Kolodny, Niko - That I should Die and Others Live

2014/11/07

Comments to Death and the Afterlife, by Samuel Scheffler, Oxford University Press, 2013

Author starts with two assumptions from Scheffler and then goes on to discuss the conclusions from them. Author focuses on the first assumption, mainly that:
A. Humans fear death not only because it deprives them of future goods, but also because it "extinguishes" them, making them, individually, extinct.
The problem is that Scheffler also believes that if humans never died, they would be unable to live value-laden lives and therefore fear something (death) about which the alternative isn't valuable. Author elaborates that the fear of extinction (the second reason) can't be an egoistic reason, like the fear of deprivation of future goods is (pg160). Hence, the fear of extinction isn't egoistical, or, rather, there isn't an egoistic reason to avoid extinction (not death, but the element of death that is extinction of the person). Trouble arises if there is a further assumption (by author), that:
I. If something would be in some way bad for one, then one has egoistic reason to avoid it.
The trouble here is that it brings the egoistic fear back into fearing something (extinction) that is not egoistically troubling, something author calls "J" (pg161). The discussion continues through Lucretius, who claims that because the pre-birth conditions of a human aren't troubling for said human, its post-mortem conditions should also be un-troubling. If this is the case, based on the principle of not fearing Y (in the future) if a similar X (in the past) wasn't feared, then Scheffler has a weird conclusion that we should not fear bad futures that are relevantly similar to bad pasts (pg162-3).

The second part of the paper involves the claim from Scheffler that the human wish for immortality is conceptually incoherent because it would destroy their value-laden lives. Author replies that even conceptual incoherence doesn't mean we can't wish for it, or regret that we can't have it (pg164-5). Or, perhaps, humans can at least continually wish for life to last just a bit longer, not necessarily 'forever'. But what is the case to be made that eternal life would be value-less? Author examines Scheffler's three main reasons:

1. Life must involve stages to be valuable. Answer: there can be an infinite number of stages
2. That life must have the risk of loss, injury, and danger to be valuable. Answer: those can still exist even with immortality, or perhaps they would be worse.
3. Temporal scarcity is a necessary condition for valuing. Answer: Scarcity, perhaps. But there are other kinds of scarcity than temporal.
At best, Scheffler's arguments might show that immortal beings wouldn't necessarily have human values (pg168-9).

 Lastly, author discusses Scheffler's claims about the limits of egoism. Author believes, contrary to Scheffler, that humans are indeed motivated to see the survival of humanity over their own individual survivals (pg170-1). Author, however, needs to give a special definition of "motivation" where "we would (sincerely, and without needing special argument) see ourselves as having stronger reasons to choose it if given the opportunity." (pg172) In other words, not that a human could make the choice, but that a human would honestly see it as the better one from a rational perspective. Lastly, author suggests that perhaps the concern for the afterlife is, at bottom, egoistic.