Monday, May 28, 2012

Is pain "intrinsically" bad?

In the last post, I mentioned that Shelly Kagan said (in passing) in his article published in the Chronicle that pain was an intrinsic bad. I've seen other philosophers say this too but I have yet to see a defense of it.

What about for very very evil people? Is pain intrinsically bad when experienced by these people? Maybe intuitions defer here but I think mine suggest that pain maybe intrinsically good for the very evil. Perhaps that's because I tend to have more retributive intuitions than most?

1 comment:

  1. One school of thought holds that it's because pain is intrinsically bad that it is owed to bad people. It's always "bad to" the sufferer, but in this case, it's "good to" society to do something "bad to" the wrongdoer.

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