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    LoyalLoyalJusticeJustice
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    Suffering raises the problem of evil for each individual ... — Carmelics
    Home/Divine Attributes
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    Suffering raises the problem of evil for each individual in a way that mere argument cannot.

    Divine Attributes
    ?Rate how convincing each reason is below to see the overall strength.
    1 reason for
    2 reasons against

    Reasons For

    1 perspective
    Reason for
    ?
    • 1.Experiences of suffering crowd all else out of our consciousness, making us feel dismayed, vulnerable and incomplete.
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    • 2.Suffering makes our projects appear trivial and our ambitions unreachable.
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    • 3.The experience undermines our confidence in the essential goodness of the world and our hope that all will be well.
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    Reasons Against

    2 perspectives
    Reason against 1 of 2
    ?
    • 1.Philosophical argument, when properly internalized, can produce existential disturbance indistinguishable in force from experiential suffering—as Kierkegaard's 'indirect communication' demonstrates.
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    • 2.The distinction between propositional and experiential engagement with evil collapses when arguments are encountered at moments of personal vulnerability and existential investment.
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    • 3.If argument can raise the problem of evil with equivalent personal force, then suffering has no unique epistemic privilege over rigorous philosophical confrontation with the claim.
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    Reason against 2 of 2
    ?
    • 1.Stoic and Buddhist traditions demonstrate that suffering can be cognitively reframed such that it loses its capacity to undermine confidence in the world's goodness.
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    • 2.If suffering's challenge to theodicy depends on a particular unreflective phenomenological response, then the problem it raises is contingent on philosophical immaturity rather than intrinsic to the experience itself.
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    • 3.A theodicy that cannot address the reflective sufferer—who neither feels dismayed nor finds projects trivial—fails to engage the strongest version of the interlocutor it must persuade.
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    Related

    A theodicy that cannot address the reflective sufferer—who neither feels dismaye...Experiences of suffering crowd all else out of our consciousness, making us feel...If argument can raise the problem of evil with equivalent personal force, then s...If suffering's challenge to theodicy depends on a particular unreflective phenom...
    +5 moreShow less
    Philosophical argument, when properly internalized, can produce existential dist...Stoic and Buddhist traditions demonstrate that suffering can be cognitively refr...Suffering makes our projects appear trivial and our ambitions unreachable.The distinction between propositional and experiential engagement with evil coll...The experience undermines our confidence in the essential goodness of the world ...

    Similar

    God lacks the possibility of doing evil.79%If God exists, any moral evil and any natural evil must be necessary f...78%Yet evil is rife in the world.78%Moral evil owes its existence to our wills, not to God's will.77%

    Source

    AI-extracted2/3 agreementValid
    SEP: providence-divine
    soul-making theodicy passage
    View source passageHide passage
    A second important point concerns the way in which suffering is defeated in the process of soul-making. It is not simply that it is caught up in a larger process that is very good. That would be compatible with suffering merely being outweighed in the larger process, or with it serving only as a causal means to the achievement of virtue — neither of which is enough to secure its defeat. Rather, suffering is addressed in the process of soul-making and, as it were, refuted. To see how this occurs, we need to understand the nature of suffering. It is rarely a matter of sheer physical pain, and ev...
    Extraction notes

    Validity: The premises accurately reflect claims made in the passage and collectively support the conclusion by showing how suffering's experiential impact—overwhelming consciousness, undermining meaning, and eroding confidence in goodness—raises the problem of evil in a personally felt way that abstract argument cannot replicate.

    Confidence: High confidence; explicit claim in the text.

    Details

    Type
    claim
    Perspectives
    3 (1 for, 2 against)
    Edits
    1 edit