Religious Studies (2020) 56, 436–446 © Cambridge University Press 2020.

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doi:10.1017/S0034412519000477

Intentionality, evil, God, and necessity

AMIR HOROWITZ
Department of History, Philosophy, and Judaic Studies, The Open University of Israel,
1 University Road, Ra’anana, Israel
e-mail: [email protected]

Abstract: In an article in this issue, Kenneth Pearce suggests a novel solution to

the ‘logical problem of evil’. That is, he defends the consistency of the obtaining of
evil with the existence of an omnipotent and good creator. The basic idea of
Pearce’s solution to the logical problem of evil is that according to the teleological
theory of intentionality, which is self-consistent and consistent with the claim that
God exists, some evil is necessary for the existence of created minds, and this evil is
outweighed by the good that is involved in the existence of created minds. The
present article argues that this suggestion fails to solve the problem.

Introduction: the logical problem of evil

In an article in this issue, Kenneth Pearce () suggests a novel solution

to the ‘logical problem of evil’. That is, he defends the consistency of the obtaining
of some evil with the existence of an omnipotent and perfectly good creator. This
article argues that Pearce fails to solve the logical problem of evil.
The logical problem of evil that Pearce addresses is the (alleged) inconsistency
between the existence of God – understood, inter alia, as perfectly good and
omnipotent – and the existence of evil in the world. The idea is that since God is
perfectly good, then God doesn’t want there to be evil in the world, and since
God is omnipotent, then God gets whatever God wants, and so if God exists
there is no evil in the world. In other words, the assumption that God exists
clashes with the claim that there is evil in the world. Pearce emphasizes that the
logical problem of evil is concerned with the existence of any evil whatsoever,
that is, with the (alleged) inconsistency of the existence of God with there being
even a minor evil, and he attempts to undermine this alleged inconsistency, that
is, to show that God’s existence is consistent with there being some evil in the


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 Intentionality, evil, God, and necessity 

world. Specifically, Pearce points out a kind of evil that, so he argues, is consistent
with God’s existence.
Pearce, like others, distinguishes the logical problem of evil from the ‘real
problem of evil’. In fact, there are a few versions to the real problem of evil, and
Pearce refers to that one of them which is concerned with the horrendous evil
and suffering that fills the world. Since his argument is not concerned with this
evil and suffering, Pearce does not take it to address this real problem of evil,
but he suggests that his argument does make some progress towards addressing
it. I will not discuss the respects in which this is so according to Pearce, but
after arguing that he fails to show that the evil in question may be justified,
I will point out another difficulty with Pearce’s argument – in fact, with Pearce’s
very approach to the logical problem – that concerns the relation between the
two problems of evil.

Pearce’s solution to the logical problem of evil

Pearce’s general strategy for solving the logical problem of evil is similar to
that of Plantinga’s () free-will solution. This strategy consists in identifying a
proposition that entails both that God exists and that evil exists, and showing
that this proposition is consistent. The proposition that Pearce identifies is:
(M) God decided to create minds although it is impossible that created minds exist in the
absence of evil. (Pearce (), )

Pearce infers the consistency of (M) from his claim that a certain theory of
mind is both self-consistent and consistent with God’s existence. The theory in
question is the naturalistic teleological theory of original intentionality. (Pearce
refers to this theory as ‘NFT’ – for ‘naturalistic-functional-teleological’ – but for a
reason to be revealed later, I will omit the mention of functionality and refer to
this theory as ‘NT’.) According to NT (ibid., ):

. A state S of a finite being B is non-derivatively about an object x iff S has

the function of indicating x for B.
. A state S of a finite being B has a function for B only if B’s exemplifica-
tion of S can be given a causal-historical explanation in terms of adap-
tive advantages that accrue to B when S successfully performs that
function.

Pearce’s argument does not hinge on the claim that NT is true. What it requires
is that it (a) be self-consistent, (b) be consistent with God’s existence, and (c) entail
that some evil is necessary for the existence of created minds, an evil that is out-
weighed by the good that is involved in the existence of created minds. The main
burden of the argument is to show that NT entails that some evil is necessary for
the existence of created minds. Here is how Pearce attempts to do this.

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  AMIR HOROWITZ

According to NT, original (that is, non-derived) intentionality requires such cor-
relations between representations and their represented objects that are selected
for on the grounds of their contribution to the proper functioning of the system
in question. Now these correlations must be selected for from among alternatives,
and so there must be instances – in the history of the individual organism or in the
history of its species – in which the correlations fail, instances that result in mal-
functions. Such malfunctions may be, for example, false alarms about the presence
of predators, and the system that sustains the correlations is selected for because
having a higher rate of false positives is a lesser evil for the organism than even a
modest rate of false negatives. The idea, in short, is that original intentionality
necessarily involves malfunctions, and malfunctions are evils. It is then impossible
for creaturely intentionality, Pearce concludes, to exist in an evil-free world.
This in itself does not amount to or entail the consistency of (M) – the claim that
God decided to create minds although it is impossible that created minds exist in
the absence of evil. Indeed, Pearce supports it by making the further claims that (a)
NT is self-consistent, (b) NT is consistent with God’s existence, (c) the existence of
minds is intrinsically valuable or (d) it is a necessary precondition for other goods,
and (e) the evil that is necessary for the existence of creaturely intentionality is out-
weighed by the goods that depend on the existence of minds. Pearce assumes that
(a) is true, and provides arguments for (b) and (e). I will not dwell on these argu-
ments, and grant that they are effective. Similarly, I will grant (a) and Pearce’s
claim that those malfunctions are evils. (I will refer to this latter claim in the
fourth section.) As to (c) and (d), Pearce takes them to be extremely plausible. I
will argue that they may only be true in a sense in which they cannot serve to estab-
lish the consistency of (M) and, thus, the claim that God may be justified to create a
world that contains some evil.

Intentionality, evil, and a posteriori necessity

Pearce insists that if NT is true, then it is necessarily true. That is, it purports
to be a necessary a posteriori truth. (Of course, taking it to be a priori necessary is
implausible.) This point is important. It well accords with the rationale of Pearce’s
argument, which is that of showing that some evil is metaphysically unavoidable
(not per se but) for bringing about some valuable state of affairs whose valence
overrides the negative valence of this evil. If this is true, then, according to this
idea, God cannot be blamed for creating a world that contains such evil. Of
course, this approach cannot serve to defend a notion of an omnipotent God in
a sense in which God can also do what is metaphysically impossible, but
Pearce, like others who address the problem of evil, is satisfied with a notion of
God who is limited by both logic and metaphysics. So let’s remain in this frame-
work, and turn to consider in what sense NT can be said to be necessary and, con-
sequently, in what sense the evils that are implicated by its truth can be justified.

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 Intentionality, evil, God, and necessity 

The notion of necessary a posteriori statements (influentially defended by

Kripke () and Putnam () ) is certainly not uncontroversial, and philoso-
phers who reject it would not be persuaded by Pearce’s suggested solution, but
for the sake of argument I will grant its legitimacy. The classical example of an a
posteriori necessary statement (one that Pearce also mentions) concerns the state-
ment that water is HO. Now to take this statement to be necessary a posteriori
does not mean or imply that water (or HO, for that matter) necessarily exists.
Neither does it mean or imply that there can be no watery stuff – that is, stuff
with the macro properties of water – that is not H. Rather, what taking this state-
ment to be necessary a posteriori means is that stuff with the macro properties of
water that is not H is not water. For example, twater – that TwinEarth liquid
whose chemical structure is XYZ rather than H but that shares water’s macro
properties (Putnam’s () ) – isn’t water.
How can this point be applied to the case of intentionality and, specifically, to
NT? Here is the first point on the matter. Suppose that intentionality is that teleo-
logical relation that NT takes it to be, and that the identity between intentionality
and that NT relation is necessary a posteriori. So NT’s being a necessary a poster-
iori truth does not mean or imply that the selection history that this thesis takes to
constitute intentionality necessarily exists. On the assumption that NT is a neces-
sary a posteriori truth, it necessarily exists only if intentionality exists.
Does this fact pose a problem for Pearce’s argument? The claim that intention-
ality necessarily exists, and, a fortiori, the claim that NTy intentionality – that is,
intentionality that is constituted the way NT takes it to be constituted – necessarily
exists, do not form part of this argument. What Pearce argues is that the state of
affairs in which intentionality exists necessarily involves some evil, and that this
state of affairs is both self-consistent and consistent with the existence of (an
omnipotent and perfectly good) God. It is consistent with the existence of God
since it is necessary for some goods that outweigh this evil. But my claim that
taking NT to be a necessary a posteriori truth does not entail the necessity of inten-
tionality is only meant to be the first step in an argument to the effect that Pearce
fails to show the consistency of the idea that some evil is necessary for this good.
Specifically, realizing what the supposed necessary a posteriori nature of NT is, we
can see that relying on it cannot serve to support this consistency claim as well.
Here goes.
Note, first, that it isn’t clear why Pearce holds that the evil that creaturely inten-
tionality involves, if it is constituted the way NT asserts it is, is necessary for the
existence of created minds. One possible way to defend this idea is to argue that
minds are necessarily intentional. Pearce does not argue for this claim, but, shift-
ing from the claim that ‘it is impossible for creaturely intentionality to exist in a
world without evil’ to the claim that ‘the existence of created minds requires at
least some evil’ (Pearce (), ) presupposes it. Pearce dos not justify this
shift. Of course, it would have been justified had minds been intentional by defini-
tion, but definitions cannot resolve substantial issues. Specifically, if it is possible

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  AMIR HOROWITZ

for those things called ‘minds’ to exist if their intentionality is subtracted from
them, it matters not, for our issue, whether those intentionality-less things are
properly called ‘minds’. What seems to be more relevant to Pearce’s argument
is the idea that it is a posteriori necessary that minds are intentional (and so it is
impossible for those things to exist without intentionality). Of course, this idea
is similar to the idea that it is necessary a posteriori that intentionality is consti-
tuted the way described by NT, and hence that it necessarily involves evil. The con-
junction of these two ideas entails that evil is necessary for the existence of created
minds. What, then, is the problem with Pearce’s reliance on the supposed neces-
sary a posteriori nature of the connection between minds and evil that is mediated
by intentionality?
As noted, the claim that water is necessarily HO not only does not mean or
entail that water necessarily exists; it also does not mean or entail that there
cannot be stuff with the macro or identifying properties of water that is not H.
Rather, what taking this statement to be necessary a posteriori means is that
watery stuff that is not HO is not water. Twater, for example, isn’t water. In
order to apply this point to the relation between intentionality and NT, we have
to determine, first, what the identifying properties of intentionality – the analogues
of watery properties or, generally, of macro properties – are. The rationale that
standardly underlies naturalistic-reductionist accounts of intentionality of the
NT kind is that these identifying properties are the functional roles of our inten-
tional states (see Papineau () and () ). Braddon-Mitchel and Jackson
characterize this idea thus: ‘Belief that p is the theoretically interesting state that
actually plays the folk functional roles distinctive of belief that p (from reflection
of what we master when we master intentional vocabulary)’ (Braddon-Mitchel &
Jackson (), ). Determining what this functional role is is supposed to be
a matter of conceptual analysis, whereas identifying it with some specific natural-
istic world-mind relation (the one that in fact connects intentional states with their
objects), such as that historical-teleological relation, is supposed to be an a poster-
iori matter. An account of intentionality along such lines is not a functional role
account of intentionality, since the functional role only plays the role of reference
fixer, and is not supposed to be the nature of intentionality.
So, given the assumption that the identifying properties of intentionality are the
functional roles of intentional states, does taking NT to be a necessary a posteriori
truth mean or imply that there cannot be internal states of an organism that have
the functional roles of intentional states but that do not involve what, according to
NT, intentionality necessarily involves (that is, bearing that adaptive historical rela-
tion – call it ‘NTy relation’ – to the environment)? No. taking NT to be a necessary a
posteriori truth only means that such states are not intentional states. Indeed, why
can’t there be internal states with the functional roles of intentional states that do
not have the adaptive history that NT takes intentionality to involve? And certainly,
the assumption that NT is a necessary a posteriori truth and the claim that our
internal states may not bear that adaptive historical relation to worldly items do

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 Intentionality, evil, God, and necessity 

not jointly entail that they may not bear any (naturalistic) relation to them. So
there may be internal states with all properties that are non-intentional and are
not constituted by intentional properties, including functional properties, that
are related to the environment by means of (naturalistic) relations to the environ-
ment different from the NTy relation. This is a metaphysical possibility, and an
omnipotent God (even one that is constrained by logical and metaphysical impos-
sibilities) could create human beings with such internal states.
If NT is a necessary truth, then internal states that bear to environmental items
only non-NTy naturalistic relations – for example, asymmetric co-variation (see
Fodor () and () ) – are not intentional, and if mentality is necessarily
intentional then these states are not even mental and their possessors do not
have minds. This seems to me to be a strange consequence, but I do not rely on
its strangeness for rebuffing Pearce’s argument. The point I wish to stress is
different. Consider entities that are identical to minds in functional role and in
any other respect except for bearing to environmental items some naturalistic rela-
tions different from NTy relations (e.g. relations of asymmetric co-variation). Call
such entities ‘twinminds’, and call their relations to environmental items ‘twinten-
tionality’. The crucial issue is whether God could be justified in creating humans
with (NTy) intentionality and (NTy) minds when God could have created creatures
with twintentionality and twinminds that do not involve the evils that (NTy) inten-
tionality and (NTy) minds involve. There appears to be no justification for such a
choice on the part of God, for twinminds may be as valuable as minds.
Pearce claims that plausibly minds are intrinsically valuable (Pearce (), ).
We may perhaps suppose that they are, but what is implausible is to suppose that
minds have intrinsic values while twinminds lack intrinsic value. To suppose this is
to suppose that the intrinsic value of minds is rooted not in their intrinsic nature
(minds and twinminds share intrinsic nature – their only difference is external) but
in their NTy relations to the environment; that NTy relations but not any other
naturalistic relations to the environment are the source of the intrinsic (!) value
of the mental. This appears to make no sense.
Claiming that minds are intrinsically valuable is, for Pearce, one possible step in
the way to support the view that ‘the existence of created minds is a sufficiently
great good that it is consistent with perfect goodness to bring about the existence
of created minds even if this implies the existence of at least some evil’ (ibid.).
Another step that Pearce undertakes for supporting this view is claiming that
‘the existence of minds is a necessary precondition for an enormous variety of
other goods, such as pleasure, virtue, love, and aesthetic appreciation’ (ibid.).
He may similarly say that (whether or not intentionality is necessary for mentality)
the existence of intentionality is a precondition for such goods. These two claims
may seem plausible: isn’t intentionality a precondition for love and aesthetic
appreciation, for example? However, when understood in the senses that are
required for making Pearce’s argument effective, these claims are not true. For
in the context of this argument twinminds and twintentionality are not minds

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  AMIR HOROWITZ

and intentionality, respectively – only NTy minds and NTy intentionality are minds
and intentionality, respectively. So the precondition for these goods according to
Pearce is the existence of minds and intentionality as distinguished from twinminds
and twinintentionality – as distinguished from any counterparts that differ from
NTy mind and NTy intentionality only in some relational-environmental differ-
ence, however slight it may be. The former two qualify for the job; the latter two
do not. Pearce gives us no reason to believe that only one specific naturalistic rela-
tion can enable us to have all these goods. And recall, minds and twinminds share
intrinsic natures, so there need not be any intrinsic difference between minds and
their non-NTy counterparts. Thus, if Pearce’s claim that minds necessarily involve
(NTy) intentionality and therefore evil is true, God should not have created minds;
rather, God should have created twinminds that do not involve evils. (Of course,
one who maintains that minds necessarily involve (NTy) intentionality may
argue that love, virtue, aesthetic appreciation, and the like cannot be attributed
to twinminds. However, in accordance with what I’ve just argued, this doesn’t
matter for our issue, since the crucial point is whether, for example, twinlove is
less valuable than love, and there is no reason to believe that it is.)
Thus, there is no reason to suppose that the evils that NT presupposes are
necessary for the goods that minds involve. An omnipotent God could bring
about such goods without bringing about evils of the NTy kind.
One might think that having (NTy) minds and (NTy) intentionality is necessary
for our optimal functioning and is thus instrumental for some goods. (Pearce
himself does not argue along such lines.) However, there is no reason to
assume that bearing precisely this specific relation – the adaptive historical rela-
tion – and thus, on Pearce’s assumption, bearing the intentional relation – to
environmental items is optimal for our proper functioning. There is nothing incon-
sistent in the idea of intentionality-less creatures who are behaviorally and func-
tionally identical to us: they lack intentionality because their internal states do
not bear the ‘right’ relation to worldly items. Relatedly, there is no reason to
suppose that internal states that bear some non-NTy naturalistic relations to the
environment that do not presuppose evils such as malfunctions (e.g. naturalistic
relations such as asymmetric co-variation) are necessarily less sensitive to the
environment and hence less efficient in making us coping with it than (NTy) inten-
tional states. (To claim that adaptive history is necessary for organisms’ optimal
functioning, so that for ensuring our optimal functioning God cannot but endow
us with NTy intentional states, is to put on God limitations beyond metaphysical
necessities, and thus to empty the notion of an omnipotent God.)
Since Pearce has not ruled out the possibility of there being non-NTy analogues
of minds the constitution of whose intentionality does not involve evils that are the
sources of no lesser good than minds, he has not provided us with a reason to
suppose that a perfectly good and omnipotent God can create evil-involving
NTy minds. So Pearce has not established the consistency of (M), and has not
solved the logical problem of evil.

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 Intentionality, evil, God, and necessity 

The logical problem and the real problem: a difficulty with Pearce’s very
approach

Though solving the logical problem of evil falls short of solving the real
problem of evil, Pearce claims that his solution to the logical problem puts us in
a better position vis-à-vis the real problem. I will not discuss the respects in
which this is so according to Pearce, but rather point out another difficulty with
Pearce’s argument – in fact with Pearce’s very approach – that concerns the rela-
tions between the two problems of evil.
Pearce does not attempt to reconcile the existence of horrendous evil and
suffering – which he takes to underlie the real problem of evil – with God’s exist-
ence. His solution to the logical problem of evil concerns evils of another kind –
the malfunctions of our representational systems, which he claims to be evils.
Now recall that Pearce’s strategy for dealing with the logical problem involves
the idea that some evils are necessary for bringing about greater goods. Pearce’s
claim that our representational systems are subject to evils may worsen the dialect-
ical situation of one who wishes to solve the real problem of evil by employing the
same strategy. For this claim implies that one has to take into account not only the
horrendous evils but also those ‘representational’ or NTy evils. So in the best case
(from the theist perspective), everything remains the same: Pearce points out a
feature that appears to be a difficulty for theism, but that (if Pearce successfully
shows that it is necessary for a greater good) isn’t.
More importantly for our present concern, a similar consideration exposes
another difficulty for Pearce’s solution of the logical problem itself. We may
wonder whether the comparison between the ‘representational’ or NTY evils
and the good that is involved in the existence of created minds is the relevant com-
parison. Why focus on this good? Evil that brings about good but also greater evil
cannot be justified. So if, in light of the existence of the evil that Pearce points out
(those representational malfunctions), we wish to justify the creation of minds, we
should not compare this evil with this good. Rather, we should examine the overall
balance of good and evil, an examination which should take into account, on the
side of evil, not only the evil that NTy intentionality brings about, but also, for
example, the familiar horrendous evil and suffering that give rise to the real
problem of evil. In other words, for Pearce, minds (qua intentional) necessarily
involve some evils, but these evils are outweighed by the greater good that
minds involve, hence the creation of minds that involves those representational
evils is justified; but if minds also involve, at least sometimes, other evils – for
example, such that do not arise from people’s own errors and malfunctions but,
say, from natural disasters that make them suffer for the rest of their lives, then
the creation of those minds that involve both those representational evils and
those horrendous evils would only be justified by showing that the sum of those
two kinds of evils is outweighed by the goods that minds involve. And of course
the task of showing this is a task of a different order of magnitude from that of

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  AMIR HOROWITZ

showing that those representational evils themselves are outweighed by those

goods.
Some clarification of the framework in which the issue arises is in order. The real
problem of evil in the version under discussion concerns the justification of severe
evil. The problem is especially challenging for theism if the evil is so great as to
make life not worth living – if the balance between good and evil in life is negative.
(On this issue see Adams ().) It is difficult to think of a plausible explanation
for how such a severe situation could be part of any divine plan. But even if the
balance is positive, theism must account for the existence of evil. Theism must
justify the existence of any evil, however minor it may be. This forms the logical
problem of evil, and it appears to involve no quantitative dimension. However,
Pearce’s justification for the existence of some specific evil by appealing to its
role in enabling some good does involve a quantitative dimension, for,
of course, that good should be greater than the evil. Still, what I have just
argued is that its being greater than the specific evil in question – the one that
intentionality is supposed to involve necessarily – is not enough for the theist jus-
tification; a total positive balance of good and evil is necessary for justifying it. If the
overall balance for minds is not positive, it would not fit with any divine plan – a
perfectly good and omnipotent God would not create minds whose balance of
good and evil is negative.
Thus, it is not only that, even on the assumption that Pearce’s argument for the
consistency of NTy evils with God’s existence is effective, the theist should still
address all other instances of evil and suffering. An effective argument for this con-
sistency itself must adequately address the existence of these other instances.
Pearce treats the logical problem of evil in isolation from the real problem, and
believes that his treatment of it puts us in a better position vis-à-vis the real
problem. But if what I argue in this section is along the right lines, such an isolation
of the logical problem within the framework of Pearce’s reasoning is impossible:
addressing the logical problem in Pearce’s way requires us to address the real
problem of evil – to reconcile God’s existence with the existence of those horren-
dous evils as well. And of course, if the theist has at her disposal an effective solu-
tion to the real problem of evil, she does not have to bother about the logical
problem.

Conclusion

Pearce’s argument fails to solve the logical problem of evil. We saw that it
suffers from two independent flaws. The first flaw is that it fails to provide us with a
reason to suppose that the evils that NT presupposes are necessary for the goods
that minds involve. The second flaw is that it compares those evils with those
goods, rather than with the overall balance of goods/evils that minds involve.
For these reasons, Pearce has not solved the logical problem of evil.

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 Intentionality, evil, God, and necessity 

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NOTES

. See Adams (). For versions of the real problem that are concerned with evils that are not necessarily
horrendous see, e.g., Rowe () and Draper ().
. Pearce refers to the versions of this theory of Dretske (); Millikan (); Neander (). According to
Pearce, in contrast to theories that appeal to mere correlations, NT accounts for human intentionality as
original intentionality.
. This framework poses some awkwardness for the theist. For example, we may wonder whether God
wishes that metaphysical necessities that are responsible for the unavoidability of some evils would not
have existed, or whether God adopts a Spinozistic attitude to such necessities. Questions such as this one
are addressed, to some extent, in Pearce and Pruss ().
. To avoid confusion (due to the analogy with ‘watery stuff’), let me emphasize that ‘NTy intentionality’
refers to what is taken to share the nature of intentionality – what constitutes it – rather than to what is
taken to share its identifying properties.

https://doi.org/10.1017/S0034412519000477 Published online by Cambridge University Press

  AMIR HOROWITZ

. It might be argued that the consistency of the idea that intentionality (unnecessarily) exists and necessarily
involves evil means that as long as it is not ruled out that intentionality necessarily exists, God could not be
charged with creating evil. But first, to defend theism from the logical problem of evil by merely asserting
that perhaps intentionality is necessary is as weak a defence as that of merely asserting that perhaps evil is
necessary. Second, the idea that intentionality necessarily exists is problematic, since there seems to be no
inconsistency with the idea of intentionality-free world. Indeed, arguments for intentional realism (see,
e.g., Fodor () ) are empirical in nature, not a priori. Baker’s () and () cognitive suicide charge
against the repudiation of intentional states does not rely on the claim that the denial of such states is
inconsistent, but on the claim that it involves pragmatic incoherence – that it is incompatible with con-
ditions of its own articulation and defence (see Cling () ).
. Did Brentano take the view that all mental states are intentional to be necessary a posteriori? As Kriegel
() claims, Brentano would not put things this way, since he does not tend to make modal claims, but
on his view intentionality is the underlying nature of mentality.
. This nature may be the functional role of intentional states – it is an a posteriori matter whether it is or it
isn’t. NT, though, is not a functional role theory. It reduces a state’s intentionality to teleology, that is, to its
selection history, whereas a functional role theory reduces it to the state’s relations to other mental states,
to perceptual inputs and to behavioral outputs (see, e.g., Block () ). It is for this reason that I refer to
the teleological theory of intentionality as NT and do not follow Pearce in referring to it as ‘NFT’.
Braddon-Mitchel and Jackson () argue that teleological theories of intentionality do not conform to
this model of reduction (and also to other ones). Papineau () replies to them. For criticism of the very
notion of the identifying properties of intentionality and thus of the very idea of naturalistic-reductionist
accounts of intentionality see Horowitz (). If any of these criticisms is effective, then, trivially, Pearce’s
argument fails, but my objection to it does not rely on the falsity of this idea.
. I am indebted to an anonymous reviewer for Religious Studies for suggesting that I refer in this context to
twintentionality, and for the term ‘twintentionality’.
. Similarly, there is no reason to suppose that such non-NTy internal states cannot be as enjoyable as our
most pleasurable phenomenal states. One might argue that if phenomenal representationalism (see, e.g.,
Tye () ) and NT are both necessarily true, then non-NTy internal states cannot be phenomenally
conscious. But, in accordance with what I argued above, the most that can be inferred from the (sup-
posed) necessary truth of these two views is that non-NTy intentional states and their phenomenal
characters are not metaphysically identical to NTy intentional states and to their phenomenal characters,
respectively. This claim does not amount to the claim that non-NTy intentional states cannot be as good
and pleasurable as their NTy counterparts.
. It is not the case that the learning process involved in the selection history in question (either of the
individual or of the species) is metaphysically necessary for optimal functioning. A (metaphysically)
omnipotent God can certainly make our functioning optimal without having us undergo this process.
. This presentation owes much to an anonymous referee for this journal.
. Pearce briefly claims that its ability to solve the logical problem is a kind of threshold that theism should
pass for addressing the real problem (see Pearce (), ). It is not my aim in this section to criticize
Pearce’s suggestions for relating the two problems of evil, but if what I claim here is right, then, given that
the way to deal with the logical problem is Pearce’s way of comparing evils and goods, this claim of Pearce
does not reflect the intricate relations between the two problems.
. I am much indebted to excellent suggestions and criticisms of two anonymous referees for Religious
Studies.

https://doi.org/10.1017/S0034412519000477 Published online by Cambridge University Press