Improving the Epicurean argument for the harmlessness of death

The famous Epicurean argument that death (considered as leading to nonexistence) is not a harm is that death doesn’t harm one when one is alive and it doesn’t harm one when one is dead, since the nonexistent cannot be harmed.

However, the thesis that the nonexistent cannot be harmed is questionable: posthumous infamy seems to be a harm.

But there’s a neat way to fix this gap in the Epicurean argument. Suppose Bob lives 30 years in an ordinary world, and Alice lives a very similar 30 years, except that in her world time started with her existence and ended with her death. Thus, literally, Alice is always alive—she is alive at every time. But notice that the fact that the existence of everything else ends with Alice does not make Alice any better off than Bob! Thus, if death is a harm to Bob, it is a harm to Alice. But even if it is possible for the nonexistent to be harmed, Alice cannot be harmed at a time at which she doesn’t exist—because there is no time at which Alice doesn’t exist.

Hence, we can run a version of the Epicurean argument without the assumption that the nonexistent cannot be harmed.

I am inclined to think that the only satisfactory way out of the argument, especially in the case of Alice, is to adopt eternalism and say that death is a harm without being a harm at any particular time. What is a harm to Alice is that her life has an untimely shortness to it—a fact that is not tied to any particular time.

The Epicurean argument on death

The Epicurean argument is that death considered as cessation of existence does us no harm, since it doesn’t harm us when we are alive (as we are not dead then) and it doesn’t harm us when we are dead (since we don’t exist then to be harmed).

Consider a parallel argument: It is not a harm to occupy too little space—i.e., to be too small. For the harm of occupying too little space doesn’t occur where we exist (since that is space we occupy) and it doesn’t occur where we don’t exist (since we’re not there). The obvious response is that if I am too small, then the whole of me is harmed by not occupying more space. Similarly, then, if death is cessation of existence, and I die, then the whole of me is harmed by not occupying more time.

Here’s another case. Suppose that a flourishing life for humans contains at least ten years of conversation while Alice only has five years of conversation over her 80-year span of life. When has Alice been harmed? Nowhen! She obviously isn’t harmed by the lack of conversation during the five years of conversation. But neither is she harmed at any given time during the 75 years that she is not conversing. For if she is harmed by the lack of conversation at any given time during those 75 years, she is harmed by the lack of conversation during all of them—they are all on par, except maybe infancy which I will ignore for simplicity. But she’s only missing five years of conversation, not 75. She isn’t harmed over all of the 75 years.

There are temporal distribution goods, like having at least ten years of conversation, or having a broad variety of experiences, or falling in love at least once. These distribution goods are not located at times—they are goods attached to the whole of the person’s life. And there are distribution bads, which are the opposites of the temporal distribution goods. If death is the cessation of existence, it is one of these.

I wonder, though, whether it is possible for a presentist to believe in temporal distribution goods. Maybe. If not, then that’s too bad for the presentist.

Ataraxia

The stoics, the academic sceptics and the epicureans all to various degrees basically agreed—or at least largely lived as if they agreed—that happiness was ataraxia, imperturbable calm and tranquility. This is a useful and important corrective to our busy work and busy “leisure”. But at the sme time, it’s really a quite empty and negative picture of life’s fulfillment. It’s more like a picture of how to get done with life without too much misery.

Perhaps they had a part of the truth: perhaps what is truly worth having is imperturbably, calmly and tranquilly doing certain things, such as enjoying the companionship of those we love—God above all. But the ataraxia is just a mode of the worthwhile activity rather than the center of it.

Furthermore, perhaps these ancients were extensionally right: for perhaps the only way to have ataraxia is by being with God, since our hearts are restless apart from him. In that case, ataraxia isn’t happiness, or worth pursuing for its own sake, but is a sign of happiness.

Epicurus on death

There is the classic Epicurean argument that:

1. You aren’t harmed by death when dead, since then you don’t exist, and

2. You aren’t harmed by death when alive, since then you’re still alive,

so:

3. You aren’t ever harmed by death.

I just thought of a cute way to make the argument slightly more compelling. Take it, contrary to fact but in accord with what the Epicureans believed, that death is the permanent cessation of existence.

Now let’s imagine a scenario where everything, including time itself, comes to an end at the last moment of your life. And for simplicity (this doesn’t affect anything) let’s suppose you came into existence at the beginning of time. Then you are never dead. When we think about this scenario, the analogue of claim 1 is trivially true, for you’re never dead. Thus on this scenario, all that needs to be thought about is an analogue of of claim 2 (with “death” being understood not as an event but as the fact that one’s life has an end) plus the additional highly plausible claim:

4. The scenario where everything, including time, comes to an end at the last moment of your life is no better for you than the scenario where you alone come to an end then.

I don’t think this makes the argument much more compelling, because I don’t think claim 1 was ever the real problem with the Epicurean argument. But in the scenario where time comes to an end, I think we avoid some irrelevant objections to the argument.

The real problem with the Epicurean argument is, I think, two-fold. First, I think 2 is dubious: your well-being at one time can depend on what happens or does not happen at other times.

Second, one can accept 3 and still think you’re harmed by death. For one can hold that one isn’t ever harmed by death, i.e., that there is no time at which one is harmed by death, but nonetheless as a four-dimensional whole one is worse off for death. Here’s one way to make the point. Suppose that by choosing a medical regimen for you, I can choose whether:

• You are unconscious for ten years, and then you live ten years while experiencing two units of wholesome pleasure each day, without anything negative, and then you cease to exist.
• You live ten years while experiencing one unit of wholesome pleasure each day, without anything negative, and then you cease to exist.

If I choose the regimen that gives you the second life, I harm you overall but you aren’t ever harmed—there is no time at which you’re worse off for that option.

Presentism and Epicurus' death argument

Becoming friendless is a harm, even if one does not know that one's last friend has just betrayed one. Likewise, one is harmed when the persons or causes one reasonably cares about are harmed, again whether or not one knows about the harm. But we also, I think, have the intuition that this is a different sort of harm from that which one undergoes when one loses an arm or when one is tortured. Call the first set of harms, extrinsic, and the well-being that they detract from extrinsic well-being, and call the second set of harms intrinsic. Apart from an incarnation, God is not subject to intrinsic harms, but he may be subject to extrinsic harms, such as when someone he loves (i.e., anyone at all) is harmed.

Now, introduce the intuitive notion of a temporally pure property. A temporally pure property is one that is had by x only in virtue of how x is at the given time. Thus, being circular is temporally pure but being married to a future president of the United States or being fifty years old are temporally impure. (If the fact that x has Fness is a soft fact, in the Ockhamist sense, then F is temporally impure.)

Then:

1. (Premise) Only the having of an intrinsic property can constitute an intrinsic harm.
2. (Premise) Ceasing to exist can be an intrinsic harm.
3. (Premise) If presentism is true, only temporally pure properties can be intrinsic.
4. (Premise) Ceasing to exist cannot be a property constituted in virtue of how x is at a particular time.
5. Ceasing to exist cannot be constituted in virtue of one's temporally pure properties. (4 and definition)
6. If presentism is true, ceasing to exist cannot be an intrinsic property. (3 and 5)
7. If presentism is true, ceasing to exist cannot be an intrinsic harm. (1 and 6)
8. Presentism is not true. (2 and 7)

This is of course in the same spirit as Epicurus' argument that death isn't bad because when you're dead, you don't exist and hence can't be badly off, and when you're not dead, you're not dead. But notice that Epicurus' argument fails to show that death isn't extrinsically bad. Also, I formulated the argument in terms of a (hypothetical) cessation of existence rather than death, since in fact death is not a cessation of existence for human beings, and it is not completely clear that death is an intrinsic harm to non-human animals.

Interestingly, the growing block theorist, who thinks only past and present events and things are real, has a similar problem. For if growing block is true, only hard properties (ones that depend only on how things were or are) can be intrinsic properties, and ceasing to exist is not a hard property.

The eternalist, however, can say that the property of being such that one ceases to exist is an intrinsic property, at least on one interpretation of "ceases to exist". It is an intrinsic property of oneself as a temporally extended being, the property of one's life being futureward finite. It is just as much an intrinsic property as the property of being circular or of finite girth. And if someone were to cause one to have the property of one's life being futureward finite, or a more specific property like that of one's life being being no more than 54 years long, she would thereby be imposing a harm on one.

And even the cessation of existence at age 54 as such isn't an intrinsic harm, the eternalist can talk of such intrinsic harms to someone as that one's life does not include any joys after the the age of 54, thereby doing some justice to the intuition that cessation of existence is intrinsically harmful.