "wicked would wish to live without end, that they might abide in their sins for ever." — Aquinas, ST I-II.87.3

Ok. I try to start from the beginning. Aquinas says that one can fix his will in sin. The infinite duration of punishment is due to the fact that the damned has a fixed will in sin therefore the damned can't repent because he will never will never want to do that.

To me this mean that at least after death, according to Aquinas, the sinner can't turn away the will from evil. During life, as I understand it, the sinner can fix his will in evil but at any moment he can end such a fixation by repenting.

Incidentally, a lot of people believe that wedding vows are impossible, and it is for the same basic reason that they believe mortal sins are impossible. The idea is that humans don't have the power to incur such lasting consequences, in this case such lasting promises. — Leontiskos

I'm not sure the two cases are the same. One can fix his own will in marriage and sincerely take the vow but a certain point he can 'fall'. One can make a lasting promise but one can break the promise, because the will isn't invariably fixed either in the good in this life. Of course, I would say that breaking the lasting promise here is wrong (assuming the spouse is still loving and faithful), but it seems to me standard Christian understanding that even the righteous can 'fall' at any time.

So, yeah, I can imagine that one can fix his will to remain in sin 'forever' but it doesn't necessarily imply that the will at a certain point must become irrevocable.

That is a reasonable argument. I would say that their evil can become subjectively irrevocable during life, but that the Catholic Church holds out hope for their repentance based on factors external to their person. For example, a saint might shake them out of their complacency. It may be worth pointing out here that if everyone turns out fine in the end, then there is no ultimate need to evangelize or even help others. — Leontiskos

I honestly think that the idea 'if everyone will be ultimately saved, then evangelization is useless' suffers from various problems. First, if there is a temporary hell, one might still want to avoid that others avoid that. Second: people might actually turn away from evil if they feel loved. Not sure why you think that evangelization becomes useless if universal salvation is true.

Regarding the rest... I'm not sure how to respond then. If some are saved by 'external factors to their person', then why only some?
I would assume that standard Catholic teaching is that any kind of 'external intervention' alone is insufficient without some 'internal intervetion' from the sinner.

Note that a corollary to your premises is that irrevocable destruction of the good only ever occurs at death, and not because of death. As if, coincidentally, anyone who ends up in Hell is on a declining path that bottoms out at the exact moment of death, and not a moment before. — Leontiskos

Ok. But if the irrevocable destruction of the good happens before death, then, some might be in a hopeless state before death. I honestly never heard that, at least nowadays, the 'official doctrine' says that.

Or maybe you're saying that the prior fixation in sin causes the destruction of the good at death. But again, I would have thought that traditional catholics generally believe that 'until there is life, there is hope'.

Your basic idea here is that death is an arbitrary cutoff, and you are working that idea via the Church's doctrine that no living person is beyond repentance. I think the basic response is that death is not an arbitrary cutoff from God's point of view (nor from Aquinas' philosophical perspective). The notion that the time of our death is arbitrary is already a denial of God's providence. Theists do not believe that people have untimely deaths and get unfairly damned by sheer luck. — Leontiskos

I am not sure what to respond here. Let's take the example of the two murderers I made before:

"Murderers A and B kill together an innocent person. They are discovered by the police and in the gunfight are both shot by the police, who shot in self-defence. Murderer A dies on the spot. Murderer B is taken into hospital and saved from the medical staff. During the time in prison, murderer B repents."

I believe that this kind of scenario is actually somewhat common. From an outside perspective at least, it would seem to me that the two murderers are not given the same chance to repent. Note that in the example I made, all actions that lead to A's death and B's survival are done by humans who are exercising their free will.

If death isn't arbitrary, as you say, but occurs for anyone at the 'right time', doesn't this imply some kind of determinism?

I see no reason to believe that the natural human life is not sufficient for the moral and spiritual responsibilities enjoined on it by Christianity. ...Heck, we even see in aging people a tendency to become "fixed in their ways," as if fixity increases in proportion to natural death. Empirically speaking we seem to have asymptotic habitus. — Leontiskos

But why don't you believe that if the damned become more aware of God in the next world they just can't repent, especially considering that, if there will be torment in hell, they'll also suffer?

I see what you mean, but at the same time, aren't humans beings with finite knowledge and finite will-power? Why an increase in knowledge can't bring at least some sinners to repent after death?

Okay, so it seems that you think that the human will only ever arrives at unmovable rest in God himself. That it can never place its (permanent) end in something other than God — Leontiskos

I quoted Augustine from the 'Confessions', not Hart. Augustine famously said that our heart can only find rest in God (and God made us for Himself). Not sure why see this particular thing as controversial.

A fuller quote of the same passage:

Great are You, O Lord, and greatly to be praised; great is Your power, and of Your wisdom there is no end. And man, being a part of Your creation, desires to praise You — man, who bears about with him his mortality, the witness of his sin, even the witness that You resist the proud, — yet man, this part of Your creation, desires to praise You. You move us to delight in praising You; for You have made us for Yourself, and our hearts are restless until they rest in You

Isn't what Augustine says here uncontroversial?

If one is in communion with God, one's heart is at rest, so one has no reason to 'fall again'.
IMHO using the 'fixity' of the destiny of the blessed to argue that the fate of the damned must be 'fixed' because otherwise the blessed could also fall again doesn't consider that in the case of the blessed, there is a clear reason why the blessed would not want to fall away.

If the damned's will is fixed in evil it must be due to a completely different reason.

Flannery draws a nice comparison between Hell and the problem of evil. A similar argument could be made: if humans are not able to rest in evil, then why do so many humans rest in evil? If Hart were right about the ineluctability of the good, then there would be no such phenomenon as the chronic addict. The universalist is again and again forced to impose a strong dichotomy between the created order and what they think is a better arrangement, "What is and what should never be." If the premises of universalism were true then it seems to me that Satan and Adam would never have fallen at all, there would be no evil, there would be no chronic addiction, there would be no child starvation, etc. If the good were ineluctable in the way that the universalist posits then the created order would look entirely different. — Leontiskos

Maybe the possibility to do evil (note the word 'possibility') is necessary for everyone to be eventually in full communion with God. So the universalist could still say that the existence of evil is compatible with the view that ultimately all we be saved.
Regarding the chronic addict, I am not sure. Again, I would say that if the 'chronic addict' goes to Heaven, probably the communion with God will free the addict from his or her addiction.

I think one only has to believe in the notion of mortal sin. If you don't believe in Hell, then you don't believe in mortal sin, at least not really. This is because mortal = mortality = death = finality. In Scripture death itself is a consequence of sin. — Leontiskos

One can believe that mortal sin lead to annihilation, for example. Like 'eternal torment', annihilation too is of course irrevocably final. I'm not sure that mortal sin as understood in these terms necessarily imply that the consequence is 'unending torment'.

Outside what you think that Scriptures say, are there any other reasons why do you think that the traditional view of hell is preferably over some kind of annihilation?

This is an example of an elaborate argument for the idea that there is no such thing as a mortal sin. Such arguments are almost always epistemic, as this one is. If you want me to engage an argument like that you will have to make it more formal, as dangers of emotion and rhetoric become rather pronounced in these areas. — Leontiskos

Well, one can certainly say that "I believe that Scripture and Tradition say that and are infallible (at least in issues like this one)" but it isn't a philosophical argument. I am not saying that everything we believe must be philosphically justified.

I honestly I don't see why I 'should' make the argument 'more formal'. And as I just said the problem isn't IMO the possibility of a final punishment but actually it is that I don't find the reasons why a punishment of unending torment can be an adequate, proportional punishment for human sins, when one takes into account the finitude of human beings.

As I also said, I believe that an annihilationist can argue that annihilation can be a 'finite, final punishment' becuase the suffering experineced in that case is finite. But unending torment is a different kind of thing. The punishment in the latter case involves an infinite amount of suffering.

I believe that, considering the finitude of human beings, it is a normal question to ask why a human being might really deserve a punishment that involves an infinite amount of pain.

Ok, I am here. But unfortunately, I'll be unable to answer in the next few days.

↪boundless I think another potential issue is the eternal possibility of repentance, faced with an eternal afterlife with no further consequences, why would someone repent? Don't you think the horizon of death, that is, our finitude, is what demands repentance of us? — NotAristotle

Well, the motivation would be: "I will continue to suffer if I never repent". Yes, maybe some won't take seriously this kind of thought. But for how long? Assuming, also, that 'in the the world to come', one has an increase of knowledge about God, why one's sins were sins and so on, maybe one would take more seriously the possibility to repent.

The only hell a person might go through is their own bad conscience, if they ever stoop that low to feel a bad conscience to begin with. Not by way of Jesus, as Jesus does not judge, for he was sent into the world as God's undying Grace. One need not feel any torment over past actions. — DifferentiatingEgg

Let's consider a serial killer who repents for his heinous crimes. Would you really think that a sincere process of repentance would not involve suffering?

Also, I would say that healing itself can be quite painful. If repentance is a turning away the will to the good by fully acknowledging that one has wickedly and taking responsibility for one's own wicked acts, I would say that the pain can be necessary for this process of 'turning away'. I really can't see why suffering goes against the 'turning of the will'.

↪boundless Okay, I see, then on your view one actually can be subject to infinite punishment, correct? Assuming they never repent (and given an eternity to do so). That is even without perfect culpability, the refusal to change heart is, in itself, meritorious of punishment. — NotAristotle

I think that maybe yes, if one is wicked and refuses forever to change one's heart, then yeah I guess that technically speaking it is a logical possibility. Maybe one can forever confirm such a choice. But if repentance is also forever a possibility, then, hope remains.

But if repentance is a possibility (and if one who repents is allowed to get out of the state of torment (sooner or later)), then no one is actually beyond hope (at least of escaping the state of torment).

That's why I think that the main problem with 'infernalism' isn't just 'eternal torment' as a possibility. But the view that at some point the destiny is irremediably fixed coupled with the view that we can earn an unending punishment of perpetual torment.

Note that an annihilationist also posits an 'unending punishment' in some sense. But the advantage here is that the annihilationist doesn't posit a punishment of infinite suffering. So, probably, the annihilationist escapes the objection in the sense that the punishment is never claimed to be 'infinite' in an important sense. Of course, whoever gets annihilated isn't 'saved' but at least doesn't experience pain.

(Please not that I am an agnostic BTW. So I'm not sure this can be said to be 'my view'...it is certainly a view that I have sympathy for)

Metanoia (μετάνοια) in Greek literally means a change of mind or a transformative rethinking. It implies an internal shift in perspective—almost existential—a turning toward a new way of being, seeing, or living. It’s often active, forward-facing, and creative. — DifferentiatingEgg

I get what you mean but I do not know* of any Greek (or even Syriac) Christian author according to whom some kind of remedial suffering is not needed for salvation. I mean even universalist ones do not deny this and, in fact, ancient Christian universalists thought that the very/extremely painful remedial experience of the temporary hell is necessary for salvation for those who are not saved during life (during which some remedial suffering must occur).
Acknowledging e.g. to having been wrong, to have done shameful deeds, to have ruined the relationship of loved ones and so on can be quite painful. But it is a necessary step for healing. If I refuse to experience the pain that comes from that acknowledgment, maybe the result is that I will in fact experience a worse fate because I refuse to experience what is necessary to heal.

So, while your point might be true, I don't think that it has support from ancient writers. But note that 'penance' in the sense of an excessive self-mortification conveys the notion that suffering must go beyond what is necessary. In this sense, yeah, If one intends 'penance' in this sense, then it seems to be truly a mistranslation.

*I am just an amatheur, so do not take my word as 'exhaustive'. But I do not recall any ancient universalist that believed that repentance can be entirely without pain.

(IIRC, even in psychoterapy it is acknowledged that in some cases the patient must confront with one's shortcomings, fears and so on and such a confrontation, while painful, is necessary to heal. If one refuses to do that confrontation in these cases, psychoterapy is useless...)

I am sorry but I have to leave now. I hope to manage to come back tomorrow. Sorry in advance for the possible delay in my answer.