Death

Death Everybody dies, J;'q\~()t everybody agrees about .what death i~. Some believe they will survive .rafter the qeath of their bodies, goi~g to Heaven or Hell or somewhere else, becoming a ghost, or returning to Earth in a different b~ody, perhaps not even as a human being. Other:s believe they will cease to exist-that the self is snuffedo,ut when the body dies. And among those who believe they will cease to exis t, some think this is a terrible fact, and others don't. .\ I t is sometimes said that no ahe can conceive . of his O'Yn nonexistenc#" and that therefore we can't really believe drat our existence will come ' to an end with our.deaths, But this doesn't seem true. Of course you can't conceive of your own nonexistencefrom the inside. You can't conceive [87 J ~i What Does It All Mean' of what it would be like to be totally annihilated, because there's nothing it would be like, from the inside. But in that sense, you can't conceive of what it would be like to be completely unconscious, even temporarily. The fact th"at you can't conceive of that from the inside doesn't mean you can't conceive of it at all: you just have to think of yourself from the outside, having been knocked out, or in a deep sleep. And even though you have to be consci~us to think that, it doesn.'t mean that you're thinking of yourself as conSCIOUS. It's the same with death. To imagine your own annihilation you have to think of it from the outside- think about the body of the person you are, with all the life and experience gone from it. To imagine something it is not necessary' to imagine how it would feel for you to experience it. When you imagine your own funeral, you are not imagining the impossible situation of being . present at your own funeral: you're imagining how it would look through someone else's eyes. Of course you are alive while you think of your own death, but that is no more of a problem than being conscious while, imagining yourself. unconSCIOUS. The question 'of survival after death is related to the mind-body problem, which we discussed earlier. If dualism is true, and each person con[ 88 ] ~.f It Death sists ofa soul and a body connected together, we can. understand how life after death might be possible. '[he soul would have, to be able to exist on its O\t\TI and have a mental life without the help of the body: then it might leave the body when the body dies, instead of being destroyed. It wouldn't be able to have the kind of mental life of action and sensory perception that depends on being attached to the body (unless it got attached to a new body), but it might have a different sort of inner life, perhaps depending on different causes and influences-direct communication with other souls, for instance. -.[~say life after death might be possible if dual- . ~ ism were truejIt also might not be possible, be- I cause the survival of the soul, and its continued consciousness, might depend entirely on the support and stimulation it gets from the body in which it is· housed-and it might not be able to switch bodies. But if dualism is not true, and mental pro,. cesses go on in the brain and are entirely dependent on the biological functioning of the brain and the rest of the organism, then life after death of the body is not possible. Or to put it more exactly, mental life after death wouIg require the ·restoratlon of biological, physi.c~al life: it would require that the body come to life again. This might beconle technically possible some [ 89 ] , 'i " " "" ;~ .i ' ! I" '. , ' '. I;" . ";.; , ' What Does It All Mean' day: I t may become possible to freeze people's bodies when they die, and then later on by advanced medical procedures to fix whatever was the matter with them, and bring them back to life. Even if this became possible, there would still be a question whether the person who was brought to life several centuries later would be you or somebody else. Maybe if you were frozen after death and your body was later revived, you wouldn't wake up, but only someone very like you, with memories of your past life. But even if revival after death of the same you in the same body ~hould become possible, that's not what's ordinarily meant by life after death. Life after death usually means life without your bId body. It's hard to know how we could decide whether we have separable souls. All the evidence is that before death, conscious life depends entirely on what happens in the nervous system. If we go only by ordinary observation, rather than religious doctrines or spiritualist claims to communicate with the dead, there is no reason to believe in an afterlife. Is that, however, a reason to believe that there is not an afterlife' I think sq.. , but others may prefer to remain neutral. Still others may believe in an afterlife on the basis of faith, in the absence of evidence. I my[ 90 ] .. Death self don't fully understand how this kind of faith-inspired belief is possible, but evidently some people can manage it, and even find it natural. Let me turn to the other part of the problem: how we ought to feel about death. Is it a good thing, a bad thing, or neutral' I am talking about how it's reasonable to feel about your own death-not so much about other people's. Should you look forward to the prospect of death with terror, sorrow, indifference, or relief' Obviously it depends on what death is. If there is life after death, the prospect will be grim or happy depending on where your soul 'will end up. But the difficult and most philosophically interesting question i~[how we should feel about death if it's the end:;\ Is it a terrible thing to go out of existence' ", People differ about this. Some say that nonexistence, being nothing at all, can't possibly be either good or bad for the dead person. Others say that to be annihilated, to have the possible future course of your life cut off completely, is the ultimate evil, even if we all have to face it. I . Still others say death is a blessing-not of course if it comes too early, but eventually-because it would be unbearably boring to live forever. If death without anything after it is either a [ 91 ] What"Does It All Mean' good or a bad thing for the person who dies, it must be a negative good or evil. Since in itself it is nothing, it can't be either pleasant or unpleasant. If it's good, that must be because it is the absence of something bad (like boredom or pain); if it's bad, that must be because it is the absence of something good (like interesting or pleasant experiences). Now it might seem that death can't have any value, positive or negative, because someone who doesn't exist can't be ei1:her benefited or harmed: after all, even a negative good or evil has to happen to somebody. But on reflection, this is not really a problem. We can say that the person who used to exist, has beeri~ benefited or harmed by death. For instance, suppose he is trapped in a burning building, and a beam falls on his head, killing him instantly. As a result, he doesn't suffer the agony of being burned to death. It seems that in that case we can say he was lucky to be killed painlessly, because it avoided something worse. Death at that time was )Q~ a ~_~gat~:_-;-~~, because it sa~ed him from the ~ '" -_·postrtVe evIl he 'would otherwIse have suffered for the next five minutes. And the fact that he's not around to enjoy that negative good doesn't mean it's not a-good for bim at all. "Him" means , the person who was alive, and who would have suffered if he hadn't died. [ 92 ] i j r, I ~ , [ ;': ~: , t Death The same kind of thing could be said about death as a ~~~~ive evil. When you die, all the good things i~GWne to a stop: n9/more meals, mov.i~s, travel,£onversation;love';work, books, music, or anything else. If -~Q.~~.,.!.~:t:l~s_- , would be g()od, their:.~:t>~ence is bag:: Of course yon--won1 t -m:isS'" them: death is not like being locked up in solitary confinement. But the ending of everything good in life, because of the stopping of life itself, seems clearly to be a negative evil for the person who was alive and is now dead. When someone we know dies, we feel sorry not only for ourselves but for him, because he can't see the sun shine today, or smell the bread in the toaster. When you think of your own death, the fact 'that all the good things in life will come to an end is certainly a reason for regret. But that doesn't seem to be the whole s~ory. Most people want there to be more of what they enjoy in life, but for some people, the prospect of nonexi§.-:tence is itself frightening, in away that isn't a~: , equately explained by what has been said so far. T~e thought that the world will go on without you, that you will become nothing, is very hard to take in. It's not clear why. We all accept the fact that there was a time before we were born, when we ,didn't yet exist-so why should we be so' dis[ 93 ] What Does It All Mean' turbed at the prospect of nonexistence after our death' But somehow it doesn't feel the same. The prospect of nonexistence is frightening, at least to many people, in a way ~hat past nonex, " istence cannot be. The fear of death is very puzzling, in a way thattregret about, the end of life is not. It's easy to understand that we might want to have more life, more of the things it contains, so that we see death as a negative evil. But how can the'prospect of your own nonexistence be alarming. in a positive way' If we really cease to exist' at death, i(. there's nothing to look forward to, so how can' there be anything to be afraid of' If one thinks about it logically, it seems as though death should be s9mething to be afraid· of only if we will survive it, and perhaps undergo some terrifying transformation. But that doesn't'prevent many people from thinking that annihilation is· one of the worst things that could happen to iliem.