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ABSTRACT
Most philosophers in the death literature believe that death can be bad for the person who dies. The most popular view of death’s badness—namely, deprivationism—holds that death is bad for the person who dies because, and to the extent that, it deprives them of the net good that they would have accrued, had their actual death not occurred. Deprivationists thus face the challenge of locating the time that death is bad for a person. This is known as the Timing Problem, which is thought to be one of the biggest challenges facing views holding that death can be bad for the person who dies. Every possible answer to this question has been defended in the literature, yet each answer can seemingly be shown to be subject to compelling objections. In this paper, I argue that the force of the Timing Problem is illusory. Specifically, I argue that the problem, as formulated in the literature, is underspecified. Any adequately precise form of the question ‘When is death bad for the person who dies?’ is one to which there is a clear, decisive, and unproblematic answer.
Disclosure Statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.
Notes
1 Nagel [Citation1970] allows that death is all-things-considered bad for the person who dies, to the extent that it deprives them of the net good that they would accrue were their actual death not to occur, where part of that good might include experience itself. Deprivationism also allows that death can be all-things-considered good for a person when the additional life that one would have, were their actual death not to occur, would be a net bad. For more recent defences of deprivationism, see Feldman [Citation1991] and Bradley [Citation2009].
2 Discussion of harm in the literature tends to focus on all-things-considered and pro tanto harms. An event is all-things-considered harmful for a person iff ‘its pro tanto harms to that person outweigh its pro tanto benefits to that person’. An event is pro tanto harmful for a person iff ‘it has an all-things-considered-harm-making feature’ [Bradley Citation2012: 393–4]. Events that cause intrinsic bads (e.g. pain) are pro tanto harms, as are events that cause instrumental bads (e.g deprivation of pleasure).
3 Most alternative views that allow that deprivationist considerations are part of the true explanation. These include McMahan [Citation2002], Blatti [2012], Benatar [Citation2017], and Kamm [Citation2019]. Categorical desire views are alternative accounts that completely exclude deprivationist considerations. See, for instance, Belshaw [Citation2009: ch. 4].
4 See [Bradley Citation2009: 74–80]. This is assuming that, had I not stubbed my toe, I would have been in no pain for those five minutes, and that the stubbing of my toe made no difference to my life after those five minutes.
5 See Gardner [Citation2017] and Bradley [Citation2009: 74–80], respectively. Note also that answers to this question might be picking out different types (e.g. intrinsic, extrinsic, pro tanto, all-things-considered) of harm. I suffered an intrinsic harm from 12:00–12:05 and I suffered an all-things-considered harm in that same duration. At least, I did so under the assumption that I would not have been in pain (or missed out on other pleasure), had I not stubbed my toe.
6 For defences of priorism, see Pitcher [Citation1993], Feinberg [Citation1993], Luper [Citation2007, Citation2009].
7 For defences of concurrentism, see Lamont [Citation1998] and Wolf [Citation2018].
8 For defences of subsequentism, see Feit [Citation2002, Citation2015], Bradley [Citation2004, Citation2009], and Boonin, [Citation2019].
9 For discussions and defences of atemporalism, see Silverstein [Citation2000, Citation2010] and Johansson [Citation2012]. Bradley allows that, in some unique cases, death might also be timelessly bad [Citation2009: 76–8].
10 This view is affirmed by Grey [Citation1999] and Nagel [Citation1970] might have held this view, although he might have accepted some form of atemporalism instead.
11 But if premise (2) is read as the proposition that there is no determinate time at which death is bad, then indefinitists would accept this premise and deny that the Timing Argument is valid.
12 For a defence of eternalism, see Feldman [Citation1991]. But note that Feldman later clarified his view in a way that makes it difficult to classify his exact considered position [Bradley Citation2009: 84n23].
13 See, for instance Feldman [Citation1992: ch. 1] and Lizza [Citation2018].
14 For discussion of these issues, see Belshaw [Citation2009], DeGrazia [Citation2014], and Luper [Citation2019].
15 The phrase total well-being is used to denote the total prudential intrinsic value accrued during one’s life. The higher a person’s total well-being, the better their life was for them.
16 This is Fred Feldman’s [Citation1992: 154] interpretation of the question. One interesting feature of this version of the question is that it’s formulated in terms of truthmakers. But one might wish to remove the ‘is it true’ phrasing, so as instead to ask the following question: ‘At what times t is the total well-being of a person P lower than the total well-being that P would have in the nearest possible world where P’s actual death did not occur?’ The answer to this question might be the same as the one formulated in terms of truthmakers, or it might be an analogue to atemporalism in the same way, and for the same reasons, that one answer to the Momentary Well-Being Question is an analogue of atemporalism. I’ll discuss this answer in detail in section 3.4.
17 These forms of priorism and concurrentism would not be examples of spooky metaphysical claims, because they would not be assigning well-being levels to non-existent persons and because they would not commit themselves to backwards causation.
18 Part of the confusion over the Timing Question stems from the fact that Epicureans and deprivationists seem to be using the terms harm and bad for in ways that cause them to talk past one another, and perhaps even to engage in merely verbal disputes. See Timmerman [Citation2019]. This is one reason why it’s important to become clear on the precise question that one might be asking when wanting to know when an event such as death is bad for a person.
19 This response is not perfectly analogous to a typical version of atemporalism. In the most analogous cases, there would be a harm of some kind, but that harm would not be located in time. In this case, on the other hand, there is no fact of the matter about whether there is a harm at all.
20 This is one way that Duncan Purves [Citation2016: 103] interprets the question. This is also how John Martin Fischer [Citationforthcoming] understands the question.
21 Again, it’s possible that Socrates’ additional life would have been, on the whole, bad for him. If that were true, then the answer to (2) in the case of Socrates would be ‘at no times’. It’s also possible that counterfactual determinism is false and there is no fact of the matter about whether Socrates’ additional life would have been, on the whole, good for him, in which case the answer to (C) would be indeterminate. The crucial points are that these answers can generalize to any supposedly harmful event, and they do not assign well-being properties to people at times when those people don’t exist, thereby avoiding the supposedly spooky metaphysical claims.
22 There’s a related question worth asking, too. Instead of asking about what times ground facts about people’s well-being, one may be interested in the question ‘When do the deprivations of intrinsic goods occur?’ To answer the question, first consider the intrinsic goods g for person P that obtain in the nearest possible world w* where P’s death in w does not occur, where g are goods that do not obtain at w. With this in mind, we can see that the question at hand is ‘When do g obtain at w*’? The answer to this question is straightforward and unproblematic, for the same reason that the answer to (C) is straightforward and unproblematic. The exact details will depend on the imagined case, but it will always be the times that P would have been alive and accruing intrinsic goods, had their actual death not occurred. Thanks to an anonymous referee for raising this helpful point.
23 The phrase momentary well-being level is used to denote the net prudential intrinsic value accrued during the moment in question. The higher a person’s momentary well-being, the better their life was for them at that moment.
24 This is Ben Bradley’s interpretation of the question. See Bradley [Citation2009: sec. 3.3] for discussion.
25 Although I grant that the answer to this question depends on whether the deceased have well-being levels, there are good arguments that meaningful well-being comparisons can be made between worlds in which an individual does, and those where she does not, exist. See Pummer [Citation2019].
26 One exception to this claim is if a certain kind of desire satisfactionism turns out to be true, one that allows for death to change one’s momentary well-being level while one is alive. For a defence of such a view, see Luper [Citation2009: ch. 6] and Boonin [Citation2019: ch. 4]. This is not a problem for my argument, however. If such a view of well-being turns out to be true, then an analogue of priorism would be the correct answer to the Momentary Well-Being Counterfactual Question, and premise (1) of the Timing Argument would be false. This is certainly a contentious position, but the contentiousness stems from this view of well-being and not from the view that death can be bad for the person who dies.
27 See, e.g., Hershenov [Citation2007], Bradley [Citation2009: ch. 3], Smuts [Citation2012], and Taylor [Citation2012].
28 Epicureans might take the ‘at no time’ response to the Momentary Well-Being Question to be a vindication of their view. They might insist that the Momentary Well-Being Question picks out the only correct use of the term ‘harm’, and that an event can only be a harm if there is a time where one is worse off than one would otherwise have been. This imagined Epicurean response is unsatisfactory, for a few reasons. First, it’s unclear why the Momentary Well-Being Question should be thought to be picking out the only accurate use of the term ‘harm’, or even whether it picks out an accurate use at all. See, for instance, Gardner [Citation2017]. Second, if the Epicurean makes these assumptions, then they are involved in a mere verbal dispute with deprivationists. See Timmerman [Citation2019].
29 Note also that this response is consistent with the aforementioned deprivationist responses to (B) and (C), and so this response does not commit the deprivationist to atemporalism full stop.
30 Those who accept subsequentism in response to (D) will have to accept that the deceased have momentary well-being levels of 0. See Bradley [Citation2009: 108–10, Citation2016: 324–6]. For discussion, see also Johansson [Citation2013: 264–6] and Luper [Citation2013: 320–1].
31 For very helpful feedback on earlier versions of this paper, I’m grateful to Kurt Blankschaen, Tim Burkhardt, Yishai Cohen, Neil Feit, John Martin Fischer, David Hershenov, Steve Kershnar, Michael McKenna, Benjamin Mitchell-Yellin, Joseph Moore, Theron Pummer, Duncan Purves, Lucia Schwarz, James Stacey Taylor, the anonymous referees and the editor Stephen Hetherington, as well as the audiences at the 2019 Pacific APA, the University of Arizona, University at Buffalo, the College of New Jersey, and the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.