A solution to the puzzle of when death harms its victims

Australasian Journal of Philosophy

Volumn 76, Issue 2, 1998, Pages 198-212

  Lamont, Julian ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF QUEENSLAND   (Australia)

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EID: 34548302799     PISSN: 00048402     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1080/00048409812348351     Document Type: Review

References (25)

1. For the arguments and counter-arguments for this set of answers see John Martin Fischer (ed.), The Metaphysics of Death (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1993).
2. All page references are to this book unless otherwise indicated. Also see John Donnelly (ed.), Language, Metaphysics, and Death, 2nd edn. (New York: Fordham University Press, 1994).
3. For an alternative view where only the psychological person does not continue, see Fred Feldman, Confrontations With The Reaper (New York: Oxford University Press, 1992), particularly Chapters Six and Seven. 'Person' can be interpreted as shorthand for 'psychological person' throughout this paper.
4. The best argument is David-Hillel Ruben's, 'A Puzzle about Posthumous Predication', Philosophical Review 97 (1988), pp. 211-236. Of course, posthumous predication normally only works with 'Cambridge' properties (at least in the form that Ruben specifies them). The type of properties I will appeal to here (e.g. 'making it so that a person's wishes can never be fulfilled') are of this 'Cambridge' kind.
5. 2. Although, the consequences for the issue of death cannot be pursued here it should be clear that one's position on future contingents may affect how truth claims about harms should be framed and it may also influence how one views the Before Death proposal to be examined next. Of course, it is not a philosophically popular view that any or all future contingents lack truth values and I have tried to avoid making my arguments here depend on it. However, I think this view is plausible and has been brilliantly defended by Michael Tooley in Time, Tense, and Causation (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997).
6. I am very grateful to Michael Tooley for his suggestions on this issue. See his Time, Tense, and Causation (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997). It is unlikely Feldman has this view of time for the following reason. For Feldman the relevant question is this: 'Precisely when is it the case that the value for Lindsay of the nearest world in which d occurs is lower than the value for her of the nearest world in which d does not occur?' But this question makes no sense on a static or tenseless view of time if 'when is it the case that' is interpreted as 'when is it true that'. Feldman does not give us enough information here to make a definitive interpretation.
7. This seems true even if one accepts (as Feinberg may) Donald Davidson's view on the timing of actions. Indeed, it is not clear that taking any particular view on the timing of actions affects the substantive issues about the timing of the harm of death. For the different views see Donald Davidson, 'The Individuation of Events' in Nicholas Rescher (ed.), Essays In Honor Of Carl G. Hempel (New York: Humanities Press, 1969);
8. Judith Jarvis Thomson, 'The Time of a Killing', Journal of Philosophy 68 (1971), pp. 115-132;
9. Jonathan Bennett, 'Shooting, Killing and Dying', Canadian Journal of Philosophy 2 (1973), pp. 315-323.
10. It would be impossible, within the confines of this paper, to outline the various formal characterizations and their merits, but it is doubtful that the disputes about the distinction need to be resolved in a particular way for it be helpful here. For those unfamiliar with the distinction see John Martin Fischer, 'Hard-Type Soft Facts', Philosophical Review 95 (1986), pp. 591-601
11. and the articles in John Martin Fischer (ed.), God, Foreknowledge, and Freedom (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1989).
12. See John Turk Saunders, 'Of God and Freedom', Philosophical Review 74 (1966), pp. 219-225.
13. For those unsure of their views on this matter, Fischer's discussion (pp. 18-23) is highly recommended. He gives an extensive characterization of the dialectic between those who believe a subject has to experience something for it to be a harm and those who do not.
14. Those who argue it is not necessary include Fischer, Feinberg (pp. 169-190), Nagel (pp. 59-70),
15. and Robert Nozick, Anarchy, State and Utopia (New York: Basic Books, 1974), pp. 42-45. The changes constituting this class of harms are 'Cambridge', not 'real' under a common terminology used in the literature. However, this terminology can be misleading and I have followed these authors in avoiding its use.
16. This appears to be the option advocated by Tom Nagel, though his position is not entirely clear as he never explicitly says: 'there is no time at which a person is harmed by her death'. However, he does offer a justification for such a claim and John Martin Fischer interprets Nagel's position in the same way as I do: as advocating the At No Time option (pp. 26-27).
17. Julian Lamont, 'On Benefiting Future People By Creating Them in Thomas Magnell (ed.), Explorations of Value (Amsterdam: Rodopi Publishing Co., 1997), pp. 155-167.
18. See John Mackie, Chapter 1, 'The Subjectivity of Values', Ethics: Inventing Rightand Wrong (New York: Penguin Books, 1977).
19. There is no reason to hold there is anything like backward causation being suggested by claims like this, as George Pitcher has clearly explained (pp. 164-5).
20. See Barbara Baum Levenbook, 'Harming Someone after His Death', Ethics 94 (1984), pp. 407-419;
21. Don Marquis, 'Harming the Dead', Ethics 96 (1985), pp. 159-161;
22. Raymond A. Bellioti, 'Do Dead Human Beings Have Rights?', Personalist 60 (1979), pp. 201-210;
23. Joan C. Callahan, 'On Harming the Dead', Ethics 97 (1987), pp. 341-352;
24. W.J. Waluchow, 'Feinberg's Theory of "Preposthumous" Harm', Dialogue 25 (1986), pp. 727-734.
25. I am very grateful to Andre Gallois and Michael Tooley for their extensive help on the topic of death and time. Thanks also to Jeff McMahan, Dirk Baltzly, John Bigelow, Christi Favor, John Donnelly, Robert Elliot, Fred Feldman, Calvin Norniore, and Graham Oddie for their comments on earlier drafts and to the Queensland University of Technology for research assistance for this paper.