Keith DeRose: January 2009 Archives

I failed to bring my series of posts on the pragmatics of hell to any kind of a decent conclusion.  I was knocked out of commission for a while by a bad case of stomach flu: It was as if I had taken the toxin of The Toxin Puzzle-- except that I was sick for more than just one day -- and nobody was offering me any million dollars.  I'll try to wrap things up a bit better here.

The lesson that seems suggested by the original Toxin Puzzle (concerning intentions, follow above link) and the modified Toxin Puzzle (about belief) is that in the case of states like intention and belief, you can't get yourself into such a state by having a reason (even a very strong reason) to be in the state in question; rather, you have to have a reasons that recommend the objects of these states -- the things these states "aim at."  (Or maybe we should tone down that "can't," and say that having only the first kind of reason at least makes it difficult to be in the state in question.  I'll get to this issue below the fold.)  The intention one wants to have in the original Toxin Puzzle has as its object the action of drinking the toxin, and what makes it difficult to form the intention is that the agent realizes she will have no reason at all to perform that action: When the time comes to drink the toxin, she will either have the money already, or she will have already missed her chance at it.  In either case, actually performing the action of drinking the toxin will accomplish nothing but to make her sick for a day.  In the modified version (about belief), the object of the belief the agent wants to have is the proposition that she didn't eat anything the day before, and her problem is that, while she has great prudential reasons for being in the state of belief, she has no evidential reason to think that that proposition is actually true -- and strong evidence (in the form of memory) that it isn't true.

The situation of trying to form a belief for such reasons may have reminded some readers of Pascal's Wager. . .

But I was reminded of the incident later when I received a letter from an American woman in her forties who had been brought up Roman Catholic. At the age of seven, she told me, two unpleasant things happened to her. She was sexually abused by her parish priest in his car. And, around the same time, a little schoolfriend of hers, who had tragically died, went to hell because she was a Protestant. Or so my correspondent had been led to believe by the then official doctrine of her parents' church. Her view as a mature adult was that, of these two examples of Roman Catholic child abuse, the one physical and the other mental, the second was by far the worst. She wrote:

Being fondled by the priest simply left the impression (from the mind of a 7 year old) as 'yucky' while the memory of my friend going to hell was one of cold, immeasurable fear. I never lost sleep because of the priest--but I spent many a night being terrified that the people I loved would go to hell.

That's from Richard Dawkins's The God Delusion - from a short section on the trauma, especially to young children, caused by belief in hell: pp. 317-21 (the above passage is from pp. 317-8). If you get your hands on the book, I recommend that short section. This section, and especially Dawkins's comparing sexual abuse to being taught nasty doctrines of hell were the subject of some great outrage. Though there are other bases for such outrage, some of it was underwritten by thoughts to the effect that it's absurd to think believing in hell could be as harmful as sexual abuse. Never having been the victim of sexual abuse myself, knowing little about what that must be like, and having nothing useful to say about it, I don't want to get into the comparative issue here. But some of the outraged seemed to be quite sure that being taught nasty doctrines of hell could not be seriously harmful at all, and that I do want to dispute.

As someone who spent many sleepless, terrified nights as a child - at just around the age Dawkins's correspondent was at the time of her trauma - over hell, I can certainly emphasize with the judgment this woman expresses. (Protestants take no back seat to Catholics when it comes to hell-terror, I believe.)

My title is a mash-up of the titles of two well-known philosophy papers: Gregory Kavka's "The Toxin Puzzle," which I discussed earlier today here, and Saul Kripke's "A Puzzle about Belief." But my topic is all Kavka: extending Kavka's Toxin Puzzle, which is about intentions, in a way that some remarks of Kavka's at the end of his paper suggest: to cover beliefs. 

So, suppose that, in accordance with an agreement you made earlier with him, our eccentric billionaire will pay you $10 million if you are able to form a belief of the billionaire's choosing. Oh, and we should work some toxin into the example, so, if you fail to have the relevant belief, you will have to drink the vial of toxin that will make you ill for a day. It will work like this: You will meet at the billionaire's lair, he will tell you what belief you are to have, give you one minute to get your thoughts together, and then you will step into his belief-o-meter, which, as you fully realize, will harmlessly and accurately (never mind how) determine whether you really believe the item in question. If you do, the $10 million is yours; if not, you drink the toxin and have a miserable day.

Let's suppose you clearly recall eating several things yesterday. For instance, you not only remember eating lunch, but you remember whom you had lunch with, what you ordered, and how good you thought it was when you ate it. And suppose that when you get to the billionaire's lair, he tells you that what you must believe to get the money and avoid the toxin is that you didn't eat a single thing all day yesterday. Can you do it?

You are feeling extremely lucky. You have just been approached by an eccentric billionaire who has offered you the following deal. He places before you a vial of toxin that, if you drink it, will make you painfully ill for a day, but will not threaten your life or have any lasting effects. (Your spouse, a crack biochemist, confirms the properties of the toxin.) The billionaire will pay you one million dollars tomorrow morning if, at midnight tonight, you intend to drink the toxin tomorrow afternoon. He emphasizes that you need not drink the toxin to receive the money; in fact, the money will already be in your bank account hours before the time for drinking it arrives, if you succeed. (This is confirmed by your daughter, a lawyer, after she examines the legal and financial documents that the billionaire has signed.) All you have to do is sign the agreement and then intend at midnight tonight to drink the stuff tomorrow afternoon. You are perfectly free to change your mind after receiving the money and not drink the toxin. (The presence or absence of the intention is to be determined by the latest 'mind-reading' brain scanner and computing device designed by the great Doctor X. As a cognitive scientist, materialist, and faithful former student of Doctor X, you have no doubt that the machine will correctly detect the presence or absence of the relevant intention.)

Thus begins Gregory Kavka's short classic, "The Toxin Puzzle" (Analysis 43 (1983): 33-36).

Suppose you could really use one million dollars. Well, come to think of it, we should perhaps start raising that amount in retellings of Kavka's puzzle to account for inflation - to avoid a Dr. Evil-style embarrassment down the line--though I could still really use a paltry million dollars! So, let's say this is an eccentric multi-billionaire whose offer is for $10 million. That should let the example keep its punch for quite a number of years into the future. So, you can really use $10 million, and if the offer was simply to get that money if you drink the toxin, you would happily do it. Now, you might think the offer being made to you is even better than a simple payment for drinking the toxin, because, the way it's set up, you can have your cake and, well, avoid puking it up, too: You can intend to drink the toxin at midnight tonight, pocket the money, and then change your mind and never drink the toxin. But as they think it over, most people start to realize things might not be that simple. If you'll know full well at midnight that you will have no reason at all to drink the toxin tomorrow afternoon - by then, you'll either have the money or you won't, and, either way, drinking the toxin will simply make you sick while providing no financial benefit - well, then, maybe pocketing the money might not be so easy. (Oh, that fiendish billionaire!) The question to ponder is: Given that set-up...

Can you form the intention?