C. S. Lewis on the (Non) Additivity of Pain in Relation to the Problem of Evil

In The Problem of Pain (Fontana 1957, pp. 203-204, first publ. in 1940), C. S. Lewis writes,

We must never make the problem of pain worse than it is by vague talk about the 'unimaginable sum of human misery'. Suppose that I have a toothache of intensity x: and suppose that you, who are seated beside me, also begin to have a toothache of intensity x. You may, if you choose, say that the total amount of pain in the room is now 2x. But you must remember that no one is suffering 2x: search all time and all space and you will not find that composite pain in anyone's consciousness. There is no such thing as a sum of suffering, for no one suffers it. When we have reached the maximum that a single person can suffer, we have, no doubt, reached something very horrible, but we have reached all the suffering there ever can be in the universe. The addition of a million fellow-sufferers adds no more pain.

I think that Lewis is right that felt pain is not additive across different subjects. Your pain and my pain cannot be summed.  This holds for both physical and psychological pain. Pain is additive only in a given subject and not across subjects.  "There is no such thing as a sum of suffering, for no one suffers it."

So far, so good. It is equally true, however,  that two people being tortured to death  is worse than one person  being tortured to death.  Both states of affair are evil, but the first is more evil than the second. The quantity of felt pain is the same, but in the first there are twice as many evils than in the second.

I conclude that the question of the quantity of pain in the world is distinct from the question of the quantity of evil in the world. This is relevant to the problem of evil faced by theists.  Lewis has shown that "the maximum that a single person can suffer" is "all the suffering that there ever can be in the universe."  And that includes all the suffering of the non-human animals who suffer. But the problem of evil faced by the theist is precisely a problem of evil and not a problem of felt pain. And this despite the fact that many pains are evil (all those, I should think, the suffering of which does not lead to a greater good.) 

My tentative conclusion is that the considerations adduced in the passage quoted above do little to alleviate the severity of the problem of evil faced by traditional theists.

Comments

[Vito B. Caiati]

On the question of pain and evil, I think that your readers would profit from reviewing your excellent posts from more than a decade ago on the privation theory of evil. I have read these many times over the years, in conjunction with my attempt to understand Aquinas on this question. I have never been comfortable with the privation theory of evil, and your thinking has been of great help to me in seeing the faults in reasoning on which it depends. Again, I strongly recommend the following posts to your readers:
https://maverickphilosopher.typepad.com/maverick_philosopher/2010/11/evil-as-privation-and-the-problem-of-pain-part-one.html
https://maverickphilosopher.typepad.com/maverick_philosopher/2010/11/evil-as-privation-and-the-problem-of-pain-part-two.html

[Dave Bagwill]

Strangely, I've not met or read any theists who have tried to sweep the problem of evil under the rug, nor have they downplayed pain or suffering. (I'm not implying that there aren't such theists)
They do attempt to clarify what the problem is, and to achieve that clarification will usually sweep out the underbrush of misunderstanding and anthropomorphism, and the persuasive power of emotional rhetoric. Lewis' passage imo served those particular ends well. He was not, of course, ignoring or minimizing the fact of evil in the world.

If as a thought experiment we were to remove humanity from the natural order, then animals would continue on in their natural course of killing and eating whatever is lower on their food chain. Torturing, not so much, correct? All the pain would come from animal on animal violence (except for such things as fires, perhaps famines). Suffering would usually be short-lived, so to speak.
Is that "natural" order a good or a bad thing? Is that order 'evil'? Is there a way to even answer that question?
Well,if we remove whatever pain and suffering that humanity inflicts on animals, we are left with an 'order' that we still may not be happy with.
Which is no problem, except: God. Because either He just does not care about the thoughts, feelings, perceptions of a vast part of His creation, or He just could have done 'better' in directly creating such an order, or in allowing the evolutionary process to go its own ruthless way? Or, did He do the 'best He could' but sadly, not good enough? Or could He be wise and good 'in spite of' our judgment on things? Can we live with this cognitive dissonance?
If the only answers acceptable to a critic must be within the limits of that critic's understanding - if he firmly stands only in Athens, with not so much as a fare-thee-well to Jerusalem - if he is enclosed in the prison of rationalism - if the Real is exhausted by his atheistic world-view - then the Theist's reasoning (him not being a rationalist) cannot be of much help.
Yes, I'm claiming that the metanarrative of Christian belief, and the fulness of understanding Reality in terms of that belief, allows for exceeding confidence in the now and hereafter, and provides an epistemic platform from where what we don't yet understand can to be acknowledged. Not to everyone's satisfaction, to be sure.

[BV]

Well thank you, Vito. I was thinking of re-posting the entries you mention in a larger font and with such redactions as now seem necessary. Reposting also gives me an opportunity to re-think the subject. I will enable comments in case you have any.