Daniel Akande:

I think within the context of this specific thread, you are begging the question. You asked why we can’t infer all these other facts from unrelated ones. It’s because those facts are measured in a different way.

How something is measured is irrelevant. The point was that if two facts are independent, there is no way to infer one from the other. And all facts about an author are independent of facts about their stories. Therefore, all inferences from story to author are unwarranted.

Remember, we both think we cant infer from fiction to author, we just have different reasons for thinking that. So it does no good to point out a bunch of other things we also don’t infer from fiction.

Giving other examples simply supports my view on why inferences from story to author are unwarranted.

Lastly, I mentioned this to jimmy already: that it’s fictitiousness (has a gap) guarantees lack of sentience does not mean it is the presence of a gap (and not sentience) that is the motivating factor when it comes to determining why we can’t make an inference.

I’m not sure I understand. There is no difference between sentience and the gap. Like I said, lack of sentience is just one way the gap can be cashed out. We don’t say an author is evil for causing fictional characters to suffer because those characters aren’t sentient. But saying those characters aren’t sentient is just saying that there is a metaphysical gap between author and story.

Jimmy Stephens:

(3) Clarification:
That something is non-fiction does not tell us that it lacks moral concern x.
That something is sentient does not tell us that it possesses moral concern x.
We want to pinpoint what tells us that something lacks moral concern x every time.

Know what does? Fiction. Almost like fiction is the important factor.

Spicy:

How something is measured is irrelevant. The point was that if two facts are independent, there is no way to infer one from the other. And all facts about an author are independent of facts about their stories. Therefore, all inferences from story to author are unwarranted.
Giving other examples simply supports my view on why inferences from story to author are unwarranted.

Talking about independence just moves the problem back a step and we end up rehashing everything we already said. I can infer moral facts about Bob from the fact that on the weekends he pushes people down the stairs, but I can’t if he write a book about some fictional character who pushes people down the stairs. You want to say its because of metaphysical distance and I want to say its because of lack of sentience. In both cases, I cannot infer facts about height, weight, IQ simply because that has nothing to do with what is being analyzed. That is why it was irrelevant to bring it up. To use “independence” here is to introduce nothing different than your original view: it is solely metaphysical distance that prevents us from inferring from fictional suffering to authorial error.

I’m not sure I understand. There is no difference between sentience and the gap. Like I said, lack of sentience is just one way the gap can be cashed out. We don’t say an author is evil for causing fictional characters to suffer because those characters aren’t sentient. But saying those characters aren’t sentient is just saying that there is a metaphysical gap between author and story.

Sentience and the gap are intensionally different concepts.

Jimmy Stephens:

(2)
“Not much a shift” is a shift just as “proxy of sentience” isn’t sentience. So much for me being imprecise; might want to tighten up the screws.

Skipping to the substance now:
Your entire view here turns on suffering. Capacity for suffering is a necessary condition of moral concern. Is that correct?
[5:31 PM]
If so, this is going to be one of the easiest knock downs in the history of someone misidentifying what explains what.

(1)
We cannot have relationships with fictional characters.
Question begging. If this means we cannot have ordinary human relationships with human characters, that’s just to say fiction isn’t non-fiction. And by extension, via the analogy, we can’t have intertrinitarian relations with God just like fictions can’t have human-human relations with authors. Your “disanalogy” is as silly as it is support via clarification for Daniel’s position.

[Y]our [the author’s] presence is not actually “down there”.
Oh, like God’s essence never comes “down here.” Wow, just like the analogy! Fascinating.

But God’s presence is down here through revelation, theophany, and incarnation just like author’s presences is in the novel via self-expression, 4th wall breaks, and avatar characters. WOAH!

This conversation is like watching you punch yourself in the face right before asking me if I’m ready to give up.

Spicy:

(3)
That something is non-fiction does not tell us that it lacks moral concern x.
That something is sentient does not tell us that it possesses moral concern x.
We want to pinpoint what tells us that something lacks moral concern x every time.

Whats missing from the list was my take:
That something is not sentient does tell us that it lacks specific moral concerns.

(2)
“Not much a shift” is a shift just as “proxy of sentience” isn’t sentience. So much for me being imprecise; might want to tighten up the screws.

In my last response, I pointed out that respect of proxies of sentience just is respect of sentience. A good example of this is the usage of proxies for people. A proxy of the king for example may be treated with respect simply because for all intents and purposes, that proxy is the king. The respect the proxy is receiving is actually respect oriented towards the king.

Your entire view here turns on suffering. Capacity for suffering is a necessary condition of moral concern. Is that correct?

In my last response, I said the following:
Nevertheless, suffering requires sentience, it is because of the sentient experience of suffering that we care about it at all.

The reason why tearing the limbs off of robots, crushing rocks into fine powder, and writing about a fictional gruesome murder is not morally concerning is because there is no pain being experienced, no snuffing of sentience, no infringing on persons. The pain of fictional characters is something we imagine, and my contention is that positing that this is the case for God-> human makes a nonsense out of his relationship with us. (edited)
[6:01 PM]
(1)
Question begging. If this means we cannot have ordinary human relationships with human characters, that’s just to say fiction isn’t non-fiction. And by extension, via the analogy, we can’t have intertrinitarian relations with God just like fictions can’t have human-human relations with authors. Your “disanalogy” is as silly as it is support via clarification for Daniel’s position.

Rather, this is just to say that the relationship between human-fiction does not mirror Divine-human. We cannot relationships with fictional characters in any meaninful sense of the word, period.

Oh, like God’s essence never comes “down here.” Wow, just like the analogy! Fascinating.

If instead of using “essence”, we use the word I started with: “presence”, your statement because wrong on orthodox Christianity. Thankfully, you acknowledge this in the next line.

But God’s presence is down here through revelation, theophany, and incarnation just like author’s presences is in the novel via self-expression, 4th wall breaks, and avatar characters. WOAH!

An author’s presence is not in their novel via any of the things you mentioned. Avatar characters at best exemplify characteristics: a fictional character that looks like me, talks like me, and thinks like me, but it isn’t me. God’s presence in creation isn’t an avatar, it is literally him, his divine presence in its totality. That is what it means for God to be fully God and fully man. It’s not clear how fourth wall breaks or self-expression come close to meeting the task. You will need to elaborate.
[6:03 PM]
What I find particularly interesting is that the initial dichotomies that I outlined for each particular response continues to be justified. What we are seeing now, live for everyone to see, is a grand diminishing of divine incarnation. Is this really better than the alternative of elevating fictional immanence? Well, it is certainly more intuitive, but its also just heresy when followed through

Ah thats a bummer. I’d expect the reply would be that this isn’t really metaphysical distance? But it really seems like it is. It also seems very intuitive that Rick’s exploitation of the microverse’s sentient life is morally wrong.
[6:06 PM]
I think it could work well because you get to imagine a unique scenario where you really do have a lower reality that is completely governed by Rick, but you still get that real sentience that tells you that their suffering and exploitation is bad.

Jimmy Stephens:

(1)
Rather, this is just to say that the relationship between human-fiction does not mirror Divine-human.
No, it is to say they do not mirror because fictions are fictitious (viz. imaginary-things-that-can’t-have-human-relationships). The argument is: the analogy fails because the analogy is not identity /is that/an analogy.

If instead of using “essence”. . .

An author’s presence is not in their novel via any of the things you mentioned.

I used the word “essence” because that’s the only way your disanalogy would be effective. The fact you mean presence is exactly why it’s not a problem.

When we move to “presence,” you’re unable to articulate why the difference counters the analogy without falling into heresy. Observe:
God’s presence in creation isn’t an avatar, it is literally him, his divine presence in its totality.
It is not God’s essence, and if not, there’s no reason yet to think that an avatar and, say, theophany are significantly different to undermine Daniel’s analogy.

Now, if you just mean God’s essence, your disanalogy just assumes the falsity of Daniel’s model and enters heresy land. Remember, the disanalogy has to meet three rerquirements:
1.) It can’t just backtrack to, “well I think Calvinism is false.” That’s not a problem with the analogy but with the model.
2.) It can’t be heretical. It needs to be a disanalogy Christians, therefore Calvinists, can consistently accept.
3.) It has to be an explanation why the inferential gap does not hold. Otherwise it’s not a “symmetry breaker.”
[6:16 PM]
Orthodox Christendom has since the beginning maintained a distinction between God in His transcendence and God in His immanence. Yes, God is fully present in His immanence. I see no reason to think an author is not differently present in His avatar – presence being the symmetry and all that is necessary for Daniel’s gap to hold.

@Spicy
(3) > That something is non-fiction does not tell us that it lacks moral concern x. > That something is sentient does not tell us that it possesses moral concern x. > We want to pinpoint what tells us that something lacks moral concern x every time. Whats missing from the list was my take: That something is not sentient does tell us that it lacks specific moral concerns. (2) > “Not much a shift” is a shift just as “proxy of sentience” isn’t sentience. So much for me being imprecise; might want to tighten up the screws. In my last response, I pointed out that respect of proxies of sentience just is respect of sentience. A good example of this is the usage of proxies for people. A proxy of the king for example may be treated with respect simply because for all intents and purposes, that proxy is the king. The respect the proxy is receiving is actually respect oriented towards the king. > Your entire view here turns on suffering. Capacity for suffering is a necessary condition of moral concern. Is that correct? In my last response, I said the following: Nevertheless, suffering requires sentience, it is because of the sentient experience of suffering that we care about it at all. The reason why tearing the limbs off of robots, crushing rocks into fine powder, and writing about a fictional gruesome murder is not morally concerning is because there is no pain being experienced, no snuffing of sentience, no infringing on persons. The pain of fictional characters is something we imagine, and my contention is that positing that this is the case for God-> human makes a nonsense out of his relationship with us. (edited)

Eastern Reformed Blokes Rep — 01/24/2023 6:23 PM
(2)
I pointed out that respect of proxies of sentience just is respect of sentience.
&
The pain of fictional characters is something we imagine, and my contention is that positing that this is the case for God-> human makes a nonsense out of his relationship with us.
(Going to take this second sentence as a yes to my former question.)
Great.

A.) Question begging. God has Sapience, humans have sapience, and fictions have imaginary sapience on Daniel’s model. So unless you just want to take umbrage with the model and therefore trivialize the analogy (remember: condition 1), saying humans do not have Sapience is not a reason to discount an analogous sapience just the same way saying imaginary-sapience is not sapience is no reason to discount an analogy. That would be to fault the analogy for being an analogy!

B.) Oh, you mean characters can only feel imaginary pain just like humans can only feel a creaturely reflections of divine emotion? Fascinating. It’s almost like you’re just stating things the analogy makes me expect under the pretense that’s somehow a conflict for me.
[6:25 PM]
In other words, exactly the same way that insentient things derive value from human evaluations, which are inherently present in human authorship, so too humans (creation) derives value from the evaluations of the Creator. You’re literally just spelling out a strength of the analogy.
[6:26 PM]
C.) No, actually, even if there’s some kind of Platonic pain going on in fictional worlds, that would not count as a reason not to think them up. In fact, that leads us to the frankly retarded position that just in case dreams, brainstorms, and so forth accidentally coming into my head involve pain, I’m doing something wrong.
[6:26 PM]
If anything, I would think a Platonic pain borne on ficitonal worlds makes them more beautiful.
[6:27 PM]
The best stories, after all, are tragicomedies that parabolize the Christ.
[6:27 PM]
Bring the suffering on!

@Spicy
(3) > That something is non-fiction does not tell us that it lacks moral concern x. > That something is sentient does not tell us that it possesses moral concern x. > We want to pinpoint what tells us that something lacks moral concern x every time. Whats missing from the list was my take: That something is not sentient does tell us that it lacks specific moral concerns. (2) > “Not much a shift” is a shift just as “proxy of sentience” isn’t sentience. So much for me being imprecise; might want to tighten up the screws. In my last response, I pointed out that respect of proxies of sentience just is respect of sentience. A good example of this is the usage of proxies for people. A proxy of the king for example may be treated with respect simply because for all intents and purposes, that proxy is the king. The respect the proxy is receiving is actually respect oriented towards the king. > Your entire view here turns on suffering. Capacity for suffering is a necessary condition of moral concern. Is that correct? In my last response, I said the following: Nevertheless, suffering requires sentience, it is because of the sentient experience of suffering that we care about it at all. The reason why tearing the limbs off of robots, crushing rocks into fine powder, and writing about a fictional gruesome murder is not morally concerning is because there is no pain being experienced, no snuffing of sentience, no infringing on persons. The pain of fictional characters is something we imagine, and my contention is that positing that this is the case for God-> human makes a nonsense out of his relationship with us. (edited)

Eastern Reformed Blokes Rep — 01/24/2023 6:28 PM
(3)
That something is not sentient does tell us that it lacks specific moral concerns.
That if something is insentient it lacks moral concerns does not say whether fictions are insentient. That’s the key factor you need even if insentience is the wider category.
[6:30 PM]
As a result, this floating hypothetical does not say whether fictions lack moral concern.
[6:31 PM]
I myself prefer to skip the middle-man and just recognize that fictions qua fictions cannot have the same moral concerns as real things, suffering or no.

@Spicy
Ah thats a bummer. I’d expect the reply would be that this isn’t really metaphysical distance? But it really seems like it is. It also seems very intuitive that Rick’s exploitation of the microverse’s sentient life is morally wrong.

Eastern Reformed Blokes Rep — 01/24/2023 6:35 PM
I suspect this is a side-disagreement. I just don’t think sentience is relevant. For example, it is wrong to destroy a book you value. It’s not wrong to destroy a cow you like and eat it. It’s sentience doesn’t factor.

What factors are how things drive value from the Author just like the metaphysical rules of value in a fictional universe derive from its author.
[6:36 PM]
(At every level, this analogy just kicks ass at predicting our inferences over and over and over.)

Daniel Akande:

I can infer moral facts about Bob from the fact that on the weekends he pushes people down the stairs, but I can’t if he write a book about some fictional character who pushes people down the stairs. You want to say its because of metaphysical distance and I want to say its because of lack of sentience.

Yeah, but what I’ve been saying is that “lack of sentience” is just the metaphysical distance at work. You want to say that if the fictional character were sentient, then we could make the inference about the authors moral character. But if the character were sentient, then there would be no metaphysical distance between the author and the character. You cannot add sentience without closing the gap.

In both cases, I cannot infer facts about height, weight, IQ simply because that has nothing to do with what is being analyzed. That is why it was irrelevant to bring it up. To use “independence” here is to introduce nothing different than your original view: it is solely metaphysical distance that prevents us from inferring from fictional suffering to authorial error.

My argument is simple:

A) Inference is unwarranted due to independence of facts
B) Author-facts and story-facts are independent (IQ, etc were examples of this)
C) Therefore, author-facts cannot be derived from story-facts.
D) Moral character is an author-fact.
E) Therefore, moral character of author cannot be derived from story-facts.
F) Author-facts and story-facts are independent because of metaphysical gap.
G) Therefore, author-facts cannot be derived from story-facts because of the metaphysical gap between them.

Sentience and the gap are intensionally different concepts.

They are different concepts, but in this case they are related. Like I’ve already said multiple times, sentience is just a way of cashing out the gap. If I were to explain the gap between fiction and reality, one of the things I’d point out is how their sentience differs from ours.
[1:00 AM]
That qualitative difference between real and fictional sentience is one expression of the metaphysical distance between them.

Daniel Akande:

The problem is that whether or not sentience and the gap are always co-extensive, their intensional distinct definitions means that sentience alone can be the relevant factor. Therefore, when we analyze a case where we have metaphysical distance and sentience (God->creation), moral inference can become possible.

It’s not possible for sentience alone to be the relevant factor because you cannot add sentience without closing the gap. If sentience were the only relevant factor, then if we introduced sentience into the author/story relationship, then we should be able to make the kind of inference the PoE wants to make. But we cannot introduce sentience without destroying the author/story relationship. What this tells us is that the inference is only possible if the gap doesn’t exist.

To prove your point, you need to show that the gap can be closed and the inference is still drawn.

My point is that this all just rests on the claim that moral-story-facts are independent from moral-author-facts simply because of metaphysical distance. That is the very claim I have been contesting all along, so this formulation entering the dialogue now has no value.

This doesn’t make sense to me at all. What premise of the argument rests on that claim? You’re going to have to deny some premise if you’re going to reject the conclusion.

At the end of the day, the PoE is only aimed at those theists whose model of God claims that God has some natural motivation for the goodness of creation.

Wrong. The PoE is aimed at any model of theism that posits a perfect being. And my point is that the perfection of God is wholly independent of His acts towards creation. God is wholly perfect regardless of if He created a world with suffering or not.

The only way we can tie the events we experience in the world to the nature of God is with a principle like “a perfect God wouldn’t allow X”. But how do we know that such a principle is true?
[5:00 PM]
.
[5:00 PM]
We can’t know that except on the basis of revelation. The proponent of the PoE erroneously assumes that he can know a priori what type of world a perfect being would and wouldn’t create. And the only reason he thinks he can know such a thing is because he assumes that God is not actually transcendent (in the way described by the author analogy).

Spicy:

(1)
No, it is to say they do not mirror because fictions are fictitious (viz. imaginary-things-that-can’t-have-human-relationships). The argument is: the analogy fails because the analogy is not identity /is that/an analogy.

Any case where there is a disanalogy is a result of the hosts of the disanalogous elements being what they are and not identical to each other. Yes, it is because of the nature of fiction that there is no relationship between humans and fiction that mirrors the relationship between divine and human. It seems the only way to maintain that they do mirror each other is to hold a low view of incarnation and a low view of human transformation.

I used the word “essence” because that’s the only way your disanalogy would be effective. The fact you mean presence is exactly why it’s not a problem.

It’s not clear why one wouldn’t be a problem and the other would be. God is not separable from his essence. Where God is, so is his essence. Orthodox Christianity maintains that in the hypostatic union, it is the essence of God that is united with Christ’s human essence. Remember, a human essence is a part of created reality, it is the equivalent of fiction here and in Christ it is united to the essence of God. This is just straight out of the Athanasian Creed. When Christ walks among us, it is not merely his human half that we interact with; we interact with the person where both his divine essence and his human essence harmoniously unite. I don’t take this to be saying something differently than presence either because one’s presence in a location requires that they are there in their essence. The only counterexample is cases where we might say someone was present in a room when in fact they were only on a video call with someone in that room. This counterexample surely does not apply to how divine presence works with us. At least, I took that for granted.
[4:29 PM]
Now, if you just mean God’s essence, your disanalogy just assumes the falsity of Daniel’s model and enters heresy land. Remember, the disanalogy has to meet three rerquirements:

A point I made later was that I would attempt to stick with Daniel’s model and object to it on its own grounds, but its defense frequently required opposing standard orthodoxy. At several points in my discussion with him, I observed a horn which required him to commit himself to something absurd. Consider what might have happened if he happily accepted such absurdity. It’s kind of the end of the discussion. I am more than happy to walk away from the discussion having known that Calvinists who use this argument commit themselves to some heterodox take on christology. Therefore, I am happy to accept that (1) Daniel’s model is flawed and that’s why it allows him to use an otherwise frivolous analogy, and (2) that Calvinists distance themselves from traditional christianity.

Orthodox Christendom has since the beginning maintained a distinction between God in His transcendence and God in His immanence. Yes, God is fully present in His immanence.

What you are missing is that paradoxically, God is transcendent in his immanence. The distinction between God’s transcendence and immanence is purely conceptual. Christ does not fail to be transcendent in the incarnation, nor is his immanence separable from his transcendence such that he only brings some watered down divinity with him.
[4:29 PM]
I see no reason to think an author is not differently present in His avatar – presence being the symmetry and all that is necessary for Daniel’s gap to hold.

The issue is, the distance between the two is so grand that it’s extremely silly to try and claim that they are close enough to warrant any interesting comparison. This is a basic problem that I have been trying to hammer home. There is clearly a qualitative difference across the two systems being analogized, so any textbook on philosophy agrees that an analogy itself never succeeds to the degree of deductive warrant.
[4:29 PM]
(2)
Some of the literal content here seems a bit silly. Both A and C in particular seem to miss the mark, but instead of going line by line like I usually do, I’m just going to respond to the entire general idea.

I’m going to start by hoping that we can agree on at least one point here: Daniel’s argument intends on having deductive strength. Daniel claims that the PoE cannot even get off the ground. This is an in principle objection, so the strength of this particular argument from analogy needs to be deductive. He can’t mess around in the realm of the inductive, intuitive, prima facie, abductive, or pragmatic.

The SEP gives several interesting analogies as examples which it later elaborates on in certain contexts to explain some of the philosophical concepts related to analogical reasoning. Most of these historical analogies are not deductive. Rather, these arguments use analogies as conceptual tools to further research, justify predictions, or to try and conceptualize phenomena. Example 7 is stronger though:
[4:29 PM]
Suppose that you have established that of all rectangles with a fixed perimeter, the square has maximum area. By analogy, you conjecture that of all boxes with a fixed surface area, the cube has maximum volume.

And this is something of a theme; deductively successful arguments from analogy usually have some underlying deductive argument (in this case a mathematical/geometric one), that could just be cached out in standard form rather than first making recourse to the analogy. What’s crucial for the inference in this case (and in all cases as I hope to make clear), is that we are working with actually identical elements. What we learn about cubes from rectangles/squares just falls out of the fact that cubes just are a collection of squares, and that volume is mathematically related to surface area.

In it’s section on deductive justification, the SEP gives another example:
[…]let’s suppose that the value (Q) of a used car (relative to a particular buyer) is determined by its year, make, mileage, condition, color and accident history (the variables Pi). It doesn’t matter if one or more of these factors are redundant or irrelevant. Provided two cars are indistinguishable on each of these points, they will have the same value.
[4:29 PM]
The variables were defined earlier where the set of variables P1….Pm were said to be the values that determined Q. In this case again, the cars need to be indistinguishable on the relevant factors. Also noteworthy is the need to already know what all the relevant factors are (which is rarely the case).

Suppose a vague analogy between P and Q. P is known to have properties [a, b, c, d, e], and we also know that some t is true of P because of one or more of its properties. If the analogy between P and Q is such that, minimally, Q is known to have [a, b, c, d, e] as well, then we can put together a deductive argument to conclude that t is true of Q as well. The first problem is that we would also have to know that Q does not have some [f, g, h, i, j] such that one or more does not make Q(t) impossible. This is already a difficult task, but now suppose that we didn’t even know that Q has [a, b, c, d, e], and the way we constructed our analogy instead said that Q has [a’, b’, c’, d’, e’], where each property is similar or analogous to P’s property. Deductively inferring t is no longer possible, at least in the same way. However, can we infer that t’ is true of Q? No. The first issue is that it’s difficult to set a metric for when any property can qualify as an a’ rather than just being something non-a altogether. Similarly, what qualifies as t’? Surely it is not just up to the whims of the person using the analogy. Also, what if the particularities of [a, b, c, d, e] is what allowed for t-ness at all? Such that some variability in [a, b, c, d, e] wouldn’t allow for enough sub-properties to justify t-ness? What if the ‘-ness of a’ makes a’ closer to f, g, h, or f’, g’, h’ than to a? The logical impossibility of ~t’ is not guaranteed by the argument from analogy, so the argument is not deductively successful. (edited)
[4:30 PM]
So how can supporters of Daniel’s argument continue? Supporters need to identify some a=a relation between P and Q, and they need to show that all factors that can possibly determine whether t is true on Q are within said a=a relation. For Daniel, this has been ‘metaphysical distance’. Importantly, not the specific metaphysical distance which P and Q possess which are themselves distinct, but ‘metaphysical distance simpliciter’ which would be an a=a relation. This means Daniel has to prove that the only relevant factor on the fiction side is ‘metaphysical distance simpliciter’ and not ‘fictional specific metaphysical distance’, which seems like an impossible task. Any argument for metaphysical distance as the motivating factor on the fiction side will always work equally well for ‘fictional specific metaphysical distance’.

I hope this is not too obtuse, but all this to say, when you respond to my point about sentience with the analogy between f-sentience and r-sentience, you are doing nothing other than giving me an a->a’ relation, which is not good enough.
[4:30 PM]
That if something is insentient it lacks moral concerns does not say whether fictions are insentient. That’s the key factor you need even if insentience is the wider category.

You have yet to give an argument for why that is needed.

For example, it is wrong to destroy a book you value. It’s not wrong to destroy a cow you like and eat it. It’s sentience doesn’t factor.

I think this mistakenly assumes that sentience is being proposed as the only factor. Even in the case of humans, it is not always wrong to harm them. In fact, in cases when it is wrong to harm humans, it may not even be sentience that always stands out as the most important reason why. However, all that matters is that if there were no sentience at all, there would be no moral concern at all.

Also, I think most morally intune people do recognize that the sentience of cows plays a role in how we should treat them. Whether people are on board with killing and eating them or not, everyone should agree that excessively harming the cow in a way unnecessary to use it for resources would be wrong. Why, though? It is only because of a well recognized moral relationship with sentience, with experience itself.
[4:30 PM]
To conclude, I want to point out that I don’t think the PoE works against Calvinists anyways and I question how many atheists would honestly try to apply it to Calvinists once they fully understood it. Calvinism falls so tremendously short so consistently on this topic that even without the author analogy, it is very clear that human experience is diminished so much that it might as well be fictional. God is so distant, and his purposes for creation so selfish and exploitative. For other Christians, that God could become man without failing to still be 100% God shows just how real we are to him. God came down because he himself made a moral “inference” regarding creation and could not sit by and let it go to ruin. We’ve talked about orthodoxy, consider Athanasius, a defining pillar of orthodoxy:
[4:30 PM]
it was equally monstrous that beings which once had shared the nature of the Word should perish and turn back again into non-existence through corruption. It was unworthy of the goodness of God that creatures made by Him should be brought to nothing through the deceit wrought upon man by the devil…

As, then, the creatures whom He had created reasonable, like the Word, were in fact perishing, and such noble works were on the road to ruin, what then was God, being Good, to do? Was He to let corruption and death have their way with them? In that case, what was the use of having made them in the beginning? Surely it would have been better never to have been created at all than, having been created, to be neglected and perish; and, besides that, such indifference to the ruin of His own work before His very eyes would argue not goodness in God but limitation, and that far more than if He had never created men at all. It was impossible, therefore, that God should leave man to be carried off by corruption, because it would be unfitting and unworthy of Himself.
[4:31 PM]
@Dragon God, Orsted
Yeah, but what I’ve been saying is that “lack of sentience” is just the metaphysical distance at work. You want to say that if the fictional character were sentient, then we could make the inference about the authors moral character. But if the character were sentient, then there would be no metaphysical distance between the author and the character. You cannot add sentience without closing the gap.

The problem is that whether or not sentience and the gap are always co-extensive, their intensional distinct definitions means that sentience alone can be the relevant factor. Therefore, when we analyze a case where we have metaphysical distance and sentience (God->creation), moral inference can become possible.

My argument is simple:

The first issue is that B is only inductively supported, but let’s leave that aside for now.

Let me rephrase your argument:
A) Inference is unwarranted due to independence of facts
B) Author-facts and story-facts are independent (IQ, etc were examples of this)
C) Author-facts and story-facts are independent because of metaphysical gap.
D) Moral character is an author-fact.
E) Therefore, moral character of author cannot be derived from story-facts because of the metaphysical gap.
[4:31 PM]
My point is that this all just rests on the claim that moral-story-facts are independent from moral-author-facts simply because of metaphysical distance. That is the very claim I have been contesting all along, so this formulation entering the dialogue now has no value. There is independence between moral-lego-facts and moral-lego-player-facts as well, but both are real, they don’t have metaphysical distance.

At the end of the day, the PoE is only aimed at those theists whose model of God claims that God has some natural motivation for the goodness of creation. Authors of fiction have no such analogous motivation. As you guys have aptly pointed out, authors can write novels with no good ending, intense suffering, and no relief. If you want to say that God is truly analogous to authors in this regard, then you are just rejecting one of the premises the PoE assumes for reductio.
[4:31 PM]
They are different concepts, but in this case they are related. Like I’ve already said multiple times, sentience is just a way of cashing out the gap. If I were to explain the gap between fiction and reality, one of the things I’d point out is how their sentience differs from ours.

If you agree they are different concepts, then it doesn’t matter if they are related. Sentience can be the main motivating factor.
[4:31 PM]
@Eating Sirloin Rib Bones
Ah, so just more of dodge because you can’t think of stuff yourself. Cool. Nice to know for sure.

I brought up the lion-soldier analogy because it already demonstrated the heart of what you are looking for. In that case, I showed how the analogy could be useful in one case, but could become uninteresting when it was used to infer something else.

Going based off of what you said that follows, I think you may be missing the point a bit. Sure, if the analogy is simply between two basic elements: cows produce, bees produce, then the analogy works fine. If instead the analogy goes from this granted comparison to saying something like: “The reason cows produce x is because of y, therefore the reason bees produce x’ is because of y’”, then it may or may not be interesting, depending on the successfulness of further argumentation that justifies this further analogy. However, the earlier granted analogy certainly does not itself justify the secondary analogy.

Here is how the SEP puts it:
1. S is similar to T in certain (known) respects.
2. S has some further feature Q.
3. Therefore, T also has the feature Q, or some feature Q* similar to Q.

The first premise establishes the analogy between two situations, objects, phenomena etc. The second premise states that the source domain has a given property. The conclusion is then that the target domain also has this property, or a suitable counterpart thereof. While informative, this schema does not differentiate between good and bad analogical arguments, and so does not offer much by way of explaining what grounds (good) analogical arguments. Indeed, contentious cases usually pertain to premise 1, and in particular to whether S and T are sufficiently similar in a way that is relevant for having or not having feature Q.
[4:32 PM]
So when I say that I agree that there is an analogy, I am just agreeing to that first premise in isolation: there are similarities, trivially. When I say that the analogy is “uninteresting”, I am just saying that the similarities granted in 1 are insufficient to justify the further inference. See the SEP’s section on deductive justification within ‘analogy and analogical reasoning”, or (2) of my response to Jimmy.

 

You really have left me with the impression that you’re fighting so hard against the Authorial Model because you disagree with determinism and/or Calvinism. You seemingly illustrated this quite eloquently and concisely when you said, “I try and start out by accepting his model, but as its defenders defend it, it starts to contradict what I think is obviously Christian.” It contradicts what you think is “obviously Christian.”

To add some clarity, what I mean by “obviously Christian”, is just those tenets that the Christian tradition widely tries to accept. There are hundreds of reasons I think Calvinism is obviously false, and they are not all playing a role here. Rather, it is when the defense of the analogy seems to commit the defender to a low view of Christ’s divinity for example, that instead of continuing in agreement with the model, I take on the new approach of “hey, here is some conclusion at odds with mainstream Christianity”.

@Spicy
@Eastern Reformed Blokes Rep (1) > No, it is to say they do not mirror because fictions are fictitious (viz. imaginary-things-that-can’t-have-human-relationships). The argument is: the analogy fails because the analogy is not identity /is that/an analogy. Any case where there is a disanalogy is a result of the hosts of the disanalogous elements being what they are and not identical to each other. Yes, it is because of the nature of fiction that there is no relationship between humans and fiction that mirrors the relationship between divine and human. It seems the only way to maintain that they do mirror each other is to hold a low view of incarnation and a low view of human transformation. > I used the word “essence” because that’s the only way your disanalogy would be effective. The fact you mean presence is exactly why it’s not a problem. It’s not clear why one wouldn’t be a problem and the other would be. God is not separable from his essence. Where God is, so is his essence. Orthodox Christianity maintains that in the hypostatic union, it is the essence of God that is united with Christ’s human essence. Remember, a human essence is a part of created reality, it is the equivalent of fiction here and in Christ it is united to the essence of God. This is just straight out of the Athanasian Creed. When Christ walks among us, it is not merely his human half that we interact with; we interact with the person where both his divine essence and his human essence harmoniously unite. I don’t take this to be saying something differently than presence either because one’s presence in a location requires that they are there in their essence. The only counterexample is cases where we might say someone was present in a room when in fact they were only on a video call with someone in that room. This counterexample surely does not apply to how divine presence works with us. At least, I took that for granted.

Jimmy Stephens:

(1) Question Begging
Yes, it is because of the nature of fiction that there is no relationship between humans and fiction that mirrors the relationship between divine and human.

[I]ts [Daniel’s model’s] defense frequently required opposing standard orthodoxy.
LOL! Let’s come back to you proving this claim when you successfully finish providing reasons for your original claim.

When Christ walks among us, it is not merely his human half that we interact with; we interact with the person where both his divine essence and his human essence harmoniously unite.
You rely on ambiguity here. Do you mean we interact with God’s essence because we interact with Christ or do you mean we interact with God because we interact with Christ?

Christ does not fail to be transcendent in the incarnation, nor is his immanence separable from his transcendence such that he only brings some watered down divinity with him.
If only you could show how this contradicts anything I said…

Yes, it is because of the nature of fiction that there is no relationship between humans and fiction that mirrors the relationship between divine and human.
&
[T]he distance between the two is so grand that it’s extremely silly to try and claim that they are close enough to warrant any interesting comparison.
They’re incomparably distant because you claim they’re incomparably distant. Wow. Knock down argument.

I’ll repeat, there’s three things your argument needs to accomplish:
– orthodoxy (not that you have a clue what that is)
– Daniel’s model (no question begging)
– symmetry breaker

So far you’re managing to miss the first two steps repeatedly. (edited)
[4:46 PM]
Every time you beg the question is a failure to meet the last step.

 

(2) Sentience
This is an in principle objection. . .
Agreed. I await to see how you’re going to get to sentience as a disanalogy from here.

[C]an we infer that t’ is true of Q? No. The first issue is that it’s difficult to set a metric for when any property can qualify as an a’ rather than just being something non-a altogether.
First, this is the very double edged sword @Eating Sirloin Rib Bones already posed to you: if an articulated metric is necessary to make judgments about analogies, you need one to say the author-fiction analogy is disanalogous.

Second, that sentience is a symmetry breaker doesn’t follow from skepticism about analogy-metrics:
Supporters need to identify some a=a relation between P and Q.
&
when you respond to my point about sentience with the analogy between f-sentience and r-sentience, you are doing nothing other than giving me an a->a’ relation, which is not good enough
Spicy, that may be your position, but I don’t share your beliefs about how analogies work. You’ll have to justify that major premise of your argument. Where you could have just addressed the explanatory function of sentience, it appears you want to drown yourself in an even bigger onus of defending an entire philosophy of analogies.

 

Me
That if something is insentient it lacks moral concerns does not say whether fictions are insentient. That’s the key factor you need even if insentience is the wider category.
Spicy
You have yet to give an argument for why that is needed.

I haven’t given an argument why an implicative relation between insentience and moral concern does not classify fictions, let alone classify them as belonging to the antecedent in the implicative relation?

Do we need arguments that unsound arguments don’t support claims too, or that squares aren’t necessarily blue colored when drawn?

all that matters is that if there were no sentience at all, there would be no moral concern at all.
And again, what you mean by “no sentience at all” trivializes your attempt to use sentience as a symmetry breaker. It’s a deepity.

If you mean no sentience in the universe at all, this is true, but this is what the analogy predicts. If you take God out of the equation, no value exists. Value derives from the Author in creation, and the same holds for works of art. This interpretation is true, but trivial.

If you mean a specific object being insentient tells us that it’s of no moral concern, this is falsified by my previous examples plus the fact that it doesn’t tell us whether fictions are sentient. This interpretation is significant, but false. Hence, deepity.

No, my argument nowhere requires sentience to be the only factor. It just shows the frankly-obvious absurdities to anyone who’s morally intuned that follow from confusing sentience for the important factor. (edited)
[5:16 PM]
.
[5:18 PM]
Finally, I could find nowhere where you defended your assumption that spooky ideas like fictions being sentience even has any noteworthy moral ramifications. I repeat that, apart from the retarded consequence that imagining any kind of evil makes you evil, there’s just no reason to think fictions actually suffering is any more a problem without question begging in favor of the PoE.

My summary (I don’t expect Spicy to agree; as a principle, he finds summaries unabidable):

1.) Daniel posted his video, which amounted to saying, “Hey, the same way we can’t nilly willy infer things about an author from fiction, neither can we about God from creation. This undermines PoE’s categorically.”

1
[5:19 PM]
2.) Spicy complained that the analogy doesn’t involve the inferential gap Daniel thinks it does.
[5:19 PM]
3.) Vincent and I challenged Spicy; Daniel did too, but got off into some cousin topics.
[5:19 PM]
4.) Spicy provided two putative symmetry breakers:
[5:20 PM]
– immanence: authors cannot be “in” their fictions the way God is fully present in creation.
[5:20 PM]
– sentience: creation includes sentience, fictions do not, and that’s the relevant factor, not fictitiousness, why we do not infer the moral character of authors from fictions.
[5:21 PM]
5.) Vincent and I gave roughly the same criticism. Both these analogies turn out to be question begging one of two ways.
[5:21 PM]
Either:
[5:21 PM]
– because Spicy denies Daniel’s model in order to interpret the analogy this way; or in Vincent’s case, because Spicy takes presuppositions in common with unbelievers to motivate the objection. (edited)
[5:21 PM]
or
[5:22 PM]
– because Spicy is faulting the analogy for its component analogs or for being an analogy simpliciter
[5:23 PM]
6.) Spicy is finally taking the trouble to try to defend sentience with me.