In this episode, I consider how we should feel about our own death given how we tend to be indifferent about when we came into existence. Lucretius takes this indifference as a reason to likewise feel indifferent about our own deaths, as our future post-mortem condition is a mirror image of our past pre-natal condition. This is called the "Symmetry Argument," of which Fischer identifies two formulations that turn out to be problematic. I reformulate both versions multiple times then respond to what I regard as the best formulation in terms of which attitude of ours is most fitting about an early death and a late birth. Fischer identifies two kinds of responses to the Symmetry Argument, one class based on denying that an earlier birth is even possible, while another justifies past indifference on the basis of a general indifference regarding past benefits and harms, yet I argue that a better response is to challenge the premise that indifference regarding our creation is fitting to begin with.
In this episode, I consider how we should feel about our own death given how we tend to be indifferent about when we came into existence. Lucretius takes this indifference as a reason to likewise feel indifferent about our own deaths, as our future post-mortem condition is a mirror image of our past pre-natal condition. This is called the "Symmetry Argument," of which Fischer identifies two formulations that turn out to be problematic. I reformulate both versions multiple times then respond to what I regard as the best formulation in terms of which attitude of ours is most fitting about an early death and a late birth. Fischer identifies two kinds of responses to the Symmetry Argument, one class based on denying that an earlier birth is even possible, while another justifies past indifference on the basis of a general indifference regarding past benefits and harms, yet I argue that a better response is to challenge the premise that indifference regarding our creation is fitting to begin with.
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. How should we feel about death? Afraid, calm, tranquil. Indifferent. In this podcast, I'm covering the second part of chapter four of John Martin Fisher's book, death, immortality and Meaning in Life. In this second part of the chapter, John Martin Fisher considers an argument from Lucretius, a follower of Epicurus, who also was likewise skeptical that death was harmful at all. According to Lucretia's argument. The oblivion that death brings isn't very unlike our non-existence prior to our birth, or as to say whenever our first moment of existence was. In this way, you can think about our life as a short blip in an ocean of eternity. Since we tend to be indifferent about the time before we were born in regards to ourselves, we likewise should be indifferent about the time after we are gone, and hence, we have no reason to be afraid of it. Fisher distinguishes between two different forms. This argument may take the first being about values while the second is about our emotions, or more generally about our attitudes. Here you can think about an attitude being any kind of mental state that's about something. Fisher doesn't mean when he uses the term attitude to only be referring to people who are upset or have a certain temperament, but rather any kind of mental state that's about something which typically involves emotions and more specifically, hope and fear and regret. Are all examples of different attitudes that we can have. And so there is a range of different arguments, a family of different symmetry arguments that argued that there's no reason to be afraid of death on the basis of certain symmetries, which exist between the non-existence we have after we die are post-mortem, non-existence, and the non-existence that obtains before we were born we might describe as our prenatal non-existence. And on the basis of the certain existential symmetry that obtains between our future and our past epicureans argue that we have no reason to be afraid about our death. So let's distinguish between the values version of the symmetry argument, as well as the attitudinal version of the symmetry argument. So the first version, which I'm saying is based on values, has to do with what is good or bad for the one who dies. Fisher formulates the argument as follows. Premise one, being born later isn't bad for its subject. That is to say the one who dies. Premise two. The future in the past are mere images of one another. Therefore, here's the conclusion. Dying earlier isn't bad for its subject. That is to say dying earlier isn't bad for the one who dies. So the first problem that may strike you is to wonder exactly what it means for the future in the past to be mirror images of one another. When we think about mirrors, let's say you go to your mirror in the bathroom and look at yourself and raise your right hand when you raise your right hand. The image in the mirror appears to raise his left hand, but other than an inversion of right versus left, the images identical. So you might think about the relationship between your own future and your own past and something of a similar fashion in that, of course, the events that happened in the future are different than the past. So in that sense, they're not mere images of one another, but there's a kind of inversion in how we think about. The future versus the past. So think about fear, for instance, if you're afraid of something, well, it doesn't make any sense to be afraid of something that's already in the past. It only really makes sense to be afraid of things that haven't happened yet. So in this sense, fear is a kind of future directed emotion. It's an emotion that we have prospectively ex anti. Before the thing. So if I'm afraid about my house burning down, what I would be afraid of is some possible future in which my house is burning down. Right? It would be in the future. It would not be in the past. Likewise, think about something like regret. If I regret something. Well, I can't regret something in the future. Regret is a retrospective attitude. It's an emotion I may have and a feeling I might have about something that was in the past, presumably about some mistake I made. So in philosophy, we like to formulate arguments in the form of premises and conclusions where we try to be explicit about what the exact reasons are that we have for believing or for doing something, and specifically for arguing in favor of a particular proposition. It's good to identify exactly what that proposition is, be clear about it. And to identify the reasons for why it's true, and hopefully in a way that makes the logical structure of our reasoning as clear as possible. So when Fisher describes the future in the past as mere images of one another, this is a bit of a metaphor, which I think obscures more than it reveals. Earlier I mentioned there being a certain kind of symmetry that obtains in our lives, or it's not really in our lives. It's about our lives on either side of our life, in the neighborhood of when we are alive. So if our lives are this brief blip in an ocean of nothingness, that might be a metaphorical way of describing how it is that we come into existence for a short time and then we go out of existence when we die. But the condition of non-existence is roughly symmetrical before we exist and after we exist. So that's the relevant idea here. So what matters is not that the future in the past are identical in the same way that when you look into a mirror, the image in the mirror is identical with you. There's no qualitative difference between the image in the mirror and how you are say in real life outside the mirror. But rather there's a kind of inverse relationship in which attitudes we have that are right and proper or good about the future in the past. And furthermore, when we think about the time in which we would actually die, and we don't exactly know when we'll die, however, we might be afraid of dying too young or dying too soon. In fact, no matter what time it may come, you may feel like it would be too soon, even if you're in your nineties. So this notion of death being a bit too early is something that might seem quite familiar, even though none of us have died, but we have certain expectations about our longevity, and we hope those expectations will not be violated. However, we don't seem to have very much thoughts or expectations about the circumstances of our birth. Hoping instead that we were born earlier, and this lends credence to this kind of common sense feeling that we have these kinds of asymmetrical attitudes regarding the circumstances in which we came into existence and the circumstances in which we may go out of existence. And of course, I'm speaking about birth, presumably. We come into existence before our birth. I'm not exactly sure when. It is one of the touchstones of the debate about the permissibility of abortions. That is so contentious as to when not just life begins, but when was the first moment of one's own existence? Speaking from the perspective of the person. So I'm not exactly sure when that is, but I'm just gonna talk about birth as if that was the first moment. And of course, I don't think it is, but it's easier to describe a late birth as opposed to an earlier birth than it is to try to pinpoint. When in the fetal development, the first moment of our existence began. So whenever that was it, presumably it could have been earlier, but we don't really care if it could have been earlier. But we do care if our death could have been earlier or if our death will come earlier sooner than we expect that we care very deeply about that, but we don't really care about the circumstances of our creation so much, or when we came into existence. Which is a kind of asymmetry and you might question that asymmetry and think that there might be something suspicious about it, because if it turns out that the future in the past are relevantly symmetrical, then I think we might be making a mistake and lucretius here may actually be correct and that we really shouldn't be afraid of our own death if it is relevantly symmetrical. With how we were before we were born, but if you were curious as to what would make a death early or what would make a birth late in this context, these are comparative notions. So earlier or later than what? Well, the thought is, if death comes for you earlier, it would be we're imagining a possible world in which there's some corresponding time in which you do die in this possible world that would be earlier than what actually happens. And likewise, also with a late birth where whatever the circumstances and time of your actual birth were a so-called late birth would be. First off, we're imagining some other, uh, counterfactual we're imagining. Some other possible world in which someone just like you was born at a later time. So I'm gonna put the values-based symmetry argument aside just for a moment, if only because I'm much more concerned in this podcast about the section of chapter four about how we feel. About our own death and how we should feel about our own death as opposed to how we feel or should feel about the circumstances of our creation. So with that, I'm going to turn to what I call an attitudinal version of the symmetry argument. So much like with the first version, Fisher's rendition starts with this kind of mirror image premise, which I've listed as premise two. But they both have this in common that the future in the past are mere images of one another. However, we're indifferent about our prenatal condition of non-existence, and therefore we should be indifferent about our postmortem condition. That is to say we shouldn't fear death. So there are are a number of problems with this formulation of the argument as Fisher puts it. The first formulation I didn't, well, sorry. The first problem I didn't even mention, which was Fisher then goes on to discuss how it is that we shouldn't really have regrets about being born or regrets that perhaps it would be better if we had a longer life by adding more time to the beginning our of our life, right? So we can very well imagine however long our lives are, they would be a little bit better with a little bit more time of net positive value. If you could get a bird's eye view on your whole life from beginning to end, and if you could wave a magic wand that would add a few more years of good life to your life overall, your life would be improved. However, this would also be true regardless of which part of your life you add this extra few years to. So if you were to tack on a few extra years to the beginning of your life, as long as your quality of life would be overall net positive, that to say it would contain. Overall more good things than bad things in it. Perhaps more pleasures than pains or more desires satisfied than frustrated or more virtue than vice or, or whatever makes good things good. There's just more good things going on than bad things overall. Well, it really shouldn't matter what part of your life we extend in this fashion, whether it's the beginning, the middle, or the end. However, we don't seem to have feelings about this sort of thing. It seems like we wish to have longer lives and so we fear an early death, right? But we don't have a corresponding attitude about the past. We don't regret that we weren't born, say, 10 years beforehand. And yet perhaps you might, perhaps you might regret missing the sixties if you were born, like I was born in the eighties. I'm not old enough to remember the sixties. That might have been a good thing, or perhaps it would've been even better to see Babe Ruth in person or the Beatles perform in person. I missed out on all of those experiences. Now, of course, in general, you might think of all the eras of human history. People have it the best now. So if you had a choice in the matter about when you should be born, You should prefer the future over the past on average, because things on average get better over time. They haven't always. Perhaps, uh, if your range of options were limited to about 2000 years ago, but you had some historical range to choose from, well, if you had a choice between 500 BC or 500 ad, or let's say zero. You might choose the year zero over 500 ad depending on where it is that you'd be born into. If you're born into a noble household under the Roman Empire, that might be more preferable than living under the rule of the vandals or whomever in 500 ad. So history overall hasn't only progressed linearly upwards when it comes to quality of life considerations, but certainly in the more recent past it has. And perhaps if there's some horrible apocalypse, like a worldwide nuclear war, then right now may be the best time to live right before an apocalypse, if there is one. Nevertheless, it's not the time at which these goods are realized that seems relevant as to their desirability, but rather the magnitude of the quality of life that one could achieve, which is only accidentally related to different moments of history. So there were a number of problems with fisher's formulation of the symmetry argument, or either symmetry argument. But I'm gonna focus on the attitudinal version. The first is that he doesn't really specify what it means for the future in the past to be mere images, and that obscures the form that the argument has. So what matters, I think, is that there are no relevant differences between the future in the past when assessing how we should feel about it. So that should have been the second premise. Whether something is a mere image is a mere metaphor. If we're speaking more literally what matters is that there are no relevant differences. And once we understand this, we can see that the form of the argument is analogical. That is to say the future in the past are analogous in certain relevant ways. That is to say ways that are relevant as to how we should feel about it. And they're not perfectly analogous because our feelings can be retrospective or prospective, but are different. In virtue of that very fact, we cannot fear the past, at least not rationally, and we cannot regret the future, at least not rationally. So an improved version of this further doesn't describe how we actually feel. Survey data is not relevant to assessing the reasonableness of a belief. What matters is how we should feel so we could formulate the argument. As such, we should not regret our prenatal condition, but there is no relevant difference between the future in the past, and so we should not fear our postmortem condition. So this formulation of the argument puts it in terms of how we should feel, specifically that we shouldn't fear death because we shouldn't regret a prenatal condition. But there's still a couple of problems with this formulation. The first problem is that when I talk about how we should feel, this suggests we have some control over our feelings. So the epicurean, were actually quite optimistic that we do have quite a lot of control over our feelings in virtue of our rational considerations. So merely by attending to the right kind of reasons and evidence, We could come to change our feelings through a rational process, which is somewhat therapeutic. However, they might just be straight up mistaken about how voluntary our emotions are, and we may not have the requisite kind of control over our emotions so as to diminish or even eliminate our fear of death. However, we shouldn't take this as grounds to think that the epicures were mistaken. Because it very well may be the case that our fear of death may even be unshakable. No matter how much persuasion or how many of these arguments we read from the Epicures, we still may not be able to shake our fear of death. It may be an unshakable emotion. We may be able to diminish perhaps, but never fully get rid of. And having any fear of death to any degree is not fully rational according to the epicurean. A perfectly virtuous person would have no such fear, not even in a small degree, cuz it has no rational basis according to their arguments. Nevertheless, if they're right, it would turn out that fear would be mistaken. There's some mistake being made by the person who fears his own death, even if that mistake was unavoidable or unshakable. So just as it's an ill formulation of the argument, to put it in terms of how people actually do or don't feel, I think it's likewise, uh, ill formulation of the argument to put it in terms of how people should or shouldn't feel. We could state it in terms of reasons, but ultimately I think the relevant relation here that's normative would be that of fittingness. So another way of describing fittingness is as appropriateness or proper or what emotion befits death. If you consider your own death, what emotion would befit death does fear befit death? This might sound like an old-fashioned or an odd way of talking. But there's a kind of relation of matching in a similar way as to how a certain key might match a certain lock in a way that it just fits right. So the divots of the key fit the lock in such a way that it unlocks the door. Likewise, when considering our emotions and how we should feel about our own death, which emotion is the fitting emotion. So I think we should reformulate the argument along those lines in terms of which attitude is most fitting. The second problem with this formulation of Fisher's argument is I put it in terms of fear and regret. Now, fear is ultimately the target by the Epicureans. That's what they wish to exercise, a kind of rational therapy to alleviate our fears of our own death. However, regret isn't quite right now. People may feel this way. Perhaps there are people out there. Who regret their birth. However, I think this is a mistake precisely because people don't have control over whether they're born. It's not up to them, it's up to their parents. So while people's parents may regret having a child, it doesn't make sense for the child to regret the circumstances of his birth. The third problem, and the last one I'll consider for this formulation of the symmetry argument is that the topic at hand isn't whether. We should be afraid of being a corpse. The topic is whether we should be afraid of death itself. So I personally have no fear of being a corpse. What I'm afraid of is the termination of my life. Which is what the event of death consists in. So to this end, we can introduce this trifold distinction between the process of one's dying, which culminates in the event of death itself, after which one is a corpse, or that has to say one is in the condition of being dead. Which properly speaking, one never obtains that condition because death Annihilates the one who dies. You cease to exist when you die. So whatever a corpse is, is not you. It's your remains so to speak. It's what remains of you in the form of a decaying, rotting piece of meat. So I think this feeds into Lucretia's mistake of trying to diagnose why people have a fear of death, which he identified as an irrational kind of fear because. It's based on the wrong kind of things. It's due to a certain conceptual confusion. When people are afraid of death, what they're imagining is being alive, but being like stuck in a casket or being eaten by worms or having an ongoing experience of nothingness, right? It's not that death is the experience of nothingness, rather, it's the nothingness of experience as to say you don't exist when you're dead. Right. There's nothing there to suffer. There's nothing there to lay in the grave, but I think this is a bit too simplistic. I think the vast majority of us are not afraid. I mean, it would be unpleasant. We wouldn't enjoy sitting around being trapped in a casket in some grave somewhere. Of course, that would be horrific, partly because it might kill you, right? Being in there too long. What's terrifying is not those experiences which are only possible if one is alive. Rather, it's the nothingness itself. The nothingness that negates your own existence, that brings a termination to what you are. That's terrifying, and it's not terrifying in a way that people, I think, misunderstand or just conceptually confused about what that entails. I think that's a bit condescending about why people are afraid of their own death. To be honest, but I've seen this not only in Lucretius, I've seen this also in Adam Smith. Who talks about this and it's a perennial subject where philosophers throughout history have attempted to psychologize why it is that people make this mistake, which they regard as a mistake to fear of their own death. And it's because they lack imagination. It's because they're kind of conceptually confused about what it means to cease to exist. They can't understand what it means to cease to exist, so they presume that they would continue to exist. But in some horrific form. Like I said, I think this is somewhat condescending. So my third objection is that I think this version of the argument needs to be reformulated. Instead of being about our attitudes regarding our prenatal condition and our postmortem condition, we need to think about it in terms of a late birth or an early death, right? Specifically what we're afraid of is death. We're not afraid of being a corpse. In fact, insofar as if we accept the view that death Annihilates the one who dies. Then whatever remains is not you. So fear wouldn't even be an appropriate attitude, at least not in the first person, because the thing you're afraid undergoing that transformation would not be you yourself. It would be a kind of empathetic fear where you would be concerned about some other thing than you, but in this case, it's not even a person. It's a corpse. You're afraid of what may happen to the corpse. So let's just reformulate the argument then with these suitable modifications. So we shouldn't state it in terms of regret, and we shouldn't talk about how we should or shouldn't feel. Instead, we just need to formulate it in terms of which attitudes are fitting and instead of being about a post-mortem condition, ultimately it needs to be about the death itself as an event. So here we go. Premise one indifference is the fitting attitude about a late birth. Premise two. There is no relevant difference between the future and the past with respect to which attitude is fitting. Conclusion one. Therefore, indifference is the fitting attitude about an early death premise. Three. Fear and indifference cannot both be fitting about the same object. Therefore, conclusion two. Fear is Unfitting attitude about an early death. So I apologize about some of the formalism with which I'm attempting to reformulate this argument, but it's somewhat unclear in Fisher precisely what it is that we're thinking about and how we should feel about it, and how we can evaluate our emotions and specifically our fears. So for the remainder of the chapter, Fisher focuses on that second premise in which he attempts to identify what are the relevant differences between the future and the past with respect to how we should feel about our own death or our own birth. And of course, by birth, I mean whatever the first moment is of our creation or our coming into existence. If it turns out that there are no relevant differences between the future and the past, then we either have to accept the conclusion of the argument. And be indifferent about our own deaths, or we should not be indifferent about our own birth and say perhaps prefer to have been born earlier. So that would be to reject that first premise. So before continuing on, I actually have a response. To this argument in which I think we should reject that first premise. But I'm gonna save that for the end of the podcast if only because there's so much detail that Fisher goes into about why the future in the past can be relevantly different, so as to reject that second premise. Now, the goal here is to justify the asymmetry of attitudes that we have. So we have this fear of death, but we're indifferent about our own birth. What would justify this kind of asymmetry? So there's two main broad strokes approaches. The first approach is to deny that it would be even possible for you to have been born earlier than you actually were. This is what Fisher describes as an asymmetry of possibilities. In which it's always possible for you to have died later, but it's impossible for you to have been born earlier. So that's the first style of responses that Fisher considers. And the second style of responses that Fisher considers instead, tries to focus on which attitudes are relevant and how it is that we don't really care. About the past, but we care deeply about the future. And that was most notably championed by a philosopher by the name of Derek Parit. And in deference to his name, he refers to these as the parition style responses. So, you know what philosopher has become super famous among other philosophers when his name is being used as an adjective, the par Vivian response. Okay, so let's go back and focus on the possibility response. So is it even possible for you to have been born earlier? Than you actually were, or to put it in even another way, would it have been possible for you to have existed earlier? Now, I think if we think about the circumstances of our mother's birth or giving birth to us, of course we think, well, the water could have broke an hour earlier, or there were so many contingencies involved in the birthing process that you would imagine that it could very well easily have been the case that you could have been born earlier. But part of the. Presumption there is that I think we're presuming that we existed as babies in the womb prior to undergoing the change of residents, so to speak, by which we were birthed. So that's not really the interesting question. Metaly speaking. The interesting question is, whatever your first moment of existence was, could it have been otherwise? And so you might think the answer is no because were it otherwise you would just be a different person. What you're imagining isn't you. So here's some ways to kind of warm you up to this thought. This is a doctor in sometimes referred to as Origins, essentialism. The thought behind this is whatever originated you. Is essential to what you are. So one way of thinking about this is in terms of the particular sperm and egg which came together to bring you about, or perhaps it's your DNA n a, that uniquely specifies you such that if your DNA n a were different, well whatever other being would have different d n A than you, it wouldn't be you. It would be like a cousin or or someone who resembles you in some ways, and perhaps they could resemble you. In almost perfect ways, but for a slight difference in DNA N. But because of that difference, it's a different person. Or alternatively, you might think that your specific history or the ongoing narrative of your life are essential to what you are. And by a life narrative here, I'm imagining. Well imagine you have some hypothetical version of yourself, which writes an autobiography, or perhaps in the far future, shortly before your death, you write a personal memoir, which gives a complete and exhaustive autobiography of your life. You can think of that as your life narrative. That seems relevant to who you are. When somebody asks you, well, who are you? You might tell a story, right? And it's not a fictional story. It's a kind of biographical story which describes something that happened in your life. If they're very curious about you, perhaps they just want to know what you do for a living or something. But if they're very curious and if they really want to know who you are for whatever reason, perhaps you're on a date or something, you might swap stories about things that have happened to you in your life. And this is giving a piece of an ongoing life narrative, and that's important to you. It's important to all of us, how we shape our lives. So there's a variety of different kinds of candidates we could describe. I mean, some more biological others, less so, which are relevant to identifying who we are or what we are and when we are. But the thought is, whatever these considerations are, there's some relevant set of considerations that once you fix those things, it is necessary for your existence. That is to say, If you imagine someone similar to you but with a different narrative or a different history or different D n A or someone originated from a different sperm or a different egg, no matter how otherwise similar they would be to you, they would not be the same person as you as to say they would not be numerically identical with you. So the thought is the reason we're indifferent about having a later birth is because the relevant contrast class is impossible. It isn't possible for me to have been born earlier with a different sperm or egg, or a different d n a or a different history. Or a different life narrative. The problem with this line of thinking according to Fisher, if it's true, it's only accidentally true of human beings. So he cites a very famous essay by Tom Nagle on Death, who is actually in turn citing something from Robert Nozick, in which he imagines a pretty wild scenario quote. We could imagine discovering that people developed from individual spores. That had existed indefinitely far in advance of their birth. In this fantasy birth never occurs naturally more than a hundred years prior to the permanent end of the spores existence. But then we discover a way to trigger the premature hatching of these spores and people are born who have thousands of years of active life before them. Given such a situation, it would be possible to imagine oneself having come into existence. Thousands of years previously. The consequence appears to be that a person's birth at a given time could deprive him of many earlier years of possible life. Now, while it would be caused for regret that one had been deprived of all of those years of life by being born too late, the feeling would be different from that which many people have about death. So the idea here is that you would have reasons to regret. Not being hatched earlier if you were one of the unlucky ones who just so happened to only have been hatched a hundred years before your expected natural death. So these spore people exist in these unhatched conditions, and only recently has it been discovered a way of prematurely hatching them. So this is a bit. Actually, it's not at all different from fetuses in the womb who are hatched after nine months, so to speak. The only difference is the magnitudes of time and the ability to prematurely birth people in this case. But the reason this matters is because it's trying to create a circumstance in which one can be birthed into the world earlier, so as to benefit from more good experiences or avoid more bad experiences. Right? So NOIC here was describing a scenario. Where we could push our births back earlier, and yet we would still have reason to be afraid of death. So even if there is a kind of. Symmetry in our circumstances such that were possible for us to have been born earlier. These spore people could have been hatched earlier in life. That relevant symmetry in terms the possibility of our birth isn't accounting for the asymmetry of our attitudes regarding our death. We're still afraid of death in this case. So the spore people would still have the same reasons to be afraid of their own death that we have. The only difference is they have a certain kind of symmetry in that they could have been born earlier. So the point is that even if origin essentialism is true for creatures like US beings born of sperm and eggs. That is some ways an accident. It can't explain why we should have an asymmetry regarding being indifferent about our birth and being afraid of our own death. And the reason is because these spore people have asymmetry regarding the circumstances of their birth and death that they can push back and increase the longevity of their lives. By being hatched earlier, and yet they still have as much reason to fear death as we do. So the possibility of an earlier birth doesn't explain or justify our feelings about our own deaths. So when we're considering how it would even be possible for us to have been born earlier than in fact we are, I think it's important to maybe pause for a second and think about, as Fisher does, what do we care about when we care about ourselves? Do we care about our history, our accomplishments, our character? Presumably, yes, we care about all of those things, but do we care about our existence? And he uses this bit of terminology between thinking of ourselves as thin persons or thick persons, or the thin self or the thick self. So the. Difference between the thick and thin self is roughly the difference between one's mere existence considered absent any other characteristics versus having a certain history or personality or character traits or other things that are true about ourselves. But are not entailed merely in virtue of one's existence, right? Perhaps we do have a certain kind of essence, which is thin, which only contains facts about, let's say, being human or being a rational animal. And so those would of course come along for the ride with anywhere we would exist, we would be rational animals, or if there were some Android version of us, that wouldn't really be us because it's an Android, right? So this distinction doesn't deny. That people have certain descriptions which are essential to their nature as rational animals or as humans, human nature. But whatever that is, it doesn't include our history. It doesn't include our character traits or personalities. Things that when we think of ourselves, we may include our personality, or we might even include our accomplishments or our history, but we wouldn't include the accomplishments of history or history or personality traits of other people. So we still have some conception of ourselves, which involves certain contingent features of our lives, which things that could have been otherwise. These are all of the elements of what Fisher means by the thick self, these contingent features. So you might think, for instance, that it might be possible for. One to exist at least in the thin South way, but not in the thick south way. So the thought here is that were we born earlier than we actually were? Our history would be quite different. In fact, our personality might be quite different. We might even have different parents. There might have been a different D n A or a different sperm egg. Who knows? Perhaps Origins. Essentialism is false. But ultimately what you care about is your character traits, your history, your personality, mere existence. Even as such may be totally unrecognizable to you. If there was some version of you, which is so different in so many ways, who'd be virtually unrecognizable, that person wouldn't be realizing any of the values you actually care about, which are all attached to the thicker elements of what you are, of, of your history, of your personality, and so on. But Fisher rejects this. He considers a baby switching case. Like suppose you were adopted shortly after your birth, but the hospital made a horrible mistake and sent you home with the wrong parents. In that scenario. Suppose later in life you wish that didn't happen. You wish you were with your biological parents in that sort of case. Well, what are you wishing for? What do you. Care about. Well, it seems like at least what Fisher argues is that you care about your thin self. You prefer that your thin self had developed or had been attached to a different thick self. That as to say that you had a different history, that you had a different upbringing or a different set of personality traits as a result of the difference in your histories. But I actually don't think that's right. I, I think we don't care about our near existence in that case, but we just care about having an alternative history. We just care about an alternative version of our thick selves by comparison. Nevertheless, I think it is quite interesting to consider. What do you care about when you care about yourself? Do you care about certain contingent things, things which could have been otherwise? Things like your accomplishments or your history. Of course, we care about those things, but perhaps you also care about things which couldn't have been otherwise. Perhaps you care about your nature or the circumstances of your existence. Now, you might think that something like Origin's, essentialism might be true. But not because of the accident that resulted in the particular D N A you have or the particular sperm in the particular egg that met. I'm not sure that the circumstances of that were accidental, but it could very well be intentional. But what I mean by accidental is in that it could have been otherwise. I mean, of the millions and millions of sperm, the chances that any one particular sperm would've been successful or very low, it could very well have been a different particular sperm. However, from the perspective of the present, the past is changeless. The past as such, couldn't have been otherwise, at least from this point forward. So I think something like Origin's, essentialism is just a special case of the changeless of the past, that the past qua passed. As such is impossible to be otherwise insofar as it has passed. Now, of course, it used to be true that things that happened could have been otherwise when they were present or future when evaluated from that perspective. But that's no longer the case anymore and hence, it's impossible for the past to be different. And when we're considering various possibilities in which what we currently regard the past as being different. Suppose we consider a possible world in which Hitler won World War ii, or in which the Normans lost the Battle of Hastings. What we're imagining is not actually this world. We're not imagining our past. We're imagining some merely possible world in which some correlate to our past is quite different, and I think something similar is the case when thinking about our own histories, especially when you're thinking about things that happened. If you're thinking about a different version of you who. Perhaps didn't graduate high school or perhaps went and majored in a different subject area in college, what you're imagining is not yourself. You're imagining some counterpart to you that's not the same person as you are someone who resembles you living a very different life. So if you were imagining someone who resembles you is very similar to you being born earlier, that other person is not you. So I think it's true that it's impossible to have an earlier birth, if only because whatever it is that was born earlier is another person who's very similar to you but is not numerically identical with you. And that results not because of a specific doctrine of origins, essentialism, that results as a special case of the changeless of the past. Nevertheless, even if the past is necessarily as it is and couldn't have been otherwise, that doesn't justify our attitudes because the past. Is changeless. That's not a reason to be indifferent about it. It explains how it is that we couldn't have had an earlier birth, but it doesn't justify an attitude of indifference regarding it. So I still take Nagle's point that we need the circumstances to justify our attitudes here and not engaged in a theoretical disputation about whether it were possible for the past to be different. That doesn't carry normative water, so to speak, that doesn't have a. Implication that would justify indifference about the past or fear of the future. So it's something of a red herring, this excursion into metaphysics. Nevertheless, Fisher argues that even if we make a distinction between our thick and thin selves, either version could have come into being earlier, according to him. Of course. I don't think that's true. But at this point, I agree with Fisher that it doesn't justify an attitude of indifference regarding a late birth or an attitude of fear regarding an early death. So, This disputation about whether it's even possible to have a earlier birth or not is no longer relevant if it doesn't carry with it the normative implication that would justify indifference regarding an earlier birth as opposed to a later birth. So that's the first grouping of. Responses to the symmetry argument, this attitudinal version of the symmetry argument for why we shouldn't fear death. The second style of responses comes from Derek Parit, which fisher quotes at length from reasons and persons quote, I am in some hospital to have some kind of surgery since this is completely safe and always successful. I have no fears about the effects. The surgery may be brief or it may instead take a long time because I have to cooperate with the surgeon. I cannot have an aesthetics. I have had the surgery once before and I can remember how painful it is under a new policy because the operation is so painful. Patients are now afterwards made to forget it. Some drug removes their memories of the last few hours. I have just woken up. I cannot remember going to sleep. I ask my nurse if it has been decided when my operation is to be and how long it must take. She says that she knows the facts about both me and another patient, but that she cannot remember which facts apply to whom. She can tell me only that the following is true. I may be the patient who has had. His operation yesterday. In that case, my operation was the longest ever performed, lasting 10 hours. I may instead be the patient who is to have a short operation later today. It is either true that I did suffer for 10 hours or true that I shall suffer for one hour. I ask the nurse to find out which is true. While she is away, it's clear to me, which I prefer to be true if I learn that the first is true. I shall be greatly relieved. And so despite the fact that in one case the surgery was much longer, And hence a lot more painful. That's 10 hours of pain. The fact that it already occurred in the past is the reason why Parit here prefers 10 hours of pain over one hour of pain. Why? Because 10 hours of past pain is much more preferable than future pain. So in general, we don't care about the past pains or even pleasures for that matter. So later Fisher constructs a parallel case. In which it's a drug that's being tested instead of a surgery. And the drug can give you pleasure. And it's another case where he's not clear about what happened because his memory has been wiped and he's forgotten what events. And then a forgetful nurse doesn't really know which patient he was and. It could be the person who had 10 hours of pleasure in the past, or one hour of pleasure in the future. So in general, at least when it comes to pleasure and pain, we tend to prefer our pain to be in the past and our pleasure to be in the future, right? Because pleasure is good and pain is bad, right? We want to avoid things that are bad, and if it's already happened, but we forgot so much, the better. So we have this kind of future bias where we prefer at least good experiences to be in the future and bad experiences to be in the past if it's necessary, if we must have the bad experiences. We at least prefer that they'd be over and done with rather than coming up in the future. So you might think, well, that is an interesting phenomenon. Why is it relevant? Well, it's relevant because this would explain a certain kind of asymmetry we would have regarding the past, right? So it could very well be the case. We're indifferent to past suffering. But we care deeply about future suffering, which is the reason we're afraid of death, but we're totally indifferent about having a earlier or later birth. So there you go. That would explain it. There's a couple of problems. I mean, so for one, if you had a God's eye view on your own life, on the entirety of two possible lives that you could have, It seems like your preferences would flip, right? You're imagining two possible lives, one with a 10 hour painful surgery, and the other with a one hour painful surgery. You're gonna prefer all else being equal to have the one hour surgery life over the 10 hour because 10 hours is a lot more pain. However, in this hypothetical, by taking a God's eye view of the matter, we're more or less thinking about our lives in the first moment of our existence, right? So the point is that this phenomenon of indifference to past pain or pleasure only obtains when we're enmeshed in a temporal perspective. When we have a certain location in our lives, a location in time where there's the presence, and we're able to consider the past in the future if we have a kind of God's eye view of the picture. Then of course these preferences go away. There's no more asymmetries. It's more or less symmetrical. However, I don't think that's an objection. Fisher describes this as if it were a kind of defect that Parit has as a response to Lucretius assymetry argument. But the fact that we occupy a temporal perspective is. The basic condition of life. There is no circumstance where we do not occupy a temporal perspective. We are always occupied with the present in some ways, in the sense that we exist in time. It's always coherent to say that there is some present time at which we exist whenever we do exist. So I don't regard that as a defect. Now, to be fair, Fisher doesn't describe as a defect, but he lists it as if it were an objection. I think the main problem with this argument is that we care about the past now, we don't care about. Past pain or pleasure, at least for its own sake, right? We would prefer that our pleasures are in the future and that our pains were in the past because we regard. Pleasure to be good and pain to be bad, all else being equal. But there's other things that are good. Not everything that is good is reducible to pleasure. For instance, think about your history or think about certain achievements you might have accomplished. So certain achievements you may actually prefer them to be in the future, but depending on how much you value the process by which you accomplished something, but you also may prefer it to be in the past. So I think the reason we care about pleasure and pain in this way, which we're preferring our pleasures to be in the future and the pains to be in the past and we're relatively indifferent to past pleasures or even past pains, is because they're experiences when it comes to the quality of experience. This matters for present and future considerations. However, if we're considering our autobiography, if we had a magic wand and we could just change our history, there's all sorts of regrets. People may have. Where they care very deeply about their pasts because if they could rectify the mistakes they made that they're regretful over, they would. Furthermore, I think virtue and vice are a similar thing, and so far as we cultivate good habits and become better people and virtue of that, there's a kind of arc to that story, which is relevant to have an arc. It's better to improve yourself in this fashion than it is to just come out of the gate. With no such problems, or at least there's a kind of value that improvement is realized, which we care about. And this is a past consideration. So I think the reason Parit focuses on just the future good things is because he was a consequentialist who thinks that what makes a right action right is purely the consequences That action would have. Another problem that Fisher identifies. Is that according to this argument, it almost goes too far. It would say, well, an earlier birth would never be desirable because it's only rational to prefer future things that we should be indifferent about the past, even though it would warrant fear of death, because why should we be afraid of death according to this perian style response? Because we're afraid about missing out on the goods of life, that we care deeply about future pleasures. There are certain possible pleasures and early death would cut short and deprive us of. Now other subsequent authors like Bradley have argued that missing out on the goods of life, which is what deprivations are, does not warrant fear. Fear is not a fitting attitude towards missing out on the possible goods of life of the future. Rather, we should feel sadness or something other than just fear. Fear is an unfitting attitude, but. You can imagine this is not a great variation from what Parit would say if we were going to come up with responses to the symmetry argument. So indifference would not be justified according to Bradley. We'd still even on a deprivation account of what makes death harm the one who dies. Indifference is not a fitting attitude towards one's own death, so he would still have a response to the symmetry argument. It just wouldn't be fear that would be fitting. I think Perfect's style of response is way too extreme and this is enough to sync as a general style of response. It's a response that I think is only available to consequentialist. So what that means is I think unless you're subscribing to Consequentialism or Par, it's line of reasoning, it does mean that there is a kind of symmetry about the future in the past, and that either you should be indifferent about both, or you should prefer to have an earlier birth and not be indifferent about your birth. So this is the response I actually favor, so I still reject Lucretia's conclusion. I think it is reasonable to fear death, and furthermore that fear is the fitting attitude. About one's own death. I think that's true, unlike what Bradley says. However, I don't think we should be indifferent about our birth. In fact, I think indifference is an unfitting attitude. I mentioned this earlier, but you might ask, well, what attitude is the fitting attitude then regarding your birth? I think gratitude. I think we should be grateful. Grateful for our own creation. Grateful for our own coming into existence. And I think that's not an attitude of indifference. And if one were indifferent, that would be a mistake. And going back to the symmetry arguments that would deny premise, one of the symmetry arguments. All right, so in this episode of the podcast, I first attempted to reformulate both of Lucretia's symmetry arguments, as I found in the second half of chapter four of John Martin Fisher's book, death Immortality and Meaning in Life. And then I considered two lines of response to the symmetry argument that Fisher considers the first having to do with the possibility of being born earlier, and its metaphysics. And the second being whether we should be indifferent about the past, which is the Perian line of response. The symmetry arguments from Lucretius and his followers are very powerful, especially once you reformulate them. But one of the reasons why it's so difficult to respond to some of them is partly because it's unclear what corresponding attitudes we should adopt regarding the future. In the past, as I put it earlier, if the future is a mirror to the past, well, when we step up to a mirror and we raise our right arm, the image in the mirror raises his left arm. And so given the complexity of our emotional lives, it can be challenging to identify which emotions are corresponding with what, which. Retrospective emotions correspond to which prospective emotions. This was the reason I reformulated the argument in terms of indifference. Indifference, more or less is a absence of an attitude, rather the presence of any positive attitude because it was unclear to me exactly which emotion is corresponding with fear of the future. So instead, I formulate in terms of indifference because. The emotion of regret is not corresponding to fear. You can only regret what is within your own control. So I don't think either of the responses that Fisher considers to the accretion symmetry argument work, I don't think the asymmetry of possibility responses that argued that it's impossible to be born earlier work if only because. It doesn't justify indifference regarding our birth. It doesn't justify asymmetry in our attitudes such that it would be reasonable for us to be afraid of our own death, but indifferent regarding our birth, which is roughly what Fisher says, even though I take it a little further than Fisher, because I think the past is changeless. Furthermore, I don't think the pian responses work if only because they're too extreme, so instead, I think an attitude of gratitude is fitting regarding our own creation.