Shelly Kagan gave a nice summary of some problems involved in working out whether death is bad for one. I agree with Robin’s response, and have posted before about some of the particular issues. Now I’d like to make a more general observation.
Intuitions? If I may, what you are missing is the "organic machine". When the doctor hits your knee with the rubber head of that little mallet, he is testing your "patellar reflex".Reflex? it is a behavior tied to the organic machine.Object Oriented Software was created to move design father away from the machinery of the computer.In that context a given software language is either "close to the machine" or "far from the machine". If you wanted to, then you could appropriate its use for the "near - far" problem domain.Institutions, then, would be "Far" reflexes - abstractions that arise from given practices. Locomotion itself is rather "near" to the machine while dance or sport is farther from the machine than locomotion.. Vocalizing is rather near to the machine while language is father from the machine than Vocalizing.Theories cut into and chop up the continuum from simplicity to complexity within the organic machine. They create surrealisms in the brains of our children.One ubiquitous theory that damages the brains of our children is mathematics. We have forgotten that the numeral "2" is just an agreement.Like circles and lines, "2" does not actually exist.The are only points, "states" of "on", and states of "off" (0 and 1)Another theory that is becoming ubiquitous, is the theory of evolution by natural selection. It is wrong, and it too is damaging our children's intuition.
'it seems likely that our intuitions are just inconsistent"
How about loosely bound rather than inconsistent? How is that possible?It is possible because we cultivate an indifference towards having experiences that would enhance our intuition.
Most likely, if you want a consistent position you will have to bite a bullet. If you are interested in reality, biting a bullet here shouldn’t be a last resort after searching every nook and cranny for a consistent and intuitive position. It is much more likely that humans have inconsistent intuitions about the value of life than that we have so far failed to notice some incredibly important and intuitive distinction in circumstances that drives our different intuitions.
Absolutely and importantly correct. But since the whole project of philosophical ethics is to harmonize our moral intuitions, the recognition that no harmony is possible should lead you to moral antirealism.
Where you do get the epistemic right to bite the hand of intuition feeding you?: intuition being all that you can draw on. You have no criteria (that I can imagine) to choose which consistent position you adopt or any arguments to convince anyone else to adopt it.
(I wanted to reply to daedalus2u, but we seem to have hit the limit of nested comment levels.)
Let me ask a question. Is the idea that people will receive the reward of eternity in Paradise for those who follow the orders of the leader a counterfactual, a true statement, or a false statement or something else?
Usually, it's a false statement, but it could be part of a counterfactual.
IIRC, all counterfactuals are of the form "if X were true, then Y would be true."
"There are 51 states in the U.S; therefore, there are 51 stars on the U.S. flag." is two false statements.
"If there were 51 states in the U.S., there would be 51 stars on the U.S. flag" is a true counterfactual.
"If you were to follow the orders of the leader, you would be rewarded with eternity in Paradise" is a false counterfactual.
"If it were actually true that people would be rewarded with eternity in Paradise for following the orders of the leader, then following the orders of the leader would be a good idea" is a true counterfactual.
There's an easy answer to Shelly Kagan's argument about "when" death is bad: your future death is bad for you now, because your present self cares about the future.
Utilitarianism is a simple resolution of the paradox. It's bad for people to die because they are missing out. Being dead does not keep you from bearing an opportunity cost, for the simple reason that it's not a cost. It's the lack of a benefit. All the people not alive are not a tragedy, because the lack of a utopia is not a tragedy. There's nothing sad about being born later because it also means you'll die later.
"Additionally, they provide assisted suicide for people provided that they are of sound judgment and submit to an in-depth medical report prepared by a psychiatrist that establishes the patient's condition, as required by Swiss courts."
Dignitas only takes terminally ill customers, and Exit only takes Swiss citizens.
And yeah, the expenses are an insult, given that the deadly drug would cost only a couple of bucks, if only the human cattle were allowed to simply buy it.
There is a clinic in Switzerland that legally offer that service, even to foreigners. It's not exactly cheap, but also not prohibitively expensive for any middle-class person.
I'd post a link, but last time I did somebody accused me of "bullying" and "daring people to commit suicide".
Well, one partial remedy for the fear of death would be the broad availability of cheap, painless, reliable suicide methods, e.g. barbiturates, which are now restricted by coercive government intervention.
If "fall asleep like normal, but don't wake up" were an easy option for everyone, that would alleviate fear of most forms of death and give a sense of control back to the person. After all, we each owe (at least) one death to the universe, and we're almost certainly never going to "cure" it forever.
Knowledge of impending death causes suffering. Would it be better to cure death, or to cure the fear of death? Perhaps we only seek the former because we don't know how to achieve the latter (without side effects.)
Intuitions? If I may, what you are missing is the "organic machine". When the doctor hits your knee with the rubber head of that little mallet, he is testing your "patellar reflex".Reflex? it is a behavior tied to the organic machine.Object Oriented Software was created to move design father away from the machinery of the computer.In that context a given software language is either "close to the machine" or "far from the machine". If you wanted to, then you could appropriate its use for the "near - far" problem domain.Institutions, then, would be "Far" reflexes - abstractions that arise from given practices. Locomotion itself is rather "near" to the machine while dance or sport is farther from the machine than locomotion.. Vocalizing is rather near to the machine while language is father from the machine than Vocalizing.Theories cut into and chop up the continuum from simplicity to complexity within the organic machine. They create surrealisms in the brains of our children.One ubiquitous theory that damages the brains of our children is mathematics. We have forgotten that the numeral "2" is just an agreement.Like circles and lines, "2" does not actually exist.The are only points, "states" of "on", and states of "off" (0 and 1)Another theory that is becoming ubiquitous, is the theory of evolution by natural selection. It is wrong, and it too is damaging our children's intuition.
"a general learning mechanism"
This is called ambivalence and is defined as the experience of concurrent like and dislike.
'it seems likely that our intuitions are just inconsistent"
How about loosely bound rather than inconsistent? How is that possible?It is possible because we cultivate an indifference towards having experiences that would enhance our intuition.
Most likely, if you want a consistent position you will have to bite a bullet. If you are interested in reality, biting a bullet here shouldn’t be a last resort after searching every nook and cranny for a consistent and intuitive position. It is much more likely that humans have inconsistent intuitions about the value of life than that we have so far failed to notice some incredibly important and intuitive distinction in circumstances that drives our different intuitions.
Absolutely and importantly correct. But since the whole project of philosophical ethics is to harmonize our moral intuitions, the recognition that no harmony is possible should lead you to moral antirealism.
Where you do get the epistemic right to bite the hand of intuition feeding you?: intuition being all that you can draw on. You have no criteria (that I can imagine) to choose which consistent position you adopt or any arguments to convince anyone else to adopt it.
According to utilitarianism, preventing somebody from being born is equivalent to killing somebody, ceteris paribus.
(I wanted to reply to daedalus2u, but we seem to have hit the limit of nested comment levels.)
Let me ask a question. Is the idea that people will receive the reward of eternity in Paradise for those who follow the orders of the leader a counterfactual, a true statement, or a false statement or something else?
Usually, it's a false statement, but it could be part of a counterfactual.
IIRC, all counterfactuals are of the form "if X were true, then Y would be true."
"There are 51 states in the U.S; therefore, there are 51 stars on the U.S. flag." is two false statements.
"If there were 51 states in the U.S., there would be 51 stars on the U.S. flag" is a true counterfactual.
"If you were to follow the orders of the leader, you would be rewarded with eternity in Paradise" is a false counterfactual.
"If it were actually true that people would be rewarded with eternity in Paradise for following the orders of the leader, then following the orders of the leader would be a good idea" is a true counterfactual.
There's an easy answer to Shelly Kagan's argument about "when" death is bad: your future death is bad for you now, because your present self cares about the future.
Utilitarianism is a simple resolution of the paradox. It's bad for people to die because they are missing out. Being dead does not keep you from bearing an opportunity cost, for the simple reason that it's not a cost. It's the lack of a benefit. All the people not alive are not a tragedy, because the lack of a utopia is not a tragedy. There's nothing sad about being born later because it also means you'll die later.
According to Wikipedia:
"Additionally, they provide assisted suicide for people provided that they are of sound judgment and submit to an in-depth medical report prepared by a psychiatrist that establishes the patient's condition, as required by Swiss courts."
" Dignitas also takes healthy customers, AFAIK"
Not according to their web page.
Dignitas also takes healthy customers, AFAIK
Dignitas only takes terminally ill customers, and Exit only takes Swiss citizens.
And yeah, the expenses are an insult, given that the deadly drug would cost only a couple of bucks, if only the human cattle were allowed to simply buy it.
There is a clinic in Switzerland that legally offer that service, even to foreigners. It's not exactly cheap, but also not prohibitively expensive for any middle-class person.
I'd post a link, but last time I did somebody accused me of "bullying" and "daring people to commit suicide".
Well, one partial remedy for the fear of death would be the broad availability of cheap, painless, reliable suicide methods, e.g. barbiturates, which are now restricted by coercive government intervention.
If "fall asleep like normal, but don't wake up" were an easy option for everyone, that would alleviate fear of most forms of death and give a sense of control back to the person. After all, we each owe (at least) one death to the universe, and we're almost certainly never going to "cure" it forever.
Knowledge of impending death causes suffering. Would it be better to cure death, or to cure the fear of death? Perhaps we only seek the former because we don't know how to achieve the latter (without side effects.)
Utility functions don't care about states, they care about changes.
In the rational agent model, the utility function is usually defined on states.
Deontological ethics cares neither about states nor changes, it is only a list of things humans are not allowed to do.
Which means that certain changes have a low "moral utility" value.