Epistemic Evil

Epistemic Evil: A Third Problem of Evil makes several significant contributions to scholarship on the problem of evil. It defends an ontological formulation of the problem of evil that differs significantly from both the logical and the evidential formulations. It provides a detailed examination of the best-of-all-possible-worlds hypothesis and the relevance of that hypothesis to the problem of evil. It offers detailed criticisms of the arguments of many leading Christian apologists. Above all, however, it identifies a third problem of evil. Tierno calls this the problem of epistemic evil. This problem arises in the context of our efforts to make judgments about the world in which we live and about how we ought to human understanding, act in that world. Such judgments often lead, through no corrigible defect in the conduct of the agents who make them, to human suffering. There is no sense in which this suffering is deserved. Moreover, the erroneous judgments that lead to this suffering are neither actually nor potentially good for anything. These judgments therefore appear to be anomalous from the standpoint of the Judaeo-Christian creation hypothesis. Tierno carefully develops and forcefully defends the problem of epistemic evil. The result is a groundbreaking work in theodicy that should be of interest to all scholars who are seriously concerned with the problem of evil.