Philosophical Studies 162 (2):309-317 (2013)
Abstract |
Abstract According to the Deprivation Approach, the evil of death is to be explained by the fact that death deprives us of the goods we would have enjoyed if we had lived longer. But the Deprivation Approach confronts a problem first discussed by Lucretius. Late birth seems to deprive us of the goods we would have enjoyed if we had been born earlier. Yet no one is troubled by late birth. So it’s hard to see why we should be troubled by its temporal mirror image, early death. In a 1986 paper, Anthony Brueckner and John Martin Fischer appealed to a version of Derek Parfit’s “Bias toward the Future”; they claimed that early death deprives us of future goods that we care about, while late birth deprives us of past goods that we don’t care about. In this paper I show that the Brueckner–Fischer principle is open to several possible interpretations, but that it does not solve the Lucretius problem no matter how we understand it. Content Type Journal Article Pages 1-9 DOI 10.1007/s11098-011-9766-6 Authors Fred Feldman, Department of Philosophy, University of Massachusetts at Amherst, Amherst, MA 01003, USA Journal Philosophical Studies Online ISSN 1573-0883 Print ISSN 0031-8116
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Keywords | Death Deprivation Approach Lucretius The mirror of time Symmetry problem Brueckner and Fischer Parfit Bias toward the future Asymmetry |
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DOI | 10.1007/s11098-011-9766-6 |
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References found in this work BETA
Reasons and Persons.Joseph Margolis - 1986 - Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 47 (2):311-327.
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Citations of this work BETA
The Evil of Death and the Lucretian Symmetry: A Reply to Feldman.John Martin Fischer & Anthony Brueckner - 2013 - Philosophical Studies 163 (3):783-789.
Prenatal and Posthumous Non-Existence: A Reply to Johansson.John Martin Fischer & Anthony L. Brueckner - 2014 - The Journal of Ethics 18 (1):1-9.
Actual and Counterfactual Attitudes: Reply to Brueckner and Fischer.Jens Johansson - 2014 - The Journal of Ethics 18 (1):11-18.
View all 17 citations / Add more citations
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