Saturday, April 12, 2014

The Badness of Death and the Meaning of Life (Updated - Series Index)



[Updated May 2017]

Albert Camus once said that suicide is the only truly serious philosophical question. Is life worth living or not? Should we fear our deaths or hasten them? Is life absurd or overflowing with meaning? These are questions to which I am repeatedly drawn. Consequently, I have written quite a few posts about them over the years. Below, you'll find a complete list, in reverse chronological order, along with links.

Enjoy.


1. Understanding the Experience Machine Argument
Is there something inferior about a life lived in virtual reality? Robert Nozick's experience machine argument suggests that there is. This post tries to unpack his claims, following Ben Bramble's article on the same topic.


2. Is Game-Playing the Highest Ideal of Human Existence?
A look at Bernard Suits's claim that a utopian world would be a world of games.
3. Does Death Make Us the Lucky Ones? Existential Luck and the Consolations of Atheism
The text of a talk I delivered. It examines Richard Dawkins' 'Death makes us the lucky ones' argument at some length. Incorporates insights from some of the other posts listed below.
4. Technological Unemployment and the Meaning of Life
The text of a keynote speech I gave discussing the end of work and its impact on the meaning of life.


 5. What is Utopia? The Meta-Utopian Argument
An examination of Robert Nozick's much-neglected argument for a meta-utopia. It's part of his classic book Anarchy, State and Utopia but frequently ignored in discussions of that book.


6. Who knows best? Personal Happiness and the Quest for a Good Life
Are we the best guides to our own happiness or should we defer to scientific experts? 

7. Is Death the Sculptor of Life or an Evil to be Vanquished?
My examination/critique of an interesting paper by Davide Sisto which argues that death is essential to shaping our identities.
8. Should we be grateful for death?
A look at Mikel Burley's paper "Atheism and the Gift of Life". The paper argues that death might be a fitting end to human life.


9. Should we experience existential gratitude?
We're all alive. Should we be happy about this state of affairs? This post analyses Michael Lacewing's attempt to argue that atheists can be grateful for the fact of their existence:
10. Podcast - Does life have meaning in a world without work?
A podcast interview I did with Jon Perry and Ted Kupper from Review the Future. Looks at meaning in a postwork future:

11. Understanding Nihilism: What if nothing matters?
An examination of Guy Kahane's contribution to the debate about nihilism. Does pretty much what you might expect given the title:



12. The Philosophy of Games and the Postwork Utopia
If we no longer have to work for a living what will we do? How will we find meaning? This post looks at Bernard Suits's argument that the life of games is the best life of all:



13. Is God the Source of Meaning in Life?
My two-part analysis of Dan Linford and Jason Megill's attempt to argue that God is not the source of meaning in life:



14. God, Immortality and the Futility of Life
William Lane Craig argues that God guarantees meaning in life by ensuring that there is ultimate justice. Toby Betenson turns this argument on its head, claiming that if it is true it robs us all of meaning:



15. Human Life and the Quest for Immortality
Everlasting life has been a central goal for many human cultures. But would an immortal life be valuable? Samuel Scheffler argues that it wouldn't because much of what we take to be valuable about our lives is conditioned on the fact that we will not live forever. I take a look at what he has to say:


16. Longer Lives and the Alleged Tedium of Immortality
Bernard Williams famously argued that an immortal life would be tedious. In this post I look at Samuel Scheffler's critique of Williams. Although he thinks Williams gets it wrong in certain crucial respects, Scheffler nonetheless believes that Williams says something important about the human condition:

17. Meaning, Value and the Collective Afterlife
Does the fact that others will live on after we die contribute to the meaning of our lives? Samuel Scheffler argues that it does and this post examines his argument.

18. Dawkins and the 'We are Going to Die' Argument
In his book Unweaving the Rainbow, Richard Dawkins states that 'We are going to die and that makes us the lucky ones'. In this post, I analyse Dawkins's argument (note: my views on this have since changed; I now think there may be a way to render Dawkins's arguments more credible):
19. Is a longer life a happier life? Stoicism and Happiness
This post looks at the Stoic claim that "“a life, once happy, does not become any happier by lasting longer”:
20. The Achievementist view of Meaning in Life
An analysis of Steven Luper's "achievementist" account of meaning in life. Although I find the account intriguing, I'm not entirely convinced.
21. William Lane Craig and the "Nothing But" Argument
This post critiques William Lane Craig's argument that, because humans are nothing but collections of molecules, their lives are devoid of moral value. Although ostensibly framed as a contribution to the debate on morality and religion, the argument also has significance for those who are interested in the meaning of life.


22. Scientific Optimism, Techno-utopianism and the Meaning of Life
This post looks at an argument from Dan Weijers. The argument claims that if we combine naturalism with a degree of techno-utopianism we arrive a robust account of meaning in life. This contrasts quite dramatically with Craig's belief that naturalism entails the end of meaning.
23. Are we Cosmically Significant?
If you look up at the stars at night, it's easy to become overawed at the vastness of our universe. It is so mind-bogglingly large and we are so small. Does this fact make our lives less significant? Guy Kahane argues that it doesn't. This post analyses his argument. 
24. Must we Pursue Good Causes to Have Meaningful Lives?
Philosopher Aaron Smuts defends the Good Cause Account (GCA) of meaning in life. According to this account, our lives are meaningful in virtue of and in proportion to the amount of objective good for which they are causally responsible. These two posts cover his defence of the GCA.


25. Revisiting Nagel on the Absurdity of Life
Thomas Nagel has probably written the most famous paper on the absurdity of life. Many people refer to this paper for knockdown critiques of "bad" arguments for the absurdity of life, while ignoring the fact that Nagel himself thinks that life is absurd. In this two-part series I revisit Nagel's famous paper. I suggest that some of his knockdown critiques are not-so good, and I outline Nagel's own defence of the absurdity of life.


26. Should we Thanatise our Desires?
The ancient philosophy of Epicureanism has long fascinated me. Epicureans developed some interesting arguments about our fear of death and developed a general philosophy of life. One key element of this philosophy was that we should live in a way that is compatible with our eventual deaths. One way to do this was to thanatise our desires, i.e. render them immune to being thwarted or unfulfilled by death. This post asks whether this is sensible advice.


27. The Lucretian Symmetry Argument
Lucretius was a follower of Epicureanism. In one of the passages from his work De Rerum Natura, he defends something that has become known as the symmetry argument. This argument claims that death is not bad for us because it is like the period of non-existence before our births. In other words, it claims that pre-natal non-being is symmetrical to post-mortem non-being. Many philosophers dispute this claim of symmetry. In these two posts, I look at some recent papers on this famous argument.
28. Would Immortality be Desirable?
If we assume that death is bad, does it follow that immortality is desirable? Maybe not. Bernard Williams's famous paper - "The Makropulos Case: Reflections on the Tedium of Immortality" famously makes this case. In these three posts, I look at Aaron Smuts updated defence of this view. Smuts rejects Williams's argument, as well of the arguments of others, and introduces a novel argument against the desirability of immortality.
29. Is Death Bad or Just Less Good?
This is another series of posts about Epicureanism. In addition to the Lucretian symmetry argument, there was another famous Epicurean argument against the badness of death. That argument came from Epicurus himself and claimed that death was nothing to us because it was an experiential blank. In these four posts, I look at Aaron Smuts's defence of this Epicurean argument.
30. Theism and the Meaning of Life
The links between religion and the meaning of life are long-standing. For many religious believers, it is impossible to imagine a meaningful life in a Godless universe. One such believer is William Lane Craig. These two posts look at Gianluca Di Muzio's critique of Craig's view.
31. Harman on Benatar's Better Never to Have Been
Anti-natalism is arguably the most extreme position one can take on the value of life and death. Anti-natalists believe that coming into existence is a great harm, and consequently we have duty not to bring anyone into being. The most famous recent defence of anti-natalism is David Benatar's book Better Never to Have Been (Oxford: OUP, 2006). In these three posts, I look at Benatar's arguments and Elizabeth Harman's critiques thereof:


32. Podcasts on Meaning in Life
Back when I used to do podcasts, I did two episodes on meaning in life. One looking at a debate between Thomas Nagel and William Lane Craig on the absurdity of life. The other looking at the possibility of living a transcendent life without God.


33. Wielenberg on the Meaning of Life
This is a frustratingly incomplete series on Erik Wielenberg's arguments about the meaning of life. In my defence, it was my earliest foray into the topic, and I've covered many similar arguments since. One for the die-hards only I suspect:


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Friday, April 11, 2014

The Objective and Anthropocentric Ideals of Enhancement



Nicholas Agar has written several books about the ethics of human enhancement. In his latest, Truly Human Enhancement, he tries to stake out an interesting middle ground in the enhancement debate. Unlike the bioconservatives, Agar is not opposed to the very notion of enhancing human capacities. On the contrary, he is broadly in favour it. But unlike the radical transhumanists, he does not embrace all forms of enhancement.

The centrepiece of his argument is the distinction between radical forms of enhancement — which would push us well beyond what is normal or possible for human beings — and modest forms of enhancement — which work within the extremes of human experience. Agar argues that in seeking radical forms of enhancement, we risk losing our entire evaluative framework, i.e. the framework that tells us what is good or bad for beings like us. That is something we should think twice about doing.

I'm currently working my way through Agar's book, and I thought it might be worth sharing some of my reflections on it as I do. This is something I did a few years back when reading his previous book, Humanity's End?. In my reflections, I'm going to focus specifically on chapters 2, 3 and 4 of the book. I will write these reflections as I read the chapters. This means I will be writing from a position of ignorance: I won't know exactly where the argument is going in the next chapter when I write. I think this can make for a more interesting experience from both a writer's and a reader's perspective.

Anyway, I'll kick things off today by looking at chapter 2. In this chapter, Agar introduces some important conceptual distinctions, ones he promises to put to use in the arguments in later chapters. This means the chapter is light on arguments and heavy on definitional line-drawing. But that's okay.

The main thrust of the chapter is that there is a significant difference between two ideals of enhancement: (i) the objective ideal and (ii) the anthropocentric ideal. The former is embraced by transhumanists like Ray Kurzweil and Max More; the latter is something Agar himself embraces. To understand the distinction, we first need to look at the definition of enhancement itself, and the at the concept of prudential value. Let's do that now.


1. What is enhancement?
The definition of enhancement can be contentious. This is something I've covered in my own published work. Some people equate enhancement with "improvement", but that equation tends to stack the deck against the opponents of enhancement. After all, who could object to improving human beings? If we want to engage with the debate in a more meaningful and substantive way, we can't simply beg the question against the opponents of enhancement like this.

For this reason, Agar tries to adopt a value-neutral definition of enhancement:

Human Enhancement: Is the use of technology - usually biotechnology - to move our capacities beyond the range of what is normal for human beings.

This definition does two important things. First, it focuses our attention on our "capacities", whatever they may be. This is important because, as we'll see below, capacities and their connection to certain goods, is an essential part of Agar's conceptual framework. Second, it defines enhancement in relation to human norms or averages, not moral norms or values. This is important because it is what renders Agar's definition value-free.

Still, as Agar himself seems to note (I say "seems" because he doesn't make this connection explicit), there is something oddly over-inclusive about this definition. If it really were the case that pushing human capacities beyond the normal range sufficed to count as enhancement, then we would have some pretty weird candidates for potential human enhancement technologies. For example, it would seem to imply that a drug that allowed us to gain massive amounts of weight -- well beyond the normal human range of weight gain -- would count as an enhancing drug. Surely that can't be right?

For this reason, Agar seems to endorse the approach of Nick Bostrom, which is to assert that there are certain kinds of human capacity that are "eligible" candidates for enhancement (e.g. intelligence, beauty, height, stamina) and certain others that are not (e.g. the capacity to gain weight). The problem is that this re-introduces value-laden assumptions. Ah well. Definitions are tough sometimes.


2. Prudential Value: Between Intrinsic and Instrumental Value
Agar's argument is about the prudential value of enhancement. That is to say: the value of being enhanced from an individual's perspective. The question he asks is: is enhancement good for me? His argument is not about the permissibility or moral value of enhancement. If we focus on enhancement from those perspectives — for example, if we were to focus on enhancement from the perspective of the public good — different issues and arguments would arise.

As Agar notes, there are two aspects to prudential value:

Instrumental Value: Something is instrumentally prudentially valuable if it brings about, or causes to come into being, other things that are good for the individual.
Intrinsic Value: Something is intrinsically prudentially valuable if it is good for the individual in and of itself, not because it brings about something else.

To add more complexity to the distinction, Agar also introduces the concepts of external and internal goods. This is something he derives from the work of Alasdair MacIntyre, who explains the difference with an analogy to the game of chess.

MacIntyre says that playing chess can produce certain external goods. For example, if I am a successful chess player, I might be able to win prize money at chess tournaments. The prize money would be an external good: a causal product of my success at chess. But there are other goods that are internal to the game itself. In playing the game, I experience the good of, say, strategic planning, careful rational thought about endgame and opening, and so forth. These goods are instantiated by the process of playing chess. They are not mere causal products of it.

Why is this important? Well, because Agar urges us to evaluate our human capacities in terms of both their instrumental value (i.e. their tendency to produce external goods) and their intrinsic value (i.e. their tendency to help us instantiate internal goods). This is where the contrast between the objective and anthropocentric ideals of enhancement becomes important.

I have one comment about Agar's view of capacities and goods before proceeding to discuss the differences between the objective and anthropocentric ideals. I think the relationship between our capacities and external goods is tolerably clear. Agar is simply saying that our capacities are instrumentally valuable when they help us to bring about certain external goods (e.g. greater wealth, happiness, artwork, scientific discoveries and so forth). The relationship between capacities and internal goods is less clear. Agar says "we assign intrinsic value to a capacity according to the internal goods it yields", but I wonder what he means by "yields" here. It can't be (can it?) that our capacities themselves instantiate internal goods? Rather, it would seem to be that our capacities allow us to do things, engage in certain activities (like chess playing), that instantiate certain internal goods. At least, that's how I understand the relationship.


3. The Objective Ideal of Enhancement
It is possible to measure objective degrees of enhancement. For example, if we take a capacity like stamina or intelligence, we can measure the amount of improvement in those capacities by adopting widely used metrics (e.g. bleep tests and IQ tests). We might quibble with some of those metrics, but it is still at least possible to measure objective rates of improvement along them. Other capacities or attributes might be more difficult to measure objectively (e.g. can we measure capacity for moral insight when the concept of morality is so contested?), but even in those cases it might be possible to come up with an objective measurement. It will just be a highly contentious one.

These contentions need not concern us here. All that matters is that there is some possibility of objective measurement. Provided that there is, we can understand the objective ideal of enhancement. This ideal has a very straightforward view of the relationship between human enhancement and prudential value. It says that as we increase the objective degree of enhancement (i.e. as we go up the scale of intelligence, moral insight, stamina, beauty, lifespan etc.), so too do we go up the scale of prudential value. There may be diminishing rates of marginal return — e.g. the first 400 years of added lifespan might count for more than the second 400 — but, and this is the critical point, there is never a negative relationship between the degree of enhancement and the degree of prudential value. This is illustrated in the diagram below.




Agar argues that many in the transhumanist community embrace the objective ideal of enhancement. They think that the more enhanced we become, the more prudential value we will have. He cites Ray Kurzweil and Max More as two exemplars of this attitude. His suggestion is that this comes from an instrumentalist approach to the value of our capacities; a belief that they matter because they help us to realise certain external goods; not because they instantiate intrinsic goods.


4. The Anthropocentric Ideal of Enhancement
This sets up the contrast with the anthropocentric ideal. This ideal has a different view of the relationship between enhancement and prudential value. Instead of it being the case that prudential value always increases in direct relation to increases in objective degrees of enhancement, it is sometimes the case that the relationship reverses. For example, an extra 100 IQ points might increase the degree of prudential value, but an extra 500 might actually decrease it. This idea is illustrated in the diagram below.



Agar's suggestion is that the anthropocentric ideal allows for this kind of relationship because it includes intrinsic value and internal goods in its assessment of prudential value. The anthropocentric ideal suggests that there are certain things that are good for us now (as human beings) that might be lost if we push the objective degree of enhancement too far. These are goods that are internal to some of our current types of activity.

Agar is adamant that the anthropocentric and objective ideals are not alternatives to one another. That is to say: it is not the case that one of those ideals is right and one is wrong. They are both simply different ways of looking at enhancement and measuring its value. Furthermore, the anthropocentric ideal doesn't necessarily assume that all forms of enhancement reach a point of decline. This is something that needs to be assessed on a case by case basis.

Despite these admonitions, it seems clear that his goal is to argue that the anthropocentric ideal is too often neglected by proponents of enhancement; and to argue that the negative relationship does arise in some important cases. The purpose of chapters 3 and 4 is to flesh out these arguments.

I'm interested in seeing where all of this goes. I appreciate the conceptual framework Agar is building, but I'm concerned about his use of the external/internal goods distinction and how it maps onto our understanding of human capacities. It seems to me like an objective ideal of enhancement (one that accepts the positive relationship) need not deny or obscure internal goods. But that depends on how exactly we understand the relationship between capacities and internal goods. I'll hold off on any judgment until I've read the subsequent chapters.
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Wednesday, April 9, 2014

Equality, Fairness and the Threat of Algocracy: Should we embrace automated predictive data-mining?



I’ve looked at data-mining and predictive analytics before on this blog. As you know, there are many concerns about this type of technology and the increasing role it plays in our lives. Thus, for example, people are concerned about the oftentimes hidden way in which our data is collected prior to being “mined”. And they are concerned about how it is used by governments and corporations to guide their decision-making processes. Will we be unfairly targetted by the data-mining algorithms? Will they exercise too much control over socially important decision-making processes? I’ve reviewed some of these concerns before.

Today, I want to switch tack and, instead of focusing on the moral and political concerns with these technologies, I want to look at a moral and political argument in their favour. The argument comes from Tal Zarsky. It claims that the increasing use of automated predictive analytics should be welcomed because it can help to the eliminate racial and ethnic biases that permeate our social decision-making processes. It also argues that resistance to this technology could be attributable to a fear amongst the majority that they will lose their comfortable and privileged position within society.

This strikes me as an interesting and provocative argument. I want to give it a fair hearing in this post. To do this, I’ll break my discussion down into three subsections. First, I’ll clarify the nature of the technology under debate. Second, I’ll outline Zarsky’s argument. Third, I’ll look at some potential problems with this argument.

The discussion is based on two articles from Zarsky, which you can find here and here.


1. What exactly are we talking about?

Zarsky’s argument is about the way in which data-mining algorithms can be used to make predictions about individual behaviour. The argument operates in a world dominated by jargon like “data-mining”, “big data”, “predictive analytics” and so forth. This jargon is often ill-defined and poorly understood. Fortunately, Zarsky takes the time out to define some of the key concepts and to specify exactly what his argument is about.

The first key concept is that of “data-mining” which Zarsky defines in the following manner:

Data-Mining: The non-trivial process of identifying valid, novel, potentially useful and ultimately understandable patterns in data.

There is a sense in which we all engage in a degree of data-mining, so defined. The difference nowadays comes from the fact that we are living in the era of “big data”, in which vast datasets are available, and which cannot be mined without algorithmic assistance.

As Zarsky notes, there are several different kinds of data-mining. At a first pass, there is a distinction between descriptive and predictive data-mining. The former is used simply to highlight and explain the patterns in existing datasets. For example, data-mining algorithms could be used to identify significant patterns in experimental data, which can in turn be used to confirm or challenge scientific theories. Predictive data-mining is, by way of contrast, used to make predictions about future events on the basis of historical datasets. Classic examples might be the mining of phone records and internet activity to predict who is likely to carry out a terrorist attack, or the mining of historical purchasing decisions to predict future purchasing decisions. It is the predictive kind of data-mining that interests Zarsky (I call this, along with others, “predictive analytics” as it is about analysing datasets to make predictions about the future).

In addition to this, there is a distinction between two different kinds of data “searches”:

Subject-based searches: Search datasets for known/predetermined patterns (typically relating to specific people or events).
Pattern-based searches: Search datasets for unknown/not predetermined patterns.

Zarsky’s argument is concerned with pattern-based searches. These are interesting insofar as they grant a greater degree of “autonomy” to the algorithms sorting through the data. In the case of pattern-based searches, the algorithms find the patterns that human analysts and governmental agents might be interested in; they tell the humans what to look out for.

All of which brings us to the thorny issue of human involvement. Again, as Zarsky notes, humans can be more or less involved in the data-mining process. At present, they are still quite heavily involved, constructing datasets to be mined and defining (broadly) the parameters within which the algorithms work. Furthermore, it is typically the case that humans review the outputs of the algorithms and decide what to do with them. Indeed, in the European Union, this is a legal requirement. Article 15 of Directive 95/46/EC requires human review of any automated data-processing that could have a substantial impact on an individual’s life.

There are, however, exceptions to this requirement and it is certainly technically feasible to create systems that reduce or eliminate human input. Part of the reason for this comes from the existence of two different styles of data-mining process:

Interpretable Processes: This refers to any data-mining process which is based on factors and rationales that can be reduced to human language explanations. In other words, processes which are interpretable and understandable by human beings.
Non-interpretable Processes: This refers to any data-mining process which is not based on factors or rationales that can be reduced to human language explanations. In other words, processes which are not interpretable and understandable by human beings.

The former set of processes allow for significant human involvement, both in terms of setting out the rationales and factors that will be used to guide the data-mining, and in terms of explaining those rationales and factors to a wider audience. The latter set of processes reduce, and may ultimately eliminate, human involvement. This is because in these cases the software makes its decision based on thousands (maybe hundreds of thousands) of variables which are themselves learned through the data analysis process, i.e. they are not set down in advance by human programmers.

In his writings, Zarsky sometimes suggests that interpretable processes are preferable, at least from a transparency perspective. That said, in order for his fairness and equality argument to work, it’s not clear that interpretable processes are required. Indeed, as we are about to see, minimising the ability of humans to interfere with the process seems to be the motivation for that argument. I return to this issue later. For the time being, let’s just look at the argument itself.


2. The Equality and Fairness Argument
To get off the ground, Zarsky’s argument demands that we make an assumption. We must assume that predictive analytics can, as a matter of fact, be useful, i.e. that it can successfully identify likely terrorist suspects, tax evaders, violent criminals, or whatever. If it can’t do that, then there’s really no point in discussing it.

Furthermore, when assessing the merits of predictive analytics we must take care not to consider it in isolation from its alternatives. In other words, we can’t simply focus on the merits and demerits of predictive analytics by itself, without also considering the merits and demerits of policies that are likely to be used in its stead. This is an important point. Governments have legitimate aims in trying to reduce thinks like terrorism, tax evasion and violent crimes. If they are not using predictive analytics to accomplish those aims, they’ll be using something else. The comparators must be factored into the argument. If it turns out that predictive analytics is comparatively better than its alternatives, then it may be more desirable than we think.

But that simply raises the question: what are the comparators? In his most detailed discussion, Zarsky identifies five alternatives. For present purposes, I’m going to simplify and just talk about one: any system in which humans decide who gets targetted. This could actually cover a wide variety of different policies; all that matters is that they share this one feature. This is to be contrasted with an automated system that runs entirely on the basis of predictive data-mining algorithms.

With all this in mind, we can proceed to the argument proper. The argument works from a simple motivating premise: it is morally and politically better if our social decision-making processes do not arbitrarily and unfairly target particular groups of people. Consider the profiling debate in relation to anti-terrorism and crime-prevention. One major concern with profiling is that it is used to arbitrarily target and discriminate against certain racial and ethnic minorities. That is something that we could do without. If people are going to be targetted by such measures, they need to be targetted on legitimate grounds (i.e because they are genuinely more likely to be terrorist or to commit crimes).

Working from that motivating premise, Zarsky then adds the comparative claim that automated predictive analytics will do a better job of eliminating arbitrary prejudices and biases from the process. That gives us the following argument:


  • (1) It is better, ceteris paribus, if our social decision-making processes do not arbitrarily and unfairly target particular groups of people.
  • (2) Social decision-making processes that are guided by automated predictive analytics are less likely to do this than processes that are guided by human beings.
  • (3) Therefore, it would be better, ceteris paribus, to have social decision-making processes that are guided by automated predictive analytics.


Let’s probe premise (2) in a little more depth. Why exactly is this likely to be true? To back it up, Zarsky delves into the literature on implicit and unconscious biases. Those who are familiar with this literature will know that a variety of experiments in social psychology reveal that even when decision-makers don’t think they are being racially or ethnically prejudiced, they often are. This is because they subconsciously and implicitly associate people from certain racial and ethnic backgrounds with other negative traits. If you like, you can perform an implicit association test (IAT) on yourself to see whether you exhibit such biases.

Zarsky’s point is simply that the algorithms at the heart of predictive analytical programmes will not be susceptible to the same kinds of hidden bias, especially if they are automated and the capacity of human beings to override them is limited. As he himself puts it:

[A]utomation introduces a surprising benefit. By limiting the role of human discretion and intuition and relying upon computer-driven decisions this process protects minorities and other weaker groups. 
(Zarsky, 2012, pg. 35)

Zarsky builds upon this by suggesting that one of the sources of opposition to automated, algorithm-based decision-making could be the privileged majorities who benefit from the current system. They may actually fear the indiscriminate nature of the automated process. If the process is guided by a human, then the majorities can appeal to human prejudices in order to secure more favourable, less intrusive outcomes. If the process is guided by a computer, they won’t be able to do this. Consequently, some of the burden of enforcement and prevention mechanisms will be shifted onto them, and away from the minorities who currently bear their brunt.


3. Problems and Conclusions
That’s the argument in outline form. The next question is whether it is persuasive. That’s a difficult question to answer in the space of a blog post like this, and it is one I am still pondering. Nevertheless, there are a few obvious, general, points of criticism.

The first is that premise (2) might actually be wrong. It may be that predictive analytics is just as biased and prejudiced as human decision-making. This could arise for any number of reasons, some of which Zarsky acknowledges. For example, the datasets that are fed into the algorithms could themselves be the products of biased human policies on data collection. Likewise, the sorting algorithms might have built in biases that we can’t fully understand or protect against. This is something that could be exacerbated if the whole process is non-interpretable.

All of which brings me to another obvious point of criticism. The “ceteris paribus” clause in the first premise is significant. While it is indeed true that — all else being equal — we prefer to have unbiased and unprejudiced decision-making systems, all else may not be equal here. Elsewhere on this blog, I have outlined something I call the “threat of algocracy”. This is a threat to the legitimacy of our social decision-making processes that is posed by the incomprehensibility, non-interpretability and opacity of certain kinds of algorithmic control. The threat is important because, according to most theories of procedural justice, any public procedure that issues coercive judgments should be understandable by those who are affected by it. The problem is that this may not be the case if we hand control over to the automated processes recommended by Zarsky.

He himself acknowledges this point by highlighting how we prefer to have human decision-makers because at least we can engage with them at a human level of rational thought and argumentation: we can identify their assumptions and spot their faulty logic (if indeed it is faulty). But Zarsky has a response to this worry. He can fall back on the desirability of interpretable predictive analytics. In other words, he can argue that we can have the best of both worlds: unbiased decision-making, coupled with human comprehensibility. All we have to do is make sure that the rationales and factors underlying the automated predictive algorithms can be explained to human beings.

That might be a satisfactory solution, but I’m not entirely convinced. One reason for this is that I think having interpretable processes might re-open the door to the kinds of biased human decision-making that originally motivated Zarsky’s argument. The more humans can understand and shape the process, the more scope there is for their unconscious biases to affect its outputs. So perhaps the lack of bias and the degree of comprehensibility are in tension with one another. Perhaps additional solutions are needed to get the best of both worlds (e.g. moral enhancement)?

I think that question is a nice point on which to end.
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Tuesday, April 8, 2014

The Achievementist View of Meaning in Life



What makes for a meaningful life? There are many proposed answers to this question. Some argue that God is necessary for a meaningful life; some argue that objectively fulfilling projects are necessary; some argue that the satisfaction of desires is enough; and some argue that nothing could make our lives meaningful. In today’s post I want to take a look at Steven Luper’s answer to that question.

Luper defends something he calls the “Achievementist View” of meaning in life. According to this, meaning is dependent upon our achieving certain goals. This is a highly subjectivist theory of meaning, and it distinguishes meaning from other related properties such as “purpose” and “well-being”. It also highlights the connections between meaning and seemingly unrelated properties like “identity”.

In what follows, I outline the main constituents of Luper’s theory. I generally refrain from overly-critical comments. I’m primarily interested in just setting out the theory and eliciting feedback from readers, not in critiquing it. This is because I find the theory both perplexing and intriguing. I find it perplexing because it seems to fall foul of several obvious objections. But I’m nevertheless intrigued because Luper is well aware of these objections, and brushes them aside with conviction.

Consequently, I’m left wondering whether there isn’t more to the theory than first meets the eye. In particular, I’m left wondering whether it doesn’t actually accurately capture what a meaningful life looks like from the “inside”, i.e. from the perspective of the one who lives it. I should add that I’m also interested in the theory because it suggests that certain forms of technological assistance can actually undermine the meaningfulness of our lives.

I base this discussion on Luper’s contribution to the Cambridge Companion to Life and Death.


1. A Quick Overview of the Achievementist View
The Achievementist View, at least as Luper defines it, is based on two key ideas:

The Whole Life Thesis: What bears meaning is the entirety of one’s life, not just particular parts or aspects thereof.
The Achievementist Thesis: What confers meaning on the whole of one’s life is whether one has achieved one’s aims.

The first of these is interesting insofar as it is denied by others. Some think that meaning arises out of particular moments or temporal slices of one’s life. Some think a combination of both is needed. For example, Thaddeus Metz, in his recent book about the meaning of life, argues that both the whole life and particular parts thereof constitute its meaningfulness. Interesting though this debate is, it need not concern us greatly here (except at the end when we look at some arguments for the absurdity of life).

It is the second thesis that is the important one. It claims that in order to have meaning, one must have a life plan: a set of coherent goals or ends that one wishes to achieve. It is only if those ends are achieved that one lives a meaningful life. Luper is adamant that this is very different from a desire-fulfillment theory of meaning. One can have one’s desires fulfilled without actually achieving anything.

Consider a simple example. One of my desires might be to laugh and have a good time. Going to see the stand-up comedian Louis CK could enable me to do both. But this wouldn’t mean that I had achieved those desires. Quite the contrary in fact. It is the other party — Louis CK in this instance — that is doing all the desire-fulfilling work for me. I am simply a passive recipient and beneficiary of his achievements.

The achievementist rejects this passive model. In order to achieve one’s ends, some active agency-like involvement in the task is required. Thus, for example, suppose one of my aims is to become completely self-sufficient in the production and maintenance of my own food supply. So I go out and buy the necessary animals and plant seeds. I dig up my land, plant the seeds, house and feed the animals, look after them through good times and bad. At the end of this process I can be said to have achieved something. If I simply hire another person to do all the work, I’ll have achieved nothing.

I find this view particularly interesting in light of the (increasing) role of technology in aiding our desire-fulfillment. At the moment this role is still limited. A satellite navigation system will help me to get to my destination, but for the time being I’m still doing the driving. Thus, for the time being I’m still playing an active part in achieving my goal of getting to that place. But what if technology completely takes over? What if we each have a team of robot assistants to cater to our every desire? Will that rob us of meaning in life? If the achievementist view is to be believed, it would. Perhaps this is something we should guard against.


2. Achievements and Purposes
The concept of an achievement is closely-related to that of a purpose. A purpose represents some object or end of one’s life; an achievement is an object or end that confers meaning. Nevertheless, purposes are distinct from achievements.

One major reason for this is that “purpose” has a faintly “externalist” or “objectivist” ring to it. In other words, people often talk about life’s purpose when they mean to refer to something that is external to and larger than the agent him or herself. Luper rejects any attempt to collapse the achievementist view into such an objectivist view. For him, the purposes at the heart of the achievementist view are dependent on self-directed goals.

This raises an obvious issue: can anyone (e.g. God) dictate to you what makes your life meaningful? In other words, can another agent set goals for you and can your achievement of those goals confer meaning on your life? Luper’s answer is a nuanced (and I presume religiously agnostic) one. He rejects Kurt Baier’s view that purposes conferred by God turn us into mere instruments or tools in His own life plan. Instead, Luper thinks that we could, meaningfully, form part of another being’s life plan. But this would require joint planning. Our achievements could involve work with a community of like-minded individuals. Nevertheless, we are always, on Luper’s view, gatekeepers of our own meaning. We must always play an active role in deciding what the goals of our lives will be.


3. Meaning and Identity
There is also a close and important relationship between meaning and identity, but not in the sense that “identity” is typically debated by philosophers. As it is typically debated by philosophers, the concept of identity is understood in terms of numerical identity, i.e. in terms of that set of properties (if any) that makes it true to say that “I” am the same person now as I was five years ago. This conception of identity has no direct bearing on the issue of meaning, except in the limited sense that existence over time might be important to our achievements.

There is, however, another concept of identity which has an important bearing on the issue of meaning. To avoid confusion, Luper introduces a new label for this concept, that of critical identity. This the set of personal properties that makes our lives worth living. More precisely, it is the set of critical features, i.e. personal properties, the loss of which would make us indifferent to our continued survival.

Luper breaks this concept of critical identity down into several parts. In particular, he highlights the notion of a conative identity, an identity we take on that gives purpose and direction to our lives (as the achievementist view demands). The conative identity is essential for meaning, but it is not the only thing that is critical. The cultivation of a moral identity might also be critical, so Luper leaves the door open to possibilities like these in his account of critical identity.

The important thing for Luper is that the critical identity is not something we are born with, nor is it something that we necessarily acquire. It is something that we need time to develop and must choose to take on. Hence it is possible, on his account, to live a completely directionless and purposeless life, one utterly devoid of meaning or critical identity. Furthermore, it is possible on his account for “us” — in the sense of our numerically identical selves — to survive the loss of our critical identities. But that loss will, as far as Luper’s concerned, be phenomenologically equivalent to our deaths: once we lose our critical identities, we lose the will to live.


4. Meaning and Welfare
There is often felt to be a close connection between meaning and well-being. Indeed, some theorists think that meaning reduces to well-being. Luper encourages us to resist this reduction. He argues instead that there are important differences between meaning and well-being.

He illustrates this by referring to one of the main (but not sole) constituents of our well-being, namely: our happiness. This is often interpreted in terms of our conscious pleasure or amusement. It is one of the things that is intrinsically good for us. There could, of course, be many other things that are intrinsically good for us. And our well-being will be determined by our share of this total set of intrinsically good (for us) things. But we’ll focus on the happiness example for now because everyone seems to agree that, even if there are other intrinsic goods, happiness must be part of the picture.

Luper accepts that achievements and intrinsic goods often go hand-in-hand, hence why it is so tempting to reduce meaning to welfare. But there are at least two important distinctions. The first is that meaning is not summative in the same way as welfare. Generally speaking, and ceteris paribus, it is better to have more welfare than less. In other words, the more happy experiences you can add to your life, then the more welfare that life will be said to have had. But an achievement confers meaning on life even if the individual whose life hangs it is had one merely one goal to be achieved. Quantity does not matter.

The other important distinction has to do with the obvious potential for meaning and welfare to diverge. For example, it is possible, on Luper’s account, to live a life full of well-being and happiness, and yet devoid of achievements. Luper thinks we should try to avoid such a life. He argues, using Nozick’s experience machine as his starting point, that meaning is a greater good than happiness. He also argues that although a certain minimum degree of happiness might be needed in order to make life worth living, we are better off if we aim for happiness indirectly through the pursuit of our goals. For it is often in achieving our aims that we experience the greatest satisfaction.

We must also accept two unwelcome implications of the achievementist view. The first is that it allows for a meaningful life to be a very unhappy one (as mentioned above). The second is that it allows for a meaningful life to be a partially evil one. This second implication in interesting. It follows because on the achievementist view all that matters is the achievement of our self-directed goals. These goals could include ones that involve the shirking of our moral responsibilities and duties. Luper illustrates by reference to the life of Paul Gaguin, a famous artist who shirked his responsibilities to his wife and family by moving to Tahiti to paint.


5. Meaning and Absurdity
A common sticking point in the debate about meaning in life is the belief that nothing could provide us with meaning; that our lives are fundamentally absurd. Luper identifies two separate strands of argument underlying the absurdist case and claims that the achievementist can resist both.

The first argument is the argument from fragility or precariousness. This stems from the observation that our lives are far too fragile to sustain meaning. We can have as many goals or projects as we life, but they can all be snuffed out in an instant. Luper gives the poignant example of the children who were permanently entombed by the lava flowing from the eruption of Mt. Vesuvius in AD 79. But that is simply a poignant example. We are all, in a sense, living in the shadow of the volcano: constrained, limited and ultimately expunged by factors beyond our control. True, the strength of those factors can wax and wane over time, but they are always there.

Luper thinks the achievementist can easily sidestep this worry about fragility. Again, what matters from the achievementist perspective is that our self-directed goals are achieved. All we need to do is to insulate those goals from the constraints and limitations we face. Thus we can pick modest goals, ones that are tailored to our particular circumstances, and focus on those. The meaningfulness of our lives will not be diminished.

This answer raises another worry. It seems to allow for extremely modest or trivial goals to count as meaningful. For example, someone whose life project is to count all the grains of sand on a particular patch of beach could, on this view, live a meaningful life (provided the goal is achieved). But that seems wrong. Many people think that some goals are meaning-conferring and some are not. To be precise, they think one has to pursue goals of objective worth in order to live a meaningful life. This view is shared by many of the leading contemporary theorists of meaning, e.g. Susan Wolf, Thaddeus Metz, Aaron Smuts and Erik Wielenberg.

Luper rejects their theories by arguing that the objectivist view is “difficult to defend” (he never says why). He also tries to neutralise the problem by arguing that even if it is true that trivial goals count on the achievementist view, people who think about their life plans and try to create a critical self, will tend to pick more serious goals anyway. So it seems like Luper is trying to have it both ways: objectively valuable goals aren’t needed on his account, but they’ll tend to be pursued by those who take it seriously. I find this problematic.

The second argument adopted by the absurdist is the argument from finitude or mortality. This stems from the common concern that our lives are finite; that our goals, even when achieved, will not be permanent; and that permanency is needed to make our lives meaningful. This is a common belief among the religious. Unsurprisingly, Luper rejects it. Part of the reason for this is that the argument may arise solely because we have faulty goals or aims, such as the goal of permanency or immortality. Since these cannot be achieved, we should drop them and focus on things that are attainable. They will provide us with the meaningfulness that we need.

Luper accepts that the length of life can have an impact on meaning. The shorter time we have, the less opportunity for achievement. Nevertheless, he thinks the impact of mortality on welfare and happiness is more significant. As noted, these goods tend be summative: the more the merrier. And finitude definitely impacts on the volume of positive experiences we can have.

One final point emerges from this discussion of mortality and meaning. Luper notes that many people feel that their lives are less meaningful as the spectre of death approaches, and they become experientially absorbed in the process of dying. While not wishing to deny the reality of those subjective experiences, he argues that the achievementist view resists any claim that life is less meaningful as a result of those experiences. What counts for the achievementist is whether goals have been achieved across the totality of one’s life (the Whole Life Thesis). Those achievements are not diminished by the process of dying.


6. Conclusion
Okay, so that brings us to the end of this summary of the achievementist view. As you can see, it offers a highly subjectivist theory of meaning in life. It claims that meaning is entirely determined by the achievement of self-directed goals. These goals can be trivial, selfish and even partly evil. That does not matter. All that matters is that the subject pursuing them perceives them as being worth his or her time.

It is this last point that makes me wonder whether Luper’s theory captures what it is to live a meaningful life from the “inside”. Maybe this is something that the more common objectivist theories neglect?
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Monday, April 7, 2014

Thoughts on Agar's Truly Human Enhancement (Series Index)



This post is just an index for my series about Nicholas Agar's book Truly Human Enhancement.



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Sunday, April 6, 2014

Game Theoretical Analysis of the Duel



We’ve all been there. A good-natured dispute among friends escalates; one party insults the honour of another; and the situation can only be resolved with a duel. The two parties face each other down with pistols, and take alternating steps toward one another. They must decide when to shoot. Victory means life and honour restored; loss means death and dishonour. What will the outcome be?

Of course, duels are no longer as common a dispute-resolution mechanism as they used to be. But should you ever find yourself participating in one, you might like to know what the best strategy is. Should you shoot first? Or should you wait? Fortunately, game theory can provide some pointers. The purpose of this post is to run through a simple game theoretical analysis of a duel.


1. The Classic Duel Game
To start off, we need to outline the structure and rules of the game. When performing any game theoretical analysis, the first thing to do is to break the game down into its basic component parts: (i) players; (ii) actions/strategies; or (iii) payoffs.

In the duel, there are two players in the game (Player1 and Player2). They start off carrying their pistols, loaded with one bullet, and positioned a certain distance apart (it does not really matter how far apart they are, though to make it interesting you must assume that the probability of them hitting the target at the starting point is well below 1).

The players then have a decision to make. The duel runs through multiple alternating rounds. During each round, the player can either take one full step forward, or they can try to take a shot with their pistol. They cannot do both in one round. Thus, the choice is a strictly binary one. The tricky thing is that if they take a shot and miss; the other player will have a certain victory. For then, that player can simply take as many steps forward as they like and fire from point-blank range. The payoffs in the game are pretty simple: you either get shot (and presumably die or be seriously injured) or you don’t get shot (and survive).

The diagram below depicts the game. Don’t read too much into the fact that there are only four steps for each player. That’s entirely arbitrary, caused by the space restrictions of the diagram. As I said above, the actual distance in the game is not too important.




If you were a player in this game, the key strategic question would be: when should I take a shot? The answer to this depends on several factors (to be discussed below), but in the first instance what matters is your probability of hitting the target. We can assume, pretty safely, that this probability diminishes the further away from the other player that you are. Thus, at d=0 (i.e. no distance between Player1 and Player2) we assume that the probability of both hitting the target is 1. This probability drops off as d increases. This is depicted in the next diagram. One nice thing about this diagram is that it doesn’t assume that both players are of equal ability. Instead, it assumes that Player2 is the better shot. This is nice because it helps to demonstrate how the analysis we are about to perform works for all probability distributions.



Anyway, looking at the graph of the respective probabilities of hitting the target, and knowing the rules of the game, can we say anything sensible about who should shoot first? Let’s see.


2. Who Should Shoot First?
A simple argument would be to claim that the better shot should fire first. This makes a certain amount of sense since this player has the higher probability of hitting the target. The problem is that if the other player knows this, they might be tempted to pre-empt the better shot by “having a go”. But then the better shot should be aware of the other player’s temptation to pre-empt and should, in turn, try to shoot earlier. This logic can continue back to the start of the game.

This is the wrong way to think about it. To solve this game (i.e. to figure out when the first shot should be fired) you need to use a combination of dominance and backwards induction reasoning. These are two classic techniques for solving strategic games of this sort. Dominance reasoning holds that you should never adopt a strategy that is dominated by others, i.e. one that yields a worse expected payoff than all the available alternatives. (There is a more formal definition of this concept, but we don’t need that here.) Backwards induction is, as the name suggests, a way of analysing multi-round games by looking first to the last possible move in the game and working backwards from there. The idea being that this will allow to pick a clear “path” through the various decision points in the game.

As I say, a combination of both methods of reasoning tells us when the first shot in the duel should be fired. We can prove this, in the abstract, using a minimal amount of formal notation. Let Pn(d) represent the probability of player n (in our case either “1” or “2”) hitting the target at any particular distance, d. Now take the perspective of Player1, at some particular distance, and ask yourself whether you should shoot or not.

Before answering the question, keep in mind two different possible facts that could determine whether or not you should shoot.

Fact A: Player2 will not shoot in the next round.
Fact B: Player2 will shoot in the next the next round.

If Fact A is true, should you shoot at d? Obviously not. If you can be confident that Player2 will not take a shot in the next round, you should definitely take a step forward. You run no risk of being shot, and you increase your chances of winning since you get closer to the target. Hence, if Fact A obtains, taking a step forwards dominates taking a shot.

What if Fact B is true? Then it’s more complicated. Then it depends on both your probability of hitting the target at d, and Player2’s probability of missing in the next round (d - 1). Why? Well, if your probability of hitting the target at d is greater than or equal to Player2’s probability of missing at d - 1, then you should take a shot. Doing so gives you the best chance of winning. Conversely, if Player2’s probability of missing is higher than your probability of hitting, you should take a step forward. Why? Because, once again, doing so gives you the best chance of winning.

This tells us something interesting. It tells us that there is an inequality we can use to solve the game. Basically, if the following inequality is true at distance d, then player 1 should take a shot:

P1(d) ≥ 1 - P2(d - 1)

Or, to put it another way, (by adding P2(d −1) to both sides of the inequality) the shot should be taken whenever:

P1(d) + P2(d - 1) ≥ 1

Obviously, we don’t know at which distance in the game this is true. We are looking at the game purely in the abstract, but if we work out the players’ respective probability distributions, then we know for sure that there is some distance — call it d* — at which this inequality first holds true and at which the first shot should be taken.

How do we know this for sure? This is where the combination of dominance and backwards induction comes into play. At every point prior to d*, taking a step forward dominates taking a shot. This is because taking a step forward always increases your probability of winning the duel. At d* we run into a problem. We must use backwards induction to figure out whether to take the shot. This means we jump forward to the last possible distance in the game and figure out what would be the rational choice at that point. So let’s assume that at the last step (d = 0) in the game it is Player2’s turn:

At d=0, Player2 should take the shot since at that point their probability of winning the game is equal to 1.

This implies that:

At d=1, Player1 should take a shot. At that point, their probability of hitting the target exceeds Player2’s probability of missing the target during the next round (since Player2 definitely won’t miss in the next round).

This, in turn, implies that:

At d=2, Player2 should take a shot. Why? Because they know Player1 will take a shot in the next round, and they know that their probability of hitting the target at d=2 is higher than Player1’s probability of missing at d=1.

This pattern of reasoning iterates backwards to whatever distance it is in the game at which the inequality outlined above first obtains. This distance is d*. Whoever’s turn it is at that distance, should take a shot.


3. Conclusion
So there you have it, a very simple game theoretical analysis of the duel. Obviously, this analysis has its limitations. One of the major limitations is that is assumes we know what the respective probability distributions of the players is. In real world cases, we often won’t know this for sure. Instead, we’ll have to guess. Yet, even if you are only guessing, the same reasoning process can help (though how helpful it will be will depend on the accuracy of your guess).

One final point: although the story behind this analysis refers to pistol-duelling, the analysis holds in other analogous contexts. For example, companies often face duel-like decisions when they and a competitor are trying to be the first to launch a viable product onto a market. The same reasoning can apply in these cases.
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Tuesday, April 1, 2014

Book Recommendation ♯14: Gratuitous Suffering and the Problem of Evil by Bryan Frances



(Series Index)

I’ve been out of the blogging loop for a couple of weeks now. This has been due to a number of commitments associated with the end of the university semester over here in the UK. With any luck, I’ll be able to get back into the swing of things next week. In the meantime, here’s a quick book recommendation: Bryan Frances Gratuitous Suffering and the Problem of Evil: A Comprehensive Introduction.

I’ve been reading this book on and off for the past few weeks, and I’ve hemmed and hawed about whether or not to recommend it. That in itself might suggest that it doesn’t deserve a recommendation, but since I’ve never claimed that the books I recommend here are without their flaws, I’ve decided to relent and give it a qualified thumbs up. As you might guess from the title, the book is an detailed treatment of the most famous of all atheological arguments: the evidential argument from evil. The treatment is introductory, as is suggested by the title, but very detailed. Indeed, so detailed is the discussion that it ends up reading like an introduction to the entire philosophy of religion.

In a way, that’s one of the great strengths of the book. What Frances manages to show — rather effectively in my opinion — is how the dialectical back-and-forth on one simple argument can grow legs and take-in a huge swathe of intellectual territory. The simple argument is the following:


  • (1) Consequence Premise: If the universe has been created by a supremely morally good, knowledgeable, and powerful being (the “4-part God”), then that being arranged things so that there is no gratuitous suffering.
  • (2) Gratuitous Premise: But (probably) there is gratuitous suffering.
  • (3) Thus, the 4-part God (probably) does not exist.


Introducing this simple argument early on, Frances goes on to identify five theistic responses to it and dedicates a chapter each to their discussion. The five responses are:

The Confident Response: Argue that since you already know for certain that God exists, there must be something wrong with one of the premises of the argument, though you know not what. This typically involves the appeal to other arguments for God’s existence (Frances covers cosmological, design and social arguments), hence defending the confident approach often gets us into debates about other aspects of the philosophy of religion.
The Compatibilist Response: Deny the consequence premise by arguing that a creator God, who is all-knowing, all-powerful and all-good, could nevertheless permit gratuitous suffering to exist. This is probably the weakest response. Indeed, as far as anyone is aware, no theist actually denies the consequence premise in this manner. Nevertheless, Frances discusses it in the interests of completeness.
The Profoundly Hidden Outweighing Goods Response: Argue that God has his reasons for allowing seemingly gratuitous evil to exist. This amounts to a denial of the gratuitous premise. The proponent of this response will attempt to articulate a “theodicy”, i.e. an explanation for why God allows what He allows. This takes in things like the free will theodicy, the soul-making theodicy and so on.
The Skeptical Response: Similar to the above except that the argument is that we are so cognitively limited, when compared to God, that we should not expect to be able to see or understand His reasons for allowing seemingly gratuitous evil to exist. This response is quite popular nowadays, although the debate about it is becoming increasingly complex and arcane.
The non-4-part Response: Deny that God has one or more of the four properties stated in the consequence premise (i.e. not creator, not all-powerful, not all-knowing or not all-good).

Frances gives a very thorough airing to each of these responses, and although his sympathies are clear throughout (he thinks the problem of evil does pose a significant challenge to theism) he is pretty fair-minded and nuanced in his analysis.

My one major criticism of the book is that it is too much of an introductory text. Although the concepts and ideas discussed within its pages have obvious analogues in the debates going on in the pages of philosophical journals and monographs, Frances eschews the usual scholarly apparatus and does not refer to them. Instead of copious referencing and footnoting to the arguments of others, he tries to show the reader how to think through a complex problem themselves with a modicum of logic and good sense. This may be appealing to complete newbies, and the constant questions posed to the reader may encourage them to engage with the book in a way that I did not. The problem for me is that at this point in my life I need the scholarly apparatuses that Frances avoids; I need to know what other philosophers are thinking; I need to be able to engage with the debate as it is currently going on in the academy. That said, if you are new to the topic, or put-off by overly academic texts, this might just be the book for you.
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