Abstract
AbstractNick Bostrom has famously defended the credibility of the simulation hypothesis – the hypothesis that we live in a computer simulation. Barry Dainton has recently employed the simulation hypothesis to defend the ‘simulation solution’ to the problem of natural evil. The simulation solution claims that apparently natural evils are in fact the result of wrong actions on the part of the people who create our simulation. In this way, it treats apparently natural evils as actually being moral evils, allowing them to be explained via the free will theodicy. Other theodicies which assimilate apparently natural evils to moral ones include Fall theodicies, which attribute apparently natural evils to the biblical Fall, and diabolical theodicies, which attribute them to the activity of demons. Unfortunately, Dainton fails to give compelling reasons for preferring the simulation solution to Fall or diabolical theodicies. He gives one argument against diabolical theodicies, but it has no force against their best version, and he does not discuss Fall theodicies at all. In this article, I attempt to rectify this. I discuss several problems faced by Fall and diabolical theodicies which the simulation solution avoids. These provide some reason to prefer the simulation solution to these alternatives.
Highlights
Nick Bostrom ( ) has argued that the simulation hypothesis – more or less, the hypothesis that we live in a computer simulation – is surprisingly credible
Nick Bostrom has famously defended the credibility of the simulation hypothesis – the hypothesis that we live in a computer simulation
I will not attempt here to survey potential problems with, or objections to, the simulation solution, or to the simulation hypothesis more broadly. (Some of these have already been discussed by Dainton.) My aim is not to argue that the simulation solution is all-things-considered more attractive than alternative subsumption theodicies
Summary
Nick Bostrom ( ) has argued that the simulation hypothesis – more or less, the hypothesis that we live in a computer simulation – is surprisingly credible. The simulation solution claims that apparently natural evils are the result of wrong actions on the part of the people who create our simulation. I discuss several problems faced by Fall and diabolical theodicies which the simulation solution avoids.
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