In this episode, from the first part of chapter 4 of John Martin Fischer's book, "Death, Immortality, and Meaning in Life," I cover and evaluate multiple responses to two Epicurean arguments that death cannot harm the one who dies: the Timing Argument, that there is no time at which death is harmful, and the No Subject Argument, that there is no one who can be harmed by death. I follow Ben Bradley in organizing the range of theories on the timing of mortal harm as responses to The Timing Argument, and evaluate them not only on their own merits but also in how well they provide a response to the No Subject Argument. I give a different ranking of preferred responses to The Timing Argument than what Fischer gives, and argue instead for my favorite response: that the time of death's harm is concurrent or simultaneous with the occurrence of death itself.
In this episode, from the first part of chapter 4 of John Martin Fischer's book, "Death, Immortality, and Meaning in Life," I cover and evaluate multiple responses to two Epicurean arguments that death cannot harm the one who dies: the Timing Argument, that there is no time at which death is harmful, and the No Subject Argument, that there is no one who can be harmed by death. I follow Ben Bradley in organizing the range of theories on the timing of mortal harm as responses to The Timing Argument, and evaluate them not only on their own merits but also in how well they provide a response to the No Subject Argument. I give a different ranking of preferred responses to The Timing Argument than what Fischer gives, and argue instead for my favorite response: that the time of death's harm is concurrent or simultaneous with the occurrence of death itself.
Welcome to Mortality Matters, a podcast about conceptual issues in the philosophy of death and the meaning of life. I am your host, Matthew Sternberg. When is death bad for you? Presuming for the moment that it is indeed bad for you. In this episode of the podcast, I shall cover chapter four of John Martin Fisher's book, death Immortality and Meaning in Life Entitled, it's about time, timing, and mirror images. This will be the first part of a two-part treatment of this chapter, and in this part I shall focus on the timing of mortal harm. That is the harm that death causes us. In order to understand what makes death harmful, presuming that it is harmful, it's important to make analogies to other types of ordinary harms that we're more familiar with. From there, we can hopefully have a better understanding in these typical cases of the atypical case of what makes death itself harm, the one who dies. To this end, John Martin Fisher considers torture as a rather extreme and easy to imagine type of harm. The problem with this example, however, is that torture is an umbrella term that covers many different kinds of harm that befalls people. There are the more obvious types of torturer in which people are maimed or fingernails or teeth are pulled out, and then there's waterboarding or other forms of, uh, sleep deprivation as a form of psychological torture. So let's just focus on a simple, ordinary case that most people encounter in their lives. Just waking up in the morning and stubbing your toe. Suppose you wake up in the morning, you get out of bed, and in the act of getting out of bed, you stub your toe on the dresser, it hurts. But suppose that in this particular occasion there's the initial stubbing of the toe, which at first shocks you a little bit. You're surprised by this. But then it only really starts to hurt a few seconds later when it begins to throb. And there's a, a certain throbbing that results from the stubbing of your toe, and this hurts. So when was it bad for you to stub your toe? Presumably it wasn't bad for you to stub your toe before you actually stubbed it, right? So Fisher takes it as a kind of beginning intuition that in ordinary cases of harm, the timing. Of when the event harms you is during or after the event itself. And in the case of stubbing your toe, which is my example, but I actually took it from Ben Bradley in his book, wellbeing and Death. The time at which the stubbing of your toe is harmful to you is during or after the stubbing of the toe itself. That's also why I added in some further details to this hypothetical in which the throbbing only begins a few seconds after the initial stubbing of the toe. The first second, you're in a kind of neutral state of surprise, and then the throbbing begins later. So we think we might understand when stubbing, your toe is harmful to you, but what about death? We're supposing for the sake of the argument that death does harm the one who dies. And if so, when does death harm you? Well, we're also supposing a secular worldview in which death is the permanent succession of your existence. And on this view, it would be quite mysterious to think that death would harm you after. You die. But if death is anything similar to other types of harm like stubbing your toe or even torture, then there should be some time at which it is bad for you. So the question for the moment is to figure out when that is. And I think the reason this question of the timing of mortal harm is particularly important is because there's an argument that death is harmless. On the basis of its timing, I shall call this the timing argument. Now, in this chapter, Fisher conflates the descriptions of what he thinks of as a timing argument with a different kind of argument, which we'll consider later. So for the moment, let's consider a timing argument from the philosopher Benjamin Bradley. So the first premise of this argument is that all harms must be harmful at a time. That is to say, For anything that is a harm for someone, there must be some time at which it is harmful. That's the first premise. The second premise is that, well, there is no time at which death harms the one who dies, therefore, so we conclude death does not harm the one who dies. So you could just accept the conclusion and in that way, agree with Epicureus and the epicurean. However, Fisher would regard that conclusion as premature because it does not comport with common sense. Which he thinks holds that death, does harm you. So if you wish to disagree with the conclusion, then according to this argument, you must decide which of the premises is false. Now, what we can do here is we can categorize the different possible responses about the timing of mortal harm in accordance with how they disagree with this argument. So for instance, if you think that the second premise is false, that is to say you think that there is a time at which death harms the one who dies. Well then the question is when that is Now, as far as I can see it, there are fundamentally only three possible answers to this question and then combinations therein of these three possible answers. So either death harms the one who dies before you die. When you die. That is to say during the death itself or sometime afterwards, and that's it. Now, when considering the event that consists in your death, the thought here is that there's three possible responses as to when your actual death harms you, and that's before, during, or after the death itself. And those can be separate responses considered. Individually, or alternatively, you could take a combination of those possible responses. There's three options. So I suppose there are six possible combinations. So for each of those possible responses, they would each be a way of denying the second premise of the timing argument in order to argue that death does harm the one who dies and reject the conclusion that it does not okay. So that's not the only possible response to the timing argument. Alternatively, one may instead reject premise one. As to say, to reject the idea that all harms must be harmful at a time. Now, if you were to reject that premise, I might ask you which harm is timeless. So you might say that there would be a difference between those times, those harms that we might describe as timed as to say, timed harms in order to distinguish them from timeless harms. And of course, you might think that death is a timeless harm. Because there is no time at which it is harmful to the one who dies. Now, you may even go so far as to say that this generalizes to all the harms, and you might think that for anything that harms you, there is no time at which it harms you, but that seems to be at least prima facsia implausible. Going back to my case of the stubbing of the toe. Well, when you woke up this morning, suppose you woke up with your alarm
clock at 7:00 AM and in that very same minute you jumped outta bed and. In your haste, that's why you stubbed your toe. It seems like the time at which the stubbing of the toe was harmful to you
was at 7:00 AM It seems like stubbing your toe, at least in that case, did have a time in which it harmed you. Now, if you want to reject the timing argument by saying that death does not have a time at which it harms you, then you need to provide some explanation as to why. Why is the harm of death so unlike anything else in that regard? Especially because doctors seem to. Identify not just the cause of death when one of their patients dies, but also the time of death at which their patient dies. But of course you would say, I don't deny that there's a time at which the person dies. I just deny that there's a time at which the death is harmful and that's different. And so in this respect, many of these possible responses to the timing argument make a distinction between the time of the event and the time of the harm. They say, for instance, That while your death may occur at 7:00 PM in say 2040 or whichever year it is that you actually die, they would say that the time at which it harms you is something different than that. Or perhaps that the time doesn't even exist at all. If it turns out that mortal harm is timeless, which is to say that there is no time at which it does harm you, it just harms you, timelessly. Note that this is not to say that it harms you at every time. That would be a combination of the before, during, and after view, according to which it would always be true that your death was harmful to you. Now, this is sometimes called the eternalist view about the mortal harm. One prima facia objection to this view is this. Suppose that you will actually die in 2040, let's say January
1st, 2040 at 7:00 PM Okay? So that you will die in January 1st, 2040 at 7:00 PM according to this view, at least without any restrictions, was bad for you at the time of the Big Bang and a billion years ago and a billion years from now. And in fact, every time that exists, as a time that is. Has this peculiar fact that suppose Matthew Gerberg dies at 2040. Matthew Jeberg's death at 2040 harms Matthew Gerberg. So if you wish to defend this, always view this Eternalist view. It seems like some sort of restriction has to be put into place in order to avoid this rather peculiar fact about the far past and the far future. Mentioning facts about the harm of someone's death, that all the times in which people actually die. So what we have here, Are four possible responses and combinations therein of different ways to deny that death is harmless by responding to the timing argument. So even if the conclusion of the timing argument is false, it at least forces us to identify when it is that death really does harm the one who dies and the standard epicurean dictum that when death comes, you are not. And when you are death has not come is what is doing the work to motivate that second premise that there is no time in which death harms the one who dies. And to further support that premise, there is a secondary argument, which I shall call the no subject argument that Fisher hopefully summarizes in this chapter. So consider the following proposition. Someone call him Sam. Sam dies at some particular time. Earlier I mentioned the year 2040.
January 1st at 7:00 PM. Now I name this person Sam, as I usually just use a variable name, call him S, so S dies at time T. Okay. We can just consider that in the abstract. We can fill in the details, talk about Sam in 2040 if we wish, but it might be easier to state the argument using the variable names first and then fill in the details as necessary. Okay, so we are considering the proposition that S dies at time T so. Suppose that a person is harmed at a particular time. T Now, of course, we shouldn't just assume that time T must be an instantaneous moment. It could very well be the case that this could be an interval of time. One interesting issue that Fisher doesn't really grapple with in this essay is the question of the duration of death itself as distinct from the process of dying, or the condition of being a corpse as to say the condition of being dead. It is frequently assumed in the literature that death itself as distinct from dying and being dead must be an instantaneous moment. And this is what is partially motivating, skepticism about the harm of death for how could anything that's instantaneous harm you harms must have a duration. So the skeptic would say, however, this argument makes no such assumption. So going back to the first premise of the argument, the first premise is if a person is harmed at a particular time, t then there is a property, call it H, such that S has that property, H at time T. The second premise is, well if that's true, if there exists a property, H at. Time T that S has then S exists at time. T. However, it's not the case that S exists at time. T because death Annihilates the one who exists, that as to say when the person dies, they cease to exist. Therefore, death does not harm the one who dies. That as to say there is no harm to S at time. T. Now, I identified a proposition, namely that S dies at T because Fisher doesn't do this. However, I think that's a mistake. I think there has to be some reason for the fact that you're harmed. Harms don't just float free in abstract space, much like if you know something as to say. If S knows that P, there is some proposition P that S knows. Likewise, if a person S is harmed at a particular time, there has to be some state of affairs in virtue of which the person is so harm like stubbing your toe. Okay. I apologize for some of the abstractness, but this version of the no subject argument is somewhat technical. Here's an easier way to understand it. If all of that abstract language just kind of was too much, just think of it like this. Okay, so we're operating on the. Secular worldview that death Annihilates the one who dies. That is to say, when you die, you cease to exist. So the skeptic asks, how can you be harmed when you don't even exist? The thought motivating the question is that in order to be harmed, it's necessary that there must be someone who gets harmed. If death makes you cease to exist, then there is no person who can be harmed at that time. And so death is harmless. Hence, Epicurus is dictum. When death comes, I am not, and when I am, death is not. There's no time at which both death and me are co-present. And as such, it's harmless. And I also have no reason to fear that which is harmless because fearing. A harmless thing is irrational. We're supposed to feel better about the whole thing because hey, there's no reason to fear it. However, the reason I was so careful about the formalization of the argument is because even though it makes mention to times, it's primarily about the non-existence of this subject. So what makes the no subject argument particularly problematic is not the timing of the mortal harm. But rather the fact that when the person dies, the death itself makes the person cease to exist, and it can't be harmful unless there's somebody who's harmed. The argument is formally valid, at least in my more abstract characterization. So what that means is that if all the premises are true, it's impossible for the conclusion not to be true. That is to say there's no rational way to reject the conclusion of this argument if you accept all the premises. So in order to defend common sense, according to Fisher, And reject the conclusion, which is to say, well, to defend the common sense view that death is harmful and does harm the one who dies. For anyone who dies, well then you have to reject one of the premises. And what makes this argument so particularly difficult to respond to is it's very difficult to think about which premise you wish to reject. Unlike the timing argument. The timing argument I think is much easier to respond to. So just as a reminder, the first premise says, If somebody is harmed at a time, then there is a property, namely the property of being harmed at that time. The second premise says that if there's a property that is the property of being harmed at a time, then the one who is harmed, the person S exists at that time. However, premise three says the person does not exist at that time. Why? Because death Annihilates the one who dies, so therefore, death is harmless. It concludes. So you might wonder about the motivation behind premise one and two. The motivation behind premise one is it just seems to be using the language of properties. So if you say that somebody is harmed and there's a time at which they're harmed, that's another way of saying that they have a property of being harmed. So you may object to this first premise by saying that well, harms are not properties, harms are relations. And this would be somewhat similar to saying, for instance, Matthew is married. So the predicate term is married. In the sentence that I just spoke in English, Matthew is married, is of a monadic form. That is to say it's not described as a relation, as another sentence I might say. For instance, Matthew is married to Ayesha, so the term married in that second sentence expresses a relation that obtains between two people. However, in the first sentence, Matthew is married. That's used as a simple predicate without relation to anyone else. This is one of the ways in which I think language disguises relations. So even though being married is true of me individually, that's only true in virtue of the relationship that I have with someone else, namely my wife. So even though the sentence Matthew is married seems to express what you might describe as a property of me, it really does not. It refers to a relation that obtains between two people, the marriage relation. So in that sense it's a disguised relation. A relation in disguise. It's in disguise because the sentence does not make mention of anyone else, but it refers to a relation that does connect to people and harms are very similar in this way. When you stub your toe, you don't just have a harm that obtains independently of anything else. No, you are harmed by some state of affairs or event that occurs. You are harmed by hitting your toe against the dresser. So that's another way of saying that Sam, say S is harmed by the state of affairs that obtains in which Sam hits his foot into the dresser or stubbs his toe. There may be multiple descriptions that apply to one of the same event. However, to respond to the no subject argument by saying that, well, Harms our relations. They're not really properties, even though if you say, well, Sam was harmed, Sam is harmed, well, those sentences are like saying Matthew is married. They express a disguised relation. The reason this objection doesn't really work against the no subject argument is because it doesn't really change anything. You can simply rephrase the argument and say, well, for premise one, that if S is harmed by P at time T, then there is a relation between s. And P at t. So the point is that what P expresses is simply eScribing harms as properties or even harms as relations. That's what makes it so difficult to disagree with as a premise. So we could reevaluate the third premise, but Fisher accepts the annihilationist view of death. That death really does annihilate its subject that has to say when somebody dies, they cease to exist. So Fisher doesn't want to deny that third premise, which means the only premise Fisher is left with to deny is premise two. And that's why he describes it as the problem of predication premise two actually generalizes. So in order to be harmed, it's necessary that there must be somebody who is harmed, is an interesting fact that applies not just to harming but to any property. Or relation. Another way of putting it is the old metaphysical dictum that there can't be relations without Rola. Now Rola are the things that are related by a relation. So for instance, if you consider the is greater than relation, you might think about how two is greater than one as numbers. Well, if the numbers one and two. Didn't exist. It'll be difficult as to say impossible for it to be true that two is greater than one for the relation to obtain. It's necessary that there exists. The rela, this, of course, is not to say that the things being related by the relation must exist necessarily. So think back about the marriage example. Neither me nor my wife must exist necessarily, but we both stand in the relation of is married to. That is to say, I am married to my wife, and my wife is married to me. So that would be in a good example of a relation, which is contingent. That is to say it need not necessarily obtained. It could have been otherwise, but since there can't be relations without barada, one cannot be harmed unless there is someone who is harmed. It's a very intuitive premise. Who could deny it? Well, if we don't deny that premise and we accept annihilationism about death, and we accept premise one because, well, it's just asserting the existence of a property or a relation, that is what harm comes to. Well, we have to accept the conclusion then that death is harmless. The no subject argument is very difficult to respond to. In order to respond to this argument, Fisher considers the various responses I gave earlier to the timing argument and then independently argues for each of their different views and then tackles whether or not they would solve the no subject problem. The first view Fisher considers is what he describes as prism. This is just the view that the time of the harm of death takes place before death has taken place. Or to put it another way, death harms you before you die. Recall the timing argument. The timing argument requires you to identify when death harms the one who dies. If you think that death is harmful, and if you can't do that, if you accept the premises, you have to accept the conclusion that death is harmless. So the pist says Death harms the one who dies before you die. So the relevant time is before. The prior risk is open to allowing this time to vary between people, or perhaps it occurs throughout one's life. It's not really specified. Perhaps death harms newborn infants as soon as they're born, or at the first moment of their existence, whatever that is. Maybe it's in the fetus, maybe not. Whatever the first moment of the person's existence is. You could say a certain pist might say that that is when death harms the one who dies. Or it could be some other time. It could be a interval of time. Who knows when? It's just occurs before the event of death itself. We'll just stay at that kind of general level because we already have reasons to reject this view, even if you don't even specify it. This just occurs sometime before the event of death itself. That proposal is already problematic even before we specify exactly when that time is supposed to be. Is it a moment of time? Is it throughout your whole life? Does it begin at your first moment of existence and end right before you die? For some reason? I'm not sure. We don't even have to specify. Let's just consider the general proposition that it's sometime before. I'm not gonna tell you when, before getting into my objections, which are several. Let's start by considering its virtues. One advantage the Pist has is he solves the problem of predication. He can respond to the no subject argument. Why? Well, because death harms the one who dies while the person still exists, so there is a subject of harm. There's a harm and there's a person at the same time. Now, the time of the harm is different from the time of the death that's defined by the view it's prior. That's to say the time of the harm occurs before your death, but the person exists. It's not mysterious. We know who it is, who is harmed because that person exists. Now, Fisher's objections, toryism are not very good. He simply says that the view is implausible on its face. And then he does the common thing in philosophy where you describe the view and simply by describing the view, you take that as a reason to reject the view. So this isn't very different than just giving it the incredulous stare. You just stare at the person who asserts this view as if it's crazy. So what's so crazy about this view? Well, the thought here is that something harms you before it even occurs, and it can harm you even if you're unaware of it. It could very well be the case on this Pist view that your death that will happen in the future is harming you right now or harmed you when you were born or at some other time, or all the times in which you've been alive. It's not really specified, but the point is that it's harming you even though you're not aware of it, that just the condition of mortality that you will actually die at some time in the future is harming you at some point in your life. Yep. That's the view. Why is that a reason to reject the view as to say, give me an independent reason to think that this view is false. Fisher doesn't really do that, at least not in this first section. He later describes this as time travel. And so in that way, there is a reason to reject the view. And so that's a pretty powerful objection, namely that whatever makes death harm you, the timing of the harm occurs before the timing of the death, right? So if that's the case, that's a bit like time travel. So some future thing occurs and because of the occurrence of a future thing, some changes made to the present, speaking from the perspective of someone who happens to be alive. So let's put a date on it. Recall that date. Suppose I die January 1st at 7:00 PM on 2040. And further suppose that that fact, that event in the future harms me now before I die. That's what the prior is, is saying, although it doesn't have to be that particular time. Suppose it is, suppose it's right now that I am being harmed. By my future death in 2040. Okay. If that's true, then that's time travel. And you might think for other reasons that time travel is impossible. And so the impossibility of time travel gives you a reason to reject Prism. That harms are not retroactive in that fashion. They don't travel into the past to change things like whether I'm being harmed right now because of the future thing. Okay? So that's a pretty powerful objection if you ask me. However, there is a possible response. Think about the normal relation between causes and effects, causal relations, and you might say, okay, I grant you that backwards. Causation is impossible, but the harm making relation is not causal, you could say to defend the pist view. So the relationship between the event of death itself and the harm of death is not a causal relation. So your future death doesn't cause you to be harmed. It's a different kind of relation. It's a harm making relation. That you are harmed right now in virtue of some future event that occurs in 2040 is not a causal relation. It is retroactive, but it occurs in virtue of some future fact. I think to motivate this response, you'd have to give other kinds of examples of changes that are occurring to you now in virtue of future things. So arguably when I applied to graduate school and I was accepted, I was a prospective. My status changed from being a post bachelorette, I suppose, to becoming a prospective person to graduate school. Now, my admission to graduate school hadn't occurred yet. It obtained later in time, but my status changed to that of a perspective. And you might think that status obtained in virtue of a future thing, namely the admission that occurred later. And so by analogy, much like the status of being a perspective, the status of being harmed by some future thing, namely mortality one's own death in the future is what changes the condition right now. So even though you are alive, you are a mortal being. Why are you mortal? Will your mortal in virtue of your future death that has not yet occurred? And you might think, well, if it turns out that some miracle happens and I never actually die in the future, well then I'm immortal. So the status of mortality would be another example of some status that we would have in virtue of the future, and perhaps even the indefinite future or the infinite future. If it turns out that someone alive today never dies, of course, I don't think that's possible, but let's just imagine. Science fiction or fantasy scenarios where that would actually be the case. So the harm of death, the condition of mortality, and perhaps even the status of being a prospective graduate student would all be statuses that would obtain in virtue of future things, and that would help motivate this view of prism. That harm making is not a causal relationship, it's just retroactive. It obtains in this non causal fashion in virtue of facts about the future and such. Now I object to even that characterization because think of the example of dying. So suppose you're diagnosed with cancer and but for some amazing medical intervention, you will die. That's merely a prediction made in the moment. Let's suppose that you do obtain an exceptional medical intervention. And the cancer is removed and goes into remission. I would say retroactively. We could say in hindsight that you were not dying. However, if the actual sequence of events that obtained did result in your death, we could say retroactively, that the process of your dying began at some state of metastasis of the tumors caused by the cancer. Now, I don't think that the dying process began when thought about in the moment prospectively. Even if the tumor metastasizes at that time, at the time of the metastasis, the process of dying, you might think has started. But it's not that it obtains at that time. It's rather that we can only say retroactively that it did obtain at that time. And that's not am mere diagnostic either. The fact that the dying began only becomes true when you die. At least that's what I would say. I think that's a more intuitive way of thinking about the past than allowing for time travel about the future, although it is a troublesome case. So I'm not sure that there's any response to the question of when does dying begin? That's not going to be on intuitive in some way, but this is a special case of the problem of processes, which are Chancey. And yet are only complete upon their conclusion because I think it does make sense to say if the medical intervention were to occur that the person really wasn't dying to begin with, that they would be dying in the scenario in which the medical intervention does not occur and the person actually dies absent the actual death the person was never really dying to begin with. And that's something I think we say retroactively because I think it tracks the way it actually works. Okay, so I considered an objection to the Pist view that it seems to require time travel in order to have future events harm you. In the past, the response from the Pist was that, well, the harm making relation is not causal. So it's not problematically time travel. It's unproblematically time travel. And then I gave some analogies to support that, and then I rejected those analogies and virtue of a different analogy about the dying process. So I would argue this retroactive way of thinking about the timing of the beginning of these processes would apply not just to the dying process, but to any of those other processes I mentioned earlier. Or even status changes such as the condition of being mortal or the harm of death or any of those other conditions. But there's a third objection, Toryism, that we haven't yet considered, but will come up in the next view as well. And this is the idea that it gives us special explanation as to what makes death harmful or the nature of the harm of death. So the prior wrist is just attempting to explain what makes death harmful to the one who dies by giving a time at which it does harm the person who dies, namely before they die. But what about other harms? When you stub your toe, when does the toe stubing harm you? And the prior wrist seems to give a totally different kind of explanation for the harm of death as what we get with stubbing our toes. So in that sense, mortal harm is of its own category. This is what philosophers sometimes describe in Latin as being sui generous. Typically, a sui generous explanation is not a very good one. It's what you may back into if you have no other alternative kind of explanation, but it rejects what I would describe as the continuity principle. So that is to say whatever makes death harmful should be continuous with other types of harms in order to have a kind of unified axiology. That is to say axiology is the study of value or goodness. Having a unified theory to explain what makes all harms harmful is a theoretically desirable thing to do. We should only reject this kind of theoretical unity if necessary. If we say there's this kind of discontinuous explanation for what makes death harm, the one who dies, it's a harm unlike any other type of harm. That very well could be the case. Death is a very unusual kind of thing because unlike other kinds of changes, the subject does not persist through the change. Right? If I go from a seated position to a standing position, I've changed, but I didn't cease to exist. But if I die, I do cease to exist. So unlike so many other types of changes, you don't persist through the change it annihilates you. That may have implications for its harm. Supposing there is a harm and I think there is. However, I don't think we should give a sui generics explanation, some kind of special explanation for the harm of death if we haven't exhausted all of our options. That's why this is a theoretical cost. We would consider an explanation for mortal harm as sui Janis only if there was no better explanation for why death would harm the one who dies. And if we have a better explanation. Or another explanation, which doesn't make use of death's harm being this unique or special kind of thing. I think we should prefer that theoretically, or at least there's some reason to believe for the sake of theoretical unity and a simplicity of explanation that the theory that that makes less special explanations for unique phenomenon that has a more unified value theory is more likely to be true. So let's move on to another view about the timing of mortal harm. Subsequent, as you might tell from the name, this is the view that death harms the one who dies after they die. The harm is subsequent to the death and obtains after the death occurs. Ben Bradley defended this view in his book Wellbeing and Death, and part of the motivation behind the view is it makes the mortal harm continuous with other types of harms. So for instance, when you got outta bed this morning and stubbed your toe, there was an initial surprise and then the throbbing began. And the idea is that the stubbing of the toe. Harmed you because of something that happened in the future. In the future of the initial hitting of the toe against the dresser. What made it harmful was the painful throbbing that occurred a few seconds later and suppose it persists for several days. What makes the toe stabbing harmful is something that occurs after the initial event, and likewise so too is death. Harmful death harms the one who dies according to this view. After you die. Now, this might seem totally crazy at first, at least. Part of the reason it might seem crazy is because after you die, well you don't exist. You can see how it does not solve the problem of predication. There is no subject of harm after you die, you don't exist. So who's the one who's harmed the thing that doesn't exist? No. To soften you up. Fisher and Bradley identify other types of characteristics people can have after their die. So while I might make a podcast about Bradley's book on another event, I'll just consider Fisher's examples that he gives in chapter four. So he gives the example of Aristotle having various properties. Now, for instance, he has the property of being written about by John Fisher, or a blinken is now well regarded. F D R is regarded well for tackling the Great depression. A blinken is regarded well for leading the fight against slavery and for being victorious after the Civil War. Stalin is considered quite nasty now and not just at the time, and Hitler is hated and he's not just hated at the time. He's hated now. All of these are examples of historical figures who have long been dead. However, I think there's a kind of intentional fallacy that underlines these reputational examples. I mean, think what they all have in common. What they all have in common is a reference to people today. It's not that Aristotle has the property of being written about by John Fisher. It's rather that John Fisher has the property of writing about Aristotle. And it's not that Hitler has the property of being hated by people. Now, it's rather that people, today, people now have the property of hating Hitler. And likewise, for the other examples, at least these examples, These are all cases of reputations or other forms of description or ways of thinking about people from the past. These descriptions can only erroneously be described as attributing things to past people occurring right now, cuz those people don't exist right now. They existed in the past, but not now. So rather, these descriptions are picking out properties we have, they're not picking out properties. The historical figures have, like I said, language can be misleading. However, there are some advantages to the subsequent His view, and I alluded to that earlier with my example of the toe dubbing. One advantage is it does endorse the continuity principle, namely that it supports a kind of unified explanation for what makes all harms harmful. The harm makers always occur after the initial event, regardless of whether we're talking about death or whether we talking about toe stubbing. So that's one benefit of the view. Before we move on to my favorite explanation for when Death harms the one who dies, I'm going to cover the other possibility that is a Temporals recall. This was the view that there is no time at which death harms the one who dies, but rather, instead of denying that death is harmful, the AEM says death is a timeless harm. It is both harmful and there is no time at which it is harmful. It is harmful Timelessly. This is kind of an odd thing to say, and I already gave some objections to it earlier, but the first objection is it seems to give a special explanation for when death HA is harmful to the one who dies and treats all other types of harms normally. There's no great mystery about when the toe stubbing harmed you. It's not like the harm of stopping your toe has no time at which it occurs that the harm is timeless. However, there are a temporal list who do say something like this. Fisher quotes Tom Nagle. There's an amazing essay called Whole Life Welfare by Ben Bramble. It's a different Ben than Bradley, although they're both hedonists on bramble's whole life welfare. Death does harm the one who dies, but at no time at all. So it's an a temporal list view. However, it's an a temporal list view about all harms that as to say anything that's harmful. The event occurs at a time. But the harm is timeless and for any bad thing that occurs to you, if it indeed is harmful, the difference it makes to the entire lifetime wellbeing you would have is the magnitude of the harm. If it's negative, if positive, it's a benefit. The advantage to bramble's a temporal list view is it accepts a kind of unified account for when anything is a harm or anything is a benefit in accordance to what difference it makes to your whole life, to your lifetime wellbeing score. Think of it like a credit score, but instead of measuring your credit worthiness to take out loans and pay them back, it measures your lifetime wellbeing considered as a whole. So that's one way of defending an aorist explanation of the harm of death. Unfortunately, fishers doesn't cite it and instead just kind of concludes this section by suggesting that the subsequent test or the a temporal list are more preferable explanations for the timing of mortal harm. Rather than prism to my mind, I would not rank them in a similar fashion. I actually have a favored view, which oddly enough, Fisher never considers, and that I would put that at the top rank. And then second tier I would go with the aorist, then the pist. And lastly, the subsequent, because the subsequent has no response to the no subject argument, is just trying to soften you up by saying, well, there can be. Properties without that which instantiates the property, there can be harms without their existing anyone who is the subject of that harm. And I think if we come up with a rigorous formulation of the no subject argument, which has its origins in Epicurus, what we will find is that the subsequent test has no good response to the no subject argument. And we will thereby be forced into accepting the epic curian conclusion that death is harmless. Accepting the subsequent test view, Bradley's view is a pathway to epicureanism. So I've left what I consider the best for the end, but let me explain a little about why I think it's best. So let's go back to the toe stubbing example, and think about the question, when did you hurt your toe? Did you hurt your toe a few seconds later after the initial hit, when it started to throb? Or did you hurt your toe when you actually hit it against the dresser? When did the hitting of the toe harm you? Well, So far, we've made this distinction at the beginning of the discussion between the time of a harmful event and the time of the harm. I think that was the first mistake. I don't think there is such a distinction, or at least it's a distinction without a difference. When does anything harm you? Well, when it occurs, it harms you when the event happens. This is called the concurrent view, and it rejects the timing argument. Second premise by saying that death. Does harm the one who dies at a particular time. So you may ask, well, if that's the case, when does death harm the one who dies? To which I answer, when you die, when else? That's the best answer. When does the stubing of the toe harm the person who stubs his toe? When he stubs his toe? But you might object and say, what about the throbbing pain? And I say, yes, that's a harm too, but that's a different harm. I think we must individuate between the different harms on the basis of the time at which they occur. And in fact, I think it is necessary to so individuate the different harms in order to understand their causal connections and for the causal sequence to be intelligible. So you get outta bed and you hit your toe on the dresser. A few seconds later, the toe starts to throb. The hitting of the toe on the dresser harmed you and it harmed you at the time at which you hit your toe. You then have a second harm in which it also begins to throb, which is caused by the first and without individuating the two different harms. There's no way to make sense, at least for a full explanation of the causal sequence, how it is that one harm was partly what caused the second harm. So what about death? When does death harm the one who dies when you die? But death as an event is the termination of the dying process. You might ask the epicurean question, how can death harm you if death annihilates you, if death makes it the case that you cease to exist? Well, I don't deny that being a corpse does not harm you. There is no one who is a corpse who is harmed by the condition of being dead. Recall the trifold distinction between dying death and being dead. The condition of being a corpse occurs posterior to the event of death itself. That's not what we're considering. We're not considering whether the condition of being a corpse harms the one who dies. We're considering whether the event of death itself considered as the termination of the dying process harms the one who dies. And yes, it does. It's one of those liminal moments you might say, if it is momentary at all, of which I am unsure, but it definitely is the end stage of the dying process and occurs before the condition of being dead. I think the subject is intelligible. You could say that the event of death itself is the last moment of your life at which you exist, and the first moment of the condition of being a corpse occurs after the event of death itself. And the event of death itself makes it the case that you cease to exist. The succession of your existence occurs at the first moment of being a corpse. So in that sense, death is something similar to the zero point on your life. If you imagine your life as a kind of blip in two oceans of eternal non-existence, you might say metaphorically or melo, dramatically, there's a kind of blip between two intervals of time which extend into the infinite past, into the infinite future of eternal nothingness. And your life as a matter of your existence occurs in a brief and finite duration of time. Death metaphorically would then be the last moment of your existence and on the liminal edge of the first moment of your non-existence. And just as we can define a limit of a function, even if the. Terminal point is not included in the set. The limit approaching from the left hand side of a continuous curve that is treated as an open interval over the domain approaches the zero point without actually getting there. And yet that limit is well defined, at least when considered from the left side, insofar as the limits of mathematical functions approaching a zero point are well-defined, so too is that of death. Alright. In conclusion, I have so far described the timing argument for why death is harmless on the basis of there being no time at which it occurs. I have thereby also given a no subject argument for why death is harmless, because there is no one who is harmed and compared different responses to the timing argument and what implications they have for the no subject argument and evaluated those responses partly on the basis of how well they succeed. And not only responding to the timing argument, but more importantly how they respond to the no subject argument, which I regard as a much stronger argument. And if we're ranking different responses to the timing argument in tier one comes my favorite response of that, of concurrent with tier two being the aorist response to the problem of the timing of mortal harm, tier three being the pist response. And I would even put tier four as the epicurean acceptance that death is harmless before I would ever accept the subsequent explanation. The problem of predication is just too strong to accept that there could be a harm without the existence of the subject, at least for me. What are your favorite explanations as to when death harms you? What would your ranking be?