Satisfied pigs and dissatisfied philosophers: Schlesinger on the problem of evil

Abstract

I argue that George Schlesinger’s proposed solution to the problem of evil fails because: (1) the degree of desirability of state of a being is not properly regarded as a trade-off between happiness on the one hand and potential on the other; (2) degree of desirability of state is not capable of infinite increase; (3) there is no hierarchy of possible beings, but at most an ordering of such beings in terms of preferences; (4) the idea of such a hierarchy is anyway morally repulsive. Schlesinger is right that the problem of evil disappears, but what makes it vanish is a recognition of the limits of our concepts of satisfaction and happiness, not the incoherent claim that satisfaction or happiness is capable of unlimited increase.