Sollereder 3: The Philosophical Context

In this fundamental chapter of God, Evolution, and Animal Suffering, Bethany Sollereder reviews the state of contemporary theodicy particularly as it addresses non-human suffering. She excludes arguments focused only on human suffering or theologies that evade the question altogether, meaning they argue that animals do not suffer or they reduce the power or goodness of God or they retreat into inscrutable agnosticism. What remains are contemporary theodicies that generally adopt arguments that make evil necessary to produce the kind of goods in creation which God desires. Such arguments are constructed from strategic options that can be grouped into three categories of good-harm analyses (GHA):

• Property-consequence GHAs: a consequence of the existence of a good, as a property of a particular being or system, is the possibility that possession of this good leads to it causing harms.
• Developmental GHAs: the good is a goal which can only develop through a process which includes the possibility (or necessity) of harm. [These can be further divided into instrumental or by-product varieties of developmental GHAs.]
• Constitutive GHAs: The existence of a good is inherently, constitutively inseperable from the experience of harm or suffering.

Property-consequence GHAs

The main idea of this strategy is nomic regularity or the law-abiding nature of the universe. The goods of such a system include rationality and predictability, including the ability to make meaningful choices. Sure, if you are clumsy or unlucky, a rock will fall on your foot or a forest fire will kill dozens of birds in their nests. But a cosmic order also provides for natural systems that support and produce life and for moral and practical goodness.

Sollereder is not buying it, though. Can those goods not be achieved in a manner that avoids suffering? Is listing such goods a way of avoiding listing their cost in uncountable deaths? The math so often is done without considering animal life. And consideration is made for groups but not for individuals (or between individuals: what about the suffering of this individual over that one?) Harms occur along an imbalance that cannot be righted. Nevertheless, Sollereder chooses a way forward. “I will [argue] later," she says, "that nomic regularity gives non-human animals the chance to develop skills and abilities, to ‘selve’ and form themselves in ways that would be unavailable to them without nomic regularity, even if the present order does cause suffering” (49).

More to come . . .

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Previous articles in this series

1. Leaving the Courtroom
2. The Bible and the Fall