Lecture 21: Other bad aspects of death, part II

What this lecture covers

This lecture continues Kagan's survey of features of death beyond simple deprivation that might make it worse (or, in some cases, better). It picks up from unpredictability and moves to the ubiquity of death — the fact that you could die at any moment — before turning to a bigger question: what is the value of the human condition as a whole, life followed by death, rather than the value of life and death considered separately.

By the end, you should be able to explain why unpredictability and ubiquity are treated as distinct bads, describe the idea of interaction effects between life and death, and state why Kagan thinks the pessimist's claim that it would be better never to have been born does not, by itself, support suicide. The lecture closes by opening the course's final question: how should you live, given the facts about death, and should you even think about those facts at all.

Key ideas

• Unpredictability: not knowing how much time you have left could make you misjudge your life's pacing, but knowing for certain might be an oppressive burden instead.
• Ubiquity of death: death is not just inevitable and unpredictable but possible at any moment, which Kagan treats as an additional, separate bad.
• Death-thrill activities: activities like skydiving suggest the chance of death can add zest, but Kagan argues this doesn't make ubiquity itself good, since a constant background risk just fades from notice.
• Interaction effects: the value of a combination (like life followed by death) isn't always the sum of the value of its parts taken separately, illustrated with the example of chocolate-covered pizza.
• Positive interaction effect: death's inevitability could make life more precious, because scarce and fragile things are often valued more.
• Negative interaction effects: "a taste is just a tease" (getting only a glimpse of life's goods before losing them) and "how the noble have fallen" (something as remarkable as a person reduced to a corpse).
• Pessimism and suicide: even if it would have been better never to have been born, that conclusion does not, as a matter of logic, imply that suicide is the right response now.
• Disregarding mortality: facts can change behavior either by giving genuine reasons or merely by causing a reaction, and only the first kind makes disregarding those facts irrational.

Walkthrough

How much time do we have left? (0:01)

Kagan reopens the question of whether it would be better to know exactly how long you have left. He imagines a genetic test that reveals your remaining years and asks whether this knowledge would help you focus on what matters or would simply become a psychological burden. He tells the story of a former student in this very class who was dying of cancer and chose to spend his remaining time finishing his Yale degree, graduating from his deathbed. The example is used to press the question of what each listener would do with a known, limited amount of time, and whether knowing would liberate or oppress you.

The ubiquity of death (7:00)

Kagan introduces ubiquity: not only is death inevitable and unpredictable, it could strike at any moment, through a stroke, an aneurysm, or an accident. He recounts a near-fatal car accident of his own to illustrate how quickly the possibility becomes real. He then plays with thought experiments about death-free zones, death-free hours, or activities that would carry no risk of death at all, asking whether such relief would actually be desirable. He considers the counterexample of skydiving, where people seem to seek out the risk of death rather than avoid it, and argues that this doesn't overturn his view: a constant, ever-present risk becomes background noise, while a spike in risk is what produces the thrill, so the ubiquity of death is not thereby shown to be a good thing.

The value of life followed by death: interaction effects (16:17)

Kagan turns from evaluating life and death separately to evaluating the human condition as a package: life followed by death. He challenges the assumption that the value of this combination is just the value of life plus the value of death added together, using the example of combining pizza and chocolate, each delicious alone but disgusting together, to show that combinations can have "interaction effects" not visible from the parts. He then asks whether life followed by death has such effects. On the positive side, mortality could make life more precious, since scarce and fragile things tend to be valued more; he references a science-fiction story where other species envy humans for their mortality. On the negative side, he describes two effects: "a taste is just a tease," where getting a partial experience of life's goods before it's taken away is worse than either the taste or the absence alone, and "how the noble have fallen," where the horror is intensified by decline from something remarkable (a person) to something lowly (a corpse), much like a deposed king reduced to waiting tables.

Better off never to have been born? (27:59)

Weighing these interaction effects, Kagan lays out the optimist and pessimist positions: optimists hold that life's value outweighs death's badness even with negative interaction effects included, while pessimists conclude the combination is on balance negative, so it would have been better never to have been born. Kagan states his own view that the human condition is, on balance, good. He then makes a key logical point: even granting the pessimist's conclusion, it would not follow that suicide is the appropriate response, since suicide doesn't undo having been born or reverse the "taste is just a tease" structure — it only shortens the taste further.

Should we even think about death? (32:55)

Kagan opens the course's remaining question — how should one live given the facts of death — by first asking whether we should think about those facts at all. He distinguishes disagreeing with the facts, accepting and acting on them, and simply not thinking about them, and argues that disregarding facts isn't inherently irrational, using the example of forgetting state capitals. He then uses two thought experiments involving an envelope of facts (about a date, and about a milkshake) to probe when disregarding true information is unreasonable.

Controlling the impact of thinking about death (47:26)

Kagan draws the crucial distinction between facts that merely cause you to change your behavior and facts that give you a genuine reason to change it, illustrated by facts about digestion that make kissing someone briefly unappetizing without giving any real reason to stop. Applying this to mortality, he concludes that neither constantly dwelling on death nor always disregarding it is right; there is a time and place for confronting the facts of death, and figuring out how to live accordingly is the task for the rest of the course.

Before you watch

• This lecture continues directly from the prior session on the badness of death (inevitability and variability); reviewing that lecture helps place unpredictability and ubiquity in context.
• Familiarity with the deprivation account of death's badness, covered earlier in the course, is assumed.
• Having read Tolstoy's The Death of Ivan Ilych, referenced here, will make the discussion of disregarding mortality clearer.

Check your understanding

1. Why does Kagan argue that ubiquity is a distinct bad from unpredictability, rather than the same idea restated?
2. What does the chocolate-covered pizza example illustrate about evaluating life followed by death as a combination?
3. Explain the "taste is just a tease" and "how the noble have fallen" interaction effects in your own words.
4. Why doesn't the pessimist's conclusion that it would be better never to have been born imply that suicide is rational?
5. What distinguishes a fact that merely causes a change in behavior from a fact that gives a reason to change behavior, and why does this matter for whether we should think about death?