Earlier Birth and Later Death
John Fischer

04 April 2005

Interesting show on Schopenhauer.

这是我们对产前和死后不存在的常识不对称态度的一种思考方式。卢克莱修的"镜像"理论似乎是可信的，如果你纯粹消极地看待这些时期，就像经验上的虚无。但如果你认为它们是“相关的”，也就是说，是对生活美好事物的剥夺的经验空白，那么人们就可以理解我们态度中的常识不对称，这是常识偏好的一个特例，即在其他条件相同的情况下，我们的快乐在未来。也就是说，如果其他一切都是固定的，我更喜欢未来的快乐而不是过去，就像我更喜欢过去的痛苦而不是未来一样。既然死亡剥夺了我未来的快乐，而产前不存在却没有，那么我关心死亡比产前不存在更不奇怪，也不合理。

For an early sketch of this idea, which builds on thought-experiments of Derek Parfit, see Anthony Brueckner and John Martin Fischer, "Why Is Death Bad?", originally in Philosophical Studies, and reprinted in Fischer, ed., THE METAPHYSICS OF DEATH, Stanford University Press.

A small point about pessimism: typically it seems to function at least in part as a defense mechanism, seeking to protect the individual from disappointment. This of course resonates with the Buddhist idea of reducing one's desires....

Comments(2)

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Guest

Tuesday, April 5, 2005 -- 5:00 PM

"Lucretius' 'mirror-image' claim seems plausible i

"Lucretius' 'mirror-image' claim seems plausible if you think of these periods purely negatively, just as experiential nothingness."
Thinking of death, people sometimes have the intuition that experiential nothingness is a possibility. But is it? Like John Fischer, I've used Parfitian thought experiments in investigating this in "Death, Nothingness and Subjectivity," originally published in the Humanist and reprinted in The Experience of Philosophy, Kolak and Martin, eds. Online athttp://www.naturalism.org/death.htm.

Guest's picture

Guest

Tuesday, April 5, 2005 -- 5:00 PM

"I prefer my pleasures in the future rather than t

"I prefer my pleasures in the future rather than the past, just as I prefer my pains in the past rather than the future. Since death deprives me of future pleasures whereas prenatal nonexistence does not, it is not surprising or irrational that I care more about my death than my prenatal nonexistence."
我不想完全反对，但我不确定这是否捕捉到了我们很多人(或我肯定)在想到死亡时感受到的一些焦虑。这也许可以解释为什么那么多人信奉某种基于死后生存的宗教或其他形式;真正的、实际的死亡(如存在的终结)的概念，思考起来是如此可怕，以至于我们本能地避开它引发的恐惧。
I'm not religious myself but I thought it might be worthwhile to mention that the terror of death is what finally settled the matter for Wittgenstein. Ray Monk's biography is generally wonderful but of particular relevance here are Wittgenstein's experiences during war - he found that the urge to survive becomes so supervenient, so overpowering that it simply consumed every other thought in his head. The seeming immediacy of death was driving him to despair until he shook it off somewhat by adopting a belief in God.
我在说什么?我并不是说上帝是一种必然，但我想说的是，上帝似乎是面对“虚空”时相当常见的反射行为——如果有上帝，我们就有了外在的“意义”，在大多数宗教中，“我们”甚至会在死后继续存在。“上帝是一个有智慧的存在”可以部分解释为，我们发现很难想象一个没有心灵的世界——如果我们自己的心灵没有了，也许为了让画面更容易理解，我们会自动创造一个更高的心灵来回避这个问题。
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