Ad hoc model of hell

Here's a way a finite hell might be able to make sense, even on hedonistic terms.

-Problem: it feels unjust to just let a moral monster into heaven. There is no difference between the fates of culprits and their victims. There is no way to separate the evildoers from their deeds, leading to distrust, hatred, unforgiveness, inability for assimilation.

-God is maximally socially intelligent and would understand perfectly that this cannot work. If you're going to reintegrate moral monsters into heaven, there has to be a process for this, a grand ceremony, a special ritual involving the drama of forgiveness and repentance.

-(God could just erase memories, but then what was the point of earth?)

-In hell, evil people experience the exact suffering that they caused others on earth.

-This allows for reconciliation in a number of ways:

-1) There is a difference maker between the fates of good people and evil people; we are not letting evil people get away with it

-Second, it fulfills the aspect of justice that we might call acknowledgement, or understanding; the evil person needs to acknowledge and understand the sheer evil of their actions; by experiencing the exact pain of their victims, they experience the evilness of their actions. You don't have to try to tell them or convince them that what they did was wrong, you directly show them the wrongness of their actions by forcing them to experience the pain that they caused.

-Third, the victim, knowing that the culprit understands the pain that they caused, now shares something in common with the culprit: a shared trauma, a shared pain, and a shared understanding of the evil that was caused.

-Fourth, the victim can forgive the culprit knowing that when the culprit apologizes, the apology is known to be sincere, because the victim knows that the culprit knows exactly the pain that they caused.

-This allows for reconciliation and forgiveness between moral monsters and their victims.

-This in turn allows for all persons to participate in eudaimonia, and not just people who happened to be initially good enough.

-This is better than annihilating the moral monster, because this way the victim also receives resolution. By annihilating the moral monster, you lose out on true resolution for the victim(s).

-This is better than annihilating the moral monster also because it does right by the moral monster; you don't make their lives retroactively absurd.

-This does right by maximizing eudaimonia by having an additional member of the eudaimonic system.

-This also requires a profound amount of virtue on the part of the victims, virtues pertaining to love and forgiveness and a relinquishing of hatred, pain, and protest.

-This means the torture of hell is smart. Instead of a dumb torture where the pain is meaningless, the pain comes explicitly from the harm the damned committed while on earth. The damned experience all and only the pain they caused others.

-Hell is temporary, as it lasts until you have gone through all the pain you caused others.

-This is hedonistically viable because it allows the damned to reintegrate harmoniously into a eudaimonic system, maximizing happiness.

The only problem with this model of hell is that it's totally ad hoc. There's no biblical evidence for it; there is biblical evidence against it, and it's not the orthodox model.

In fact, the plausibility of this model, insofar as it really is a plausible justification of hell, counts against Christianity exactly because Christianity fails to teach it. If Christianity fails to teach the most plausible model of hell, then that counts against Christianity.

This model is a plausible ethical model, meaning that its justification is plausible, though the idea that this hell is real is not plausible.

The point of this is to show that it's not necessarily the case that retributive punishment goes against a perfect being, or against hedonism.

The damned would not experience unbearable suffering in the sense that the damned would rather cease to exist than go through this suffering. It might not even be determined whether the damned are willing or not to undergo this experience. On some level, the damned might understand that while the pain is bad, the pain is for a good reason, and will eventually lead to eudaimonia. In fact, God could implant this background understanding into the damned mind to prevent the damned from experiencing unbearable suffering by giving them hope that eventually it will all work out.

Project: Intellectual virtue

"Shall we not, like archers who have a mark to aim at, be more likely to hit upon what is right?" -Aristotle

(Nicomachean Ethics, 1094a, I.2, trans. W. D. Ross)

The truthseeker is a person who holds within their heart the following thought: I want to believe what's true. We start with a desire, the desire for truth, and the desire to be rid of false beliefs.

Should we have that desire? That's a separate question.

Do we have this desire because we are rational creatures, suggesting that anyone without this desire is irrational? That's a separate question. 

What does it even mean for something to be true, or for something to be a desire? Again, separate questions. 

Is truth intrinsically good? Should we seek truth without discretion, or should we only care about certain kinds of truth? Still, separate questions.

To keep things focused, let us focus on the desire itself. If someone wants to increase the likelihood that their beliefs are true, how do they do this? If someone wants to avoid being stuck in false beliefs, how do they do this? This is the question I'm interested in.

By aiming for truth, we increase the likelihood that we find it. Here is then the core question: What does it look like to aim for truth? When a person aims for truth, what will this person sound like when they speak? What will their mindset be? What will they spend their time doing? What practices and habits will they form? What does aiming for truth entail for one's own psychology, personality, and behavior?

Philosophy, as a discipline for seeking the most fundamental truths, begins with psychology: the psychology of the kind of person who cares, and could care, about truth.

Questions:

• What is virtue?
• What is intellectual virtue?
• What are the intellectual virtues?
• How do we know when something is virtuous or vicious?
  
• Does intellectual virtue provide a foundation for seeking truth? Or is it part of the foundations of truthseeking? Does all rational inquiry begin with virtue?
• Does intellectual virtue provide examples of true 'should' statements? Ex. You should be passionate about truth, you should be intellectually brave, you should not be intellectually lazy, you should be able to disagree well, etc.
• What does virtue have to do with epistemology? What is virtue epistemology?
• How does virtue relate to epistemic hypocrisy?
• How does virtue relate to the problem of being epistemically stuck?
• How does virtue relate to how we can tell whether someone is a genuine truthseeker?
• If someone appears to not exhibit intellectual virtue, then how should we react to their truth claims?
• How does intellectual virtue relate to intelligence?
• How does intellectual virtue relate to rationality? 
• How does intellectual virtue relate to reason, reasons, and a priori knowledge?

Bibliography:

• Linda Zagzebski: Virtues of the Mind (book)
• T. Ryan Byerly: Introducing Logic and Critical Thinking (book)
• Michael Huemer: Knowledge, Reality, and Value (book)
• Joe Schmid: The Majesty of Reason (book)
• Josh Rasmussen: How Reason Can Lead to God (book)
• Aristotle: Nicomachean Ethics (W. D. Ross translation)
• Philip Dow: Virtuous Minds (book)
• Richard Swinburne (quote) 

Degree complete 🥳

I have officially completed my Bachelor's in Philosophy from Fort Hays State University in Kansas. I already had a Bachelor's degree in Business Admin – Accounting from Wichita State, so my general eds carried over. I end with a Philosophy GPA of 4.0 and a cumulative GPA of 3.73.

What does a 4.0 GPA in a philosophy Bachelor's mean? By itself, almost nothing. It depends on the quality of the program and what the student actually accomplished. There are only three (slightly) noteworthy things in my case:

1) I took a metaphysics class that was not required for graduation. This is not a class the school teaches – I had to request this class and I selected the textbook for it – Alyssa Ney's introduction to metaphysics. It was guided very well by Rob Byer, a PhD student of Linda Zagzebski (I'll be doing a deep dive on one of her books starting... today in fact).

2) I took a philosophy of mind class that was not required for graduation.

If you were to ask me what an undergraduate of philosophy must have under their belt by the time they graduate, I would say (among other things): Advanced Logic, Metaphysics, and Philosophy of Mind. I was on track to graduate with none of those, which I found unacceptable. At least I was able to get 2/3.

3) I won the first annual essay contest with my essay "The Logical Problem of Hell." I've posted an updated version of that essay here: https://benstowell.blogspot.com/2025/04/the-logical-problem-of-hell.html

Since I've written this, I think there are a lot of problems with this argument and it would take a lot of work to sort them out. I'll post at some point a follow-up looking at those. Maybe the argument is salvageable.

One reason why I say a Bachelor's in philosophy means almost nothing, at least from this program, is because it would have been much easier to not take those two optional classes, and I would have still had the same degree with the same GPA. So GPA doesn't tell the full story, and really it doesn't tell much of anything. Someone could have a Bachelor's in philosophy without having taken advanced logic or intro to mind or intro to metaphysics, which is crazy to me. At least the program required epistemology and ethics.

In this case it's a moot point because the philosophy program at Fort Hays has been terminated; I'm one of the last graduates. Philosophy classes are still being taught to cover gen ed requirements, and I believe they still have a Master's program that requires philosophy courses (it's not a Master's in philosophy, but something else). I guess this is a known trend – the eradication of humanities departments in small colleges, with philosophy high on the chopping block.

I don't see how things could be any other way. As demand for philosophy classes goes down (as they don't lead to jobs), supply goes down.

I've heard people say that it's better to use that money and time to just buy philosophy books and read them. The advantage of formal courses is that 1) Professors introduce you to authors, books, and papers that you wouldn't have been introduced to otherwise; 2) Professors offer student hours in which you can ask questions to check your understanding; 3) Classes force you to be motivated to push and get work done using deadlines, getting you into the habit of what it feels like to push yourself to get work done on a good pace; 4) Classes force you to learn how to research properly; 5) Professors provide feedback on essays.

If you don't care about any of that then it's not worth it. But if you want to increase your skill specifically at essay writing in philosophy, then it is worth it if you can afford it (and many people can't – neither the upfront costs nor the opportunity costs).

Really, it just comes down to who you are. There's a Youtube clip of an exasperated Jon Blow getting asked the question, "Should I make video games?", and he basically says that if you have to ask the answer is no. A true game dev doesn't ask the question; they just make games. This generalizes; someone truly passionate about philosophy doesn't ask whether they should pursue it; they just do, come hell or high water.

Good/bad (Value) vs good/bad (Success)

Introduce a pluralism about badness/goodness. Good (Value) refers to intrinsic goods, extrinsic goods, and saving goods. These are objective, undeniable, judgment-independent, and mistake-making in a non-goal sense.

That is, if a certain intrinsic good takes place, and someone denies that it takes place, then the denier is wrong. They are mistaken. And they are mistaken regardless of anyone's judgment as to whether they are mistaken. They are mistaken relative to a non-goal fact.

A failure, by contrast, is a mistake relative to a goal fact. Epistemic mistakes are failures, though in some cases they can be bad too. For example, it's bad to believe p without evidence that p. This is bad (failure), and may also be bad (value).

A mistake is to regard p as true when p is not true, where 'regarding' is some minimal doxastic attitude.

So just as physical facts (e.g. the earth is round) are mistake-making in a non-relative sense, value facts are mistake-making in a non-relative sense. Value facts include facts about happiness and pain, which are instantiations of intrinsic good and intrinsic evil. Depending on philosophy of mind, value facts are physical facts. Or you could say there are goal facts and non-goal facts (world facts). Both physical facts and value facts are world facts.

Good / bad (success) is when something is a success / failure with respect to some goal. 

If I write 'snuflowre', that's a mistake relative to the goal of spelling 'sunflower' correctly. Snuflowre is bad (success) spelling, but not necessarily bad (value).

The problem with only having value facts is that there are epistemic facts that are undeniable mistakes, but they don't necessarily constitute extrinsic or depriving evils. So we have to introduce a second kind of badness.

This seems to cut against monoaxiology. There is, in fact, more than one kind of badness / being wrong. Failure is not necessarily intrinsically bad, extrinsically bad, or a depriving bad. Depending on the system, failure can be intrinsically, extrinsically, and/or a saving good.

Argument for and against 'nothing matters'

When you take the limit
And the limit is infinite
And the limit is infinite
We diminish
To nothing we finish

When perception is reality
And forever we perceive nothing
We never existed
We never existed

-Lyrics from a song I wrote in January 2017, "From the Void"

Scenario 1: You never come into being. An infinite amount of time passes where you have no subjectivity.

Scenario 2: You come into being and then eventually die, and you stay dead forever. An infinite amount of time passes where you have no subjectivity.

In both cases "you" spend an infinite amount of time with no subjectivity. If we made a pie chart showing the percentage of time spent with subjectivity and without, both charts would look identical.

So, there is no real difference between Scenario 1 and 2.

If there is no real difference between Scenario 1 and 2, then nothing matters.

So, nothing matters.

Response: It's true that as time approaches infinity, the finite time spent alive approaches zero. But zero is a limit, never truly reached. So the time spent alive is never actually zero.

More importantly, while we are alive, we are certain that we have experiences; we are certain that we are existing and thus certain that we will have existed. So not only is it false that there is no difference between Scenario 1 and 2, it's certainly false.

The real moments of real flourishing (or suffering) that real people really have—that's the difference, and just as we are certain of those moments, we are certain of that difference. So not only is 'nothing matters' false, it's false with certainty.

If you cannot prove that worst possible fates are impossible, then you should not have children

Informal argument:

1) I cannot prove that our world is not fundamentally bad.

(A fundamentally bad world is one that generates fundamentally bad lives. A fundamentally bad life is a life in which the person living it would rather die than continue living but is forced to continue living forever.)

(A maximally fundamentally bad world is one that generates many lives where 100% are fundamentally bad. A minimally fundamentally bad world is one that generates exactly one fundamentally bad life, or generates many lives where some minimal percentage above 0% are fundamentally bad.)

2) So, for all I know, our world is at least minimally fundamentally bad.

3) So, for all I know, some or all of us are living fundamentally bad lives in which we will survive death and go on to live forever while wishing for death.

4) So, for all I know, any number of my children (if I were to have them) will go on to live fundamentally bad lives.

5) The most evil thing you can do to a person is cause them to live a fundamentally bad life.

6) So having children is risking the most evil thing you can do to someone.

7) Knowingly taking an evil risk is itself evil.

8) So having children knowing it is risking the most evil thing you can do to someone is itself one of the most evil things you can do.

Douglas Portmore on Philosophy and Moral Disagreement

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oBq-2vpbS60

8:15 - 13:24

"Philosophy is unique as a discipline in that you do not have to accept any disciplinary assumptions or methods in order to count as doing philosophy. You can do philosophy so long as you are investigating certain questions like whether we have free will, whether there are moral facts, and you don't have to accept Rene Descartes' method of doubt or foundationalism or coherentism or X-phi or any other particular methodology to count as doing philosophy. You also don't have to accept any kind of particular assumptions, like you don't have to accept classical logic, or the law of non-contradiction, or the principle of bivalence to count as being a philosopher.

Now that's different from other disciplines. You don't count as doing science if you don't employ the scientific method. You don't count as doing science if you don't accept or assume that there's a world that exists independently of our perceiving it, a world that we can learn about via our empirical observations. And that's why we don't teach creationism in science class, and we don't look at the argument from design in science class. To count as science you have to do empirical investigation and creationism doesn't involve doing that kind of empirical work, and the argument from design for the existence of God doesn't do that kind of empirical work, so it just doesn't count as science.

Same thing with mathematics: if you don't accept Euclid's axioms and you don't accept classical logic as the method of inferring certain theorems and postulates from those axioms using classical logic, then you just don't count as doing geometry.

So philosophy is unique in that in order to count as doing philosophy you don't have to accept any particular assumptions or even particular methodology. And this is why philosophers don't converge on views in the way that scientists and mathematicians do. And this is why, with respect to philosophical disagreement, you don't have a resolution of these philosophical questions in the way that you have a resolution in mathematics and in science. . . . 

Why is there so much moral disagreement? Because we do moral inquiry via philosophical inquiry. And when we do philosophical inquiry, we are not required to start from any certain assumptions, and we are not required to follow any particular methodology. . . . 

So we've had three explanations for moral disagreement: One explanation is the disagreement is due to the fact that there are no moral facts for us to agree on. The second explanation is that although there are moral facts for us to agree upon, we fail to agree because some people are just ignorant of those facts. And then a third explanation is that the reason why there is so much moral disagreement is because moral disagreement is done in the mode of philosophical inquiry, and the nature of philosophical inquiry is such that it doesn't result in convergence on certain particular views.

I think the third is the best explanation, and to see that, notice that we don't find that there's any greater disagreement about moral issues among philosophers than there are about other philosophical questions among philosophers. So we find that the kind of disagreement we have with respect to morality is the same as the kind of disagreement we have with respect to whether there's free will . . . how to solve the mind-body problem, and so on and so forth. So it's no surprise then that we find that there's so much moral disagreement . . ."