Lecture 17: The Badness of Death, Part II: The Deprivation Account

What this lecture covers

Building on the previous lecture's conclusion that death's central badness must be for the person who dies (not the survivors), this lecture asks how nonexistence itself could be bad for someone. It develops the deprivation account: death is bad not because nonexistence is intrinsically painful, but because it deprives you, comparatively, of the good things life would otherwise have given you. That account sounds simple but runs into a serious ancient objection from Epicurus, and most of the lecture works through two versions of that objection and the philosophical cost of each possible reply.

By the end, you should be able to state the deprivation account precisely, explain why it needs a "comparative" rather than "intrinsic" notion of badness, and walk through the existence-requirement puzzle, including why Kagan lands on a "modest" rather than "bold" version of the requirement to avoid the absurd conclusion that untold numbers of never-born people are owed our sympathy.

Key ideas

• Intrinsic vs. comparative badness: pain is intrinsically bad (bad in itself), but something can also be bad comparatively, merely because you're missing out on something better, the way watching TV instead of attending a great party is bad only by comparison.
• The deprivation account: death is bad for you not intrinsically but comparatively, because it deprives you of the good things in life you would otherwise have had.
• Epicurus's puzzle: his claim that "death is nothing to us" suggests death can't be bad for you while you're alive (you're not dead yet) or while you're dead (you don't exist to be affected), so there's no time at which it is bad for you.
• Facts and dating: the puzzle assumes every true fact must have a time it is true; Kagan tests this using a delayed-killing example (shooting someone who dies after the shooter has already died) to show some facts may resist dating.
• The existence requirement: the claim that something can be good or bad for you only if you exist, which, if accepted, implies death cannot be bad for you since you don't exist once dead.
• The Larry problem: rejecting the existence requirement outright forces you to say it's a tragic deprivation that vast numbers of possible-but-never-born people never got to live, which seems absurd.
• Modest vs. bold existence requirement: the bold version requires existing at the same time as the bad thing; the modest version only requires existing at some time or other - accepting the modest version lets death be bad for you (since you did once exist) without making non-birth bad for people who never existed at all.

Walkthrough

Separating the process of dying from being dead (0:00)

Kagan clarifies what the lecture is and isn't about: the process of dying can be painful or peaceful, and current dread about a future death is itself only rational if being dead is bad, so neither is the central question. The real question is what it is about being dead - about your nonexistence - that could be bad for you.

Building the deprivation account (4:08)

Kagan distinguishes intrinsic badness (like pain, bad in its own right) from comparative badness (bad only because you're missing out on something better, illustrated with a TV-versus-party example and two envelopes with different amounts of cash). Nonexistence can't be intrinsically bad, since there's no unpleasant experience involved, but it can be comparatively bad: you lack the good things life would have given you. This is the deprivation account, and Kagan endorses it as capturing the central badness of death, while flagging that other factors may also matter later in the course.

Epicurus and the problem of dating a fact (13:27)

Kagan introduces the objection that any true fact must have a time at which it's true, and asks when the fact "death is bad for me" could be true - not now (I'm alive), and seemingly not once I'm dead (I don't exist). He reads the relevant Epicurus passage and tests whether some facts might simply resist dating, using a scenario where someone shoots a victim who dies only after the shooter has already died of unrelated causes - it's true the shooter killed the victim, but there may be no clean date for that fact.

Dating death's badness during the deprivation itself (20:35)

An alternative response: accept that facts need dates, and say death is bad for you during the period you are dead, since that's when the deprivation occurs - just as a headache is bad for you while it's happening. This raises the deeper existence requirement objection: how can anything, even a deprivation, be bad for someone who doesn't exist during it?

The existence requirement and Larry (25:00)

Kagan formalizes the existence requirement - something can be bad for you only if you exist - and shows that accepting it forces the conclusion that death can't be bad for you after all. Rejecting it instead solves that problem but opens a new one: if nonexistence can be bad for someone even without existing, it must be bad for every merely possible person who is never born. Using two audience volunteers, Kagan illustrates this with "Larry," a specific possible-but-never-conceived person, then estimates (with a rough back-of-envelope calculation) that the number of such never-to-be-born possible people vastly exceeds the number of actual people who have ever lived - making the "tragedy of the unborn" an absurdly large moral catastrophe if taken seriously.

The modest existence requirement as a middle path (44:30)

To escape both problems, Kagan proposes distinguishing a bold existence requirement (you must exist at the same time as the bad thing) from a modest one (you must exist at some time or other). The modest version lets death be bad for you, since you did once exist, while still not applying to Larry and the unborn billions, since they never exist at any time at all. Kagan presents this as the most promising way to preserve the deprivation account without absurd consequences.

Before you watch

• This lecture directly continues the previous lecture's conclusion that death's central badness must be explained in terms of the person who dies, not the survivors.
• The physicalist account of personhood and death (the body breaking, ending P-functioning) from earlier in the course is assumed throughout.

Check your understanding

1. Why does Kagan say the badness of the process of dying, and current dread about future death, cannot be the central question about the badness of death?
2. Explain the difference between something being intrinsically bad and comparatively bad, and why the deprivation account relies on the comparative sense.
3. Reconstruct Epicurus's argument that death cannot be bad for you, and identify the premise Kagan tests with the delayed-killing example.
4. Who is "Larry," and why does rejecting the existence requirement entirely create a problem involving him?
5. What is the difference between the bold and modest existence requirements, and why does the modest version let Kagan keep the deprivation account without having to feel sorry for unborn possible people?