Suppose you present your reasoning to a literal fire-and-brimstone Christian where sinners go to hell for eternity unless they are saved by Christ.

The task for you, as I see it, is to argue how you can know any one afterlife is more likely than another while simultaneously denying others' appeals that likewise do not rely upon evidence.

Do you think your reasoning here would persuade someone with different good guesses? — Moliere

As I say in the OP, what makes one earth-like afterlife (even one you might call hellish) any more likely than another is how well it abides by the logical rules we might develop and whether or not it exists within the boundaries of possible human experience. So, if that is what you are talking about, then I would have trouble with that. — ToothyMaw

My interest here is in wondering how it might be possible to rationally think about such imaginings that are widespread in human culture.

So the more interesting question is where you have trouble. Obviously this is just a hypothetical since neither of us believe -- but I'd encourage you to talk more about where you have trouble in thinking through this thought. That's the best stuff. — Moliere

Camus says "[Stupidity] is sin without God" — 180 Proof

Dostoyevsky says "Hell ... being unable to love" (i.e. perpetual failure to learn from failure). — 180 Proof

Honestly, the most vulnerable part of my argument, as far as I can tell, is that there are, although not infinite, myriad ways of torturing someone by manipulating the chemicals in their brain, which inflates the number of earth-like events to gargantuan numbers if there is no limit to the unique causes of these painful neuro-chemical events. Not to mention the presence of these possible events in this life implies that an earth-like afterlife could consist of many of these painful neuro-chemical events if they are at all likely - although many of the worst ones would probably be very unlikely by virtue of being difficult to produce via events external to whatever is happening in the brain, i.e. even psychiatric medications, which are designed to produce certain mental outcomes, can only produce so many of these reliably.

That might still sound bad, but even in the worst-case scenario, there is a limit to how much pain you can experience via such manipulations, and there is no limit to how much pain you might feel in the kind of unknowable hell I talk about in the OP. So, the existence of brains kind of complicates things a little, but my argument remains almost totally unaffected. — ToothyMaw

possess the means to follow the process of discovery through to its end or figure out its details — ToothyMaw

OK so it sounds to me like you have a specific idea about what hell is not, and that this is what you're trying to get at. — Moliere

I'm afraid I remain unmoved, though that's common in philosophy. — Moliere

The only way we could ...
possess the means to follow the process of discovery through to its end or figure out its details
— ToothyMaw

... is if we are alive after we die. To initiate the process of knowing what's after life is to end the process that is life, which makes it rather hard to know about while still alive. — Moliere

Are you referring to an unknowable hell or a hellish, earth-like afterlife here? If we are talking about an earth-like afterlife: I totally concede that an earth-like afterlife could be hellish, so that might be a misunderstanding. If we are instead discussing an unknowable hell in which cause and effect doesn't break down, then you are wrong: my argument is about guessing, and it doesn't say that the afterlife is not, or could not be, an unknowable hell just because the right one is virtually impossible to guess, but rather that we are much more likely to be right when we guess at an earth-like afterlife. — ToothyMaw

I'm not sure what your position is, really, so I don't know what it would mean if you did move. Is it just that since there is no evidence for any afterlife we can't have better or worse guesses at it? — ToothyMaw

Did you read the OP? I specifically say that we could form predictive models for what could be the case in the afterlife from observing the relations between events in this life. — ToothyMaw

Are you referring to an unknowable hell or a hellish, earth-like afterlife here? If we are talking about an earth-like afterlife: I totally concede that an earth-like afterlife could be hellish, so that might be a misunderstanding. If we are instead discussing an unknowable hell in which cause and effect doesn't break down, then you are wrong: my argument is about guessing, and it doesn't say that the afterlife is not, or could not be, an unknowable hell just because the right one is virtually impossible to guess, but rather that we are much more likely to be right when we guess at an earth-like afterlife.
— ToothyMaw

I'm referring to any hell at all, earth-like or otherwise. It's the part where you say "We are much more likely to be right..." that gets me. I just don't understand how we could make that claim. — Moliere

Only experience justifies knowledge, we don't experience after-life, and so we have not justification to claim knowledge about the afterlife. For less esoteric topics I'd be more willing to give leeway, but for claims about the afterlife I'm less inclined to grant charity because there are so many divergent accounts of the afterlife that cannot all be true, and people tend to insist that their version of the afterlife must be true in spite of this. — Moliere

I'd extend this skepticism to guesses about the afterlife: it seems to me that the only way to find out is by dying. So since I am not dead I cannot say much about it. And if I were dead I couldn't say much about it either. So there's just not a good guess either way. — Moliere

You say we can form predictive models about the afterlife from this life, yes. But that's the claim I'm questioning. It doesn't seem to me that we can because we'd have to die in order to do so, and after we die we couldn't make many claims. — Moliere

Before we can get to my thought experiment, there is one other thing I must address: when certain events occur on Earth, they are often followed by other events as reflected by consistent logic determined by the content of those events. For instance: if we mandate a vaccine for everyone in the US, we can expect a reactionary response characterized by vast protests and a general denigration of the medical apparatuses in place. This is because many people view it as a challenge to their autonomy, which is a consistent gripe. There is a clear logic to what might trigger that kind of complaint - in this case being injected against one’s will - and I can only imagine that the logic behind it would apply to a similar schema in an earth-like afterlife. If it would, then we know that certain combinations of certain types of events in the afterlife are more likely than others. I hope that isn't too reductive; I’m not saying we can extrapolate indefinitely far or even far at all from a given event, but rather that they might be able to be connected locally according to some inherent logic. Think something like Marxist critiques but in areas other than history. — ToothyMaw

We can make that claim because a perfect selector is selecting from a potentially infinite number of unique events to form guesses at an UH (unknowable hell), and the chances of guessing the right combination from this potentially infinite set of unique events approaches zero. — ToothyMaw

when certain events occur on Earth, they are often followed by other events as reflected by consistent logic determined by the content of those events. For instance: if we mandate a vaccine for everyone in the US, we can expect a reactionary response characterized by vast protests and a general denigration of the medical apparatuses in place. This is because many people view it as a challenge to their autonomy, which is a consistent gripe. There is a clear logic to what might trigger that kind of complaint - in this case being injected against one’s will - and I can only imagine that the logic behind it would apply to a similar schema in an earth-like afterlife. If it would, then we know that certain combinations of certain types of events in the afterlife are more likely than others. I hope that isn't too reductive; I’m not saying we can extrapolate indefinitely far or even far at all from a given event, but rather that they might be able to be connected locally according to some inherent logic. Think something like Marxist critiques but in areas other than history. — ToothyMaw

How do we know that?

Using "infinite" in a philosophical argument is always a red flag to me: it's easy to set up antinomies with respect to infinite space and time, for instance, as Kant explored. — Moliere

He persuades me that such things are unknowable, and so we're free to say anything we like for as long as we like about the afterlife -- we will never know anything about the afterlife while alive in any sense. It is noumenal. We can believe in it for practical purposes, and a reality is, thereby, created by people living together in a community with similar beliefs about the afterlife, but that's not the same thing as to make claims on what makes a good guess on what the afterlife is like. — Moliere

1. when certain events occur on Earth, they are often followed by other events as reflected by consistent logic determined by the content of those events.

(Example to support 1)

2. There is a clear logic to what might trigger that kind of complaint - in this case being injected against one’s will - and I can only imagine that the logic behind it would apply to a similar schema in an earth-like afterlife.

When you say "the logic behind it", I read "the logic behind that kind of complaint", so it reads "There is a clear logic to what might trigger that kind of complaint, and I can only imagine that the logic behind that kind of complaint would apply to a similar schema in an earth-like afterlife"

3. If it would, then we know that certain combinations of certain types of events in the afterlife are more likely than others.

Which I'm reading as an enthymeme, so the implied premise is "it would", and therefore by modus ponens: we know that certain combinations of certain types of events in the afterlife are more likely than others.



Can you justify "it would" in premise 3? — Moliere

I did not say "infinite" but rather "potentially infinite", which is different insofar as I when I use that term, I am denoting a set of unique events that are effectively unbounded in number, while if I said "infinite unique events" that would clearly correspond to the concept you are right to be wary of. I do not believe I have set up any antinomies, as I have made no references to anything actually being infinite apart from the potential different ways to be made to feel pain in an unknowable hell - but that is definitional and, thus, essential to any considerations of unknowable hells. — ToothyMaw

a perfect selector is selecting from a potentially infinite number of unique events to form guesses at an UH (unknowable hell), and the chances of guessing the right combination from this potentially infinite set of unique events approaches zero. — ToothyMaw

While the afterlife is essentially noumenal by virtue of us not being able to directly ascertain its details with our senses, that doesn't mean that what we can ascertain could never occur in the afterlife, or that phenomenal attributes perceivable in this life could not correspond to it. In fact, I argue that it is possible that we can predict some of these attributes, and I'll address your contentions about it further on in this post. But you are, at this point, making an argument against predictive models, not just predictable afterlives; just because we don't, or can't, know for sure, what is actually correct, doesn't mean no good guesses at what might be correct exist. — ToothyMaw

If there is an event in this life that is logically related via its content to other events, and the content of that event does not change if it happens in an earth-like afterlife, then we know that the logical connections between that event and others that are similar in this regard are the same as they would be on earth, and we have no reason to think otherwise; therefore, if certain events on earth can be predicted via these kinds of logical connections, they can be predicted similarly in an earth-like afterlife — ToothyMaw

That leads to my conclusion that, given these kinds of earthly events occur in the afterlife, certain combinations, based on the transcendent logic according to which the events are related, are more likely than others. — ToothyMaw

No I don't think you've set up antinomies -- I just mean any use of "infinite" in a philosophical argument -- "potentially infinite" would count from my perspective. Outside of mathematics it's a pretty fuzzy term. (EDIT: I ought say that I don't believe this means we should never use it outside of mathematics. Levinas uses "infinite" at times, and I think it works. But it's not like he's making analogies to calculus with it either)

The part where you seem to be relying upon the mathematical notion is where you say:

a perfect selector is selecting from a potentially infinite number of unique events to form guesses at an UH (unknowable hell), and the chances of guessing the right combination from this potentially infinite set of unique events approaches zero.
— ToothyMaw

We can take the limit of a function as it's variable approaches some number, and sometimes we can take the limit of a function as it approaches infinite.

But how is that applicable to guesses being right? Are guesses a function?

The way I see it we either say something true, false, or nonsensical when making assertions about the likelihood of things. — Moliere

The way I see it we either say something true, false, or nonsensical when making assertions about the likelihood of things. — Moliere

I'm more arguing for when a predictive model is appropriate. Sometimes they are appropriate, and sometimes they aren't. One of the times they aren't is when we know nothing on a subject. It's not so much that there's an infinite amount of possibilities here as we are simply unable to adequately create a predictive model.

It could be the case that an afterlife exists, that said afterlife is earthlike -- but that "could" is also true of an afterlife that is not-earthlike. Here I'd de-emphasize the "hell" aspect and focus more on the "afterlife" aspect. Since we are ignorant about the afterlife we cannot say which guesses are better. What we believe could be true, but we lack justification, and so cannot claim to know. — Moliere

I would not agree with the supposition "these kinds of earthly events occur in the afterlife" — Moliere

Would you agree that if an earth-like afterlife exists, we could indeed make guesses at its contents? — ToothyMaw

Your issue with my assertions about useful, relevant predictive models existing is that I am presuming that earthly events that can be logically connected have no particular reason to occur in the afterlife. — ToothyMaw

And what I meant was that my argument would hold if it were the case - and if it weren't the case, I grant that my argument would be faulty or incoherent. This is clearly a red herring. — ToothyMaw

You presume that I am trying to persuade people to believe in a certain account of what the afterlife is. What I might try to persuade people of is more specific, such as: you are more likely to be correct in guessing at whatever earth-like afterlife you might believe in than believing that there is a correct unknowable hell that might ever be guessed. People who believe in unknown hells might reconsider their beliefs with this knowledge - or so I hope. — ToothyMaw

it should be comforting to know that one's beliefs and guesses about a potentially comfortable, earth-like afterlife are more likely to be correct than any given guess a magical supercomputer could make about a correct hell. If people know that, then there is less to worry about concerning what might happen when we die, and we can all focus on the important stuff. — ToothyMaw

One part of knowledge is belief. In order for someone to know something they also have to believe it, at least with respect to propositional knowledge.

That's what the "persuasion" part is about -- it justifies the belief such that a person is persuaded to believe it for such-and-such a reason. — Moliere

if a Christian believes in an eternal hell because this is what they learned at Church, and that's where you go to learn truths about the afterlife, and your argument is not persuasive, then they'll continue to believe in an afterlife that's not-earthlike — Moliere

They'd claim to know, instead, that hell is an eternal torture, and you ought not do the bad things else you'll go there. — Moliere