Hostname: page-component-8448b6f56d-qsmjn Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-04-24T15:45:13.208Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Your death might be the worst thing ever to happen to you (but maybe you shouldn’t care)

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2020

Travis Timmerman
Travis Timmerman*
Affiliation:
Department of Philosophy, Syracuse University, Syracuse, NY, USA
*
Email: tmtimmer@syr.edu
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Deprivationism cannot accommodate the common sense assumption that we should lament our death iff, and to the extent that, it is bad for us. Call this the Nothing Bad, Nothing to Lament Assumption. As such, either this assumption needs to be rejected or deprivationism does. I first argue that the Nothing Bad, Nothing to Lament Assumption is false. I then attempt to figure out which facts our attitudes concerning death should track. I suggest that each person should have two distinct attitudes toward death: one determined by agent’s reasonable expectations about when she will die and one determined by the amount of metaphysically possible good one reasonably believes death precludes.

Keywords

Deathbadnessdeprivationismharmfitting attitudes
Type
Distinguished Lecture
Information
Canadian Journal of Philosophy , Volume 46 , Issue 1 , February 2016 , pp. 18 - 37
Copyright
Copyright © Canadian Journal of Philosophy 2016

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Footnotes

*

Earlier versions of this paper were given at the Facing Death conference at Rhodes University and the Immortality Project Capstone conference in Riverside, California.

References

Belshaw, Christopher. 2009. Annihilation, the Sense and Significance of Death. New York: McGill Queens University Press.Google Scholar
Belshaw, Christopher. 2013. “Death, Value and Desire.” In The Oxford Handbook of Philosophy of Death, edited by Bradley, Ben, Feldman, Fred, and Johansson, Jens, 274–297. New York: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Bradley, Ben. 2007. “How Bad is Death?” Canadian Journal of Philosophy 37(1): 111–127.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bradley, Ben. 2009. Well-being and Death. New York: Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bradley, Ben. 2015. “How Should We Feel about Death?” Philosophical Papers 44(1): 1–14.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Broome, John. 1999. Ethics out of Economics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Brueckner, Anthony, and Fischer, John M.. 1986. “Why is Death Bad?” Philosophical Studies 50(2): 213–221.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Draper, Kai. 1999. “Disappointment, Sadness, and Death.” The Philosophical Review 108(3): 387–414.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Draper, Kai. 2004. “Epicurean Equanimity towards Death.” Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 69(1): 92–114.10.1111/j.1933-1592.2004.tb00385.xCrossRefGoogle Scholar
Feit, Neil. 2015. “Plural Harm.” Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 90(2): 361–388.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Feldman, Fred. 1991. “Some Puzzles about the Evil of Death.” The Philosophical Review 100(2): 205–227.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Fischer, John M. 2006. “Epicureanism about Death and Immortality.” The Journal of Ethics 10(4): 355–381.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Fischer, John M. 2009. Our Stories, Essays on Life, Death, and Free Will. New York: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Fischer, John M. 2011. “Foreknowledge, Freedom and the Fixity of the Past.” Philosophia 39(3): 461–474.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Fischer, John M., and Mitchell-Yellin, Benjamin. 2014. “Immortality and Boredom.” The Journal of Ethics 18(4): 353–372.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Holliday, Wesley. 2012. “Freedom and the Fixity of the Past.” Philosophical Review 121(2): 179–207.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kaufman, Frederik. 2016. “Lucretius and the Fear of Death.” In Immortality and the Philosophy of Death, edited by Cholbi, Michael, 53–66. MD, Lanham: Rowman and Littlefield.Google Scholar
McMahan, Jeff. 2002. The Ethics of Killing. New York: Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Nagel, Thomas. 1970. “Death.” Noûs 4(1): 73–80.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Olson, Jonas. 2004. “Buck-passing and the Wrong Kind of Reasons.” The Philosophical Quarterly 54(215): 295–300.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Otsuka, Michael. 2004. “Skepticism about Saving the Greater Number.” Philosophy and Public Affairs 32(4): 413–426.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Rabinowicz, Wlodek, and Ronnow‐Rasmussen, Toni Rønnow. 2004. “The Strike of the Demon: On Fitting Pro‐attitudes and Value.” Ethics 114(3): 391–423.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Rosati, Connie. 2013. “The Makropulos Case Revisited, Reflections on Immortality and Agency.” In The Oxford Handbook of Philosophy of Death, edited by Bradley, Ben, Feldman, Fred, and Johansson, Jens, 355–390. New York: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Rosenbaum, Stephen E. 1986. “How to Be Dead and Not Care: A Defense of Epicurus.” American Philosophical Quarterly 23(2): 217–225.Google Scholar
Scanlon, T. M. 1998. What We Owe to Each Other. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Sullivan, Meghan. Forthcoming. “Are There Essential Properties? No.” In Current Controversies in Metaphysics, edited by Barnes, Elizabeth.New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
Taylor, James S. 2012. Death, Posthumous Harm, and Bioethics. New York: Routledge.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Timmerman, Travis. 2016. “Reconsidering Categorical Desire Views.” In Immortality and the Philosophy of Death, edited by Cholbi, Michael, 21–38. MD, Lanham: Rowman and Littlefield.Google Scholar
Väyrynen, Pekka. 2006. “Resisting the Buck-passing Account of Value.” In Oxford Studies in Metaethics. 1 vol., 295–324. New York: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Williams, Bernard. 1973. Problems of the Self. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar