Zachriel: Quite so, and that would be true whether there was an underlying physical cause for the pain or not.

MikeGene: But that is irrelevant.

This is not the first time you have claimed irrelevance concerning a comment of mine resulting in me having to backtrack through the thread. You introduced the notions of "reality" and "mental illness".

MikeGene: Yet it was real, far more real to me than anything that takes place in the lab, the media, or everyday life.

Zachriel: As people all experience pain, they can relate.

MikeGene: But what if they didn't have such experience (and we didn't have any test for it)? I'd bet they'd have a term for my description above "“ mental illness.

Hence, my comment that the pain would be "real" even if there was no known or no actual underlying cause. Hence, my comment concerning amputees who sometimes experience pain in missing limbs and the effectiveness in pain-killers reducing pain in the non-existent limb. These phantom pains are as "real" as any pain. And the pain felt by the mentally ill is just as "real", too"”even if no one is actually lighting them on fire.

Then he heads for any port in a storm, pretending that indeterminism will be a safe harbor. But, nothing about indeterminism precludes actual pain occurring, nor that more pain might occur than would be the case in a hypothetical deterministic universe. So indeterminism is irrelevant. What's relevant is whether causal laws, be they indeterministic or not, do anything to mitigate causal pain-producing processes. From the point of view of macro pain-causing events, indeterminism is a red herring, especially in the case of the guy who lambasts TP about microtubules and Penrose's quantum road to consciousness. And if God did ensure that no suffering would occur by exploiting physical indeterminism, then the world wouldn't in fact, er, be indeterministic. So this escape route is incoherent. And feel free to color me unsurprised.

Then we're told that even leaving the issue of indeterminism aside ('cos keiths knows it's irrelevant in the present context), there would be no need for a deterministic world to be painful, since God could make a deterministic but pain-free world. This is true. God could do that. But—and this is the important bit—–it would not be a world containing animals. So the possibility is irrelevant.

You see, animals need things like water and sunlight. No description of an alternative physics that would generate such things has been provided. But it turns out you need, oh, gosh, plate tectonics and a whole lot more, even just to get those two needs satisfied. In other words, sticking to the actual science relevant to animal life, there's no possibility of animals who can and do have sex, reproduce, and eat, not being able to drown in floods, nor to get killed in forest-fires, earthquakes, and tsunamis by virtue of causal necessity, nor for all animals to actually always avoid such mishaps given the causality of the world. If one drives one's car into a concrete wall, chances are you'll die. For the world not to be like that doesn't seem possible given the mathematical necessity attaching to the equations and laws governing energy and fast-moving human bodies, etc.

The objection, in short, imagines a Tom and Jerry cartoon magic world, not a physical one, hence it's irrelevant to the question of whether God could have made an animal kingdom with less suffering, since the concept of animal kingdom is only applicable to physical worlds. Now, if God 'violated' the causal laws occasionally, intelligible order would be preserved. And maybe God does so, and maybe God does so by exploiting the apparently probabilistic nature of the causal laws. But if God did it very frequently, intelligible physical order would be lost. But even so, the actual causal laws may well be designed and tuned to enhance animal safety, and I suspect the causal laws pertaining to pain are. That, indeed, is probably one of their primary functions. It's kinda obvious when you think about it.

So when one imagines a physical world containing animals, one is by logical implication imagining a world containing finite sentient physical life-forms, and thus conceiving of a corresponding mathematics and physics of spacetime, energy, mass, stars, minerals, nutrients, etc. And the impact on animal consciousness of the physical environment will be determined by either (materialist) physical or (interactionist) psycho-physical causal laws, on pain of mathematical and causal incoherence, or 'incoherence' for short.

As far as we can tell, the actual physical and psychophysical causal laws are necessary for diverse, long-lasting animal life, including higher life. An undrownable human is as logically incoherent a notion as a square circle. And that's because of the essential properties of water, humans, squares, and circles.

To summarize:

1. keiths' argument is incoherent, because it relies arguendo on the simultaneous truth and falsity of materialism.

2. keiths' argument depends on the assumption that deterministic worlds containing higher consciousnesses containing no suffering are possible, but he's neglected to justify that assumption.

Either way, keiths' argument fails.

Back to the drawing board.

In response to your addenda:

I've tried up to now to assess your argument on its own terms, but I should pause to point out that those terms are themselves incoherent. For example, you write:

So either he retains materialism, and holds God as blameworthy for creating conscious physical life-forms at all. Or he abandons materialism, and starts writing a book on how to produce a better design of mental-physical relations than the one God designed.

But if I retain materialism, that means I believe God doesn't exist, and so the issue of blame never arises for me. Your argument contradicts itself.

That alone is fatal to your argument, but let's nevertheless see how your argument fares if we set the contradiction aside.

Your initial claim was that if, on materialist principles, higher consciousness necessarily entails vulnerability to suffering, then the only way for God to prevent suffering is to refrain from bestowing higher consciousness on his creatures.

I raised the obvious objection that being capable of suffering does not mean that one must suffer.

In response, you now argue that materialism entails determinism, and that every instance of suffering is therefore inevitable:

It's not just vulnerability to pain that is necessitated given materialism's view of consciousness. It's all actual instances of pain-causing events. That's what materialist determinism entails. It entails the Titanic disaster, mass extinctions, the Holocaust, the Bush presidency, keiths' posts, etc.

First of all, you're assuming that materialism entails determinism, which is false. Setting that aside, you're assuming that any deterministic world must necessarily contain suffering. But why? Why couldn't God create a deterministic world without suffering? You've offered absolutely no justification for your assumption.

To summarize:

1. Your argument is incoherent, because it relies arguendo on the simultaneous truth and falsity of materialism.

2. Your argument depends on the assumption that deterministic worlds containing higher consciousnesses must inevitably contain suffering, but you've neglected to justify that assumption.

Either way, your argument fails.

Back to the drawing board.

It's not just vulnerability to pain that is necessitated given materialism's view of consciousness. It's all actual instances of pain-causing events. That's what materialist determinism entails. It entails the Titanic disaster, mass extinctions, the Holocaust, the Bush presidency, keiths' posts, etc. Given the laws of physics and initial conditions—which are finely-tuned for conscious life even to be possible—these events were inevitable on the materialist account. In short, there's no possible world containing the laws and conditions that produced the Earth's animal kingdom but which does not contain all the Earth's painful events, given a materialist analysis of the nature of painful events.

And no alternative laws and initial conditions are even on the table, let alone have been shown to be preferable, regardless of whether one takes a materialist or interactionist view of mental events.

Do you really not see the difference between

a) creating a world in which creatures are capable of suffering, but don't,

and

b) creating a world in which creatures are capable of suffering, and do?

The difference is in the last two words of each scenario.

…and such a world by definition is one whose processes are determined by physical laws…

I think keiths may not understand that all known cases of pain are inevitable if everything that happens is determined, as materialism holds to be the case. It's not just vulnerability to pain that is necessitated given materialism's view of consciousness. It's all actual instances of pain. That's what determinism entails.

So either he retains materialism, and holds God as blameworthy for creating conscious physical life-forms at all. Or he abandons materialism, and starts writing a book on how to produce a better design of mental-physical relations than the one God designed.

As a wise man once said, holding one's breath in such circumstances is a bad idea, unless perhaps you're suicidal.

What difference is there between creating beings capable of suffering with God preventing any suffering from manifesting, and banning suffering altogether? None.

Exactamentemundo.

But remember, Jean, this is keiths you're dealing with, and subtlety isn't his forte. Though I think I did try to make it clear and avoid unnecessary subtlety when I wrote:

Thus, the orthodox materialist position in the philosophy of mind is that, to use the modal jargon, there is no possible world in which there are naturally pain-immune higher animal species. Hence, on the materialist's own account, no designer can actualize such a world, for it is simply not a possible world at all.

Here's the irony. It's the materialist who is the one who is saying pain is necessitated by the nature of the physical world, and such a world by definition is one whose processes are determined by physical laws, as against frequent 'law-violating' (if you'll pardon the oxymoron) interventions by non-physical beings.

So what does keiths do when this is pointed out to him? He simply denies the necessity of the entailments that materialism itself says are necessary. It would be sad if it wasn't so funny.

Keiths can't grasp that if a designer chooses to create animals at all, then there has to be a lawfully ordered physical universe. And we know from the fine-tuning data that very few lawfully ordered physical universes out of the infinite number of possible such universes will contain higher animal life.

Keiths' position reduces to the following proposition: God is a wicked bastard for creating animals.

Alternatively, he could abandon materialist philosophy of mind and say that God could have designed the connections between bodily states and pain qualia (which materialism regards as being entailed by metaphysical necessity) so that there would be less pain. But all the relevant biological evidence suggests that animal life would have undergone far greater extinction under such circumstances. Just watch carnivores chasing their prey in the wild, then imagine the young prey thinking, "Nah, let the lion have me for dinner. The pain will be moderate and shortlived, and frankly I'm bored". But if keiths really can produce a better physical-mental design for animal life, then let's see it in all its important details. The truth, of course, is that neither keiths nor anyone else on the planet has any such supposedly superior design. Not even remotomatamente.

Once you understand what is logically implied by the concept of long-lasting but finite sentient physical life, the objections simply unravel even when they're not obviously incoherent. Which they obviously are when proffered by materialists.

Quite so, and that would be true whether there was an underlying physical cause for the pain or not.

But that is irrelevant.

You've missed the entire point.

Stunney's argument: If higher consciousness and the ability to suffer are two sides of the same coin, then to prevent suffering, God would have had to refrain from creating us altogether.

My rejoinder: Creating beings with the capacity for suffering does not mean that they must suffer. Stunney's argument is wrong.

I hope that clears it up for you.

The question is not why God would create beings capable of suffering, but rather why he would fail to prevent the suffering from being actualized.

What difference is there between creating beings capable of suffering with God preventing any suffering from manifesting, and banning suffering altogether? None. You just repackaged the old silly atheist argument "why is there evil?".