134 ARGUMENTS: MONOTHEISTIC CONCEPTIONSmiserably selfish person being allowed to suffer as a way of providing her
an opportunity to become compassionate. Perhaps an accident that renders
irrevocably comatose a loving wife and mother whose community activities
alleviated much suffering falls into the class of unimaginably pointful
evils.^13
The class of imaginably pointful evils can be further divided into those
where nothing we know about a particular case renders it unavailable for
being pointful in the imagined way, and cases where this is ruled out by
what we know. Suppose two stingy hoarders face death by freezing and are
discovered just in time to save their lives. The one becomes generous and
charitable, but the other has been so completely conditioned to be mean
about money that even his being rescued by Red Cross workers does not
make him any more willing to be charitable. One might think of the
suffering the first hoarder endured as having a point in its positive results
on his character, but the latter hoarder was so set in his ways that changing
was not an option, even if he nearly froze to death. Let the former sort of
case be imaginably and contextually pointful and the latter sort of case be
imaginably, but not contextually, pointful. A rough informal
characterization of the sense of these terms is this: an imaginably and
contextually pointful evil is one that, so far as we know, may occur to a
person under conditions in which the evil serves some morally sufficient
point – some point such that a perfectly good being who allowed the evil to
occur in order that the point be served acted rightly in so doing.^14 An
imaginably, but not contextually, pointful evil is one that might occur to a
person under conditions in which the evil serves some morally sufficient
point – some point such that a perfectly good being who allowed the evil to
occur in order that the point be served acted rightly in so doing – but we
know something about the circumstances in which the evil occurred that
fully prevents them from being conditions of this sort. An evil is
unimaginably pointful if after considerable effort we still cannot think of
any condition under which the occurrence of that sort of evil might serve
some morally sufficient point – some point such that a perfectly good being
who allowed the evil to occur in order that the point be served acted rightly
in so doing.^15
A more formal characterization of these rough distinctions can be
expressed along these lines:
D1 An evil E is imaginably and contextually pointful relative to person S
if and only if (i) we can describe a condition C such that if S is in C
and endures E, it is possible that her doing so will be a necessary
condition of S coming to have property Q, where S’s having Q is a
sufficiently good state of affairs that one who allowed S to endure E
for the sake of S coming to have Q would be morally justified in so