Overview
Discussion 10
I would like you to have a free-form discussion of the Reduplication thought experiments we discussed in lecture #14. You can focus on any of the scenarios we considered when doing so (Karen’s Napoleon case, Williams’ Guy Fawkes case, Parfait’s teletransporter case, the situations envisioned in Total Recall and The Sixth Day). In lecture, I suggested that these scenarios have very serious consequences for the psychological continuity theory of personal identity. Do you agree with this assessment? Why or why not? I am not looking for right or wrong answers here. I am merely looking for serious attempts on your parts to examine your own intuitions concerning these things.
Lecture 14
Objection 4: The Reduplication Problem • There are lots of variations on this thought experiment: • Kagen’s Multiple Reincarnation Napoleon Example: • Two Guys, both psychologically continuous with Napoleon, appearing in Michigan and New York at the same time. • This looks like a very odd case: X,N,Y • The problem that arises is the following: • Psychological continuity theory dictates that N = X and N = Y. • But then the transitivity implies that X = Y. • But how can this be right? • The question is whether psychological continuity is enough to make people living at different times identical. 4
Thought Experiment—Williams’
Reincarnation of Guy Fawkes • Suppose Charles undergoes a sudden and violent change, so that he now has Guy Fawkes memory and character. • So Charles is psychologically continuous with Guy Fawkes. • If it’s possible for Charles to undergo those sorts of psychological changes, it’s possible for his brother Robert to undergo them as well. • But it’s not possible for two different people to be numerically (quantitatively) identical. • So psychological continuity is not sufficient for identity. 5What Can we Do?Option 1: Invert the Analysis
• We can’t give up the transitivity of Identity, since it is a logical truth. • Perhaps we can say the following: – x and y are two different persons who, for a period of time are a single self before branching. • This might be plausible if we give up on the idea of the unity of consciousness. 1What Can we Do?
Option 2: Identity is not Necessary for Survival Kagen, Parfit both suggest the following: • It’s commonly assumed that we can survive the death of our bodies only if we’re numerically identical to someone who exists after our body dies. • Perhaps all that is needed for survival is psychological continuity. 2What Can we Do?
Identity and What Matters in Responsibility • It’s commonly assumed that we can be held responsible for an action only if we are numerically identical to the person who performed it. • Perhaps all that is needed for responsibility is psychological continuity. 3What Can we Do?
Option 3: The Self is Not a Thing Perhaps the most provocative option is suggested by some Buddhists, who liken the self to a series of candle flames, each one lit by the he one preceding it (which is then perhaps extinguished). This is close to the Humean “bundle theory” of the self we noted earlier. On this account, the self is not a thing, but a process. If we think of the self as a process, then reduplication scenarios don’t pose a problem (Think of two different lines of candles lit by the last member of a single line of candles preceding them). 4Conclusions
What we have accomplished: • Even if we haven’t determined what the sufficient conditions are for personal identity (this would let us relevantly distinguish between the duplicates and the original), • We have determined, I think, that psychological continuity (as opposed to retention of substance) is necessary for identity. • This is quite an accomplishment, since it tells a great deal about what would be required to avoid death construed as personal extinction. It tells us that psychological continuity (a personal mental narrative) is a central component of personal identity. 5
Discussion 11
Consider the (modified) following passage from Nagel's article "Death." "[One might think that] what you don't know can't hurt you. This would mean that even if a man is betrayed by his friends, ridiculed behind his back, and despised by people who treat him politely to his face, none of this can be counted as a misfortune for him so long as he does not suffer. It would mean that a man is not injured if his wishes are ignored by the executor of his will or if, after his death, the belief becomes current that all the literary works on which his fame rests were written by his brother, who died in Mexico at the age of 28." 1. Discuss the ideas of this passage using the examples that Nagel provides. 2. based on this discussion, describe what you conclude about the claim that "what you don't know can't hurt you" in such cases. 3. Describe what, if anything, follows from your conclusions in (2) above concerning the idea that one might be harmed in life by things that happen after one’s death.
Discussion 12
In discussing the asymmetry argument in PowerPoint lecture #16, I have suggested, with Frederick Kaufman, that “you could not have been born significantly earlier (with a significantly extended lifespan) than you were because this would entail that the contents of “your” personal biography would now be so very different than they are now that “you would not be you.” More carefully put, I have suggested that if the genetic package that produced the zygote that has grown up to be you had been created at a much earlier time than it was, and the resulting person had survived into the present day, then the content of that person’s biography of psychological continuity would be so very different from yours now that that person could not be you. From this, I tried to derive another conclusion regarding the irrationality of regret. Please answer the following questions in two or three well-constructed paragraphs: 1) What is this suggested conclusion regarding the irrationality of regret? 2) Do you agree with it? Why or why not? If you don’t consider it an intrusion, I would like you to write concretely about your own life and some decisions you made that you now regret (assuming you have any regrets). If you had made a different decision, do you think that the result of doing this would be that “you” (understood in terms of a personal narrative of psychological continuity) would not now “exist”? I think my suggestions concerning the irrationality of regret are simply bogus. Or it is all a matter of degree since the extent to which you would exist now depends upon how much earlier you had started existing. Such conclusions are fine. Just explain why you reached them. I want you to think about this issue personally (the details of which you certainly need not relate to me).
Philosophy 115: Philosophy of Death and Dying Lecture #16 The Badness of Death IIPhilosophy 115: Philosophy of Death
and Dying Lecture #16 We have looked at the deprivation account and looked at one major classic problem that its proponents have had developing it. I have tried to argue that the deprivation account is plausible, for essentially for the reasons Phillip Larkin expresses in “Aubade,” in which he writes off the Epicurean account by saying, “And specious stuff that says No rational being Can fear a thing it will not feel, not seeing That this is what we fear—no sight, no sound, No touch or taste or smell, nothing to think with, Nothing to love or link with, The anaesthetic from which none come round.”
Philosophy 115: Philosophy of Death
and Dying Lecture #16 • The Epicurean claims that death cannot be bad because it consists in a total absence of conscious sensation. • Larkin responds that it is precisely because of said lack of conscious sensation that death is bad. – It is the very fact that I cannot be benefited (or even harmed) by conscious sensation after death which makes death an evil. This is the fact that robs me of the possibility of experiencing any more of the good things of life. • The paradox that Epicurus claims to see in this assertion is eliminated once we eschew the bold existence condition for the modest existence condition. This is the move that allows us to eliminate the air of seeming paradox that Epicurus seizes upon. • We no longer have to say that we are harmed by death when we don’t exist. Instead, we can say that we are harmed by death when we are still alive. • More specifically, we can say that we are harmed during our lives by our condition of mortality, which itself obtains while we are still alive.
Philosophy 115: Philosophy of Death
and Dying Lecture #16 Lucretius: Let’s now look at another classic objection that has been offered against the idea that death can harm us, one which we might see as more specifically directed against the deprivation account. This one was offered by Lucretius, a Roman poet and philosopher who lived around 50 B.C., about 250 years after Epicurus. • Ridiculously, this argument isn’t highlighted in the selection included in the P&D volume which I asked you to look at. But below is the relevant passage from The Nature of Things: “Look back at the eternity that passed before we were born, and note how utterly it counts to us as nothing. This is a mirror that nature holds up to us, in which we may see the time that shall be after we are dead. Is there anything terrifying in this sight – anything depressing – anything that is not more restful than the soundest sleep?”
Philosophy 115: Philosophy of Death
and Dying Lecture #16 • The basic idea is this: our post-mortem non-existence (following our deaths) should give us more no anxiety than our pre-natal non-existence (I will alternately assume that that we come into existence at conception and birth. These assumptions are just being made for convenience). • Call this the symmetry argument. It maintains that our pre- natal non-existence is relevantly symmetrical to our post- mortem non-existence, so that any attitudes we have toward the former should be extended also to the latter. But since we don’t feel harmed by the fact that an eternity passes before we came into existence, we shouldn’t feel threatened by the fact that an eternity will pass after we go out of existence.
Philosophy 115: Philosophy of Death and
Dying Lecture #16 What are we to make of this argument? There are a number of critical strategies will not pursue. This is an editorial decision on my part, so feel free to disagree. • One critical strategy we will not pursue is that of arguing that Lucretius’s appeals to intuition or “common sense” are suspiciously selective. Lucretius’s grounds for premise (1) consists in nothing more than the fact that this is what many or most people are inclined to say. However, Lucretius uses this premise in support of conclusion (4), which is a claim that many or most people are probably inclined to reject. So, we might think that Lucretius is arbitrary in his decision to use (1) in support of (4) rather than, say, the negation of (4) in support of the negation of (1). This is an interesting objection, but not one that we will focus on here. • Another critical strategy we will not pursue is that of that of simply agreeing with Lucretius’ argument, accepting his premises and deriving his conclusion that death is not a harm. • Yet another critical strategy we will not pursue is that of simply denying premise (1) (thus asserting that we are harmed by the fact that an infinite amount of time that passed before we came into existence) in order to derive the negation of conclusion (4). This procedure would, I think, give us the right conclusion, but for the wrong reasons. • A final critical strategy we will not pursue is that of denying the sub-inference from (2) to (3). That is, we will assume here that if is no relevant difference between pre-natal and post-mortem existence insofar as their ability to harm us is concerned, then our attitudes toward them should be relevantly similar.
Philosophy 115: Philosophy of Death
and Dying Lecture #16 Instead, our focus will be on premise (2), i.e. the symmetry assumption. We want to ask if it is really the case that one’s pre-natal non-existence is relevantly similar to one’s post-mortem non-existence. Are they perfect “mirror images” of each other, to use Lucretius’ language? • If you recall the previous lecture, we already have the basis of a response: post- mortem non-existence entails loss, while pre-natal non-existence doesn’t. The period after my death is one in which I have lost something (i.e., conscious life and all of the good things of conscious life), whereas the period preceding my existence doesn’t involve such loss. In the first case, I have a track record of having existed, but in the second case I don’t, and this is what makes the difference. • In Chap. 10 of Death, Kagen considers this response, but quickly rejects it as less than completely adequate. His diagnosis: the reason this seems like an adequate response is that we happen to have a word in natural language (i.e., “loss”) for what goes on in the post-mortem case. However, there is no clear corollary word for what goes on in the pre-natal case. Thus, it is this completely contingent feature of English (and other ordinary languages) which accounts for our intuition that in the post-mortem case something more substantial is going on than in the pre-natal case.
Philosophy 115: Philosophy of Death and
Dying Lecture #16 • So Kagen suggests that we correct this situation. Suppose we coin such a word, say “schmoss.” Now we can say the following: In the post-mortem case, we suffer “loss” (of conscious life and all the good things of conscious life), whereas in the pre-natal case, we suffer “schmoss” (of conscious life and all the good things of conscious life). In the case of “loss,” we will be deprived of something we presently have, whereas in the case of “schmoss” we presently have something that we didn’t previously have. • With the addition of this word to our language, the apparent symmetry between the pre-natal and post-mortem cases reasserts itself, on Kagen’s telling. For we must now ask ourselves why we should care more about loss of life than schmoss of life? What is it about the fact we will in the future not have something that we presently have that makes it worse than he fact, which applied to us in the past, that we then lacked something that we now have? • This is a deep question. Let’s try to tackle it.
Philosophy 115: Philosophy of Death
and Dying Lecture #16 Parfit: We simply care more about the future than we care about the past. The first objection to the symmetry assumption we should consider is that of Parfit, whose paper we haven’t read but whose position is well-summarized by Kagen. Parfit invokes a thought experiment to explicate his view. (Note, by the way, that, despite surface appearances, Parfit’s thought experiment has little or nothing to do with the “You’re being Tortured in the Morning” thought experiment we did in connection with discussion assignment #9. This is Parfit’s thought experiment below: • Suppose you need a medical operation which necessarily causes a great deal of pain which cannot be anesthetized away while the procedure is going on. However, once the operation is performed, the following kind of relief can be provided: your memories of the procedure and the pain you experienced during its performance can be completely erased. • So this is the situation: you are to undergo a very painful surgery with no anesthetic. However, once the surgery is performed, you will be left with no painful memories of procedure. In fact, you will be left with no memory at all of the procedure having ever even been performed.
Discussion 13
Dylan Thomas’ poem "Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night" is his most famous work. He wrote it in response to his father's declining health and eventual death. In this poem, he encourages the reader to not give in easily to death, but to resist it with all their might.
There are two questions relating to this poem that need to be answered:
1. How does Thomas suggest people approach the inevitability of death? Can we draw any parallels between Thomas's approach and Camus' recommendation for dealing with the absurd, which Nagel explains in his article "The Absurd"?
2. Nagel believes that Camus' approach to dealing with absurdity is "romantic and slightly self-pitying". He recommends another approach, which is different.
a. Do you agree with Nagel's assessment of Camus' strategy as "romantic and slightly self-pitying"? b. Can you explain Nagel's alternative recommendation and give your opinion on it?
It is important to note that poetry is best heard rather than read. You can listen to the poem being recited online at several locations, including by Dylan Thomas himself at , by Anthony Hopkins at http://www.dailymotion.com/video/xgcn6l_do-not-go-gentle-into-that-good-night-anthony-hopkins_creation, and by Rodney Dangerfield at Dangerfield's concluding summary of the poem's point is particularly noteworthy.
Discussion 14
In Chapter 13, Other “Aspects of Death”, Kagen talks about various different life geometries. What I would like to do is to refer to his remarks, and perhaps my own (on the last 7 or 8 slides of lecture #18) as a springboard for this discussion assignment. Specifically, I would like you to do the following:
(1) Using your own considered deliberations, I want you to ask yourself which (if any) of the six life shapes described in the diagrams in Part 6 of Lecture #18, all things being equal, most appealing to you. Then I want you to explain your reasoning, remembering that you need not settle on any given one of them. (Condition: When you do this, I want you to assume that the diagrams have been constructed by those who accept a simple hedonist account of human well-being. However, I am not requiring that you be a hedonist, as opposed to a desire satisfaction or objective list theorist unless you have already decided that you are a hedonist. Doing this exercise should help you to determine two things. It should help you determine whether or not you think that a simple hedonistic account is adequate. Moreover, if you don’t think it’s adequate, this exercise should help you articulate why you think that’s the case.
(2) Upon deciding what the best of these “life geometries” is (if you think there is one), ask yourself the question: Are there any essential connections between this geometry of distribution of the good things of life and the capacity a life has for the sort of narrative continuity described in the previous lecture? (For instance, you might think that figure 2 describes a life which offers the best chance for meaningful narrative continuity because it represents the existence of growing accomplishment, in which the good things in life increase continually from birth to death. Perhaps you think that such a life offers the promise of an especially coherent personal narrative because this is a life trajectory in which one’s plans and projects best come to fruition.)
Note that you might see no such connection. You even find the question to be silly. Any of these reactions are fine, as long as you endeavor to explain and justify whatever reaction you have. Another thing you might want to do is to describe a diagram other than any of the six provided with which to illustrate the lifetime distribution of pleasure which you might ideally like to have (you can't actually construct the diagram itself through this Blackboard application. So you would have to simply describe the diagram in words).
Last 7 slides
Existential Geometry
Let’s try to compare these different existential geometries for relative value. • Kagen suggests that Diagram 2 represents the best possible life geometry, since here one’s existence describes a simple path of “onwards and upwards” from birth till death. He calls this the “Horatio Alger” life of continual progress. Do you agree with this assessment? • You might not. On one had, this does look like the kind of admirable life of “self-creation” that Nietzsche praised. But on the other hand, you might suspect that such a life would make a person shallow, since it would never oppose them with the kinds of struggles and setbacks needed to build perspective. • Of course, saying things exactly this way may be problematic, since it requires that you decided not to count “the building of personal perspective” as a good at the outset only to invoke it critically as a good now. • You might even view this life trajectory as tragic on the grounds that the person’s life is such a success and things are going so well for her, it is a shame that she doesn’t live longer than she does.
Existential Geometry
• Figure 3 depicts a situation in which you enjoys a steady rise up followed by a steady decline equal length. Ask yourself what you think about his kind of life. • Some might regard it as tragic on the ground that it is a scenario in which the person slowly loses all that he has managed to gain. • One need not, however. Perhaps you see value in the scenario it presents, on which one gradually comes to see what life has to offer, but then gets a chance to spiritually mature by realizing that one can, after all, easily survive without these things. The idea here is that there might be a great deal of equanimity to be found in the thought, “easy come, easy go.” • Though, again, saying things in exactly this way may be problematic, since it requires that you have decided not to count the development of such “spiritual maturity” as a good at the outset only to invoke it as a good now.
Existential Geometry
• Kagen suggests that Diagram 1 represents the worst possible life geometry, since here one’s existence describes a simple path of “backwards and downwards,” as it were. Kagen compares this kind of life to stories about European royalty with squandered fortunes who end up waiting tables in New York. He calls them “Alger Horatio” stories. • Is this in fact the worse kind of life? Maybe. Maybe not. • You might agree with Kagen: What’s the good in getting a taste of the good life at the outset only to have it all taken away from you. • Or you might think this: One gets all the good stuff up front instead of having to wait. Maybe there’s some value in that.
Existential Geometry
• Figures 5 represent situations in which things peak either earlier and later than they perhaps should. • Suppose, for instance, that you pride yourself on your intellect, but then get Alzheimer's (like Iris Murdock) or syphilis (like Frederick Nietszche) and live for an extra 10 years completely out of it. • Perhaps you see this scenario (Figure 5, perhaps) as particularly tragic on the grounds that the person should have died sooner. • It’s seems to me to be pretty hard to put a positive spin on this scenario unless you take mere existence itself (even with diminished mental capacities) as an overwhelmingly valuable good in itself.
Existential Geometry
• Finally, Figure 6 represents a condition of relative sameness throughout the course of one’s existence. What do you think of the value of this life trajectory? • I suppose that one might think that it offers a kind of equanimity which can only come with unchanging expectations. • On the other hand, I suppose that one might view it as a formula for interminable boredom. • What do you think?
Existential Geometry
In Chapter 13, Other “Aspects of Death”, Kagen talks about these different life geometries. • What I would like to do is to use his remarks and my own in the previous few slides as a springboard the discussion assignment associated with this lecture (Discussion Assignment #14). (1) I want you to do the following: invoking Kagen’s observations and your own considered deliberations, I want you to ask yourself which of these life shapes is, all things being equal, most appealing to you. Then I want you to explain your reasoning. Conditions: • When you do this, I want you to assume that the diagrams have been constructed by those who accept a simple hedonist account of human well-being. However, I am not requiring that you be a hedonist, as opposed to a desire satisfaction or objective list theorist. (Note: you may have decided that you are a hedonist. If so, this is OK). • Doing this exercise should help you to determine two things. It should help you determine whether or not you think that a simple hedonistic account is adequate. Moreover, if you don’t think it’s adequate, this exercise should help you articulate why you think that’s the case.
Existential Geometry
I also want you also to do the following: (2) Upon deciding what the best “life geometry” is of those given by the preceding diagrams (if you think there is one), ask yourself the question: Are there any essential connections between this geometry of distribution of the good things of life and the capacity a life has for the sort of narrative continuity described in the previous lecture? • For instance, you might think that figure 2 describes a life which offers the best chance for meaningful narrative continuity because it represents an existence of growing accomplishment, in which the good things in life increase continually from birth to death. Perhaps you think that such a life offers the promise of an especially coherent personal narrative because this is a life trajectory in which one’s plans and projects best come to fruition. • Note that you might see no such connection. You even find the question to be silly. Any of these reactions are fine, as long as you endeavor to explain and justify whatever reaction you have.
Part 6
Existential Geometry
• Of course, not all external goods are, we are inclined to think, of equal value. • We might think that the acquisition of knowledge is superior to the acquisition of beer coasters. • On top of this, we may think that the acquisition of some sorts knowledge (e.g., of the fundamental laws of nature, of the history of civilization leading up the present age) is of more value than knowledge of other kinds (the number of grains of sand on all the beaches of the Hawaiian Islands). • But saying which goods and accomplishments are of greater value than others, i.e., filling out the objective list of an adequate objective list theory, is not something that we are going to try to do here.
Existential Geometry
• Our reason for looking at this has been to allow us to do something else (i.e., to give us a way of conveniently comparing lives so as to give more content to the idea we developed in the previous set of lectures concerning the way in which we might think that the narrative shape of a life can determine that life’s meaningfulness. • For now we can think of a life’s content in terms of its maximization of whatever those things are which we regard as of intrinsic value. And we can say this irrespective of what we take these items of intrinsic value to be. • I have argued that amongst these items one should include items derived from some or other objective list of activities, accomplishments, states of character or whatever actually relate to our relations to the world and each other. • But if you disagree with this – if you take either the pleasure or the desire satisfaction accounts to be adequate (so that the best kind of life might be realized by the pleasure lever or the experience machine), that’s your prerogative.
Existential Geometry
• One distinction that Kagen develops in Chapter 12 is that between “neutral container” and “valuable container” theories. • These accounts differ in whether or not they ascribe value to mere existence. This is a distinction that matters when we are considering the rationality of suicide. But it isn’t relevant to our concerns here. • We simply want to note that on either view, it becomes possible to compare lives as one would the contents of containers, irrespective of whether one understands those contents on a hedonic, desire satisfaction or objective list account.
Existential Geometry
• Thinking about things in these terms, we can, following Kagen, represent different life plans using simple diagrams. • If we let the horizontal axis represent the time occupied by a life and the vertical axis represent the goods of a life (on any of the three above models of “goods”), then can roughly compare life-shapes for relative quality. That is, we can represent different ways in which these goods can be distributed across time. (My skills with my Paint Accessories program are not that great, so please excuse the poor quality and print size)
Existential Geometry
• Figure 2 depicts a life in which one goes from worse to better over time, acquiring more and more of the good things of life as life progresses. • Figure 1 depicts the exact opposite of this. Here one starts out well, but things become steadily worse with the passage of time. • Figure 6 depicts a situation in which one’s fortunes remain constant over the course of one’s life. • Figure 3 depicts a situation in which one enjoys a steady rise up followed by a steady rise down of equal length. • Figures 4 and 5 represent situations in which things peak earlier and later than you might think they should
Discussion 15
In light of the readings, lectures, and your reflections, describe whether or not you would take your own immortality to be a desirable thing. Explain your answer.