DEATH, or Thoughts on a Friday afternoon

“Since no man, of aught he leaves, knows what is't to leave betimes, let be.”

– Hamlet, Act V, Sc. ii.

Introduction

Although the topic of Death might not prima facie remain a topic for art, many of our greatest thinkers have revered in its mystery. Socrates welcomed it; Hamlet discerned its implications; Freud linked it to our unconscious drive towards destruction. A 21st Century blog (with thinkers) that addresses the vicissitudes of human existence would, therefore, certainly require a discussion.

Despite the tedious discourse that surrounds the existential, psychoanalytic, idealist, and so forth, philosophical doctrines, the “problems of Death” are clear. This post will address one of many such problems that resurfaces over the years, following a rather simple intuition. The first argument that addressed this intuition was made by the classical Greek scholar Epicurus in his Letter to Monoeceus. He writes:

“death is nothing to us, for good and evil imply awareness, and death is the privation of all awareness … Death, therefore, the most awful of evils, is nothing to us, seeing that, when we are, death is not come, and, when death is come, we are not. It is nothing, then, either to the living or to the dead, for with the living it is not and the dead exist no longer.”

And so the problem begins as such: do not fear death, my friends, for you will not experience its dawn. Death presents no pain to the mortal life as one will not experience its happening, and one could never regret the life that one leaves behind.

Now for the paradox: Granted the average population tentatively withdraws upon conversation around death, mourns for the loss of their loved ones’ life, actively embraces the health economy to live a longer life and would undoubtedly recline if held at gunpoint- why such ludicrous behaviour? For we are all going to die one day (Humean skepticism aside), and our death certainly admits of no experience.

Philosophers, however, have never taken anything for granted. This post, then, will look at some of the responses given to Epicurus to salve the other end of the dialectic – that death is, indeed, an evil. However, as shall be shown, they all come short in appreciating the comforting fact that death ought not to be feared.

First, allow me to turn to a few disclaimers. We are not concerned with the process leading up to death – for no philosopher will admit that dying of a painful and chronic disease is not harmful. The discussion is to be found in the moment itself – and the state that is to follow: infinite non-existence. Secondly, it is assumed that there is no afterlife. A discussion on this would require a lifetime’s thesis, of which a meager blog post cannot attempt. Finally, the harm being referenced refers solely to that individual that dies, and not their family, friends and so forth (although, something will be said on this matter below).

A Response: The Deprivation Account

Thomas Nagel provides a classical response in his 1979 paper Death. He argues that a conception of harm and a conception of its awareness are two distinct categories, and as such, death is indeed a harm despite the lack of sentience it affords. He asks us to consider the case of a man who has a cheating wife (for now, we might ignore any sexist extensions) who is not aware of his wife’s behaviour. Ordinarily, we would want to say that the man, or more specifically, the man’s marriage, is being harmed by his wife’s behaviour, despite his lack of knowledge of her sexcapades. The essential point of this analogy is that an account of “harm” relying on one’s experience of it is neither necessary nor sufficient. This leads us to an alternate conception of “harm”, commonly known as the “Deprivation Account”. I wish to discuss two such conceptions, of which the first I shall call the “simple account”: An event or action is harmful if it deprives an individual of goods that they would have enjoyed had the event or action not occurred, regardless of their awareness. Therefore, given that Death deprives us of future interests related to life, it could be a harm*.

However, this analogy is problematic, for it ignores that element of harm related to death that is not found in the ordinary case. As is argued (by Stephen Rosenbaum), there are two conditions of awareness that Epicurus might draw upon: possible awareness, and impossible awareness. In the case of the cheating partner, the “depriving of interests” remains harmful because we ordinarily concede that it is possible for the man to find out about his wife’s behaviour. In the case of Death, however, it is necessarily impossible that one could find out about it. Therefore, Death is that special case to which the “simple account” as related to awareness cannot be applied. Death is, indeed, no harm.

Yet, the non-Epicurean might retaliate by imagining an ordinary scenario where an individual is harmed yet this harm admits of no possibility of being found out. Take the example of an individual suffering a brain injury in a motorcycle accident where their cognitive abilities are severely impaired to the extent that they have no awareness of his deprived state. Certainly, we would want to concede that they are harmed by this impairment despite the fact that there is no possibility that they could discover this harm.

However, Epicurus might reply that we have made an unwarranted step with admitting of such a case. In the example, an essential element to the harm is the requirement of an individual – the person with the impairment is now harmed. In the case of Death, there is no existing entity to which we would attribute this predicate, for death is necessarily non-existence of an “individual”. Therefore, the ordinary cases of impossible awareness contain a further disanalogy of postulating a person suffering the harm. Death, up to now, is still not a harm.

To solve this rather tedious back-and-forth slinging of awareness, Fredrick Feldman provides an argument of which I shall call the “possible world Deprivation Account”**. Simply, we might grant that a “possible world”, as is used in the study of semantics, refers to the counterfactual alternative where one state or event differs. So, I might decide to get hopelessly drunk on tequila tonight. In a possible alternate world, I could equally decide not to. With an account of harm, we might look at both of the consequences of such actions and decide that one action presented more harm than the other. In other words, “I” am made worse off for, say, not throwing back a few shots of tequila. This “worse off” and “better off” provides the premise that Feldman will draw upon with his account. I use “I” here in scare quotes as the existing “I” as used in the real world is not required in the possible world accounts – there is the first possible I of drinking tequila, and the second possible I of not drinking tequila. This point will be made apparent below.

So, to turn back to Feldman, he asks us to imagine the case where an individual dies. Furthermore, to follow on from the Epicurean philosophy, he embraces a strict hedonistic conception of harm – harm is equated with pain. Then he asks us to imagine the alternate world where the man does not die. He then concludes that if, in the alternate world, the individual would have gained one unit of pleasure following the “no death” event, then the individual is made worse off by dying. Hence, Death is, in almost all cases, a harm***.

This might sound more complicated than what it actually is. In a simpler account, and I believe this is our intuition when we mourn the death of others, we would say that had the person not died they would have continued to live a life full of pleasures, satisfactions and meaningful experiences. It certainly captures the horrors in the death of a child. The event of Death deprives the individual of this alternative possible world where they did not die and in which they would have been happy. Therefore, Death is bad.

Quickly, allow me to turn to the objection raised above to the simple account: the problem of postulating an individual that suffers harm. This does not apply in with Feldman’s case: for we merely have to stipulate a possible alternate individual to attribute possible pains and pleasures to. Therefore, an event can still be bad for someone if they do not exist post-event – all that is required is that there is a nearest possible world in which the event does not occur and, as a result, the hedonic value of that world is more. Hence the “I” in scare quotes above.

It would seem, from this commonsense reply, that Death deprives us of a life that we would have lived – and that is its harm. However, there is a deeper problem. Consider the case of Alice as offered by David Suits. Alice is a wonderful girl – bright, happy, and somewhat impulsive. She decides on an ordinary day, out of the blue, to purchase a lottery ticket. She admits of no serious possibility that she might win. And so, she continues with her everyday chores. Unsurprisingly, she does not win the lottery. Clearly, had she won the lottery, she would have certainly been better off in the alternate world. However, and here is the point, she is not made worse off by not winning the lottery in this world****. There is a disjunction between better off and worse off. There is no state of pain in this world to which a concrete comparison could be made. Simply, because one might have, counterfactually, been made better off by something does not imply that one is now worse off. For, then, every action that we follow through with is, necessarily, a harm as we could always imagine an alternative world that is, sadly, better.

Therefore, although we might be better off for not dying, death is not a case where one is made worse off as this would require a somewhat continued existence with which the comparison can be made. The "either/or" is not quite apparent.

Furthermore, there is an issue that relates to the evaluation of the alternative world. Given the alternative world of non-death, we would have to calculate the overall hedonistic value of this world. Yet, given an infinite existence (without death), the hedonistic value would be, strangely, a limit towards infinity. The extent to which it could be made into a comparison with a world where our pleasures have a fixed value given our death is somewhat both a mathematical problem (perhaps) and, more deeply, a ludicrous one. For, on this account, one would have to accept that mere existence is an evil – as it must be granted that one unit of pain could only be experienced once one exists, as opposed to the alternate world where one does not come into existence, a world where one is not shown the sufferings and torments of existence. Although not problematic as such, it is an implication that Feldman does not consider.

Conclusion

And so, death is no evil. Whether this merely shows how ridiculous the ordinary conception of the world, and human behaviour, might be, or whether it speaks to a deeper problem of the value of making something out of life itself (given that we could never regret our lives), I shall leave to the reader. Furthermore, the papers discussed are rich and many other arguments, of which a short blog post cannot address, are considered therein. However, I can confirm that they all fail in light of the idiosyncrasies presented by the glorious and somewhat depressingly unique example of Death.

I have not considered why we fear Death at the heart of our tormenting existence – simply that we ought not to. For our lives, indeed, will never end to us.

So, upon being presented with a gun to the head, I urge you all not to fear, but laugh manically at the fact that you need not delay the inevitable.

Notes

* Unless, of course, one has no such future interests. The case of suicide is apparent.
** The axiologies and methodologies of possible world arguments in philosophy have a long history – and to expound upon the problems of such arguments shall not be a concern for this post.
*** Obviously, if the person does not die and does not experience one further unit of pleasure, or continues to experience more pain than pleasure, then we might concede that their Death is not a harm. Again, cases of living with chronic pain come to mind.
**** Strictly, Suits compares the case of Alice to another who is in deep financial trouble and for whom winning the lottery is a matter of life or, um, getting themselves into deep problems. In the latter's case, we might grant that not winning is a harm. However, in the case of Death, there appears to be no such example other than "life" to which the alternative can refer to - a rather tenuous case.

Reference List

Epicurus. Letter to Monoeceus, available at Internet Classical Archives, http://classics.mit.edu/Epicurus/menoec.html.

Feldman, F. (1991). Some puzzles about the evil of death, in Philosophical Review 100(2). pp. 205-227.

Nagel, T. (1979). Death, in Mortal Questions (New York: Cambridge University Press), pp. 1-10.
Rosenbaum, S. (1986). How to be dead and not care, in American Philosophical Quarterly, 23(2).

Rosenbaum, S. (1986). How to be dead and not care, in American Philosophical Quarterly, 23(2).

Suits, D. (2001). Why death is not bad for the one who died, in American Philosophical Quarterly, 38(1), pp. 69-87.