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)

abstractBy appealing to the similarity between pre-vital and post-mortem nonexistence, Lucretius famously tried to show that our anxiety about death was irrational. His so-called Symmetry Argument has been attacked in various ways, but all of these strategies are themselves problematic. In this paper, I propose a new approach to undermining the argument: when Parfit’s distinction between identity and what matters is applied, not diachronically but across possible worlds, the alleged symmetry can be broken. Although the pre-vital and posthumous time spans (...) that we could have experienced are indeed analogous with respect to our identity, they are not analogous with respect to psychological continuity, which forms the basis of prudential concern. Lucretius even anticipated the Parfitian distinction. He did not, however, notice the significance that it has for his Symmetry Argument. (shrink)

Here I respond to Anthony Brueckner and John Martin Fischer’s “The Evil of Death: A Reply to Yi.” They developed an influential strategy in defense of the deprivation account of death’s badness against the Lucretian symmetry problem. The core of their argument consists in the claim that it is rational for us to welcome future intrinsic goods while being indifferent to past intrinsic goods. Previously, I argued that their approach is compatible with the evil of late birth insofar as an (...) earlier birth would have generated more goods in the future. In reply, Brueckner and Fischer argue that my critique fails to appreciate an important aspect of their thought experiment, which aims only to show that the deprivation of past goods per se is not bad for us. Thus, purportedly, my critique poses no threat to their view. Here I argue that since the deprivation account explains the evil of death with recourse to how one’s life would have fared had one lived longer, it ought to respond to the symmetry problem with reference to how one’s life would have fared had one been born earlier. However, it is not generally true that the life one would have had with an earlier birth is not preferable to one’s actual life, because in many cases such a life would contain more future goods. (shrink)

What, if anything, makes death bad for the deceased themselves? Deprivationists hold that death is bad for the deceased iff it deprives them of intrinsic goods they would have enjoyed had they lived longer. This view faces the problem that birth too seems to deprive one of goods one would have enjoyed had one been born earlier, so that it too should be bad for one. There are two main approaches to the problem. In this paper, I explore the second (...) approach, by Anthony Brueckner and John Martin Fischer, and suggest that it can be developed so as to meet deprivationists’ needs. On the resulting view, metaphysical differences between the future and the past give rise to a corresponding axiological difference in the intrinsic value of future and past experiences. As experiences move into the past, they lose their intrinsic value for the person. (shrink)

According to John Martin Fischer and Anthony Brueckner’s unique version of the deprivation approach to accounting for death’s badness, it is rational for us to have asymmetric attitudes toward prenatal and posthumous nonexistence. In previous work, I have defended this approach against a criticism raised by Jens Johansson by attempting to show that Johansson’s criticism relies on an example that is incoherent. Recently, Duncan Purves has argued that my defense reveals an incoherence not only in Johansson’s example but also in (...) Fischer and Brueckner’s approach itself. Here I argue that by paying special attention to a certain feature of Fischer and Brueckner’s approach, we can dispense of not only Johansson’s criticism but also of Purves’s objection to Fischer and Brueckner’s approach. (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)

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)

The heavily discussed (neo-)Lucretian symmetry argument holds that as we are indifferent to nonexistence before birth, we should also be indifferent to nonexistence after death. An important response to this argument insists that prenatal nonexistence differs from posthumous nonexistence because we could not have been born earlier and been the same ‘thick’ psychological self. As a consequence, we can’t properly ask whether it would be better for us to have had radically different lives either. Against this, it’s been claimed we (...) can form preferences as to which ‘thick’ (psychological) self our ‘thin’ (metaphysical) self would be better off ‘associated’ with. I argue that these discussions draw the right distinction, but do so in the wrong place: understanding the ‘thin’ self phenomenally instead of metaphysically allows us to understand how we can rationally form preferences to have been somebody else. (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)

In this paper, we develop a novel version of the so-called Lucretian symmetry argument against the badness of death. Our argument has two features that make it particularly effective. First, it focuses on the preferences of rational agents. We believe the focus on preferences eliminates needless complications and emphasizes the urgency to respond to the argument. Second, our argument utilizes a principle that states that a rational agent's preferences should not vary in arbitrary ways. We argue that this principle underlies (...) our judgments of cognitive biases. We should therefore endorse the principle insofar as we think a cognitively biased agent fails to be rational. In the second half of the paper we survey potential ways to resist the new symmetry argument. We show that they all fail to meet the dialectical burden of our argument or involve highly controversial assumptions about the metaphysics of time or the limits of rational preferences. (shrink)

In a recent article, I criticized Anthony L. Brueckner and John Martin Fischer’s influential argument—appealing to the rationality of our asymmetric attitudes towards past and future pleasures—against the Lucretian claim that death and prenatal non-existence are relevantly similar. Brueckner and Fischer have replied, however, that my critique involves an unjustified shift in temporal perspectives. In this paper, I respond to this charge and also argue that even if it were correct, it would fail to defend Brueckner and Fischer’s proposal against (...) my critique. (shrink)

If a person’s death is bad for him for the reason that he would have otherwise been intrinsically better off, as the Deprivation Approach says, does it not follow that his prenatal nonexistence is bad for him as well? Recently, it has been suggested that the “A-theory” of time can be used to support a negative answer to this question. In this paper, I raise some problems for this approach.

In defense of the Deprivation Approach to the badness of death against the Lucretian objection that death is relevantly similar to prenatal nonexistence, John Martin Fischer and Anthony L. Brueckner have suggested that whereas death deprives us of things that it is rational for us to care about, prenatal nonexistence does not. I have argued that this suggestion, even if correct, does not make for a successful defense of the Deprivation Approach against the Lucretian objection. My criticism involved a thought (...) experiment in which a person avoids being tortured. Recently, Taylor Cyr has defended Fischer and Brueckner’s approach, arguing that my thought experiment is incoherent. In this response, I question both the truth and relevance of Cyr’s incoherence claim. (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 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 an inappropriate conflation of the time from which the relevant asymmetry emerges and the time of the badness of death.

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)

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)

John Martin Fischer and Anthony L. Brueckner have argued that a person’s death is, in many cases, bad for him, whereas a person’s prenatal non-existence is not bad for him. Their suggestion relies on the idea that death deprives the person of pleasant experiences that it is rational for him to care about, whereas prenatal non-existence only deprives him of pleasant experiences that it is not rational for him to care about. Jens Johansson has objected to this justification of ‘The (...) Asymmetry’ between the badness of death and pre-natal non-existence on the grounds that what it is actually rational for us to care about is irrelevant to the question of whether the event is bad for us. Taylor Cyr has recently argued that Jens Johansson’s objection to Fischer’s and Brueckner’s position relies on an incoherent example, and is thus unsuccessful. I argue that Cyr’s attempt to defend Fischer and Brueckner in fact illustrates that their position is incoherent, and that Johansson’s objection therefore succeeds. (shrink)

John Martin Fischer and Anthony L. Brueckner have argued that a person’s death is, in many cases, bad for him, whereas a person’s prenatal non-existence is not bad for him. Their suggestion relies on the idea that death deprives the person of pleasant experiences that it is rational for him to care about, whereas prenatal non-existence only deprives him of pleasant experiences that it is not rational for him to care about. In two recent articles in The Journal of Ethics, (...) I have objected that it is irrelevant what it is in fact rational for the person to care about. Fischer and Brueckner have replied to my critique. In this paper I respond to their latest pair of replies. (shrink)