| Alas ladies and gents, the much anticipated thread is finally here. Note to self that I should refrain from making promises about threads.... What I wish to do here is limit the scope of discussion about death to a few central questions rather than cover it comprehensively. I do this because for one, this isn't an academic paper and two, because I don't consider myself to have any authority on the questions regarding death. Death is something that simply interests me in a philosophical way and I hope you'll join me in pondering some questions that had philosophers, as well as common-folk, occupied for centuries. The scope of this topic will not include religious doctrine or institutions. Much in the same spirit, I hope to avoid anthropological and cultural aspects of death such as superstition and treatment of the dead. I shall also admit that much of what I am going to say is influenced by Shelly Kagan's discussion about death in his book aptly titled: "Death." If you're at all interested in death from a philosophical point of view, I recommend this book as a primer. As I'm sure many of you know, it is improbable that we will solve any of death's mysteries in this thread, thus, the point is to simply sample where people stand in their thinking about one of the few things we can be certain about, death. With that preface out of the way, let us begin. There are several questions we can ask regarding death: 1. When death occurs, who, or rather what, actually dies? 2. Is death "bad" for us? 3. Is it possible to survive death? 4. Is it reasonable to fear death? 5. Is rational to commit suicide? Note that these are all central questions in Kagan's book on death and I shall lay out the groundwork for each in turn. 1. A good place to start is to think about what we actually are, or in other words, our identity. The views of this may be divided into three broad categories. We are either the body, or more specifically the brain. We are either the immaterial soul. Or perhaps we are a mix of both where the body has some sort of causal connection to the soul. Depending on which view you hold, your ability to answer the question of whether death is survivable and when it occurs will vary. For instance, if you believe that we are merely physical entities existing in our brain, then death would seem to occur at the destruction of the brain or when it ceases to function. If, however, you believe that we are an immaterial soul, then the moment of death becomes much harder to pin down. Perhaps your soul is connected to the brain (similar to consciousness), hence when the brain ceases to function, the soul ceases to exist. Or maybe your soul cannot die at all since it is immaterial, hence you end up in a state of immortality outside of the body. Whatever your view is, there are complications as a result. Even if you believe in the brain (materialist) view, then determining exactly when a comatose patient is no longer a person is not as easy as it seems. 2. The puzzle of whether death is actually bad for us is indeed quite a puzzle. Epicurus gives us this famous quote: "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. It does not then concern either the living or the dead, since for the former it is not, and the latter are no more." It seems that he is right. Being dead is not inherently bad, for there is nothing painful or unpleasant about being dead. We simply cease to exist, much like the time prior to our own existence and clearly not existing prior to our birth was not bad for us, thus, ceasing to exist does not appear to be bad for us either. Of course, that is not how we think about death. We clearly treat death as an ill and avoid it at all costs. After all, if death isn't bad, then why is murder bad? Here I will appeal to Kagan's "deprivation account," for I feel he summarizes it quite well. To be brief, the deprivation account states that death is bad because it deprives us of the pleasures we would otherwise have had we not died. It is a forward-shot argument since it assumes a certain balance of pleasures that would make living preferable, but statistically speaking, I think it's a fair assumption to make. Therefore, death is bad for us because it deprives us of the things we want. 3. The question of whether we can survive death is prima facie absurd. How can we survive the unsurvivable? If death is the end of life, then how can we keep living after we cease to live? From the brain point of view, we can't. Once the brain is destroyed or ceases to function properly, we die. Perhaps science fiction may reconstruct our brain or freeze it in a vat to resurrect us, but for now, brain death seems to be personal death. If you believe in the immaterial soul, then perhaps you have a way to survive. After all, bodily death is only a minor inconvenience for an immaterial soul. However, the soul does not get off the hook that easily. After all, the soul has no sensory organs, those all die along with the body. So how can the soul perceive the world around it, much less have memories or thoughts? If we do exist as some spooky immaterial soul, it stands to reason that it is not an existence that bears much attraction. Tangled in the question of survival is the question of personal identity over time. This is an incredibly difficult question to unpack, but I will say this. If we wish to survive death, perhaps what matters to us is that we survive not only in some uncertain state, but in a way where out memories and personality stay in tact. For instance, think of cloning or a machine that can map your entire personality and transfer it to a different brain. Would you say that a person with an identical personality to your's is really you? What if your brain is transplanted into a different body but wiped clean of all of its memories? Is it still you? These problems require deep thought about what personal identity is and how we sustain it over time. 4. Fear of death is quite common and here again I will appeal to Kagan's argument about what a reasonable emotion is. Kagan claims that we can indeed have reasonable emotions. For instance, pride can be reasonable if we indeed have something to be proud of. It is reasonable to be proud of graduating from med school, however, it is not reasonable to be proud of breathing or blinking your eyes. He goes on further to state that fear is reasonable insofar as it meets certain criteria. what we fear must be: -inherently bad for us, -it must be likely to happen, and -we must be uncertain over whether it will happen or not We have touched on whether death is bad for us. For argument's sake, we may fulfill the first condition by using the deprivation account. That is, death is bad for us because it deprives us of future pleasures. Second, death must be likely to happen. Arguably, the likelihood of death in the near future is uncertain, though statistically it is unlikely. Third, we must be uncertain over whether it will happen. Of course, we are certain that death will occur, however, we cannot always know when. In fact, we seldom know when we will die. Therefore, perhaps what we fear is rather an early death instead of an inevitable one. After all, an early death deprives us of things we desire. It disrupts our plans. And we can hardly know whether it will occur tomorrow, in a week, or in a year. I think that is what we really fear. Though Kagan feels that it is only reasonable to fear death if you're in terminal condition or are legitimately more likely to die due to other circumstances, I feel that at least some fear of death is justified insofar as it is a fear of being robbed of what you expect to have for years to come. Of course, I would agree that fearing death to the point of crippling anxiety is not reasonable. 5. Lastly, the question of whether suicide is rational is a bit of an unstable topic. We once again return to what is considered to be reasonable or rational and that in itself is a difficult topic. It seems to me, that on the most basic level of analysis, suicide is rational when you feel as though you would be better off dead. Again, "being dead" is not a state that we can really compare to since you don't exist after death, but in simpler terms, we can imagine what your life would have been like had you stayed alive and attempt to determine whether you would be better off to avoid living. For instance if you're been hit by a train and your body is mangled mess with no hope of recovery. In that instance, being in pain until you die is worse than dying instantly. Hence, you have an outcome in which you would be better off dead earlier rather than later. Applying the same reasoning to a case where you are terminally ill and expect to live out your last months in incredible pain, perhaps you would consider suicide to avoid agony. It seems in cases such as this one, it would indeed be rational. One interesting dimension of this issue is apparent when we apply a utilitarian approach to weighing the lifetime balance of pleasures and pains. If we imagine a lifetime line graph of pleasure and pain with death being equivalent to the x-axis, then we can do some calculus to figure out the point at which it makes sense to commit suicide. If, for example, your lifetime well-being is expected to dip below zero and stay, suicide at the zero point would seem rational. Though I suggest that this kind of utilitarian calculus is a bit unsettling as it does not seem to matter what your well-being is before it drops below zero. Even if your lifetime well-being was at say 50 for 90% of your life and for the last 10% it sharply dropped to -10 until you die, it seems that what really matters is the -10 and if you have no hope of crossing zero before you die, then suicide makes sense as soon as you drop below zero. Apart from this, we also run into the issue of statistical probability of well-being in the future which is difficult to determine. Perhaps average well-being is projected above zero, but that is simply not good enough when we put suicide on the table. There must be more certainty for it to be rational. I shall conclude this post for now as I do not want to make it too long. Of course, I'm sure I've missed a lot that could be covered in more detail. I would greatly appreciate any engagement and thoughts on the topic for it is one that is of great interest to me. |
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