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James Reilly's avatar

*Wipes tear* They grow up so fast!

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Bentham's Bulldog's avatar

Note I still find hedonism quite plausible, think it's probably right if atheism is true, and think that it's a real cost of theism that it's mostly incompatible with hedonism about well-being. While there is a way out of each of the challenges, it requires biting lots of bullets.

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Rajat Sirkanungo's avatar

Hedonism is compatible with theism. Why do you think that it is incompatible? Sharon Hewitt Rawlette believes in God (or at least an afterlife full of happiness and when I talked to Josh Rasmussen as he knew her in grad school, Josh said Sharon was a universalist like Christian Universalist) and she is a hedonist. Susanna Newcome was also a hedonist - https://www.utilitarianism.net/utilitarian-thinker/susanna-newcome/

I am also a hedonist.

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Bentham's Bulldog's avatar

I don't think they're incompatible. But it's a bit hard to see why, if hedonism is true, God wouldn't make us all supremely happy from the start.

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Rajat Sirkanungo's avatar

But while on the other hand objective list would lead to God giving weight to knowledge or free will or achievement to the point of extreme implausibility. My view is that both hedonists and OLT theorists have to accept the view that there is just something metaphysically necessary about relationship between souls or consciousness and pleasure (and other goods if you are OLT) such that it requires creation of our world alongside heaven.

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Bentham's Bulldog's avatar

But objective list theorists have a good story about that--it's plausible that our world is necessary for certain valuable relationships. IN contrast, it seems God could just put us all in unbounded bliss.

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Rajat Sirkanungo's avatar

I think, you can simply say that those valuable relationships are required to speed up the maximization of pleasure (or pleasantness) and that is what God is doing. You don't need to believe that those relationships are intrinsically valuable on their own.

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