Dougherty's Forthcoming Book on the Problem of Animal Pain

Dougherty, Trent. The Problem of Animal Pain (Palgrave, forthcoming). The book is due to come out in July. Interestingly (and plausibly) it rejects the neo-Cartesian response to the problem of animal suffering defending by Michael J. Murray and endorsed by William Lane Craig. Here's the blurb:

The problem of evil constitutes the greatest challenge to rational belief in the existence of God. Animal suffering constitutes perhaps the most powerful version of the problem. Considerations that render human suffering theologically intelligible seem inapplicable to non-human animals. It is commonly held that they do not have morally significant free will, they do not have immortal souls, and they do not have a direct relationship with God. In this book, Dougherty defends radical possibilities for animal afterlife that allow a soul-making theodicy to apply to animals. He defends that animals have souls, and a novel model of materialist resurrection if they don't. He then proposes that animals will undergo theosis and given the expanded cognitive resources to understand and embrace their place in the scheme of salvation. Along the way we get tours of probability theory, four-dimensionalism, and chimpanzee behavior. From the split-brain experiment to the relationship between mammalian and avian brains, this tour de force challenges conventional wisdom on the theology of animals.

And here's the table of contents:

Series Editors' Preface Acknowledgements 1. The Plan of this book2. The Problem of Animal Pain3. The Bayesian Argument from Animal Pain4. Is there Really a Problem? The Challenge of Neo-Cartesianism5. There is a problem. The Defeat of Neo-Cartesianism6. The Saint-Making Theodicy I: Negative Phase7. The Saint-Making Theodicy II: Positive Phase8. Animal Saints9. Animal AfterlifeBibliography Index