An asymmetry between Modal Problems of Evil and Modal Ontological/Contingency - The Correct way to Handle Modal Problems of Evil

 Recent literature on Modal approaches to God's existence have shown that there's a sort of scale on which Modal Ontological Arguments (Modal Ontological Arguments simply refer to any argument in this context which has apriori premises and uses the S5 inference from Possibly God to Necessarily God, which I'll call MOA from now on.) and Reverse MOAs (From Possibly God doesn't exist to Necessarily God doesn't exist) are placed. Multiple symmetry breakers have been presented between these arguments, with the most notable one on the atheistic side being Modal Problems of Evil. There is very few literature on this idea, yet it is brought up by Philosopher such as Brian Leftow throuhgout their work. In this blogpost, I hope to show that Modal Problems of Evil are far more superior to Theistic Modal Arguments to God in regards to The Possibility Premise and the Inferences being made, and that the Theist should not attempt to engage with the Possibility Premise at all, as the Atheist is far better with regards to his modal epistemic "rights" in making the claim - but rather the Theist should simply reject the metaphysical incompossibility between God and Gratuitous Evil.

To lay out the asymmetry in the "Logical Structure" of the Atheistic and Theistic Arguments, consider this:
Let GE be Gratuitous Evil, and grant that a Morally Perfect God would not allow Gratuitous Evil, and that Moral Perfection is an essential attribuite of God. 

 
1. □(GE -> ~G)  
2. ◇GE
3. ◇~G (Modus Ponens from 1,2)
4. G -> □G  (From the Definition of "God".)
5. ~□G -> ~G (Contrapositon on 4)
6. ~~◇~G -> ~G  (Equivalence)
7. ◇~G -> ~G (Double Negation)
8. ~G (From 1,5)

Now, The weakest Theistic MOA (I.e with the least controversial axioms possible):

1. □(G -> □G)
2. ◇G
3.◇□G (From 1, 2 and K)
4. ~G -> □◇~G (Brouwer)
5. ◇□G -> G (Contraposition on 4)
6. G (from 3, 5)

The Theistic Argument here clearly relies on the slightly controversial Brouwer Axiom, while the Atheistic does not. To put this into words, It's possible that God doesn't exist, the definition implies necessity. Therefore the non-necessity of God implies the non-existence of God; it's possible that God doesn't exist implies God doesn't exist. This doesn't require any sort of S5/Brouwer Inference while the Theistic Analogue does. In this case, there is an asymmetry.

Of course, this wouldn't be problematic if Brouwer or S5 were uncontroversial - There are many reasons to reject both axioms, which I will inshallah go over in another post, but I'm going to instead list a few positions one might adopt (or just general views) which are incompatible with S5 or Brouwer.

- Aristotelian Actualism
- Kment's view on the different grades of ontic possibility
- Relativized Metaphysical Modality (which is said to be S5-friendly but in my eyes, and many others, is just blatantly false.)
- A Dispositionalist, Hard Actualist account of Modality (A Theistic Modified version fails aswell).
-  Moderate Origin Essentialism (per Salmon's and Chandler's critiques).
- The Necessity of the Past
- Fineian/Haleian Essentialism (Both have made attempts to solve this issue which in my eyes also fail.)
- Epistemic Two-Dimensionalism (Falls nicely with Relativized Metaphysical Modality as pushed by Murray and Wilson, I think we have reasons to think this is incompatible with S5 too which I might go over in another post)

Etc. The point here isn't some sort of all-out attack on both Axioms - rendering them false, but rather just that both Axioms are slightly, if not extremely controversial given some of our best accounts of Metaphysical Modality. And hence, This sort of Asymmetry between these two arguments is very important to note. (For example, I personally am convinced Atheistic Modal Arguments are far better than Theistic Arguments in this regard as I reject both Axioms, but that's not to say the Arguments succeed.)
I think it's also important to note that there are a dozen other criticisms I haven't brought up here to both Axioms, which should really show how pressing this sort of Asymmetry might be. So, even if one thinks both Possibility Premises are true in this regard, they could still think Brouwer or S5 fail and hence favour the Atheistic Argument. This asymmetry is relevant in the general context, but not to the following discussion.

I think most theists, especially Classical Theists, would not reject 1. There are a few Islamic Scholars whom defended the notion that Goodness is not an essential property of God, but I take it that such a view makes God composed of both Accidental and Essential Properties and might run into other Anselmian Objections. Hence, these sort of views will be ruled out for now - Atleast for the Classical Theist. So if one were to construe Moral Perfection/Maximal Goodness to be Essential to God, and that Moral Perfection is incompatible with Gratuitious Evil (For now, atleast.) Then they should attack the Possibility Premise.

But what sort of attack can be made on the Premise? I think this sort of route is far too hasty, and that all of our modal epistemic tools (atleast the ones I'm aware of) would easily lean towards the Atheistic Rather than Theistic Possibility Premise.

The following example of Gratuitious Evil as all the Atheistic Argument needs - Following Rowe: Rowe asks us to imagine a forest fire in which a fawn "is trapped, horribly burned, and lies in terrible agony for several days before death relieves its suffering. ~2 Such suffering obviously could be prevented by an omnipotent being, and Rowe doesn't think there is any plausible candidate for the "greater good", Which comes about as the result of this suffering and would have been impossible without it. Hence, this is an instance of Gratuitious Evil, and therefore incompatible with the Existence of a Morally Perfect, Omniscient, Omnipotent being.

Going back to support of P1, let's look at all the modal epistemic tools we have on us:

Modal Intuitions: Modal Intuitions (as opposed to say, semantic intuitions) are one of our more reliable yet relative guides to Possibility. Usually, a strong intuition towards some proposition being possible is strong prima facie evidence for it's possibility. But just looking at the Intuitions alone, I think it's very easy to see how easily the Atheist wins here. It's just obvious that the Intuition regarding this situation being possible far outweighs the Intuition behind God being possible, even for most theists. It's important to note that Modal Intuitions behind God can be undermined - With Tooley's/Kane's "Less than Perfect Necessary Beings", while the same can't be said for Gratuitious Evil. Again, I seriously want to the reader to be honest with themselves for a second, and think to themselves if they think the situation outlined above is Metaphysically Impossible, intuitively. 

Of course, one could point out that as I said earlier, this sort of evidence is merely prima facie (strongly so), therefore if any Theist finds any sort of Theistic argument far more convincing, they'd have reasons to dismiss their Intuitions in this regard. I don't think any theist should find the arguments that convincing, but that's a seperate issue. If they do take this route, I think we can grant this and simply look at our other tools.

Conceivability: Conceivability is probably the most controversial tool in Modal Epistemology to date. But the (Conceivability entails Possibility - CEP) thesis is slowly becoming dominant in the Metaphysics of Modality, thanks to the work of David Chalmers and Two-Dimensionalism. There is alot to say here, but I'm going to skip the issues behind Conceivability and the response to them. I think the following thesis is plausible, if not trivial:

Ideal Primary Negative/Positive Conceivability entails Metaphysical Possibility.

with Ideal Conceivability - one could say that S is ideally conceivable if an ideal reasoner would find it to pass the relevant tests (if an ideal reasoner could not rule out the hypothesis expressed by S a priori, for example). Essentially, we shift Concievability into a rational notion, and move it into the domain of an Ideal Reasoner. In that case, we rule out cases of Prima Facie Conceivability (I.e Goldbach Conjectures) which would contradict the CEP thesis. It also helps us establish a far more elegant and secure link between Conceivability and Possibility. Of course, one could object to this thesis with Kripkeian Aposteriori Necessities, or acknowledging that those fail and try utilizing what Chalmers calls - "Strong Necessities" (Only Aposteriori knowable propositons which have a necessary primary and secondary intension - I.e Are both epistemically and metaphysically necessary yet are only knowable Aposteriori). But I think Chalmers and others do a great job at diffusing these objections, so I'm fine with granting the CEP thesis as outlined above.

Now, it's obviously Ideally Positively - Negatively Conceivable that Gratuitous Evil situation as outlined above is possible. So what could the theist say in response here? 

The theist could show that such a thesis leads to another stalemate, or might even run into some contradictions. For example, it's Ideally Conceivable that God exists, and that he doesn't exist, therefore God both exists and doesn't exist given S5/Brouwer. Hence we should reject the CEP thesis as outlined above, to cut off the contradiction.

However, it's not really clear that it's Ideally Concievable that God exists. Chalmers accuses these examples of involving "Meta-Modal" or "Double Modality" Conceivablity claims.  To copypaste Chalmers since I am lazy:

I certainly can form no clear and distinct conception of such a god (like many, I was suspicious of the idea the moment I heard about it as a student), and continued rational reflection reveals all sorts of problems with the idea. One thing that rational reflection reveals is the conceivability of a world without a god. If such an intuition is accepted, it causes grave difficulty for the coherence of the idea of a necessarily existing god. (Ideal reflection allows us to use one modal intuition in evaluating others, of course.)

 The problematic issues here arise because of the double modality: we are conceiving not just of worlds "in themselves", but also of what is possible or necessary within those worlds. Conceiving of a god (an omnipotent, omniscient, and benevolent being, say) is arguably not too hard; but to conceive in addition that the being exists necessarily, we have to conceive that the space of possible worlds is such that this god exists in each of them, despite the conceivability of a godless world. 

So not only do we have to ideally conceive of a "God" with certain modal properties - hence "double modality", but rather for the possibility premise to actually work in the case of the CEP thesis, we need to conceive de re of a very specific notion of God across every possible world. Which obviously seems impossible, given the Ideal Conceivability of a Godless World (or refer back to the Less Than Perfect Necessary Beings, which would threaten God's aseity and hence are incompatible with his existence.)

Furthermore, consider this next asymmetry: The Possibility Premise in the Atheistic Argument only needs the Ideal Conceivability of a Godless World, while the Theistic Argument requires this sort of Meta-Modal de re Conceivability (One might question if it's even possible to conceive of such a God de re, as I've implied. It seems like this might only work de dicto, but a de dicto necessary God rather than de re is just not an option for the theist). Hence, the Conceivability claim in the Atheistic Argument is in-fact stronger. Not only in terms of the Thesis, but also in the lack of Brouwer or S5 - which the Theistic CEP Argument needs.

So, it seems like even Conceivability is not an option for the Theist. Let's move on to the next tool.

S5: Funnily enough, the Gratuituous Evil Scenario is just trivially possible under S5. We can acknowledge the following two possibility claims:
- Possibly, the Fawn's spatial location is changed by an extremely miniscule amount (I.e, it's metaphysically possible that the Fawn be 0.0000000000001 milimeters right to his current location in the actual world).
- Possibly, The Forest would catch on fire.

Given the S5 axiom -  ◊A→□◊A (or the Equivalence of the Accesibility Relation) - We can simply stipulate a world in which the Fawn's location changes by the measurement given above, and repeat the process how many times we want until say, it's trapped inside a tree. Clearly, metaphysically possible.

Now given the metaphysical possibility of the Forest catching on fire, and the S5 axiom, we now have a possible world in which the Fawn is trapped, and the Forest catches on fire. So the Gratuituous Evil Scenario is set-up with extremely weak, undeniably possible premises. One might object that the necessary possibility of each one does not mean there's a possible world in which they're compossible. For example, it's necessarily possible I'm thinking of a higher prime number than you, and vice versa. But that doesn't mean there's a possible world in which we're both thinking of a number higher than each other's. In the sense, the Gratuitious Evil Scenario doesn't have to be compossible, given the sort of external contradiction you can derive with God existing in that world (supposedly, atleast).  I think this is plausible to some extent, but this sort of avoids the argument. Which of these possibility premises is more plausible to the normal person?

- Possibly, the Fawn's spatial location is changed by an extremely miniscule amount (I.e, it's metaphysically possible that the Fawn be 0.0000000000001 milimeters right to his current location in the actual world).
- Possibly, The Forest would catch on fire.
- Possibily, God exists. 

I think the answer here is just obvious, so I'll just let the reader fill in the gaps here.

On the same note, the next tool, the Principle of Modal Continuity, is all that's needed for this argument to go through aswell. Arguably, S5 and this principle might be reliant on each other, but that's irrelevant for now. The point is, we can do the exact same thing with another plausible modal epistemic principle, which deals with modal continuity. 

Recombination principles run through the exact same scenario, with regards to the Compossibility Objection as outlined above. Again, we just have to look at which of these possibility claims is more plausible to see where the actual issue of Compossibility is, meaning the argument would plausibly still go through. I don't want to write too much here, so I just kept it brief for the previous 2 principles.

Another accounts in Modal Epistemology, for example Counterfactual accounts as pushed by Williamson, Rationalist Essentialist accounts, any Essentialist accounts, Powerist account, etc. all give us the same result. Again, I don't think it's hard to see why, and I am just too lazy to give a full explanation.

So, it seems very clear that the Atheist is just dominating here in terms of the Modal Arguments, so what's the better move? Of course, as I said above, it's most likely to just reject the contradiction between Gratuituous Evil and The Existence of God, there are a few ways to do this (which I might elaborate on in another post), but the two most plausible accounts are:

- Brian Davies' solution
- Ash'ari accounts of God and Morality

Once you sever the link between God and Gratuitious Evil, we can easily acknowledge that these modal problems of evil are just vacuous. We reject the first premise right off the bat. This sort of solution is extremely powerful, as not only does it kill Modal Problems of Evil, but quite literally any Problem of Evil (with an exception or two maybe). Again, I'd prefer to elaborate on these accounts on another post, as I think they have alot going for them, so I'll just end this off here.


Ty for reading!!1!1!1