The Problem of Salient Suffering: Saving vs preventing

In this post (https://benstowell.blogspot.com/2025/03/the-argument-from-salient-suffering.html) I argue from salient suffering to the non-existence of God.

 

When a person is in fact suffering from a max salient evil, then the best thing for them – a max salient good – is to save them. This faces the following objection:

 

How does salience transfer from intrinsic goods to depriving evils, or from intrinsic evils to saving goods? If saving / depriving means preventing, then unborn creatures suffer a max evil by being deprived of max goods. But intuitively, unborn creatures cannot suffer at all, and certainly not maximally. Maximal suffering is salient, and salient suffering depends on consciousness.

 

(I guess you could try to cash things out in terms of the consciousness of God. God is consciously aware of how much better it would be for non-existent creatures to become conscious and enjoy max goods. Indeed, wouldn't that be the basis for God's motivation to create other creatures? But intuitively to suffer (in the worst way) is to suffer consciously. So if the unborn are suffering (in the worst way) from deprivation, then they are suffering consciously. But non-existent persons cannot suffer consciously. Whether salience transfers may depend on whether there are modal facts and whether God, being omniscient, is aware of all the creatures that would exist and what goods they would enjoy were God to create them. If there are no modal facts, then God is off the hook. If there are modal facts, then perhaps facts of would-be consciousness provides the conscious facts needed for salience.)

 

Certainly there is a self-evident conscious difference between suffering consciously and not. So does God need to allow someone to suffer from a max salient evil for a moment to transfer salience from the intrinsic suffering to the saving good? That seems silly. Surely it's even better to not suffer maximally for even one moment.

 

It's not that God is ever rescuing people from worst possible fates, it's that he's preventing these fates from occurring, because even the one moment is unjustified. But then how does salience transfer? If there is no actual suffering, only "modal" suffering, then does that commit one to modal facts? This person would suffer a maximal evil if God doesn't intervene, so God has to intervene? I don't want to commit myself to modal facts, in case the grounding objection, and other objections, prove too powerful.

 

If a single person suffers a single moment of max evil, then it will have been the case that God is not perfect. Obviously, God cannot allow this. So it can never have been the case that God is not perfect. So it can never be the case that someone will suffer a max evil.

 

So it's not modal facts, but future facts (facts of the closed future) that allow salience to transfer from intrinsic goods/evils to preventative goods/evils. It cannot be the case that intrinsic evils are salient without it being the case that future intrinsic evils are salient.

 

But maybe even open future facts can do this too. If there is a 10% chance for a person to experience unbearable suffering, then there's a 10% chance for God to not exist. Obviously, that's absurd. So open future facts about unbearable suffering are impossible; it's always 0%.

 

If someone is enjoying a max good, it can never be the case that this person will cease to enjoy this max good, as this would be a max depriving evil, with salience transferring from the max good to the depriving evil by way of direct comparison. So it can never be the case that someone will enjoy a max good only to cease enjoying it. Max depriving evils enable max saving goods – being saved from the depriving evil. So once someone is in heaven, God cannot possibly take them out.

 

Of the non-existent persons who will never come to be, there are no future facts for them. Because future facts are what carry salience, and because there are no future facts for the non-existent persons that never come to be, non-existent persons that never come to be never suffer maximal salient depriving evils.

 

Or, we can scratch all that and say there are max modal depriving evils and a perfect being is obligated to create an infinite number of creatures who each enjoy max goods. Which, there's probably reason to believe this anyway – a perfect being must create the best possible state of affairs, and what else could be the best possible state of affairs except the maximum possible number of creatures living fundamentally good lives?

 

This also nicely explains away the brute fact of your existence. Why do you exist rather than some other person in your place? Because you literally have to exist – everyone does. Only impossible persons do not exist.

 

Of course, we are not living fundamentally good lives, which are lives where a person never rejects consciousness (i.e., never prefers non-existence to existence) and always lives. Some of us do reject consciousness, which entails unbearable suffering. So, this cannot be the best possible state of affairs, and there cannot be a best possible being.

The Argument from Salient Suffering

1) The most salient suffering (or salient evil) is the suffering we are directly aware of. (Premise 1)

2) That which we are directly aware of is necessarily within our ken. (Premise 2)

3) Therefore, the most salient suffering is necessarily within our ken. (Conclusion 1; 1,2,Categorical syllogism)

A visual representation of steps 1-3:

4) Saving goods grounded by salient evils are salient. (Premise 3)

5) The magnitude of saving goods matches the magnitude of the evils that ground them. Maximal evils ground maximal saving goods. (Premise 4)

6) If 4 and 5, then maximal salient evils ground maximal salient goods. (Premise 5)

7) Therefore, maximal salient evils ground maximal salient goods. (Conclusion 2; from 4,5,6,modus ponens)

8) Saving goods grounded by evils within our ken are also within our ken. (Premise 6)

9) If 3, 7, and 8, then maximal salient goods are necessarily within our ken. (Premise 7)

10) Therefore, maximal salient goods are necessarily within our ken. (Conclusion 3; from 3,7,8,modus ponens)

Here we can split off into two directions. 

Skeptical theism is false:

11) If skeptical theism is true, then maximal salient goods are not necessarily within our ken. (Premise 8)

12) Therefore, skeptical theism is not true. (Conclusion 4; from 10,11,modus tollens)

13) If skeptical theism is not true, then we can know that God does not exist. (Premise 9)

14) Therefore, we can know that God does not exist. (Conclusion 5; from 12,13,modus ponens)

God does not exist:

11) God's mystery goods are not within our ken. (Premise 8)

12) Therefore, God's mystery goods are not maximal salient goods. (Conclusion 4; from 10,11,modus tollens)

13) There are maximal salient evils. (Premise 9)

14) If there are maximal salient evils and God's mystery goods are not maximal salient goods, then God is not a perfect being. (Premise 10)

15) Therefore, God is not a perfect being. (Conclusion 5; from 12,13,14,modus ponens)

16) If God exists, then God is a perfect being. (Premise 11)

17) Therefore, God does not exist. (Conclusion 6; from 15,16,modus tollens)

I'm getting overexposed to a certain word...

S A L I E N T

This argument is kenough to disprove God 😎

I'm sorry. I had to.

Discussion of premises 3 and 6:

The highlighted premises are to me the most precarious. Suffering is salient when it is the most urgent / important / relevant / consequential / impactful, and so on. By my lights, suffering is most urgent when it is experienced. If there were no sentient creatures at all, no consciousness, then I don't see how there could be any evil of any kind. So suffering depends on consciousness. It seems especially true to me that the kind of suffering that threatens the worthiness of life is the most urgent, and only conscious evils threaten to make life not worth living. Indeed, for a person to experience their life being (in their view) not worth living, consciousness is required.

Premise 3: Saving goods grounded by salient evils are salient.

This suggests: Depriving evils grounded by salient goods are salient.

But we are not directly aware of depriving evils, and thus depriving evils cannot be salient. So depriving evils are both salient and not, a contradiction. Indeed, one could run a parody of my argument that inverts goods and evils, resulting in the conclusion that depriving evils are the most salient when only intrinsic evils can be the most salient on my view.  

I have two optional responses: 

Direct awareness is not necessary for saliency.

On this option, direct awareness is sufficient, but not necessary, for saliency. Saliency can transfer from a good or evil that is directly experienced to one that is saving or depriving. The problem arises when you have no consciousness at all giving rise to salient suffering. Suppose God chooses not to create any creatures. Then God would be allowing the maximal salient evil of depriving all the infinities of non-existent beings of the maximal salient goods in heaven. But this is absurd. It gets even more absurd, because God could send all the same infinities of creatures to hell. By not doing this, God is saving them from the maximal salient evils in hell. So God is somehow giving both maximal salient goods and evils to all uncreated creatures. Commonsensically, it's impossible to be both flourishing and suffering maximally at the same time. And, it's impossible to be maximally flourishing or suffering while not existing.

So how do we fix this? One suggestion: Saving goods and depriving evils require actual events of saving and depriving. Saliency depends on consciousness. If there is no consciousness, there is no saliency. But once you have consciousness, then saliency can transfer. It seems crazy to think that stopping the torture is not a salient good for the person being tortured. Likewise, it seems crazy to think that dying in a car accident is not a depriving evil for the young girl with the rest of her life ahead of her.

Direct awareness is necessary to get things started. It is the saliency of the direct good / evil that gives rise to the saliency of the corresponding depriving evil / saving good.

The upshot of this is that it would be a maximal salient depriving evil to take someone out of heaven who is there. That makes sense. What could be the greatest evil for someone in heaven other than losing heaven?

Direct awareness is necessary for saliency.

Another option is to say that direct awareness is necessary, but there is a direct awareness test, at least a hypothetical one, where you compare your (actual) suffering to a state of a lack of suffering. You are directly aware that the state without suffering is preferable to the state with suffering. Likewise, you compare your (actual) flourishing to a state of a lack of flourishing, and you are directly aware that the state with flourishing is preferable to the state without it. Direct goods / evils give rise to the direct comparison test, and this direct awareness is what allows for saliency to transfer from direct goods / evils to depriving evils / saving goods. 

These two options might just be the same option. There is a sharp break between the two if one says that we cannot be directly aware of saving goods / depriving evils and the other says we can be (through the direct comparison test). But both can be synthesized if both say that direct awareness is needed up front, and then the saliency from this direct awareness is able to transfer to saving goods / depriving evils (which are not within our direct awareness), either through the direct comparison test or through some other means.

This discussion clarifies premise 6. Once we see how it is that saving goods / depriving evils can be salient, then we see how they can be within our ken. Certainly, someone in hell would be fully aware of what it would mean to get out of it, and how good that would be, and someone in heaven would be fully aware of what it would mean to be cast out of heaven, and how tragic that would be.