Is it rational to fear death?
This is where the Epicurean notion is required. In his letter to Menoeceus, Epicurus writes, ‘ So death, the most terrifying of ills, is nothing to us, since so long as we exist, death is not with us; but when death comes, then we do not exist. ’ If we elaborate, the nature of the Epicurean notion goes as follows: 1. (from hedonism) An individual can only harmed if their experiences are negatively affected. 2. Death constitutes the cessation of experience. 3. Therefore, an individual can only be harmed prior to their deaths when they have the capacity to experience. 4. Prior to their deaths, an individual’s death has not yet occurred. 5. Therefore, an individual’s death cannot harm them. Premises 1, 3, and therefore 5, are rejected by the rival claims of deprivationism. This is the view that post- mortem harm is possible, as death deprives us of future pleasurable experiences. From hedonism, it can be stipulated that there are two types of harm: intrinsic harm (e.g., pain), and extrinsic harm (e.g., something that leads to pain). Deprivationism seeks to overcome the problem of the subject – the notion that harm requires a subject to experience it (from premise 1) – by introducing a new type of harm: deprivational harm. Most accounts of deprivationism use intuitive analogies explaining the ways in which an individual can be harmed without them experiencing this harm knowingly, and then extrapolating these cases onto post-mortem harm. One example goes as follows: person p has a winning lottery ticket in their name stolen, but p is not aware of this fact. From this example, it is proved by analogy that death is harmful to the one who dies; the one who dies does not know of or experience the deprivational harm befalling them, yet, just as in this analogy, they are apparently harmed as a result. Where this analogy fails is the fact that it conflates extrinsic and deprivational harm. Person p suffers the loss of their lottery winnings, which in turn denies them pleasure. In other words, p is harmed by the loss of their lottery winnings; this is an overt example of extrinsic harm. Thus, this analogy fails to overcome the problem of the subject and therefore cannot prove post-mortem harm. To overcome the conflation of deprivational harm with extrinsic harm, an analogy must be created in which there is a case of deprivational harm that cannot be attributed to extrinsic (or intrinsic) harm. Feldman manages to create such an example: 4 person p attends college A; at college A, p does not suffer any intrinsic harm, nor do they judge that they have been the victim of any extrinsic harm. However, for various reasons, p would have been better off attending college B instead – p is not aware of this fact. Thus, p is the victim of deprivational harm without experiencing extrinsic harm. However, Suits, on account of this example, makes an important distinction between life-life comparisons, and life-death comparisons. 5 In all life-life comparisons (such as the previous cases), keeping the central event constant, but slightly tweaking the circumstances, results in a case of extrinsic harm occurring, whereas death could not possibly, with any circumstantial alteration (keeping the central event of death constant), result in any extrinsic harm occurring. For example, p , in attending college A could have suffered, and regretted their choice to attend college A, thus experiencing extrinsic harm. By making this distinction, Suits proves that analogies of this sort fail to overcome the problem of the subject and therefore cannot prove post-mortem harm.
4 Feldman (1994). 5 Suits (2001).
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