More on E.J. Bond
I previously mentioned a quote from E.J.Bond's Reason and Value. It's a really good book, which I recommend those interested in motivation theory take a look at. Two more interesting quotes:
"Jan Narveson, the only important contemporary hedonist of whom I am aware"
(p105)
Is this true? There must have been more well-known hedonists than only Narveson in 1983? I'm sure there are more than that now (Crisp and Singer spring to mind so far as I am aware), and I would imagine that hedonism has fallen in decline since then. Anyone?
"Epicurus gave comfort to many by arguing that death was nothing to fear, pain being the only evil and dead people suffering not at all! It is fairly plain, I think, that death can be understood as evil only if it is understood to mean extinction, though even if there is some kind of personal existence after death, we nevertheless cease to exist as individual human beings in the world, and that, Heaven knows, is terrifying enough. Ceasing to be is what most of us, with or without reason, fear more than anything."
(p128, cut for brevity)
I appreciate the honesty here, though I would go further. There is some kind of common-sense assumption that philosophy can help us deal with death, can offer comfort, and can even explain why death is not bad at all. Philosophical, after all, sometimes just means Stoical, and under this guise many assume that philosophers are happy with the idea of death. This strikes me as a horribly false impression, and for the better. Death is a bad thing, that we should strive to avoid and which it may be appropriate to fear. Why shrink from that conclusion?
Death
I think the burden of proof is on you to say why you would reach the conclusion that death is a bad thing, and something to be feared, rather than the other way round. If death is understood simply as ceasing to be, then I can't think of any reason to fear it except for the fear of its consequences - the grief of my wife, the financial deprivation of my children - which do not seem to be a fear of death itself in any case.
(Is there a good case for a distinction between death and dying here? The process of dying, I accept, might be 'terrifying' precisely because it is unknown and strange, how much so would depend on circumstances and cause of death.)
MD, (As Richard
MD,
(As Richard says..)
Imagine I shoot you with a happiness-sapping gun, that stops you from feeling at all happy, but which does not do anything else to you, such as cause you pain, make you feel miserable, or any other negative effect. This gun, that is, just makes you feel emotionally neutral all of the time. I assume that my shooting you with this gun would be wrong, and it would be wrong because by shooting you I make your life worse?
If so, it looks as though harm can come about through the deprivation of good things as well as the presence of bad things. That in turn seems to imply that death can be a bad thing even though non-existence doesn't involve any positively harmful effects on oneself. It's the deprivation of the good things that makes death bad.
Alex
I don't think this is the
I don't think this is the same thing at all. I don't accept the principle of a harm existing outside of a temporal frame. If you harm me I need to know when. If I'm alive but unable to experience happiness then I am being harmed at those moments when I would otherwise have felt happy - but if I'm dead, I'm not being harmed. You then have to resort to a claim that somehow my life as a whole is deprived of a good but I reject that as simply meaningless.
I don't deny that deprivation of a good can be harmful, merely that a dead person is not in any real sense deprived because he isn't there.
Good suggestion, but let me
Good suggestion, but let me try and see what I can muster against it.
Let me rephrase my point: Things can be bad for you without harming you. That means that even if harm only makes sense in a temporal frame, things might still be bad for you, but not at a time.
Let me rewrite my final paragraph to remove references to "harm":
"If so, it looks as though things can be bad for you because of the deprivation of good things as well as the presence of bad things. That in turn seems to imply that death can be a bad thing even though non-existence doesn't involve any positively bad effects on oneself."
Does this allay any of your worries?
(I need to think more about the gun example in order to think of a clear example where your response fails.)
Alex
Let's say I accept that
Let's say I accept that things can be bad for me, not at any time but in a temporally general way - though I'm not sure that I do. The point about death is that while it deprives me of the opportunity to experience positive things it also takes away the risk of experiencing the negative. Since negative experiences are, I would guess, at least as likely as positive ones, shouldn't my view of total experience deprivation be neutral?
I think this is related to the idea of being 'philosophical' about death. The thinking man knows that life is good and bad and pretty much pointless because it always ends in death and so he does not fear that inevitable conclusion.
"Since negative experiences
"Since negative experiences are, I would guess, at least as likely as positive ones"
You have a far more pessimistic outlook than I do!
Alex
Alex - Isn't Singer a
Alex - Isn't Singer a preference utilitarian, rather than a hedonist?
MDHinton - Don't you have any future-directed goals or desires? Death will thwart those. (And even a hedonist could think it's bad to deprive one's life of additional pleasure.)
Richard, A brief look
Richard,
A brief look suggests you are correct on Singer, though I'm still sure there must be more hedonists about than this.
Alex
'Don't you have any
'Don't you have any future-directed goals or desires?' - good question. Err no, not really.
On the subject of fear - deprivation of additional pleasure is hardly something to be frightened of.
On the subject of additional pleasure - I can only regret the inevitability of death if I believe that the sum of pleasures over pains during the rest of my hypothetical life will be positive - I have no such reasons. Following your example form your link, if your grandfather, an old and presumably sick man, had lived an extra day, would he really have experienced greater pleasure?
If we are simply counting pleasures, so that the best life is the one which contains the most, then a long life of extreme suffering interspersed with lots of pleasures would be 'a good thing'. That seems to me a pretty stupid kind of hedonism.
Anyway, your argument in the discussion you link to seems to be that death 'can' harm us, but that does not lead to the conclusion, offered by Alex, that we should try to avoid it.
Sorry, forgot to put my
Sorry, forgot to put my name...