Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-t8hqh Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-20T11:37:26.694Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

How A-theoretic Deprivationists Should Respond to Lucretius

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  22 September 2015

NATALJA DENG
NATALJA DENG*
Affiliation:
UNIVERSITY OF CAMBRIDGE [email protected]
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract:

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.

Keywords

A-theoriesdeathdeprivationismsymmetry problem
Type
Articles
Information
Journal of the American Philosophical Association , Volume 1 , Issue 3 , Fall 2015 , pp. 417 - 432
Copyright
Copyright © American Philosophical Association 2015 

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.)

References

Belshaw, C. (2000a) ‘Later Death/Earlier Birth’. Midwest Studies in Philosophy, 24, 69–83.Google Scholar
Belshaw, C. (2000b) ‘Death, Pain and Time’. Philosophical Studies, 97, 317–41.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bradley, B. (2009) Well-being and Death. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Brink, D. (2011) ‘Prospects for Temporal Neutrality’. In Callender, Craig (ed.), The Oxford Handbook of Time (Oxford: Oxford University Press), 353–81.Google Scholar
Brueckner, A., and Fischer, J. M.. (1986) ‘Why is Death Bad?’. Philosophical Studies, 50, 213–21.Google Scholar
Brueckner, A., and Fischer, J. M.. (2013) ‘The Evil of Death and the Lucretian Symmetry: A Reply to Feldman’. Philosophical Studies, 163, 783–89.Google Scholar
Brueckner, A., and Fischer, J. M.. (2014a) ‘Prenatal and Posthumous Existence: A Reply to Johansson’. Journal of Ethics, 18, 1–9.Google Scholar
Brueckner, A., and Fischer, J. M.. (2014b) ‘Accommodating Counterfactual Attitudes: A Further Reply to Johansson’. Journal of Ethics, 18, 19–21.Google Scholar
Brueckner, A., and Fischer, J. M.. (2014c) ‘The Mirror-image Argument: An Additional Reply to Johansson’. Journal of Ethics, 18, 325–30.Google Scholar
Bykvist, K. (2007) ‘Comments on Dennis McKerlie's “Rational Choice, Changes in Values over Time, and Well-being”’. Utilitas, 19, 73–77.Google Scholar
Caruso, E. M., Gilbert, D. T., and Wilson, T. D.. (2008) ‘A Wrinkle in Time: Asymmetric Valuation of Past and Future Events’. Psychological Science, 19, 796–801.Google Scholar
Casati, R., and Torrengo, G.. (2011) ‘The Not so Incredible Shrinking Future’. Analysis, 71, 240–44.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Feldman, F. (1991) ‘Some Puzzles about the Evil of Death’. Philosophical Review, 100, 205–27.Google Scholar
Feldman, F. (2013) ‘Brueckner and Fischer on the Evil of Death’. Philosophical Studies, 162, 309–17.Google Scholar
Fischer, J. M. (2006) ‘Earlier Birth and Later Death: Symmetry through Thick and Thin’. In McDaniel, Kris, Raibley, Jason, Feldman, Richard, and Zimmerman, Michael (eds.), The Good, the Right, Life and Death (Aldershot, UK: Ashgate Publishing). Reprinted in John Martin Fischer (2009), Our Stories: Essays on Life, Death and Free Will (Oxford: Oxford University Press).Google Scholar
Johansson, J. (2005) Mortal Beings: On the Metaphysics and Value of Death. Stockholm: Almqvist & Wiksell International.Google Scholar
Johansson, J. (2008) ‘Kaufman's Response to Lucretius’. Pacific Philosophical Quarterly, 89, 470–85.Google Scholar
Johansson, J. (2013) ‘Past and Future Nonexistence’. Journal of Ethics, 17, 51–64.Google Scholar
Johansson, J. (2014a) ‘Actual and Counterfactual Attitudes: Reply to Brueckner and Fischer’. Journal of Ethics, 18, 11–18.Google Scholar
Johansson, J. (2014b) ‘More on the Mirror: Reply to Brueckner and Fischer’. Journal of Ethics, 18, 341–51.Google Scholar
Kagan, S. (1998) ‘Rethinking Intrinsic Value’. Journal of Ethics, 2, 277–97.Google Scholar
Kaufman, F. (1996) ‘Death and Deprivation; Or, Why Lucretius's Symmetry Argument Fails’. Australasian Journal of Philosophy, 74, 305–12.Google Scholar
Le Poidevin, R. (1996) Arguing for Atheism. New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
Maclaurin, J., and Dyke, H.. (2002) ‘“Thank Goodness That's Over”: The Evolutionary Story’. Ratio, 15, 276–92.Google Scholar
Moore, G. E. (1922) Philosophical Studies. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Olson, E. (2013) ‘The Epicurean View of Death’. Journal of Ethics, 17, 65–78.Google Scholar
Parfit, D. (1984) Reasons and Persons. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Prior, A. (1959) ‘Thank Goodness that's Over’. Philosophy, 34, 12–17.Google Scholar
Sider, T. (2011) Writing the Book of the World. Oxford: Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Silverstein, H. (2000) ‘The Evil of Death Re-visited’. Midwest Studies in Philosophy, 24, 116–34.Google Scholar
Smuts, A. (2012) ‘Less Good but not Bad: In Defense of Epicureanism about Death’. Pacific Philosophical Quarterly, 93, 197–227.Google Scholar
Suhler, C., and Callender, C.. (2012) ‘Thank Goodness that Argument is Over: Explaining the Temporal Value Asymmetry’. Philosophers’ Imprint, 12, 1–16.Google Scholar
Sullivan, M. (2012) ‘The Minimal A-theory’. Philosophical Studies, 158, 149–74.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Warren, J. (2004) Facing Death: Epicurus and His Critics. Oxford: Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar