## 1. Life



To die is to cease to be alive. To clarify death further, then, we
will need to say a bit about the nature of life.



Some theorists have said that life is a substance of some sort. A more
plausible view is that life is a property of some sort, but we should
also consider the possibility that lives are events. If we say that
lives are events, we will want to know something about how to
distinguish them from other events, and how they are related to the
individuals that are alive. It would also be useful to know the
persistence conditions for a life. If instead we conclude that life
(or *alive*) is a property, we will want to clarify it, and
identify what sorts of things bear it. Let us briefly discuss each of
these views--that life is a substance, a property, or an event.



### 1.1 Life as a Substance



We can deal quickly with the view called 'vitalism'
(defended by Hans Driesch, 1908 and 1914, among others), which holds
that being alive consists in containing some special substance called
'life.' Vitalism is a nonstarter since it is unclear what
sort of stuff vitalists take life to be, and because no likely
candidates--no special stuff found in all and only in living
things--have been detected. Moreover, vitalism faces a further
difficulty, which Fred Feldman calls 'the Jonah Problem':
a dead thing, such as a whale, may have a living thing, say Jonah,
inside it; if Jonah has 'life' inside him, then so does
the whale, but by hypothesis the whale is not alive. Of course, in
this example Jonah is in the whale's stomach, not in its cells,
but the difficulty cannot be solved by saying that an object is alive
if and only if it has 'life' in its cells, as an
infectious agent (organisms with 'life' in them) could
survive, for a time, within the dead cells of a dead whale.


### 1.2 Life as an Event



As Jay Rosenberg noted (1983, p. 22, 103), sometimes when we speak of
a life we mean to refer to the events that make up something's
history--the things that it did and the things that happened to
it. (For example, the publication of *The Problems of
Philosophy* was one of the events that made up one life, namely
Bertrand Russell's.) Yet a rock and a corpse have histories, and
neither has a life. Presumably, then, 'a life,' in the
sense we are discussing, refers to the history of something that is
alive. In that case what we are really looking for is clarification of
a property, not an event. We want clarification of what it is to be
alive.



According to a second theorist, Peter van Inwagen, while a life is
indeed an event, it is not the history of something.
"'Russell's life,'" van Inwagen writes
(1990, p. 83), "denotes a purely biological event, an event
which took place entirely inside Russell's skin and which went
on for ninety-seven years." Russell's life included the
oxygenation of his hemoglobin molecules but not the publication of his
books.



If lives are biological events, it would be useful to know more about
what they are, how they are individuated, and what their persistence
conditions are. Van Inwagen declines to provide these details (1990,
p. 145). He assumes that (the events he calls) lives are familiar
enough to us that we can pick them out. But he does make the useful
comment that each such event is constituted by certain self-organizing
activities in which some molecules engage, and that it is analogous to
a parade, which is an event constituted by certain marching-related
activities of some people. Having taken the notion of a life for
granted, he draws upon it in his account of organisms. On his view
(1990, p. 90), some things compose an organism if and only if their
activity constitutes a life.


### 1.3 Life as a Property



Many theorists have defended the view that life, or (being) alive, is
a property, but there is considerable disagreement among them about
what precisely that property is. The main views on offer are
life-functionalist accounts and accounts that analyze life in terms of
DNA or genetic information or evolution by natural selection.



Life-functionalism, a view introduced by Aristotle, analyzes the
property *alive* in terms of one or more salient functions that
living things typically are able to perform. The salient functions
Aristotle listed were nutrition, reproduction, sensation, autonomous
motion, and thought. However, life-functionists disagree about how to
formulate their account and about which functions are salient. Take
Aristotle's list. Obviously, it would be a mistake to say that
something is alive if and only if it can perform all of the functions
on the list. Might we say that, for something to be alive, it
*suffices* that it be capable of one or more of the listed
functions? Is being capable of one of these functions in
particular *necessary* for something to be alive? As Fred
Feldman points out, neither of the suggestions just mentioned is
acceptable. Devices such as Roomba cleaning robots can do one of
Aristotle's functions, namely move themselves, but are not
alive, so being able to do at least one listed function does not
suffice for being alive. Nor is it plausible to say that any one on
the list is necessary for being alive. Which on the list would this
necessary function be? Perhaps nutrition? Adult silk moths are alive
but lack a digestive system, so are incapable of nutrition. And, as
many theorists have noticed, many living things cannot reproduce;
examples include organisms whose reproductive organs are damaged and
hybrid animals such as mules.



What, now, about accounts that analyze life in terms of genetic
information? Feldman thinks that something like the Jonah problem
arises for any account according which being alive consists in
containing DNA or other genetic information, as dead organisms contain
DNA. A further problem for such views is that it is conceivable there
are or could be life forms (say on other planets) that are not based
on genetic information. This latter difficulty can be avoided if we
say that being alive consists in having the ability to evolve, to
engage in Darwinian evolution, assuming that evolution by natural
selection is possible for living things that lack nucleic acid. We
might adopt NASA's definition, according to which life is
"a self-sustaining chemical system capable of Darwinian
evolution." However, accounts like NASA's are implausible
for a further reason: while the ability to evolve by natural selection
is something that collections of organisms--species--may or
may not have, it is not a feature an individual organism may have.
Later members of a species come to have features earlier members
lacked; some of these new features may make survival more or less
likely, and the less 'fit' are weeded out of existence. An
individual organism, such as a particular dog, cannot undergo this
process. Yet individuals may be alive.



Because he has encountered no successful account of life, no account
exempt from counterexamples, Feldman concludes that "life is a
mystery" (p. 55). Despite his skepticism, however, there is a
good case to be made for saying that what distinguishes objects that
are alive from objects that are not is that the latter have a
distinctive sort of control over what composes them, which the former
lack. Let us see if we can make this claim clearer.



Consider ordinary composite material objects that are not alive. We
can assume that, at a given time, these are made up of, or composed
of, more simple things, such as molecules, by virtue of the fact that
the latter meet various conditions. Among the conditions is the
requirement that (in some sense in need of clarification) they be
*bonded together*. Take the boulder near my front porch. Among
the things that compose it now will be a few molecules, say four
molecules near the center of the boulder, that are bonded together, in
that each is bonded to the others, directly or indirectly (a molecule,
A, is *in*directly bonded to another molecule, B, if A is
directly bonded to a molecule C that is directly bonded to B, or if A
is bonded to a molecule that is indirectly bonded to B). The things
that make up the boulder are not limited to these four molecules, but
they are limited to molecules that are bonded to them. Nor is the
boulder unique in this way; something similar seems true of any
composite material object. A composite material object is composed of
some things at a time only if those things are bonded together at that
time.



What sort of bonding relationship holds among the things that compose
material objects? Any answer to this question will be controversial.
Let us set it aside, and move on to some further assumptions about the
composition of nonliving composite material objects, namely that a
great many of them persist for a while (some persist for a very long
time) and that what composes them at one time normally differs from
what composes them at other times. Exactly how this works is a
complicated matter, but among the conditions that such objects must
meet if they are to persist is that any change in their composition be
incremental. (Even this condition is controversial. For more on
material objects, see the article Material Constitution and Ordinary
objects.) Consider the boulder again. Suppose that at one time,
*t*0, it is composed of some molecules, and that all
or most of these molecules remain bonded to each other until a later
time *t*1. Suppose, too, that no or few (few as
compared to the number of molecules that composed the boulder at
*t*0) molecules come to be newly bonded to these by
the time that *t*1 rolls around. Under these
conditions the boulder undergoes an incremental change in composition,
and it seems plausible to say that the boulder remains in existence
over the interval *t*0-*t*1,
and, at *t*1, is composed of the molecules that
remain bonded together with the molecules that are newly attached to
them. Presumably, it will also survive a series of such incremental
changes in composition. But it will not survive drastic and sudden
changes. It would stop existing, for example, if the molecules that
compose it were suddenly dispersed.



Enough said about composite material objects that are not alive. Now
let us see if we can shed some light on what makes living objects
special. What is it that distinguishes an object that is alive from an
object that is not?



The answer seems to be that, normally, a live object has a distinctive
sort of control over whether things come to be, or cease to be, part
of it. The control in question is made possible by activities its
constituents themselves are capable of. Contrast objects that are not
alive, say automobiles. What an ordinary car is composed of is settled
*for* the car by the mechanics who repair it (detaching some
parts and affixing others), by whether it is involved in an accident
and loses some parts, and so forth. Imagine a car that is not passive
in this way. Imagine that its parts were somehow capable of replacing
some of themselves with fresh parts, without assistance from outside,
so that the activities of the parts that compose the car today were
responsible for its being composed of certain parts tomorrow. That
would make it quite lifelike.



Let us describe, in a bit more detail, what the molecules that compose
living objects can do:


1. Working together, these molecules can engage in activities that
are integrated in conformity with (under the control of) the
information that some of them carry (information that is comparable to
blueprints and instructions), much as soldiers that make up an army
can engage in activities that are integrated in conformity with battle
plans and instructions issued by the commanding officers that are
among them.
2. Deploying these activities, the molecules can self-modify, in the
sense that they can bond new (perhaps recently ingested) molecules to
themselves, or prune (and excrete) some away, combining themselves in
various ways (e.g., constructing cells), thereby giving way to a
slightly different assembly of molecules at a later time, and fueling
their activities by drawing upon external energy sources or stored
reserves.
3. The molecules can also pass along their ability to self-modify,
enabling the molecules to which they give way to continue these
activities, thus allowing the object they compose to sustain a given
form (or forms) over time (say that of a dog) despite the fact that
what composes that object at one time differs from what composes it at
another time.



The view on offer--we might call it the *compositional
account* of life--is that an object is composed of things
that are capable of the activities just described if and only if it is alive.



This account of life needs refinement, but it avoids at least most of
the worries mentioned earlier. It implies that an object may be alive
even though it is sterile (as in the case of mules), even though it
survives on stored energy (as in the case of a silk moth), and
conceivably even if it lacks nucleic acid (yet is still composed of
things that engage in activities integrated in conformity with
information they carry). In fact, it implies that being capable of
none of the items on Aristotle's list is necessary nor
sufficient for being alive. What is more, the compositional account
just sketched implies that being alive is a property an individual,
say the last remaining dodo, may bear on its own, which suggests that
it may be alive without being capable of Darwinian evolution. At the
same time, it explains how collections of live individuals may evolve.
Individual objects are alive only if their composition is under the
control of some of their parts (e.g., nucleic acid molecules) that
carry information. The mechanisms by which such information is carried
tend to be modified over time, altering the information they carry,
and thus the features of the organisms they help shape, introducing
mutations that may or may not facilitate survival. (For more on the
nature of life, see Bedau 2014 and the entry on Life.)


## 2. Death



The previous section discussed the nature of life, thereby clarifying
what it is that death ends. This section discusses the nature of death
and how death is related to the persistence of organisms and persons.
(For an excellent discussion of views of death outside of the analytic
tradition, see Schumacher 2010.) 


### 2.1 Life and Death



According to the compositional account of life discussed in the
previous section, objects that are alive have a distinctive capacity
to control what they are composed of, fixing these constituents
together in various ways, by virtue of the fact that their
constituents can engage in various self-modifying activities that are
integrated in conformity with information they carry. Let us call
these *vital activities*.



It is one thing to have the capacity to engage in vital activities and
another actually to engage in them, just as there is a difference
between having the ability to run and actually running. Being alive
seems to involve the former. It consists in having the relevant
capacity. To die is to lose this capacity. We can call this *the
loss of life account of death*.



The event by which the capacity to engage in vital activities is lost
is one thing, and the state of affairs of its having been lost it is
another. 'Death' can refer to either. However, the
capacity to engage in vital activities may be lost gradually, rather
than all at once, so it is reasonable to speak of a process of dying.
In some cases that process is especially complicated, because the
self-modifying activities of some organisms result in the construction
of complex physiological systems that must remain largely intact for
the self-modifying activities of these organisms to remain integrated.
In defining death, some theorists focus on these systems, and claim
that an organism's life ends when that organism's
physiological systems can no longer function as an integrated whole,
or when this loss becomes irreversible (Christopher Belshaw 2009;
David DeGrazia 2014).


### 2.2 Death and Suspended Vitality



The loss of life account of death has been challenged by theorists who
claim that things whose vital activities are suspended are not alive
(Feldman 1992, Christopher Belsaw 2009, Cody Gilmore 2013, and David
DeGrazia 2014). When zygotes and embryos are frozen for later use in
the in vitro fertilization procedure, their vital activities are
brought to a stop, or very nearly so. The same goes for water bears
that are dehydrated, and for seeds and spores. It seems clear that the
zygotes and water bears are not dead, since their vital activities can
easily be restarted--by warming the zygote or by wetting the
water bear. They are not dead, but are they alive? If we deny that
they are alive, presumably we would do so on the grounds that their
vital activities are halted. If something's life can be ended by
suspending its vital activities without its dying, then we must reject
the loss of life account of death.



However, the loss of life account is thoroughly established in
ordinary usage, and is easily reconciled with the possibility of
suspended vitality. In denying that frozen embryos are dead, it is
clear that we mean to emphasize that they have not lost the
*capacity* to deploy their vital activities. When we say that
something is dead, we mean to emphasize that this capacity
*has* been lost. Having used 'dead' to signal this
loss, why would we want to use the word 'alive' to signal
the fact that something is making active use of its vital activities?
Our best option is to use a pair of contrasting terms. We can use
'viable' to indicate that something has the capacity to
deploy vital activities and 'unviable' to indicate that it
has lost this capacity. When instead we are concerned about whether or
not something is engaging its vital activities, we can use different
contrasting terms, say 'vital' and 'nonvital',
the former to characterize something that is employing its capacity
for vital activities and the latter to characterize something that is
not making use of its capacity for vital activities. What seems
relatively uncontroversial is that being dead consists in unviability.
To retain the loss of life account, we have only to add that being
alive consists in viability. We can then say that a frozen embryo is
viable and hence alive despite its lack of vitality, and it will die
if its life ends (it will die if it ceases to be viable). Of course,
if we are willing to abandon the loss of life account, we could
instead use 'alive' to characterize something that is both
viable and vital. We would then say that a frozen embryo is not alive
(since it lacks vitality) but also that it is not dead (since it
remains viable).


### 2.3 Being Dead



People often speak of being dead as a 'state' or
'condition' as opposed to an event or process. They say an
organism comes to be in this state once it dies. This way of speaking
can be puzzling on the assumption that what dies ceases to exist.
(This assumption is discussed below.) If the assumption is true, then
an organism that dies stops existing but simultaneously comes to be in
the state of death. Mustn't something exist at a time if it is
(literally) in some state at that time? But of course it would be
absurd to deny that something can truly be dead on the grounds that
death is a state and what does not exist at a time cannot be in any
state at that time.



Why not solve the problem by saying that upon dying an organism leaves
a corpse, and it is the corpse that is in the state of being dead?
There are several problems with this suggestion. Some organisms do not
leave corpses. What corpses are left eventually disintegrate. Whether
an organism leaves a corpse or not, and whether its corpse exists or
not, if that organism dies at time *t* and does not regain life
then it is dead after *t*.



The difficulty can be avoided if we say, with Jay Rosenberg 1983, p.
42), that dead is a relation between an organism, the time it died,
and a subsequent time, and that when someone asserts, at some given
time *t*, 'Socrates is dead,' what is asserted
(ignoring the possibility of restored life, discussed in the next
section) is roughly that Socrates died before *t*.



As is mentioned below, some theorists deny that an object that is at
one time an organism may continue its existence as a corpse. Such
theorists will say that organisms and their corpses are two different
objects. They may conclude that 'dead' is
ambiguous--that it means one thing as applied to organisms, and
another thing as attributed to the corpses organisms leave. In any
case, they will need to deny that, as concerns corpses, being dead
implies having died, as corpses are never alive, according to them.
If, on the other hand, an object that is an organism may continue its
existence as a corpse, then, at any time *t* after that object
dies, 'dead' applies univocally to it at time *t*,
and means roughly *died before t*.


### 2.4 Resurrection



It will be useful to sharpen the loss of life account if, as seems
conceivable, it is possible to *restore* life to something that
has died.



Restoration in this sense is quite different from the revival of
something, such as a frozen embryo, whose vital activities have been
halted. Something can be *revived* only if it is
alive--only if it has the capacity to deploy vital activities, as
in the case of a frozen zygote. It is revived when it regains
vitality. Something's life can be *restored* only if it
has lost its capacity for vital activities. Life is restored when this
capacity is regained.



To bring the possibility of restoration into view, imagine a
futuristic device, the *Disassembler-Reassembler*, that chops
me into small cubes, or individual cells, or disconnected atoms, which
it stores and later reassembles just as they were before. It is far
from obvious that I would survive--and that my life would
continue--after Reassembly. (Assuming that I am a material
object, the account of objects sketched in Section 1.3 implies that
chopping me into bits ends my existence forever.) But even if my
existence would pick up again after Reassembly occurs, it is quite
clear that I would not live during intervals when my atoms are stacked
in storage. I would not even exist during such intervals. If I can be
Reassembled, my life would be restored, not revived. Restoration, not
revival, is a way of bringing a creature back from the dead.



Now imagine a *Corpse Reanimator*, a device that moves
molecules back to where they were prior to the death of the creature
that left the corpse, and restarts its vital activities. Some
theorists say that I continue my existence as a corpse if it remains
in good shape; they will assume that I remain in existence after
losing my life, and continue my existence after the Corpse Reanimator
does its work. On their view the Corpse Reanimator *restores*
my life--it gives me back the capacity to engage in vital
activities.



Given the possibilities of restoration and revivification, it seems
best to refine the loss of life account, as follows:



*Dying* is the loss of an object's life--the loss of
its capacity to perpetuate itself using vital activities. An object
dies at the time it loses this capacity. It is *dead* at all
times afterwards, except while that capacity is regained.


### 2.5 Death and What We Are



Death for you and me is constituted by the loss of our capacity to
sustain ourselves using vital activities. This characterization of
death could be sharpened if we had a clearer idea of what we
*are*, and its implications concerning our persistence. After
all, we cannot retain *any* capacities if we fail to persist,
so if we fail to persist we stop being capable of vital activities. We
die. However, what we are, and what is involved in our persistence, is
a matter of controversy.



There are three main views: *animalism*, which says that we are
human animals (Snowdon 1990, Olson 1997, 2007); *personism*,
which says that we are creatures with the capacity for self-awareness;
and *mindism*, which says that we are minds (which may or may
not have the capacity for self-awareness) (McMahan 2002). Animalists
typically say that we persist over time just in case we remain the
same animal; mindist typically suggest that our persistence requires
our remaining the same mind. Personism is usually paired with the view
that our persistence is determined by our psychological features and
the relations among them (Locke 1689, Parfit 1984). (For more on what
we are, see the entry on Personal Identity.)



If we are animals, with the persistence conditions of animals, we die
when we cease to be the same animal. If we are minds, with the
persistence conditions for minds, we die when we cease to meet these
conditions. And if persistence is determined by our retaining certain
psychological features, then the loss of those features will
constitute death.



These three ways of understanding death have very different
implications. Severe dementia can destroy a great many psychological
features without destroying the mind, which suggests that death as
understood by personists can occur even though death as understood by
mindists has not. Moreover, human animals sometimes survive the
destruction of the mind, as when the cerebrum dies but the brainstem
does not, leaving an individual in a persistent vegetative state. Many
theorists also think that the mind could survive the extinction of the
human animal, say when the brain is removed from the body, kept alive
artificially, and the remainder of the body is destroyed (assuming
that a bare brain is not a human animal). These possibilities suggest
that death as understood by mindists can occur even though death as
understood by animalists has not (and also that the latter sort of
death need not be accompanied by the former.)


### 2.6 Death and Existence



What is the relationship between existence and death? May people and
other creatures continue to exist after dying, or cease to exist
without dying?



Take the first question: may you and I and other creatures continue to
exist for some time after our lives end? Fred Feldman (1992, p. 91)
coins the term *termination thesis* to refer to the view that
"when a person dies, he or she ... goes out of existence;
subsequently, there is no such thing as that person." (A version
of the thesis applies to any living thing.) We can call those who
accept the termination thesis *terminators*, and those who deny
it *anti-terminators*. One point anti-terminators such as
Feldman (1992, 2000, 2013) cite is that people who encounter corpses
sometimes call them dead animals, or dead people. Such talk may
suggest that we believe that animals continue to exist, as animals,
while no longer alive. The idea might be that an animal continues to
count as the same animal if enough of its original components remain
in much the same order, and animals continue to meet this condition
for a time following death (Mackie 1997). On this view, if you and I
are animals (as animalists say), then we could survive for a time
after we are dead, albeit as corpses. In fact, we could survive
indefinitely, by arranging to have our corpses preserved.



However, this way of defending the anti-terminators's view may
not be decisive. The terms 'dead animal' and 'dead
person' seem ambiguous. Normally, when we use 'dead
people' or 'dead animal' we mean to speak of persons
or animals who lived in the past. One dead person I can name is
Socrates; he is now a 'dead person' even though his corpse
surely has ceased to exist. However, in certain contexts, such as when
we are standing inside morgues, we seem to use the terms 'dead
animal' and 'dead person' to mean "remains of
something that was an animal" or "remains of something
that was a person." On this interpretation, even in morgues
calling something a dead person does not imply that it is a
person.



Still, the dispute between terminators and anti-terminators is
unlikely to be settled on the basis of how we use terms such as
'dead animal' and 'dead person.' Metaphysical
considerations must weigh in. For example, consider that the remarks
made in Section 1.3 about the persistence of objects are consistent
with the possibility that objects that are people may continue their
existence as corpses, which may be useful to anti-terminators. On the
other hand, many theorists think that nothing is a person unless it
has various psychological features, which corpses lack, and some think
that nothing is an organism unless it is alive. Terminators may be
able to exploit these thoughts.



What about the second question: can creatures cease to exist without
dying? Certainly things that never were alive, such as bubbles and
statues, can be deathlessly annihilated. Arguably, there are also ways
that living creatures can be deathlessly annihilated (Rosenberg 1983,
Feldman 1992, Gilmore 2013). Perhaps an amoeba's existence ends
when it splits, replacing itself with two amoebas, and the existence
of chlamydomonas ends when pairs of them fuse to form a zygote. Yet
when amoebas split, and chlamydomonas fuse, vital activities do not
cease. If people could divide like amoebas, perhaps they, too could
cease to exist without dying. (For a famous discussion of division,
fusion, and their implications, see Parfit 1981.) If such
'deathless exits' are possible, we would have to modify
the loss of life account of death.



However, proponents of the loss of life account can hold their ground.
They can say that division, fusion, and other apparent examples of
deathless exits are unusual ways of dying, because, in such cases,
nonexistence is not brought about via the destruction of vital
activities, but they are not ways of escaping death altogether.
Proponents of the loss of life account might also turn the tables on
its critics, and argue as follows: nothing can be alive unless it
exists, so if something ceases to exist it ceases to be alive, but to
cease to be alive is to die. So there are no deathless exits.


### 2.7 Criteria for Death



Defining death is one thing; providing criteria by which it can be
readily detected or verified is another. A definition is an account of
what death *is*; when, and only when its definition is met,
death has necessarily occurred. A criterion for death, by contrast,
lays out conditions by which all and only *actual* deaths may
be readily identified. In some cases criteria for death are intended
to capture conditions by which the actual deaths of *human
persons* may be identified. Such a criterion falls short of a
definition, but plays a practical role. For example, criteria for the
death of a person would help physicians and jurists determine when
death has occurred.



In the United States, the states have adopted criteria for the death
of a person modeled on the Uniform Determination of Death Act
(developed by the President's Commission, 1981), which says that
"an individual who has sustained either (1) irreversible
cessation of circulatory and respiratory functions, or (2)
irreversible cessation of all functions of the entire brain, including
the brain stem, is dead. A determination of death must be made in
accordance with accepted medical standards." In the United
Kingdom, the accepted criterion is brain stem death, or the
"permanent functional death of the brain stem" (Pallis
1982).



These current criteria are subject to criticism, even if we put aside
reservations concerning the qualifier 'irreversible'.
Animalists might resist the criteria since the vital activities of
human beings whose entire brains have ceased to function can be
sustained artificially using cardiopulmonary assistance. Mindists and
personists might also resist the criteria, on the grounds that minds
and all psychological features can be destroyed in human beings whose
brain stems are intact. For example, cerebral death can leave its
victim with an intact brain stem, yet mindless and devoid of
self-awareness. (For more on criteria for death, see the article on
the Definition of Death.)


## 3. Epicurus and the Harm Thesis



Is death bad for some people who die? Is it good for some of them?



According to the *harm thesis*, death is, at least sometimes,
bad for those who die, and in this sense something that
'harms' them. It is important to know what to make of this
thesis, since our response itself can be harmful. This might happen as
follows: suppose that we love life, and reason that since it is good,
more would be better. Our thoughts then turn to death, and we decide
it is bad: the better life is, we think, the better more life would
be, and the worse death is. At this point, we are in danger of
condemning the human condition, which embraces life and death, on the
grounds that it has a tragic side, namely death. It will help some if
we remind ourselves that our situation also has a good side. Indeed,
our condemnation of death is here based on the assumption that more
life would be good. But such consolations are not for everyone. (They
are unavailable if we crave immortality on the basis of demanding
standards by which the only worthwhile projects are endless in
duration, for then we will condemn the condition of mere mortals as
tragic through and through, and may, as Unamuno (1913) points out, end
up suicidal, fearing that the only life available is not worth
having.) And a favorable assessment of life may be a limited
consolation, since it leaves open the possibility that, viewing the
human condition as a whole, the bad cancels much of the good. In any
case it is grim enough to conclude that, given the harm thesis, the
human condition has a tragic side.



It is no wonder that theorists over the millennia have sought to
defeat the harm thesis. Let us consider some challenges to the harm
thesis, beginning with the case against it developed by the ancient
Greek philosopher Epicurus.


### 3.1 The Epicurean Case



Epicurus (341-270) adopted a version of hedonism according to
which pleasure (or pleasant experiences) is the only thing that is
intrinsically good for us (that is, the only thing that is good for us
in itself), while pain (or painful experiences) is the only thing that
is intrinsically bad for us, bad in itself. Call this view intrinsic
hedonism. (For a discussion of intrinsic value, see the entry on
Intrinsic vs. Extrinsic Value.) Epicurus's commitment to
intrinsic hedonism prompted him to say, in his *Letter to
Menoeceus*, that "everything good and bad lies in
sensation." He also claimed, in that same letter, that
"when we are, death is not, and when death is present, then we
are not." The death of a person, and that person's
existence, do not overlap in time. On the basis of this assumption
about death and existence, he concluded that a person's death
does not cause her to have any experiences (sensations)--indeed,
"death is to be deprived of sensation." In the following
passage, he uses these thoughts against the harm thesis:



> 
> Make yourself familiar with the belief that death is nothing to us,
> since everything good and bad lies in sensation, and death is to be
> deprived of sensation. ... So that most fearful of all bad
> things, death, is nothing to us, since when we are, death is not, and
> when death is present, then we are not.
> 



Much about Epicurus's argument is unclear, so let us work
through it more carefully and see if we can fill in some details that
he did not supply. Some speculation will be necessary, but we can
develop a reconstruction that aligns with the things he wrote.



Earlier we mentioned one of the views Epicurus accepted, which we can
state as follows:


1. Intrinsic hedonism is true: a person's experiences
(sensations) of pleasure (or her pleasant experiences) are the only
things that are intrinsically good for her, the only things that are
good for her in themselves, while her experiences of pain (or painful
experiences) are the only things that are intrinsically bad for her,
bad in themselves.



From this view it follows that


2. something is intrinsically good or bad for a person only if it is
an experience.



Now, regardless of whether a person experiences her death, that death
is not itself an experience. (Compare: I may experience jogging down
the street, and I may experience the cup that is in front of me, but
neither jogging nor the cup is itself an experience. My experiences
are, so to speak, in my mind. Cups are not.) Let us add this
observation to the argument:


3. A person's death is not an experience.



And if a person's death is not an experience at all, clearly it
is not an experience that is intrinsically good or bad for her. So,
from 1-3, it follows that


4. a person's death is not intrinsically good or bad for
her.



However, something that is not intrinsically bad for a person might
nevertheless make other things happen that are detrimental to her, in
which case it may be *extrinsically* bad for her. Seeing
somebody fall and break her arm is not intrinsically bad for a person,
but it might well cause her painful sadness, which makes the accident
she saw extrinsically bad for her. Similarly, something that is not
intrinsically good for a person might be extrinsically good for
her.



Epicurus recognized the possibility of extrinsic goodness. It is not
entirely clear how he understood it, but he seemed to accept a view we
can call *extrinsic instrumentalism*: something is
extrinsically good or bad for a person only if it makes her have
things (other than itself) that are intrinsically good or bad for her.
Let us add this to the argument:


5. extrinsic instrumentalism is true: something is extrinsically good
or bad for a person only if it makes her have things that are
intrinsically good or bad for her.



Armed with this assumption, Epicurus can reject the possibility that a
person's death is extrinsically bad for her, arguing as follows.
Because Epicurus thought that the death of a person and that
person's existence do not overlap in time, he thought that


6. a person's death does not make her have any
experiences.



From premises 2, 5 and 6 it follows that


7. a person's death is not extrinsically good or bad for
her.



To complete the argument against the harm thesis, Epicurus would need
an additional assumption, such as this:


8. something is good or bad for a person only if it is either
intrinsically or extrinsically good or bad for her.



Premises 4, 7 and 8 entail that the harm thesis is false:


9. a person's death is not good or bad for her.



Is this Epicurean argument convincing? Let us see if we can find weak
spots. We can begin with a reservation concerning the term
'death.'



Earlier we noted that 'death' might be used for dying, the
event or process of losing life, or being dead, the property of having
lost life. The first reservation about the argument is that it is
strongest if its uses of 'death' refer to being dead, and
not to (the event or process of) dying. Here is why.



Being dead is not an experience, and it does not make a person have
any experiences. So (on Epicurus's assumptions) it is neither
intrinsically nor extrinsically bad for a person to *be* dead.
However, a person may experience *dying*, and the experience of
dying (the experiences dying causes her to have) might well be
intrinsically bad for her, even if only painful experiences are
intrinsically bad for her (as premise 1 says). So even if
*being* dead is not extrinsically bad for a person, the
question arises as to whether, for some people, it is extrinsically
bad *to die*. If something makes a person have painful
experiences, isn't it extrinsically bad for her, other things
being equal? At least this much is true: the Epicurean argument does
not show that dying painfully is not extrinsically bad for a
person.



Apparently, then, the argument does not demonstrate that
*neither* being dead *nor* dying is ever bad for those
who die. Nevertheless, unless we find further weaknesses in it, it
still seems to support powerful conclusions: being dead is neither
good nor bad for those who die, and dying is extrinsically good or bad
for them only if and insofar as it causes them to have painful
(pleasant) experiences. Dying is wholly a matter of indifference for
those who do not experience it, say because they sleep through it.



But there are further reservations to consider. Intrinsic hedonism is
questionable. So is extrinsic instrumentalism.



Consider the first of these. Which things are intrinsically good or
bad for us is a controversial matter , but many theorists deny that
the list is limited to pleasure and pain. (For further discussion, see
the entry on Intrinsic Goodness, the entry on Preferences, and
"What Makes Someone's Life Go Best," Parfit 1984, pp.
493-502.) Adding more things to the list can undermine the Epicurean
argument.



For example, we might adopt some version of preferentialism, or the
desire fulfillment account, which is the view that it is intrinsically
good for us to fulfill one of our desires (assuming that the desire
meets various conditions; exactly what these are is
controversial--let us put the matter aside), and it is
intrinsically bad for us to have a desire that comes to be thwarted.
Now, many of my desires may be fulfilled, and many may be thwarted,
without my noticing--desire fulfillment need have not
experiential upshot. If I want my child to be happy, and she is, my
desire is fulfilled, even if she has travelled away so far from me
that I cannot interact with her, now or ever again. So preferentialism
blocks the Epicurean's move from premise 1 to 2.



Preferentialism also blocks the move to 7. Epicureans cannot use
extrinsic instrumentalism to deny that a person's death is
extrinsically good or bad for her if the things that are intrinsically
good or bad for her are not limited to experiences. Preferentialism
implies that things may be extrinsically bad for us by virtue of
thwarting our desires, regardless of whether this has any experiential
upshot. Suppose, for example, that I desire that my child have a happy
upbringing, and, for various reasons, it turns out that I am the only
one who can make this happen, but I die suddenly, and as a consequence
she has a miserable childhood. Arguably, my untimely death would be
bad for me, in that it would thwart my desire, even if I die in my
sleep, and am never aware of her fate. (The role a person's
experience plays in her being harmed is discussed by several
theorists, including Rosenbaum 1986, Nussbaum 2013, Silverstein 2013,
and Fischer 2014.)



Now consider some worries about extrinsic instrumentalism, which says
that something is extrinsically good or bad for us only if it causes
us *to have* things that are intrinsically good or bad for us.
This view overlooks something that Thomas Nagel (1970) noted in his
seminal essay "Death," namely the fact that things may be
extrinsically good or bad for us, other things being equal, by virtue
of causing us *not* to have--by virtue of precluding our
having--things that are intrinsically good or bad for us.
Consider that being rendered unconscious prior to surgery is
extrinsically good for a patient who otherwise would endure great
suffering when the physicians apply the knife, in that it keeps him
from suffering, and not because it causes him to accrue pleasure or
some other good. Of course, after waking, the patient might also
accrue pleasure or some other good as an indirect result of having
been sedated, but in view of the suffering that it averts, being
sedated is extrinsically good for him whether he receives that
indirect bonus or not. As well, being made unconscious might be
extrinsically bad for a person, say when it precedes, not surgery, but
rather some joyous occasion he will miss because he is not conscious
while it occurs. It is extrinsically bad for him, in this case,
because it prevents him from taking joy in the occasion he misses.
This remains true whether or not he also accrues some pain or other
intrinsic evil as an indirect result of being sedated.



If it is indeed the case that things may be extrinsically good (bad)
for us, other things being equal, by virtue of precluding our having
evils (goods), we will want to allow for this fact in settling on an
adequate understanding of what makes things good or bad for us. Next
let us consider how this might be done, and the implications for the
harm thesis.


### 3.2 The Deprivationist Defense



To argue that death may be bad for those who die (even if they do not
experience dying), theorists typically draw upon some version of the
*comparativist* view that we are harmed by what makes our lives
as wholes worse than they otherwise would be, and benefitted by what
makes our lives as wholes better than they otherwise would be (early
proponents of this view include Nagel 1970, Quinn 1984, and Feldman
1991). Applying comparativism, we may claim that, in at least some
cases, dying at a time makes our lives as wholes worse than they would
have been had we not died when we did, roughly because, by cutting our
lives short, it deprives us of good life. This suggestion about death
needs further development, but first let us explain the comparativist
view more clearly.



Note that how well off you are at one time is likely to differ from
how well off you are at another time. Your welfare level rises and
falls over time. (For a discussion of welfare, see the article on
Well-Being.) What determines how well off you are at a time, or during
an interval of time, are the things you then accrue that are
intrinsically good for you, goods such as pleasure, together with the
things you then accrue that are intrinsically bad for you, evils such
as pain (using the term 'evil' as a synonym for
'bad'). Accruing the former at a time boosts your welfare
level during that time, other things being equal, while accruing the
latter lowers your welfare level during that time. Your welfare level
during an interval of time will be positive if the goods you then
accrue outweigh the evils. It will be 0--neither positive nor
negative--if and only if you are capable of accruing goods or
evils (unlike, say, a shoe, which is incapable of faring well or ill)
but the goods you accrue are exactly offset by the evils and vice
versa. The welfare level resulting from the goods and evils you accrue
over the course of your life we may call your *lifetime welfare
level*.



Using the notion of a lifetime welfare level, let us formulate an
account of what it is for something to be extrinsically good or bad
for us. Let us say that something is extrinsically good (bad) for us
if and only if, and to the extent that, it is overall good (bad) for
us *simpliciter*, where:



an event is *overall* good (bad) for us *simpliciter* if
and only if, and to the extent that, it makes our lifetime welfare
level higher (lower) than it otherwise would be.



(Why add the term 'simpliciter'? Read on.) By way of
illustration, consider a typical case in which you receive treatment
by a dentist. Let us assume that, on this particular occasion, the
dentist fills a cavity in one of your teeth, and that, had you not
received this treatment, your tooth would have decayed, painfully, for
months, until finally you would have sought out proper treatment. So
the salient difference between your lifetime welfare level in the
situation in which you are treated right away, on one hand, and the
lifetime welfare level you would have in the case that you were not
treated until much later, on the other, is that, in the latter
situation, that level is significantly lower, due to the pain you
would incur. Hence, on these assumptions, receiving treatment was
overall good for you: the greater that pain would have been, the
better for you it was that you were treated.



Note that things that are overall good for you may be a mixed
bag--they may bring some pain or other intrinsic evils in their
wakes, as well as some intrinsic goods, and the mix may differ from
time to time. In some cases, what is overall good for you
*simpliciter* is overall bad for you in a temporally relative
sense--overall bad for you *during some period of time*.
And although it is overall bad for you during one period of time, it
might be overall good for you during some other period of time. Let us
elaborate upon this point briefly. Comparativists can say that:



an event is overall good (bad) for us *at* some time *t*
if and only if, and to the extent that, it makes our lifetime welfare
level higher (lower) at *t* than it otherwise would be.



Suppose, for example, that, while your tooth's cavity is being
filled, the dentist's drill causes you pain, and that this is
pain you would not have had if you had not sought treatment, and
instead watched TV. In that case, your visit to the dentist is overall
bad for you *during the time* your tooth is being repaired.
Yet, as emerged earlier, your visit to the dentist is overall good for
you *simpliciter*, insofar as it enables you to reduce the
episodes of toothache you would suffer over the course of your
life.



Comparativists can accept intrinsic hedonism, but need not. They
could, for example, pair comparativism with some version of the
preferentialist view (mentioned earlier) that getting what we
want--fulfilling one of our desires--is intrinsically good
for us, and having our desires thwarted is intrinsically bad for us.
Comparativism is neutral on the issue of what counts as the intrinsic
goods and evils. Theorists who conclude that things other than
pleasure are intrinsically good for us will want to weigh them in when
they assess an individual's welfare level. For example,
preferentialists can say that even if accruing pleasure boosts a
person's welfare level so does desire fulfillment.



According to comparativism, a person's death, whether painful or
not, may well be overall bad for her (and hence extrinsically bad for
her). To decide whether a person's death is overall bad for her
*simpliciter* (usually we can drop 'simpliciter'
without creating confusion) we compare her actual lifetime welfare
level to the lifetime welfare level she would have had if she had not
died. Suppose, for example, that Hilda died (painlessly) on December
1, 2008 at age 25 and that, had she not died, she would have gone on
to prosper for 25 years--her welfare level during that time would
have been high--then suffer during her final five years. Her
overall welfare level over her final 30 years would have been high,
despite the downturn during the last five. Hence her lifetime welfare
level had she not died at age 25 is significantly higher than her
lifetime welfare level would be upon dying at 25. The former is
boosted by the many goods she accrues during her final 30 years, and
these goods are absent from her lifetime welfare level as it would be
were her life ended at age 25. Hence dying at 25 is overall bad for
her.



Importantly, dying at a time is not overall bad for everyone who dies.
In fact, it will be overall good in many cases. Imagine that, had she
not died at age 25, Hilda would have fared badly for 25
years--her welfare level during that time would have been low. We
might also suppose that, during her last five years her welfare level
would have been positive. Despite this last stipulation concerning her
final five years, her lifetime welfare level had she not died at 25 is
significantly lower than her lifetime welfare level would be if she
did die at 25, so, on our new assumptions, dying at 25 is overall good
for her.



According to comparativism, when a death is bad for us despite not
making us accrue intrinsic evils such as pain, it is bad for us
because it precludes our coming to have various intrinsic goods which
we would have had if we had not died. We might say that death is bad
for us because of the goods it deprives us of, and not, or at least
not always, because of any intrinsic evils for which it is
responsible. This stance is sometimes called *deprivationism*,
and its proponents *deprivationists*.



As promising as it is, however, there may be grounds for doubting that
comparativists can give the harm thesis a deprivationist defense. Let
us discuss one such doubt next.


## 4. The Timing Puzzle



If we cannot identify a time when something makes us worse off than we
otherwise would be, we might well doubt that it really was bad for us.
We might go so far as to say that what never makes us worse (better)
off than we otherwise would be is not bad (good) for us. Call this the
*Epicurean presumption*. Given this presumption, proponents of
the harm thesis need an answer to the *timing question*, which
asks: if death is bad for us, at what time (or times) does it make us
worse off than we otherwise would have been? In some cases in which
things are bad for us, it seems rather easy to identify times when we
are made worse off, but in other cases, especially in some cases
involving death, it seems more difficult, which may make us worry
about the deprivationist defense of the harm thesis. All this needs
elaboration.


### 4.1 Concurrentism



If having something is intrinsically bad for us, it is bad for
us--because it is intrinsically bad for us--while we have
it. Moreover, if something is overall bad for us wholly by virtue of
making us have things that are intrinsically bad for us, we can say
that it makes us worse off while we have those evils. For example,
coming to be infected with a flu virus is overall bad for us, and the
time it makes us worse off is not when we come to be infected, but
rather while we are sick, while we suffer. (If we came to be infected
with a virus, and our immune system dealt with it, preventing our
becoming sick, the infection would not be bad for us.) This line of
thought suggests that a *painful* death makes us worse off
while we die, or rather while dying is painful for us. What about a
painless death? Might it also be bad for us? (If so, when are we made
worse off?) Perhaps; more on that in a bit.



We can use the term *concurrentism* for the view that a bad
death makes us worse off while we die.


### 4.2 Priorism



If we reject intrinsic hedonism, we might conclude that death can make
us worse off not just while we die but at other times as well. If we
adopt some form of preferentialism, we can take the view that things
may make us worse off at the time one of our desires is thwarted.
Suppose that, as George Pitcher (1984) suggested, a desire that you
have now may be thwarted by your death, even though you will die
several months from now. In that case, it might be now that your death
makes you worse off than you would have been had you not died.
Pitcher's assumptions suggest that *priorism* is true:
death may make you worse off before you die. It may harm you
retroactively.



Identifying a time something makes us worse off seems rather easy in
cases, such as the examples of infection or thwarted desire, in which
it brings us have pain or other things that are intrinsically bad for
us. But what about cases in which something is bad for us due to the
fact that it precludes our having things that are intrinsically good
for us? In cases like this, the victim incurs *deprivation
harm*. But at what time are such persons worse off than they
otherwise would be? When, in particular, does dying painlessly make a
person worse off?



Is it possible to defend a concurrentist answer to this question about
death? Julian Lamont (1998) says we incur deprivation harm at the time
some event ensures that we will not retain or attain some good that is
otherwise available. Call such an event an *ensuring event*.
Death may itself be an ensuring event, he thought, so death and
deprivation harm may occur simultaneously.



But this suggestion appears doubtful. Recall the earlier case in which
we come to be infected and only later experience any symptoms. The
event of coming to be infected is overall bad for us, but it seems
implausible to say that this makes us worse off than we otherwise
would be *at the time we are infected*. Instead, it seems,
coming to be infected makes us worse off later, while we are sick. We
are unlikely to adopt concurrentism as our story concerning catching
the flu, which makes it doubtful as our story concerning deprivation
harm.


### 4.3 Subsequentism



In cases like catching the flu, it makes sense to say that the
offending event is bad for its victim after it occurs--while she
is incurring intrinsic evils she otherwise would lack. Perhaps the
same is true of deprivation harm. Recall the example, discussed
earlier, in which being sedated at time *t* is bad for a person
due to the fact that it deprives her of good things: in this example,
it seems, being sedated makes her worse off than she otherwise would
be at a time after *t*--at the time when she would have
been enjoying those goods had she not been sedated. Can we extend this
story to the deprivation harm for which a victim's death is
responsible? Does a person's death makes her worse off than she
otherwise would be after she dies--during the time when she would
have been enjoying the goods of which her death has deprived her, had
she not died? Call this stance *subsequentism*. Proponents of
subsequentism include Neil Feit (2002) and Ben Bradley (2004,
2009).



Subsequentism is plausible only if we can make good sense of the
welfare level someone occupies while dead, but this may not be
possible. There are at least two problems to discuss.



One difficulty is the *problem of the subject*. Suppose we are
terminators rather than anti-terminators (discussed in Section 2.6).
Suppose, too, that you die at time *t*1 but had you
not you would have experienced joy at time *t*2.
Time *t*2 arrives while you are dead, so that, given
the termination thesis, *t*2 arrives while you no
longer exist. Consider the property, *lacks joy*. Does it make
sense to attribute this (or any other) property to you at
*t*2? Does it make sense to say that some subject
has a property at a time when that subject does not exist? If not, it
seems difficult to make sense of your having a welfare level then.
Epicurus seemed to be thinking along these lines when he wrote that
"death is nothing to us, since when we are, death is not, and
when death is present, then we are not." (Echoing Epicurus,
Nagel 1970 wrote "So long as a person exists, he has not yet
died, and once he has died, he no longer exists; so there seems to be
no time when death, if it is a misfortune, can be ascribed to its
unfortunate subject." But if this is the reason we cannot
ascribe misfortune to a victim of death then we cannot even ascribe
death to any victim.)



It might seem possible to solve the problem of the subject by simply
switching sides and becoming anti-terminators, but this will not work.
Anti-terminators can say that it is a straightforward matter to
attribute the property *lacks joy* to you at
*t*2, since you still exist at
*t*2. You are your (joyless) corpse at
*t*2. This won't work because you might die
and go out of existence without leaving a corpse, and even if you
leave a corpse it might rot away, taking you out of existence, well
before time *t*2 arrives. Both possibilities are
consistent with the fact that, had you not died when you did, at
*t*1, you would have experienced joy at
*t*2.



Still, there are more promising strategies for solving the problem of
the subject. Subsequentists might adopt a view that is sometimes
called metaphysical eternalism (defended by Nagel 1970 and Silverstein
1980, among others). On this view, past and future objects are
ontologically on a par with present objects. Existing things are
spread out in both space and time. Suppose it is possible to refer to
anything that is ontologically on a par with present objects. Then,
given metaphysical eternalism, we can still refer to Socrates, even
though 'Socrates' refers to something whose existence is
temporally located wholly in the past, and say of him that he is not
alive. For similar reasons, perhaps, we can also attribute the
property *lacks joy* to a person, such as Socrates, whose
existence is over.



However, even if they can solve the problem of the subject, and make
sense of attributing properties to subjects who are dead,
subsequentists face another difficulty: it seems confused to speak of
how well off a subject is during times when she is dead. Now, it does
make sense to attribute the property *lacks joy* to a corpse,
and to a person who has stopped existing. Anti-terminators will add
that a person will have this property--*lacks
joy*--while she is a corpse. But it makes no sense to ask how
well off a person is while she is a corpse or during some time after
she has stopped existing altogether. The concept of faring well or ill
does not apply to things like concrete blocks and corpses or to
persons while they are corpses. Things that do fare well or ill may
pass through periods of time when they have a level of welfare that is
equal to 0--during those times they are capable of accruing goods
or evils but do neither--but unlike them, bags of concrete are
not capable of having any welfare level, not even a level of 0. The
same seems true of a corpse. And the same seems true of us during such
times as we are no longer alive--times when we have become
corpses or when those corpses have turned to dust.



Many theorists who reject subsequentism assume that because death
takes a person out of actual existence, the dead are not
"there" to be harmed. Palle Yourgrau (2019) rejects this
assumption. He combines modal realism (the view that, like the actual
world, other possible worlds are concrete objects) with the thesis of
transworld identity (one and the same object exists in more than one
possible world), and says that although a dead person no longer exists
in the actual world, one and the same person is still alive, and
exists, in other possible worlds. We may deny that, after a person has
died, she is no longer real at all--not "there" to be
harmed--because she still exists in other worlds, according to
Yourgrau.


### 4.4 Indefinitism



Some (Nagel 1970; Silverstein 1980) suggest that death harms us but at
no determinate time. This view is criticized by Julian Lamont (1998)
on the grounds that it implies that some events take place but at no
particular time. But William Grey (1999) counters that Lamont has
misunderstood Nagel's (and Grey's) indefinitist position,
which is that the harm death causes is incurred during a stretch of
time that has blurry boundaries (compare: the time of the onset of
baldness).



As Grey understands it, indefinitism is correct only if subsequentism,
priorism or concurrentism is true (Grey opts for subsequentism), for
even a period of time with blurry edges must occur before, after or at
the same time as a mortem event (eternalism is an exception since an
infinite period has no boundaries to blur).


### 4.5 Atemporalism



Suppose we conclude that there just is no (stretch of) time, whether
with blurry edges or not, at which we are made worse off than we
otherwise would be by a death that precludes our having goods we
otherwise would have. Given the Epicurean presumption, we would have
to conclude that it is not bad for us to be deprived of such goods by
death. But of course we need not accept this conclusion. We can
instead reject the Epicurean presumption. Being deprived of goods by
death is bad for us, we can say, if, and insofar as, it is overall bad
for us *simpliciter*, and to be overall bad for us
*simpliciter*, there *need not* be a time at which death
makes us worse off than we otherwise would be. There need be no time
at which death makes our welfare level lower than it otherwise would
be. Death can preclude our enjoying years of pleasant activities,
making our lives worse than they would have been had we not died, even
if at no time we are worse off than we would be had our lives not been
cut short.



Isn't it still possible to raise a question about timing,
namely: if death is overall bad *simpliciter* for those who are
deprived of happy years, at what time is it bad for them? This
question does indeed arise, but it is not the timing question we have
been asking, and an answer to the one is not an answer to the other.
The answer to the new question is this: if true at all, the
proposition that death is overall bad for us *simpliciter* is
an eternal, a timeless, truth (Feldman 1991). A timeless truth is a
proposition that is true at all times if true at all. That 6 is less
than 7 is an example. That the welfare level Harry accrued today is
lower than the welfare level Mary accrued today is another example.
And so is the proposition that Sam's death is overall bad for
him *simpliciter*. It amounts to the claim that Sam's
actual lifetime welfare level is lower than the lifetime welfare level
Sam would have accrued had he not died. Jens Johansson (2013) coined
the term *atemporalism* for the view that "death is bad
for the deceased but not at any time." (For further discussion
of atemporalism see Lamont 1998, Silverstein 2000 and Feit 2002.)


## 5. Further Reservations Concerning the Harm Theses



Before we move on, let us consider some further objections to the harm
thesis and the deprivationist defense of it.


### 5.1 Harmless Preclusion



Another worry about the deprivationist defense is that deprivationism
appeals to comparativism, and comparativism says that an event or
state of affairs harms me, in that it is bad for me, when my life
would have been better for me, my lifetime welfare higher, had that
that event not occurred. However, there seem to be exceptions.



I am not harmed, it seems, by failing to be brilliant, or rich and
beautiful. But compare my life as it is, with my unimpressive IQ,
income and looks, to my life as it would be were I brilliant or rich
or beautiful: the former is considerably worse than the latter. My
*not* being a genius (or rich and so forth) precludes my coming
to have many goods. It makes my life worse than it otherwise would be,
so comparativism seems to imply that not being a genius is bad for me.
Suppose you have the winning Mega Millions jacpot ticket, and you
decide to give it to me. Before you hand it over, you have a stroke
and die. Has your death harmed me?



Epicureans might renew their attack on the harm thesis by exploiting
examples like these. The examples appear to show that things can have
enormous negative value for me without harming me. Similarly,
Epicureans might insist, the preclusion of goods by death is harmless:
cut short, my life is worse than it would be were I not to die, but
this comparative difference does not show that I am harmed.



It seems that the comparative criteria work well when we evaluate
losses, such as the loss of my arms, and also when we evaluate some
lacks, such as the inability to see or to feel pleasure. But,
arguably, the criteria have worrisome implications when we evaluate
certain other lacks, such as my lack of genius. It is relatively clear
that a person is harmed by the inability to see but less clear that he
is harmed by the lack of genius. Why is that?



Nagel seems inclined to think that the solution is to "set some limits
on how possible a possibility must be for its nonrealization to be a
misfortune," but also mentions that we might not regard, as a
misfortune, "any limitation, like mortality, that is normal to the
species." Draper suggests that harmless preclusion involves cases in
which the events or states of affairs that would be good for us if
they held are highly improbable (Draper 1999). Another explanation
might focus on the relative importance of having some goods rather
than others. In some moods, we may consider it harmful to be deprived
of a good just when it is important for us to have it. The troublesome
lacks we have been discussing might be lacks of goods it is
unimportant to have; such lacks would not be harmful even though we
would be better off without them. (But if, against all odds, a person
*is* a genius, or rich, or beautiful, would taking these away
be harmless to her?)


### 5.2 The Symmetry Argument



Lucretius, a follower of Epicurus, extended Epicurus's case
against the harm thesis. The argument he developed involved a thought
experiment:



> 
> Look back at time ... before our birth. In this way Nature holds
> before our eyes the mirror of our future after death. Is this so grim,
> so gloomy? (Lucretius 1951)
> 



According to his symmetry argument, it is irrational to object to
death, assuming it ends our existence, since we do not find it
objectionable that we failed to exist prior to being alive, and the
way things *were* for us while not existing then is just like
the way things *will* be for us after death ends our existence;
our pre-vital nonexistence and our posthumous nonexistence are
symmetrical, alike in all relevant respects, so that any objection to
the one would apply to the other.



Lucretius's argument admits of more than one interpretation,
depending on whether it is supposed to address death understood as
dying or as being dead (or both).



On one interpretation, the argument is this: the ending of life is not
bad, since the only thing we could hold against it is the fact that it
is followed by our nonexistence, yet the latter is not objectionable,
as is shown by the fact that we do not object to our nonexistence
before birth. So understood, the symmetry argument is weak. It would
have some force for someone who thought initially that death puts us
into a state or condition that is ghastly, perhaps painful, but that
need not be our complaint. Instead, our complaint might be that death
precludes our having more good life. Notice that the mirror image of
death is birth (or, more precisely, becoming alive), and the two
affect us in very different ways: birth makes life possible; if a life
ends up being good for us, birth starts a good thing going. Death
makes further life impossible; it brings a good thing to a close.



Perhaps Lucretius only meant to argue that *being dead* is not
bad, since the only thing we could hold against it is our
nonexistence, which is not really objectionable, as witness our
attitude about pre-vital nonexistence. So interpreted, there is a
kernel of truth in Lucretius's argument. Truly, our pre-vital
nonexistence does not concern us much. But perhaps that is because our
pre-vital nonexistence is followed by our existence. Perhaps we would
not worry overly about our post-vital nonexistence if it, too, were
followed by our existence. If we could move in and out of existence,
say with the help of futuristic machines that could dismantle us, then
rebuild us, molecule by molecule, after a period of nonexistence, we
would not be overly upset about the intervening gaps, and, rather like
hibernating bears, we might enjoy taking occasional breaks from life
while the world gets more interesting. But undergoing temporary
nonexistence is not the same as undergoing permanent nonexistence.
What is upsetting might be the permanence of post-vital
nonexistence--not nonexistence per se.



There is another way to use considerations of symmetry against the
harm thesis: we want to die later, or not at all, because it is a way
of extending life, but this attitude is irrational, Lucretius might
say, since we do not want to be born earlier (we do not want to have
always existed), which is also a way to extend life. As this argument
suggests, we are more concerned about the indefinite
*continuation* of our lives than about their indefinite
*extension*. (Be careful when you rub the magic lamp: if you
wish that your life be extended, the genie might make you older!) A
life can be extended by adding to its future \(or\) to its past. Some
of us might welcome the prospect of having lived a life stretching
indefinitely into the past, given fortuitous circumstances. But we
would prefer a life stretching indefinitely into the future.



Is it irrational to want future life more than past life? No; it is
not surprising to find ourselves with no desire to extend life into
the past, since the structure of the world permits life extension only
into the future, and that is good enough. But what if life extension
were possible in either direction? Would we still be indifferent about
a lengthier past? And should our attitude about future life match our
attitude about past life?



Our attitude about future life should match our attitude about past
life if our interests and attitudes are limited in certain ways. If
quantity of life is the only concern, a preference for future life is
irrational. Similarly, the preference is irrational if our only
concern is to maximize how much pleasure we experience over the course
of our lives without regard to its temporal distribution. But our
attitude is not that of the life- or pleasure-gourmand.



According to Parfit, we have a far-reaching bias extending to goods in
general: we prefer that any good things, not just pleasures, be in our
future, and that bad things, if they happen at all, be in our past. He
argues that if we take this extensive bias for granted, and assume
that, because of it, it is better for us to have goods in the future
than in the past, we can explain why it is rational to deplore death
more than we do our not having always existed: the former, not the
latter, deprives us of good things in the future (he need not say that
it is because it is in the past that we worry about the life-limiting
event at the beginning of our lives less than the life-limiting event
at the end). This preference for future goods is unfortunate, however,
according to Parfit. If cultivated, the temporal insensitivity of the
life- or pleasure-gourmand could lower our sensitivity to death:
towards the end of life, we would find it unsettling that our supply
of pleasures cannot be increased in the future, but we would be
comforted by the pleasures we have accumulated.



Whether or not we have the extensive bias described by Parfit, it is
true that the accumulation of life and pleasure, and the passive
contemplation thereof, are not our only interests. We also have
active, forward-looking goals and concerns. Engaging in such
pursuits has its own value; for many of us, these pursuits, and not
passive interests, are central to our 'identities', our
fundamental values and commitments. However, we cannot make and pursue
plans for our past. We must project our plans (our
self-realization) into the future, which explains our forward
bias. (We could *have been* devising and pursuing plans in the
past, but these plans will not be extensions of our present concerns.)
It is not irrational to prefer that our lives be extended into the
future rather than the past, if for no other reason than this: only
the former makes our existing forward-looking pursuits possible. It is
not irrational to prefer not to be at the end of our lives, unable to
shape them further, and limited to reminiscing about days gone by. As
Frances Kamm (1998, 2021) emphasizes, we do not want our lives to be
all over with.



Nevertheless, it does not follow that we should be
*indifferent* about the extent of our pasts. Being in the grip
of forward-looking pursuits is important, but we have passive
interests as well, which make a more extensive past preferable.
Moreover, *having been* devising and pursuing plans in the past
is worthwhile. If fated to die tomorrow, most of us would prefer to
have a thousand years of glory behind us rather than fifty. We want to
*have lived* well.



In "Death" Thomas Nagel offered a response to Lucretius
that has been widely discussed. It is entirely reasonable not to want
to come into existence earlier even though we want to live longer,
Nagel said, because it is metaphysically impossible for a person to
have come into existence significantly earlier than she did, even
though it is possible for a person to have existed longer than she
actually did. However, his response hinges on questionable assumptions
about the essential features of people's origins, as Nagel
acknowledges (in footnote 3 of the reprint of "Death" in
his collection *Mortal Questions*.) Imagine someone who
originated from a zygote that had been frozen for a very long time.
Mightn't that zygote have been frozen for a brief time instead?
Wouldn't that be a way for this person to have come into
existence far earlier than she did?



According to Frederik Kaufman (2016, p. 63), this thought experiment
(perhaps tweaked a bit) might provide a way in which a human
*organism* could have come into existence far earlier than she
did, but it does not provide a way in which a *person* could
have come into existence far earlier. "Persons (properly
understood) cannot exist earlier than they do." He bases this
view on the assumption--challenged by animalists but defended by
Parfit--that persons are objects (distinct from organisms) with
psychological persistence conditions, chief among which is
psychological continuity, together with the assumption that "if
mental continuity is constitutive of personal identity, then when a
particular consciousness emerges is essential to that
person."


## 6. Posthumous Harm



According to Aristotle,



> 
> a dead man is popularly believed to be capable of having both good and
> ill fortune--honour and dishonour and prosperity and the loss of
> it among his children and descendants generally--in exactly the
> same way as if he were alive but unaware or unobservant of what was
> happening (*Nicomachean Ethics* 1.10)
> 



The belief Aristotle reported in this passage is that a person may be
benefitted or harmed by things that happen while she is dead. Nagel
(1970, p. 66) agrees; drawing upon his indefinitist approach he says
that "a man's life includes much that does not take place within
the boundaries ... of his life" and that "there is a
simple account of what is wrong with breaking a deathbed promise. It
is an injury to the dead man." If something that occurs while a
person is dead is bad for her, let us say that it is responsible for
*posthumous harm*. (But this way of speaking is potentially
misleading, as theorists who argue that posthumous events may harm us
need not assume that the victims are worse off while they are dead.)
*Is* there such a thing as posthumous harm?


### 6.1 Doubts About Posthumous Harm



The main reason to doubt the possibility of posthumous harm is the
assumption that it presupposes the (dubious) possibility of backwards
causation. As Ernest Partridge wrote, "after death no events can
alter a moment of a person's life" (1981, p. 248). The dead may
be wronged, Partridge thought, but being wronged is not a kind of
harm. (The claim that a person may be wronged by actions others take
after she is dead is itself quite controversial. Like Partridge, some
theorists think that people may be wronged but not harmed
posthumously. Priorists typically argue that both are possible, while
other, theorists, such as J.S. Taylor 2012, argue that neither is
possible.)



We might also question the possibility of posthumous harm by drawing
on the assumption (made by Mark Bernstein 1998, p. 19, and Walter
Glannon 2001, p. 138, among others) that something is intrinsically
good or bad for a person only if it reduces to her intrinsic,
non-relational properties. For simplicity, we can focus on one version
of this view, namely intrinsic hedonism. Suppose we assume that a
person is harmed only by what is intrinsically or extrinsically bad
for her, that intrinsic hedonism is the correct account of intrinsic
harm and comparativism is the correct account of extrinsic harm, and
also that the termination thesis (people do not exist while dead) is
true. On these assumptions, it is impossible for an event that occurs
after a person dies to be bad for her. It cannot be bad for her in
itself and it cannot be overall bad for her either. To be overall bad
for a person, a posthumous event would have to make her have fewer
goods or more evils or both than she would have had if that event had
not occurred. But nothing that happens after a person dies and ceases
to exist has any bearing on the amounts of pleasure or pain in her
life. Nothing that occurs after she ceases to exist modifies
*any* of her intrinsic properties.



Although the above assumptions rule out the possibility of posthumous
harm, they are entirely consistent, we have seen, with the possibility
of mortal harm, the possibility that people are harmed by dying. (We
might think otherwise if, as some theorists do, we assume that a
person no longer exists at the time she dies. Joel Feinberg 1984,
following Barbara Levenbook 1984, defined death as "the first
moment of the subject's nonexistence," which makes death
something that occurs after a person has ceased to exist, and suggests
that by ruling out the possibility that a person is harmed by things
that occur after she ceases to exist we rule out the possibility of
mortal harm.)


### 6.2 Retroactive Harm



Those who defend the possibility of posthumous harm deny that it
involves backwards causation. But how could posthumous events affect
people if not via backwards causation?



Some theorists say that posthumous harm occurs when posthumous events
change the value of a person's life for the worse. Dorothy
Grover (1989) suggests that posthumous events may affect the
"quality" of a person's life, say by changing the value of
her accomplishments. David Velleman (1991) argues along similar lines,
claiming that later events may affect the meaning of earlier events,
and the latter bears on the value of a person's life.



Some theorists (for example, Pitcher 1984, Feinberg 1984, Luper 2004
and 2012, and Scarre 2013) appeal to preferentialism to explain the
possibility of posthumous harm. We noted earlier that preferentialists
can defend the idea that some events harm their victims retroactively,
and that death is such an event. Preferentialists can take a similar
stance on posthumous events, assuming that things that happen after we
die may determine whether desires we have while alive are fulfilled or
thwarted.



According to Pitcher, posthumous events harm us by being responsible
for truths that thwart our desires. For example, being slandered while
I am dead makes it true that my reputation is to be damaged, and this
harms me at all and only those times when I desire that my reputation
be untarnished. It is while I am alive that I care about my
reputation's always being intact, and it is while I am alive
that my well-being is brought lower by posthumous slander. Similarly,
my desire that my child have a happy upbringing even if I am not there
to provide it will be thwarted if, after I die, she catches some
devastating illness. The event that makes it true that my child will
be miserable occurs after I am gone, but this truth thwarts my desire
about my child now, so it is now that I am worse off. The posthumous
events themselves harm me only indirectly; directly I am harmed by
their making things true that bear on my interests.



However, the desire-based case for the possibility of posthumous harm
remains controversial. It will be rejected by theorists who doubt that
people are harmed by events that do not modify their intrinsic
features, and by theorists who think that it hinges on the possibility
of backwards causation, of course. Velleman (1991, p. 339) rejects the
desire-based case on the grounds that "we think of a person's
current well-being as a fact intrinsic to the present, not as a
relation that he currently bears to his future." Some theorists
echo a criticism that was offered by Partridge (1981, p. 246).
Consider an event that thwarts one of a person's desires. To harm her
by virtue of thwarting that desire, Partridge claims, the event must
occur *while she still has that desire*, while she still cares
about whether it is fulfilled, but she and her desire are gone by the
time a posthumous event occurs. For some theorists (Vorobej, 1998,
Suits 2001), the point is that we have no reason to care whether our
desires are fulfilled by events that occur once we no longer have
those desires, and we no longer have desires after we die. Parfit
resisted this charge by noting that while some of our desires are
conditional on their own persistence (we want them fulfilled at a time
only on condition that we will still have them at that time), others
are not.


## 7. Never Dying



Is it always a misfortune for us to die? Would never dying instead be
bad for us? In a pair of influential essays, Thomas Nagel defends an
affirmative answer to the first question, while Bernard Williams
defends an affirmative answer to the second.


### 7.1 Never Dying Would be Good



In "Death" (and in *The View From Nowhere*, p. 224)
Nagel argues that no matter when it happens, dying is bad for those
who die. He bases this view on the claim that "life is worth
living even when the bad elements of experience are plentiful and the
good ones too meager to outweigh the bad ones on their own. The
additional positive weight is supplied by experience itself, rather
than by any of its contents." (1970, p. 60) Nagel's view
appears to be that it is intrinsically good for us to experience
things, and that this good is great enough to outweigh any evils that
accompany it. Hence a person's welfare level is positive at any
time when she is experiencing things, and no matter how much misery
continued existence will bring her, it is overall good for her to live
longer, assuming that she continues to experience things. (Nagel does
not argue that being deprived of continued life would be a misfortune
if that life were entirely devoid of experience.)



Nagel considers objections to his view towards the end of his essay.
One might argue, Nagel points out (as noted earlier), that mortality
is not a misfortune on the grounds that the nonrealization of remote
possibilities (like being immortal) is not harmful, or on the grounds
that limitations that are normal to the species (like mortality) are
not harmful. He responds that the normality and inevitableness of
death "do not imply that it would not be good to live
longer." Whenever death comes, it would have been good to live
longer, so it is bad for us that we will not: "if there is no
limit to the amount of life that it would be good to have, then it may
be that a bad end is in store for us all." (1970, p. 69)



Nagel's case for saying that death is always bad for those who
die rests on his claim that the goodness of experiencing outweighs any
accompanying evils. However, the latter is implausible, as is evident
to anyone who would rather be sedated into unconsciousness than
undergo the suffering she would otherwise experience during surgery.
Under such circumstances, sedation is overall good for us, despite the
fact that (indeed: because) it stops us from experiencing things for a
time. And once this is acknowledged, it seems reasonable to add that,
under certain circumstances, dying would be overall good for us, and
hence not bad for us after all. It would be overall good for us if the
further life we otherwise would have would bring us great evils, such
as suffering, that are not offset by goods.


### 7.2 Never Dying Would be a Misfortune



Bernard Williams (and others, such as Shelly Kagan 2012) takes the
view that it would be bad to live forever, even under the best of
circumstances. In his influential essay "The Makropulos Case:
Reflections on the Tedium of Immortality," Williams argues that
although the deaths of some persons is a misfortune for them, never
dying would be intolerable. In arguing for these views, Williams draws
upon the notion of a categorical desire, which we can clarify as
follows.



Consider a woman who wants to die. She might still take the view that
if she is to live on, then she should be well fed and clothed. She
wants food and clothing on condition she remain alive. In this sense
her desires (for food and clothes) are conditional on her remaining
alive, and, in being conditional on her living on, they do not give
her reason to live. Contrast a father who desires that his beloved
daughter have a good start in life. His desire is not conditional on
his remaining alive. In this sense, it is, Williams says, categorical.
In fact, his desire gives him reason to live, because he can see to
her well-being if he survives. Williams thinks that our categorical
desires are not only what motivate us to live on, they give meaning to
our lives, and are important elements of our characters. He also
thinks that it is by virtue of the fact that we will retain the same
character until a later time that it is clear to us that we will be
the same person until then.



The bearing on death, according to Williams, is, first, that we have
good reason to condemn a death that is premature in the sense that it
thwarts our categorical desires. Second, mortality is good, for if we
live long enough, eventually we will lose our categorical desires. At
that point we will no longer be motivated to live on, and oppressive
boredom will set in. When we contemplate this fate from our vantage
point in the present, we find it that it is not even clear to us that
these bored seniors are us.



If we could find a way to extend our lives indefinitely, yet avoid the
ravages of senescence, and remain healthy and mentally competent,
couldn't we avoid becoming jaded with life by gradually varying
our interests over time, adding to and perhaps replacing some of our
categorical desires, again and again? Several theorists including
Nagel (1986, p. 224, n. 3), Glover (1977, p. 57), and Fischer (1994),
have argued that the lives of superseniors need not become dull and
tedious. Williams's view is that it is not possible to make
eternal life desirable (which claim is not identical to the claim that
eternal life would inevitably be bad for us). Varying my categorical
desires will not work, because, to be desirable, the endless life I
design for myself must meet two conditions: (1) "it should
clearly be me who lives forever," and (2) "the state in
which I survive should be one that, to me looking forward, will be
adequately related, in the life it presents, to those aims I now have
in wanting to survive at all." (1973, p. 83) If I replace my
categorical desires, I fall afoul of at least one of these conditions.
Life under the future desires is detached from life under my current
categorical desires. Moreover, the desires I give myself in the future
will be elements of a character that is very different from my current
character; replacing my current character with an entirely different
one later in life makes it far less clear, Williams appears to think,
that the individual living that later life is me. "The degree of
identification needed with the later life ... is absolutely
minimal." (1973, p. 85)



Williams's claim that immortality cannot be made desirable
remains controversial. It is not obvious that eternal life is
undesirable if it involves changing our categorical desires and
characters (insofar as our characters are defined by the desires). Nor
is it obvious that such changes must violate Williams's two
conditions for the desirability of continued life. Williams seems to
think that the individual who is changed in this way will not clearly
be the same person as before, but he stops short of saying that it
clearly will not be the same person (indeed, he defends a bodily
continuity criterion for identity in "The Self and the
Future," pp. 46-63, so he presumably thinks that a person
does survive changes of desires and character). Concerning
Williams's second condition, his view is that if we replace our
characters and desires, "there is nothing left by which he can
judge" whether future life is desirable (1093, p. 85). Yet it
seems reasonable to take the view now that it would be good for me to
develop and fulfil desires in the future--desires I now lack.
Many of us would welcome the prospect of gradually transforming our
interests and projects over time. The gradual, continuous
transformation of our desires and projects does not end our lives, or
existence. It is distinct from, and preferable to, annihilation. If we
could live endlessly, the stages of our lives would display reduced
connectedness, yet remain continuous, which is a property that is
important in the kind of survival most of us prize. Even after
drinking from the fountain of eternal youth, we would tend to focus on
relatively short stretches of our indefinitely extensive lives, being
animated by the specific projects and relationships we have then.
However, sometimes we would turn our attention to long stretches of
life, and then, prizing continuity, we might well phase in new and
worthwhile undertakings that build upon, and do not wholly replace,
the old. (For further discussion of the desirability of eternal life,
see Overall 2003, Bortolotti 2009, Smuts 2011, Luper 2012b, Altshuler
2016, Buben 2016, Cholbi 2016, and Fischer 2019.)


## 8. Can Death's Harmfulness be Reduced?



Even if death is usually bad for those of us who die, perhaps it
*need* not be bad for us, if we prepare ourselves suitably.
This might be possible if some form of preferentialism is true, and
if, by altering our desires, we could cease to have any interests that
dying would impair. For then we might be able to *thanatize*
our desires, in this sense: we might abandon all desires that death
might thwart. Among these are desires we can satisfy only if we live
on for a few days, but also desires we cannot possibly satisfy within
the span of a normal lifetime, and the desire for immortality itself.
Instead of desiring that some project of mine succeed, which is a
desire that might be thwarted by my death, I might instead adopt a
conditionalized version of this desire, namely: should I live on, let
my project succeed. If all goes well, thanatizing would insulate us
from harm from death by leaving us with no interests with which dying
interferes.



Unfortunately, this strategy will backfire. The main problem is that
death can interfere with desire fulfillment not just by falsifying the
objects of our desires but also by precluding our having desires
(Luper 2013). So even if we resolve, from now on, to limit ourselves
to desires whose objects cannot be falsified by death, we are still
vulnerable to the harm death will do us if it precludes our having and
fulfilling desires. Hence thanatizing would force us to avoid having
any desires whose fulfillment would have benefitted us, and to deny
ourselves such desires would be as bad for us as the harm we are
trying to avoid.



However, the core idea of adapting our desires is useful, if not taken
to an extreme. It is prudent to avoid taking on goals we cannot
possibly attain, and hence prudent to eschew projects that cannot
possibly be completed during the course of a normal lifetime.