Is Death Bad for Those Who Have Died?
THIS PAPER ADDRESSED THOMAS NAGEL’S DEATH (1970). I OFFER MY OWN THEORY- THAT DEATH IS ONLY BAD FOR SOMEONE FOR AS LONG AS THEY COULD HAVE NATURALLY LIVED OTHERWISE.MARCH, 2017.
The Statute of Limitations for the Deprivation Theory of Death
Most people try to avoid death. They enjoy life, and want to know what will happen next. Many people live a hedonistic lifestyle: they make decisions and seek out experiences which they believe will maximize their pleasure in life, and avoid those that cause pain. Considering the desire to indulge in as many goods of life, people would want to live as long as possible, and dread the thought of a day in which they can no longer feel anything.
It naturally follows that we consider death to be a bad thing because it is the ultimate and infinite end to indulgence. Thomas Nagel explains that living people who anticipate badness in death are making the error of trying to imagine how it will feel to be dead. Such thoughts are erroneous as one cannot imagine the absence of existence. Those guilty of doing so are left feeling unsettled as their lack of understanding makes death seem mysterious and scary. In Nagel’s account, the potential badness of death does not come from any positive, active characteristics of death but rather the negation of life which death implies the absence of. In other words, death deprives the dead from the all encompassing good that is life.
For something to be bad for someone, the badness must occur to them at a particular time. Death cannot be bad for someone who is still alive, because death does not apply to them, categorically. Neither, one may suppose, can it be bad for someone who is dead because they no longer exist in the dimension of time or otherwise, and therefore the badness has no one to implicate itself on. This is the point Nagel tries to reconcile with, for he believes that death can still be bad for those that are dead, because they otherwise would be alive. There is value in Nagel’s point, however, he fails to put limitations on this badness, to be discussed later. A solution to this problem is to allow that death is bad for someone, but only so long as they realistically could have lived otherwise.
Nagel’s account lacks sufficient description on what non-existence really is. His arguments rely on our inclination to see a dead person as vaguely existing. As discussed earlier, people cannot grasp nothingness, which makes contemplating death scary. Let’s imagine a particular child is born, matures into a man, lives a life, and eventually dies of old age. Now, on the other side, imagine an alternate storyline in which his parents never met, and therefore never created him. There is no man to experience badness or existence in the first place. Someone’s prenatal experience exists exactly as much as that of someone who has not been born yet and never will: that is, utterly non-existent. We do not feel bad for the hypothetical people that were never born. Thinking about them shows how difficult it is for our minds to grasp nothingness. If we don’t apply badness to the situation of the hypothetical man, we cannot rightfully do so for the person who not only has died, but has been dead long enough for there to to be no possibility of them still living a natural life in any universe. If we allow ourselves to think about a dead person as existing to the same exact extent that this non-person-and-never-will-be does, it is unconvincing that we may attribute being deprived of goods and the associated badness onto them.
The word badness used here does not mean suffering or pain, as we assume for our purposes that someone who is dead has completely exited existence and thus cannot “feel” anything. We must allow for a situation in which someone can be in a bad state without knowing. According to Nagel, there is such a thing as an unexperienced bad. Take a scenario where a man whose loved ones and supposed friends are mean and hateful to him when he is not around. Though he may be oblivious and feels satisfied and loved in his relationships it is hard to argue that this situation is good for him.
A more moving point is that of a once independent man who, due to some trauma, has undergone brain damage which has reverted his functioning and dependence on others to that of an infant. We do not feel bad for an actual infant in their state of limited capability, and furthermore, we did not ascribe badness to the same man when he was a proper infant himself. Even if the man feels no unpleasantness and is as unaware of his state and what he is missing out on, just as any other infant, it is still a bad condition. It is not the state of suffering that necessitate badness. Rather, it is the thoughts and experiences this man would have had, had this horrible accident not occurred. We would imagine that if the man was cognitively capable of assessing his condition, he would be devastated. This man could be considered dead in a way, though his body walks among the living, the person is gone. Considering this example, one can imagine how badness can occur to a person even if the person is not there. One flaw in using this scenario to justify death as bad is that much of the devastating nature of the story comes from the fact that the man is still on earth, and does exist at least an iota more than someone who is completely dead. This man cannot be our basis for what we consider non existence to be.
There are further issues involved with Nagel’s comparison of death to the brain damaged man. The alternate universe in which he gets to experience the goods of life is not such a stretch from reality. The accident causing his injury actively made things bad for the man where otherwise he presumably would have continued to live a prosperous and enriching life. The man sits in front of us and we can pity him and imagine what would have happened had he not gotten into his car that day, or something along those lines. As for the person who is dead and gone, there is only so much slack we can allow for other possible worlds in which the person continues to experience the goods of life.
Nagel’s deprivation account of death applies nicely to someone who died young due to accident or disease. One can imagine the family members of those who died young lamenting about how their loved one could have had a normal life if only they had caught the cancer earlier or had not tried to drive in a snow storm. It is easy to grant that such a person was robbed of the goods of life. On the other hand, in the case of someone who lived a long and fruitful life and died at the age of 95 having experienced love, art, and all other goods that life involves one cannot as straightforwardly justify why death continues to be bad for him for the centuries that will elapse after his natural death. There is no alternate realm of possibility where that man continues to walk the earth. No storyline can deviate much from this one where he dies that allows the man to enjoy much more life.
As I imagine Nagel would agree, life is a good in which Paul McCartney has enjoyed more of than John Lennon, for example. Based on this, his justification of good exists on the axis of time. Paul McCartney has been afforded much more time to experience the goods of life such as reunion tours and cameos on television shows than the late John Lennon. But Nagel also implies that death is unaffected by time as he would agree that death has not been worse for Abraham Lincoln than it has been for Ronald Reagan say, because the former has been dead for more time. Ronald Reagan died from Alzheimer's at 93 while Abraham Lincoln was assassinated at the age of 56. Contrary to what Nagel says, death seems like a worse condition for Lincoln. We are left to imagine how many years of policy making and poetry reading Lincoln would have been afforded had he not died so young, but there is not much to imagine for Reagan. Granting this, there must be a statute of limitations on how long death is bad. It would be a shame if we were to exist for 90 years if lucky, and then spend millennia to come disadvantaged by the badness of death. One may allow that death is bad, but only for as long as someone would have lived had they not died when they did. It is difficult to view death as bad for Lincoln 152 years after his untimely death, though for the the 40 years after his death, his misfortune is distinct. As with the case of the brain damaged man, the badness of his condition relies on the fact that he could plausibly be better for more time.
In the cases of the brain damaged man and John Lennon, both people could otherwise be enjoying the goods of life. One could grant that though they do not experience the badness, they are nonetheless in a bad situation. They undergo this unexperienced bad that Nagel describes, but there is also the component that there is another universe where it is possible that they are still alive and enjoying the pleasures associated. In the cases of Reagan and Lincoln, Nagel’s theory falls short. Nagel says that death is just as bad for all those who are dead, regardless of how long they have been afflicted with the condition. But this theory is insufficient. The badness of death is much more smoothly applied to someone who could have plausibly enjoyed more of it, had their life taken a different path. We are not debating here whether immortality is good, but whether death is bad. To call all death bad seems more like greediness. We can apply badness to death, only to someone who did not get their fair amount. Death is bad, but only to the point in which life would no longer be possible.
"President's Remarks on the Passing of President Ronald Reagan". The White House. June 6, 2004. Retrieved 2017-02-23.
Richard A. R. Fraser, MD (February–March 1995). "How Did Lincoln Die?". American Heritage. 46 (1). Retrieved 2017-02-23.
Most people try to avoid death. They enjoy life, and want to know what will happen next. Many people live a hedonistic lifestyle: they make decisions and seek out experiences which they believe will maximize their pleasure in life, and avoid those that cause pain. Considering the desire to indulge in as many goods of life, people would want to live as long as possible, and dread the thought of a day in which they can no longer feel anything.
It naturally follows that we consider death to be a bad thing because it is the ultimate and infinite end to indulgence. Thomas Nagel explains that living people who anticipate badness in death are making the error of trying to imagine how it will feel to be dead. Such thoughts are erroneous as one cannot imagine the absence of existence. Those guilty of doing so are left feeling unsettled as their lack of understanding makes death seem mysterious and scary. In Nagel’s account, the potential badness of death does not come from any positive, active characteristics of death but rather the negation of life which death implies the absence of. In other words, death deprives the dead from the all encompassing good that is life.
For something to be bad for someone, the badness must occur to them at a particular time. Death cannot be bad for someone who is still alive, because death does not apply to them, categorically. Neither, one may suppose, can it be bad for someone who is dead because they no longer exist in the dimension of time or otherwise, and therefore the badness has no one to implicate itself on. This is the point Nagel tries to reconcile with, for he believes that death can still be bad for those that are dead, because they otherwise would be alive. There is value in Nagel’s point, however, he fails to put limitations on this badness, to be discussed later. A solution to this problem is to allow that death is bad for someone, but only so long as they realistically could have lived otherwise.
Nagel’s account lacks sufficient description on what non-existence really is. His arguments rely on our inclination to see a dead person as vaguely existing. As discussed earlier, people cannot grasp nothingness, which makes contemplating death scary. Let’s imagine a particular child is born, matures into a man, lives a life, and eventually dies of old age. Now, on the other side, imagine an alternate storyline in which his parents never met, and therefore never created him. There is no man to experience badness or existence in the first place. Someone’s prenatal experience exists exactly as much as that of someone who has not been born yet and never will: that is, utterly non-existent. We do not feel bad for the hypothetical people that were never born. Thinking about them shows how difficult it is for our minds to grasp nothingness. If we don’t apply badness to the situation of the hypothetical man, we cannot rightfully do so for the person who not only has died, but has been dead long enough for there to to be no possibility of them still living a natural life in any universe. If we allow ourselves to think about a dead person as existing to the same exact extent that this non-person-and-never-will-be does, it is unconvincing that we may attribute being deprived of goods and the associated badness onto them.
The word badness used here does not mean suffering or pain, as we assume for our purposes that someone who is dead has completely exited existence and thus cannot “feel” anything. We must allow for a situation in which someone can be in a bad state without knowing. According to Nagel, there is such a thing as an unexperienced bad. Take a scenario where a man whose loved ones and supposed friends are mean and hateful to him when he is not around. Though he may be oblivious and feels satisfied and loved in his relationships it is hard to argue that this situation is good for him.
A more moving point is that of a once independent man who, due to some trauma, has undergone brain damage which has reverted his functioning and dependence on others to that of an infant. We do not feel bad for an actual infant in their state of limited capability, and furthermore, we did not ascribe badness to the same man when he was a proper infant himself. Even if the man feels no unpleasantness and is as unaware of his state and what he is missing out on, just as any other infant, it is still a bad condition. It is not the state of suffering that necessitate badness. Rather, it is the thoughts and experiences this man would have had, had this horrible accident not occurred. We would imagine that if the man was cognitively capable of assessing his condition, he would be devastated. This man could be considered dead in a way, though his body walks among the living, the person is gone. Considering this example, one can imagine how badness can occur to a person even if the person is not there. One flaw in using this scenario to justify death as bad is that much of the devastating nature of the story comes from the fact that the man is still on earth, and does exist at least an iota more than someone who is completely dead. This man cannot be our basis for what we consider non existence to be.
There are further issues involved with Nagel’s comparison of death to the brain damaged man. The alternate universe in which he gets to experience the goods of life is not such a stretch from reality. The accident causing his injury actively made things bad for the man where otherwise he presumably would have continued to live a prosperous and enriching life. The man sits in front of us and we can pity him and imagine what would have happened had he not gotten into his car that day, or something along those lines. As for the person who is dead and gone, there is only so much slack we can allow for other possible worlds in which the person continues to experience the goods of life.
Nagel’s deprivation account of death applies nicely to someone who died young due to accident or disease. One can imagine the family members of those who died young lamenting about how their loved one could have had a normal life if only they had caught the cancer earlier or had not tried to drive in a snow storm. It is easy to grant that such a person was robbed of the goods of life. On the other hand, in the case of someone who lived a long and fruitful life and died at the age of 95 having experienced love, art, and all other goods that life involves one cannot as straightforwardly justify why death continues to be bad for him for the centuries that will elapse after his natural death. There is no alternate realm of possibility where that man continues to walk the earth. No storyline can deviate much from this one where he dies that allows the man to enjoy much more life.
As I imagine Nagel would agree, life is a good in which Paul McCartney has enjoyed more of than John Lennon, for example. Based on this, his justification of good exists on the axis of time. Paul McCartney has been afforded much more time to experience the goods of life such as reunion tours and cameos on television shows than the late John Lennon. But Nagel also implies that death is unaffected by time as he would agree that death has not been worse for Abraham Lincoln than it has been for Ronald Reagan say, because the former has been dead for more time. Ronald Reagan died from Alzheimer's at 93 while Abraham Lincoln was assassinated at the age of 56. Contrary to what Nagel says, death seems like a worse condition for Lincoln. We are left to imagine how many years of policy making and poetry reading Lincoln would have been afforded had he not died so young, but there is not much to imagine for Reagan. Granting this, there must be a statute of limitations on how long death is bad. It would be a shame if we were to exist for 90 years if lucky, and then spend millennia to come disadvantaged by the badness of death. One may allow that death is bad, but only for as long as someone would have lived had they not died when they did. It is difficult to view death as bad for Lincoln 152 years after his untimely death, though for the the 40 years after his death, his misfortune is distinct. As with the case of the brain damaged man, the badness of his condition relies on the fact that he could plausibly be better for more time.
In the cases of the brain damaged man and John Lennon, both people could otherwise be enjoying the goods of life. One could grant that though they do not experience the badness, they are nonetheless in a bad situation. They undergo this unexperienced bad that Nagel describes, but there is also the component that there is another universe where it is possible that they are still alive and enjoying the pleasures associated. In the cases of Reagan and Lincoln, Nagel’s theory falls short. Nagel says that death is just as bad for all those who are dead, regardless of how long they have been afflicted with the condition. But this theory is insufficient. The badness of death is much more smoothly applied to someone who could have plausibly enjoyed more of it, had their life taken a different path. We are not debating here whether immortality is good, but whether death is bad. To call all death bad seems more like greediness. We can apply badness to death, only to someone who did not get their fair amount. Death is bad, but only to the point in which life would no longer be possible.
"President's Remarks on the Passing of President Ronald Reagan". The White House. June 6, 2004. Retrieved 2017-02-23.
Richard A. R. Fraser, MD (February–March 1995). "How Did Lincoln Die?". American Heritage. 46 (1). Retrieved 2017-02-23.