[lit-ideas] Re: The Problem of Evil
- From: Robert Paul <robert.paul@xxxxxxxx>
- To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Wed, 08 Mar 2006 17:01:31 -0800
Julie wrote:
Does it seem possible to anyone in this conversation that what humans
perceive of as pain or evil may not be? That our humanly flawed and
limited perception may assign an attribute which is not Real? Think
Plato and the Cave, and Pauline through a glass darkly.
No it doesn't. I can't imagine what it would mean to say that human
beings don't ('really') know what pain is. (I have no opinion on evil,
which is a theological, not a natural concept.) The allegory of the cave
is supposed to show that ordinary people don't know what is really
responsible for the phenomena they experience. They don't know that
behind them is a fire and that between them and the fire there are
shapes and puppets manipulated by some metaphysical puppeteer. They take
the shadows to be real. However, as they operate perfectly well in the
ordinary world (which Plato dismisses as the world of appearances) it's
hard to see what someone who says 'Wounds or painful,' or 'St.
Griddlefred died in pain,' hasn't understood. Plato's conclusion
('That's not a table, it's the shadow of a table') already seems just
plain wrong, for apparently the shadow of a table has a shadow, whereas
the form, Table, hasn't. Well, I digress.
You can believe pain is unreal if you like, but we give analgesics to
people in pain, whether or not they know in some obscure sense, what
pain is, metaphysically speaking.
Aristotle derides Plato somewhere for thinking that there were forms of
everything (mud, hair, filth), and I wonder what features the form,
Pain, has that the tortured victim is unaware of.
Here's a somewhat linguistically oriented account of the allegory of the
cave, from Marc Cohen, at the University of Washington.
http://faculty.washington.edu/smcohen/320/cave.htm
Robert Paul
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