A primary argument against the badness of death (known as the Symmetry Argument) appeals to an alleged symmetry between prenatal and posthumous nonexistence. The Symmetry Argument has posed a serious threat to those who hold that death is bad because it deprives us of life’s goods that would have been available had we died later. Anthony Brueckner and John Martin Fischer develop an influential strategy to cope with the Symmetry Argument. In their attempt to break the symmetry, they claim that (...) due to our preference of future experiential goods over past ones, posthumous nonexistence is bad for us, whereas prenatal nonexistence is not. Granting their presumption about our preference, however, it is questionable that prenatal nonexistence is not bad. This consideration does not necessarily indicate their defeat against the Symmetry Argument. I present a better response to the Symmetry Argument: the symmetry is broken, not because posthumous nonexistence is bad while prenatal nonexistence is not, but because (regardless as to whether prenatal nonexistence is bad) posthumous nonexistence is even worse. (shrink)

It seems that people typically prefer dying later to dying earlier. It also seems that people typically do not prefer having been created earlier to having been created later. Lucretius’ Puzzle is the question whether anything typically rationally recommends having a preference for dying later to dying earlier over having a preference for having been created earlier to having been created later. In this paper, I distinguish among three ways in which Lucretius’ Puzzle can be understood and say how I (...) think they ought to be answered. (shrink)

We worry about becoming non-existent, but not about coming into being. But both events are similarly bad according to Deprivationism; hence, it seems that we should display symmetric attitudes towards both. This entails the implausible conclusion that we should display negative attitudes towards the time of our birth. In a series of articles Brueckner and Fischer offered one of the most prominent attempts to block this conclusion by appealing to a temporal bias towards future pleasures. Inspired by Yi’s criticism of (...) their view, we argue that there is an appropriate sense of deprivation in which late birth can deprive of future pleasures. Hence, Brueckner and Fischer’s Temporal Bias does not explain the attitudinal asymmetry. In addition, to make sure that one picks out the appropriate sense of deprivation, we offer a restriction, the Historical Condition, that prevents us from considering that every value one would otherwise have is value that one was deprived of due to one’s actual birth/death. Finally, we present a novel account for the attitudinal asymmetry that relies on what we call ‘Interests Proximity Bias’. (shrink)

Using the Epicurean position on death as a starting point, this article re-examines the basic assumptions of philosophers regarding their views on whether death should be seen as a bad. It questions the positions of philosophers such as Thomas Nagel and Derek Parfit by applying Wittgenstein’s notion of grammar as developed by G. P. Baker and P. M. S. Hacker. While philosophers may characterize questions such as ‘What is the nature of death?’ and ‘Is death a bad?’ as metaphysical, I (...) propose that such questions can be better characterized as grammatical. The failure to understand the grammatical character of such questions creates the illusion that questions concerning the nature of death can be adequately tackled with reference to empirical or metaphysical ‘facts’. If the arguments in this article are substantiated, some philosophical puzzles about death can be dissolved. (shrink)

A much discussed question in the philosophy of death is whether both of the following claims are true: (1) it is at least typically appropriate to prefer dying further in the future to dying less far in the future; and (2) it is at least typically appropriate not to prefer having been created further in the past to having been created less far in the past. Some philosophers have tried to defend (1) and (2) by appeal to the alleged appropriateness (...) of future bias—roughly, greater concern for certain goods and bads in one's future than for certain goods and bads in one's past. I argue that such approaches to defending (1) and (2) probably cannot succeed, by arguing that even if a very strong version of future bias is appropriate, it does not follow that (1) and (2) are both true. Philosophers attracted to the conjunction of (1) and (2) ought to try to defend it by appeal to something other than future bias. (shrink)

Death is an undeniable fact of life. Whether it is a bad or feared thing is an important discussion that can be brought back to the ancient Greek philosophers. This article is primarily concerned with the discussion on what grounds Epicurus's thesis "death, is nothing to us; since when we exist, death is not yet present, and when death is present, then we do not exist," and to what extent satisfactory results are reached. Later, it tries to investigate how Lucretius, (...) who is regarded as the successor of Epicurus, derives the result of meaningless of fear of death from the symmetrical relationship between prenatal and post-mortem non-existences. Finally, it refers to the modern asymmetric approaches which argue that, contrary to Lucretius's claim, the relationship between these two periods of non-existence is not symmetrical, because there are serious differences between the later birth and the later death of people, given their deprivations. This article argues that death has a mystery that raises the anxiety that comes from the nature of death; however, it defends the idea that it makes a significant contribution to the meaning of life. (shrink)

If earlier-than-necessary death is bad because it deprives individuals of additional good life, then why isn't later-than-necessary conception bad for the same reason? Deprivationists have argued that prenatal non-existence is not bad because it is impossible to be conceived earlier, but postmortem non-existence is bad because it is possible to live longer. Call this the Impossibility Solution. In this paper, I demonstrate that the Impossibility Solution does not work by showing how it is possible to be conceived earlier in the (...) same senses it is possible to live longer. I then offer a solution to the Asymmetry Problem by suggesting a novel way to separate the badness of each type of non-existence from the type, and frequency, of attitudes we should have towards each type of non-existence. Even if both types of non-existence are equally bad, certain contingent facts about our postmortem non-existence provide reason for the badness of early deaths to be more frequently salient than the badness of late conceptions. (shrink)

In previous work we have defended the deprivation account of death’s badness against worries stemming from the Lucretian point that prenatal and posthumous nonexistence are deprivations of the same sort. In a recent article in this journal, Fred Feldman has offered an insightful critique of our Parfitian strategy for defending the deprivation account of death’s badness. Here we adjust, clarify, and defend our strategy for reply to Lucretian worries on behalf of the deprivation account.

Abstract According to the Deprivation Approach, the evil of death is to be explained by the fact that death deprives us of the goods we would have enjoyed if we had lived longer. But the Deprivation Approach confronts a problem first discussed by Lucretius. Late birth seems to deprive us of the goods we would have enjoyed if we had been born earlier. Yet no one is troubled by late birth. So it’s hard to see why we should be troubled (...) by its temporal mirror image, early death. In a 1986 paper, Anthony Brueckner and John Martin Fischer appealed to a version of Derek Parfit’s “Bias toward the Future”; they claimed that early death deprives us of future goods that we care about, while late birth deprives us of past goods that we don’t care about. In this paper I show that the Brueckner–Fischer principle is open to several possible interpretations, but that it does not solve the Lucretius problem no matter how we understand it. Content Type Journal Article Pages 1-9 DOI 10.1007/s11098-011-9766-6 Authors Fred Feldman, Department of Philosophy, University of Massachusetts at Amherst, Amherst, MA 01003, USA Journal Philosophical Studies Online ISSN 1573-0883 Print ISSN 0031-8116. (shrink)

We have argued that it is rational to have asymmetric attitudes toward prenatal and posthumous non-existence insofar as this asymmetry is a special case of a more general (and arguably rational) asymmetry in our attitudes toward past and future pleasures. Here we respond to an interesting critique of our view by Jens Johansson. We contend that his critique involves a crucial and illicit switch in temporal perspectives in the process of considering modal claims (sending us to other possible worlds).

According to the “deprivation approach,” a person’s death is bad for her to the extent that it deprives her of goods. This approach faces the Lucretian problem that prenatal non-existence deprives us of goods just as much as death does, but does not seem bad at all. The two most prominent responses to this challenge—one of which is provided by Frederik Kaufman (inspired by Thomas Nagel) and the other by Anthony Brueckner and John Martin Fischer—claim that prenatal non-existence is relevantly (...) different from death. This paper criticizes these responses. (shrink)

In previous work we have presented a reply to the Lucretian Symmetry, which has it that it is rational to have symmetric attitudes toward prenatal and posthumous nonexistence. Our reply relies on Parfit-style thought-experiments. Here we reply to a critique of our approach by Huiyuhl Yi, which appears in this journal: Brueckner and Fischer on the evil of death. We argue that this critique fails to attend to the specific nature of the thought-experiments (and our associated argument). More specifically, the (...) thought-experiments seek to elicit attitudes about (say) past pleasures per se, and not insofar as such pleasures are connected to more pleasures in the future or a greater total amount of pleasures in one’s life overall. (shrink)