The Concept of Negative Experience. Evidence in radical pesimism

Abstract

This work presents an analysis of the notion of negative experience (NE), taken as a key notion in the justification of radical pessimistic doctrines. It analyzes three possible elucidations of the idea of NE: based on factual expectations, based on evaluative expectations, and based on the perception of real absences; then examines the relevance of each of these versions for the radical pessimistic project, and proposes a restrictive view on the role that the NE may have in said justifications, in any of the three versions, noting that the version that can contribute to said role justifier is the version of the evaluative expectations, but with limitations.