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Limitations of analytic philosophy


Is the question below and the answers it generates in this summary of a debate about death, a good example of the dead-ends of analytic philosophy? If not, what is a better example?

Epicurus: Death is not bad for the one who dies because so long as one exists, one is not dead, and once death arrives one no longer exists. Thus my being dead is not something that I can experience, nor is it a condition in which I can be. Instead it is a condition in which I am not. Accordingly my death is not something that can be bad for me.

Question: is the Epicurean view that death is not bad for the one who died correct? (On the assumption that death is the irreversible cessation of existence).

The premise that death is not bad for one who dies is in opposition to a range of other commonly held views, for example
Murder harms the person who is killed.
A longer life is, all else being equal, better.
We ought to respect the wishes of those that are dead.
Killing a person without his consent is to wrong him.

Objection: Death is bad for the person who dies because it deprives that person of future life and the positive features thereof. Even though person doesn't exist after his death, it's still true that his death deprives him.

Epicurean response: Advocates of above account cannot state when the harm of death occurs, they cannot date the time of harm. It cannot be when death occurs, because at that point the person no longer exists, and cannot be before death , because that would involve backward causation – later event causing earlier harm.

Response: Time of harm is 'always' or 'eternally', for example, if the entire world were to be destroyed tomorrow, that would make it true that even now during president Trump's reign, he is the penultimate president of the United States. Similarly one's later death makes it true that even now one is doomed not to live longer than one will. No backward causation in a death that harms one all along.

Further objection to deprivation account: Defenders of Epicurus simply deny that those who have ceased to exist can be deprived of anything. Ante-mortem person may indeed be worse off than he would otherwise have been had he lived longer, but being worse off in this purely relational way is not thought to be sufficient to show that he is harmed.

Here we seem to have an impasse. Defenders of deprivation account seem to think that death is different and that it is the one kind of case in which somebody can be deprived without existing.
Epicureans by contrast insist that death cannot be different and we must treat deprivation in the same way here as we do in other cases. In no other case can a person be deprived without existing, so a person cannot be deprived by death, given that it brings the end of existence.

We've put the question under rational scrutiny, and gained some kind of insight, but the original question nevertheless remains unanswered, perhaps it's even unanswerable.

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Murder harms the person who is killed.
No, "murder" is a fiction we made up.

We ought to respect the wishes of those that are dead.
No, "ought" is a fiction we made up. There is never anything we organisms "ought" to do.

Killing a person without his consent is to wrong him.
It has nothing to do with accuracy. Being "wronged" is a fiction we made up, the universe doesn't care how we organisms treat eachother.

IMHO death being bad for you or not is as shallow a question as suffering being bad for you or not.
You are a living organism, you want stuff then you're a dead organism, you don't want stuff. You not getting what you want (e.g. not getting air when you're drowning) is deemed "bad" but there is no objective measuring stick.

Also, this: http://www.imdb.com/board/bd0000130/nest/263626706

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Why is 'murder' used to argue against the Epicurean view? Seems to me to be a 'Special' example, a la Einstein's Theory of Relativity.

There are other agencies of death: aging, negligence, unintended consequence, disease, accident, self-inflicted, war, et alia.

Epicurean view: Death is not bad for the one who dies because so long as one exists, one is not dead, and once death arrives one no longer exists.

Question: is the Epicurean view that death is not bad for the one who died correct?
Given the broad array of agencies, there is a broad array of subjectivity regarding good or bad death. Quality of existence/life is also subjective depending on the POV, again, a la Einstein's Relativity.

nevertheless remains unanswered, perhaps it's even unanswerable.
A safe conclusion.










________

Is it the Devil in the whiskey, or is it the Devil in him? -- ???

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