The termination theory versus the deprivation account - Essay Example

The Termination Theory versus The Deprivation Account Introduction All human beings must die. This is theonly thing that we know for a fact. The certainty aside, death still presents many questions to the living that make them curious of what exactly it means to die. Some people believe that death is the end of everything and nothing remains except the memory of a person in the ones he leaves behind. A number of philosophers have focused at length on the philosophy of death and have offered contrasting viewpoints on what their take on death is. The question that many people ask is whether death is evil or not. This is where the contrasting viewpoints arise whether the person believes in some form of immortality or not. One school of thought claims that death is an evil simply because it puts an end to all the good things that we experience in life. The benefits that humans accrue from being alive are activities, desires, perception, thought and all aspects that generally constitute the human life. Despite the misery that fills our lives on occasion, we still have the good times that we treasure and that is the greatest thing about being alive. On a scale, there are many experiences that we go through that are positive and fill us with joy, hope, and all other good emotions we experience. On the contrary, there are experiences in our lives including the death of our loved ones that make our lives worse. For this reason therefore, one would assume that life is a neutral as the good cancel out the bad. However, the good usually outweigh the bad and the result is positive meaning that the experiences of life far outweigh its consequences. The other school of thought is regarded as the termination thesis in which philosophers like Epicurus ascribe to. This school says that as long as we are alive, death is not with us but soon as we die, then we do not exist. The philosophers of this school say that there is nothing to fear in death. PART I The termination thesis is false. This is because it purports that when a person dies, there is no change that occurs except that the person has simply ceased to exist. It also claims that the person’s psychological or moral importance is not eroded due to death. Another argument that the termination thesis makes is that when a person dies, he does not continue to exist as a corpse. The existence of a person is the cornerstone of the termination thesis and it states that if a person continues to exist as a corpse, the person continues to exist and is contrary to the thesis. To die is bad, not because of death itself, but because life as we know it is a good experience and the loss of it is a deprivation. It is not bad because of any positive elements that it might have but because it removes what we consider desirable. PART II The termination theory in my account is false. This however does not mean that the arguments by Epicurus are easy. In any case, it makes the termination theory even harder while making those of the deprivation theory look harder too. The termination theory does not purport that there is no life after death. In fact, neither does the deprivation theory. In the opinion of Epicurus and other like-minded philosophers who support the termination theory, there are a number of points that need to be considered. When a person dies, he ceases to exist. That is the consensus between the two theories. However, the termination theory goes ahead to say that that occurrence cannot be considered as being an evil and as such, people should not fear death. When a tree dies, there is a remaining stump that is still firmly rooted to the ground albeit lifeless. Therefore, when a person cuts the tree off and counts the annual rings, then one can tell the age of the tree when it died. When one looks into the field, you see what was once a tree. If this is the case for all organisms, then, we all cease to exist at some point but the signs of our existence are still visible. There is a transition that is involved in the death of an organism and the remains can be seen as evidence of that. Some persisting object must be the subject of the transition from life to death and this seems to provide a reason to claim that the termination thesis is false. If the tree can persist long after its death still rooted to the ground, then, human beings still exist in a manner after their deaths. The point is that during that period, the goods that were positive in their lives are deprived of them. Human beings often inscribe on gravestones that the person formerly living now lies there. It is true that the person now lies inside the grave albeit rotten and probably reduced to a pile of dust. But in any case, there is evidence of the person’s existence in the previous life now. The pervasiveness of the idea that people do not go out of existence when they die is given plausibility by the inscriptions on their gravestones. If people were to be considered nonexistent after their death has occurred, then at no time will inscriptions give so much insight into the state that they exist in. Every inscription on every gravestone is considered a lie by the termination thesis. Another scenario is that the person is the body as the history of the person begins at birth and ends after he has long been buried. As long as the body of the person persists albeit unconscious, the person still exists in the body. The termination theory seems to ignore these facts that human beings hold dear to them. Although the paper supports the arguments put forth by the deprivation account, the point that are raised by the termination theory make it even harder to be completely supportive without asking some questions. First, the deprivation account suggests that it is possible for a person to be harmed by his own death. The question here is whether it is possible to consider something as being bad or evil without experiencing its positive unpleasantness. Equally difficult is whether the deprivation of possible goods can be regarded as an evil while the person is not paying mind to that deprivation. Second is that it is difficult to assign the misfortune of death to a subject that is no longer existent. A misfortune must be assigned to a victim. Hence, when a person dies, he does not have the consciousness to discover that he has been wronged. If human beings consider the posthumous a misfortune how then do they not regard the prenatal with the same sentiment? These are some of the issues that the deprivation theory assumes and that the termination theory seems to have an edge on. However, at the end of it all, the deprivation account seems to give the best arguments. PART III The deprivation account states that death is an evil as it ultimately robs the person of the goods that he may have been enjoying if he was alive. Nagel states that; “If death is an evil at all, it cannot be because of its positive features, but only because of what it deprives us of…. Death is an evil because it brings to an end all the goods that life contains” (pp. 1-2). However, there is no continuing consciousness after death which makes it impossible for a person to feel either pain or pleasure. This point makes understanding both accounts of death harder to compare as both give valid arguments that if positively considered could sway a person either way. In order to understand what Nagel?s claims are over that of Epicurus, it is prudent to consider the life of a person before he died. The epicurean school of thought considers many things that happen in the life of a person as being either good or bad. However, upon death, these things cannot be classified as such since the person who was previously enjoying them has no capability of cognition. Therefore, what Nagel considers good for human beings is not what Epicurus considers. The choice here is to either reject the basis and the assumptions behind the arguments by Epicurus or reject the beliefs that make us human on the good or bad things that we encounter in life. In the preface of Nagel?s book, he states that; “I believe one should trust…intuitions over arguments…. Given a knockdown argument for an intuitively unacceptable position, one should assume there is probably something wrong with the argument that one cannot detect…” (x). this means that the author chooses to dismiss the arguments by Epicurus that solely focuses on the logical arguments instead of the experiences and intuitions that one has garnered in the course of living. The partners in crime principle which Nagel uses in the deprivation account to counter the arguments of the termination thesis can be illustrated by the following examples. Human beings live by the principle that what they do not know cannot hurt them. This seems to somewhat support the epicurean theory that once you are dead, you do not know what you are missing since you are not conscious and cannot experience pain or pleasure and thus what you do not know will not hurt you. However, according to Nagel, one does not have to know something for it to hurt him. If your friend goes behind your back and does something that hurts your reputation but you have no knowledge of it, Nagel believes that, despite the fact that you are not aware, you have been harmed. Therefore, betrayal harms you whether you are aware or not and so does death. The other example is of impairment. Consider a person who has been involved in an accident that leaves him with severe cognitive impairment where his intellect is now comparable to that of an infant. The victim of the change is contented and happy with his condition since he does not know what happened. While the epicurean theory will disregard this fact, Nagel says that such an occurrence is definitely bad for the victim. The state of the person?s view is one of the tenets of the termination thesis. The view highlights that the well being of a person is characterized by the pleasures or pains that he experiences that can be considered as either being good or bad. The states must however exist at a given point in time for them to be considered as being either good or bad for the person. This state of welfare seems to discount death since it is not a state of life and therefore cannot be considered as being an occurrence in time but rather an end to the welfare of the person and the person himself. The state of the person?s view is vehemently opposed by Nagel who is convinced that the accounts of good or bad cannot be merely dismissed with such simplicity and that more parameters have to be considered. When a person is brain dead, that person is considered to still be alive. As such, the argument for the termination theory is that the person has not ceased to exist. Nagel on the other hand concedes that the state of being brain dead is not bad for the person because it is a bad state but rather is bad because it deprives the subject the good things in life. The elimination of the possibilities of the person by the condition is what constitutes the evilness of the situation. Mental degradation is a classic case of reality and the alternatives that would have existed prior to the state. Nagel states that It therefore seems to me worth exploring the position that most good and ill fortune has as its subject a person identified by his history and his possibilities, rather than merely by his categorical state of the moment—and that while this subject can be exactly located in a sequence of places and times, the same is not necessarily true of the goods and ills that befall him (p. 5). Bodily death that makes a person lose the cognitive senses of pain and pleasure is not bad simply because it is a bad state but rather is bad because it eliminates the possibility of feeling and thus deprives the person the possibility of enjoying the goods of living. PART IV The Lucretian argument focuses on the prenatal and the posthumous state of a person. Most of the people do not have a problem with the time that they were born. However, they regard their deaths as a misfortune. Others even consider that the fact that some people did not have any children is a misfortune on the part of those children. Lucretius argues that if the time before our births was not a time to lament, how then is the time after our deaths different. He advocates for a change either in the attitude that we have before birth or the attitude we have after death. He supports the change in the latter. The argument that has been forwarded by this author is one that should be carefully considered. The fact that a person is dead deprives him the goods that he would have been enjoying in life. The birth of a person in contrast does not deprive a person any good in life. Therefore, following the precincts of the deprivation account, the arguments by Lucretius can be supported. The prenatal condition deprives us nothing but the posthumous does. Considering the fact that death to many is regarded as a misfortune, can birth be regarded in the same light? If one was to subject a corpse to a mishap as that with which a piece of furniture would be subjected to, no one will show pity for the corpse. The case of pity would be for the man?s death rather than for the corpse’s mishap. When a person dies, his temporal and spatial locations are not subject to discussion. However, his misfortune is not as easy to locate. If a person is alive and there is a loss to be suffered, the individual must suffer the loss in his temporal or spatial location although the loss does not have a location. It cannot be considered therefore a misfortune to die, as one cannot suffer a loss while dead. Some of the greatest talents the world has produced usually die without having children. One cannot consider the fact that these children were not born a misfortune. Unless we can conclusively assign good and ill to an unborn child or even a pair of gametes, then we cannot consider being born or not being born a misfortune. Conclusion Every human being must contend with the fact that he must die. The termination thesis states that when a person dies, he ceases to exist which means that he has lost the ability to feel neither pain nor pleasure. This means that not all things that might befall that person will harm him since he has ceased existing. The thesis is meant to alleviate fear of death in people as it says that death does not have the capability of harm and as such is not an evil and should not be feared. The deprivation theory on the other hand states that death is an evil. It further states that the evil nature of death does not arise from the fact that death is not a desirable thing but rather that the death of a person deprives him of the goods that are associated with living. The two schools of thought each present arguments that are aimed to support their views. Despite the fact that there are both arguments and counterarguments for both of the thoughts, the deprivation account, in my opinion, stated the strongest case for reasons that have been discussed above. It is therefore the conclusion of this paper that death is a bad thing. This state, although the source of the bad sentiment, is not bad due to this reason but rather due to the fact that it deprives the human being the possibilities, choices and the experiences of the goods of living. Works cited Nagel, Thomas. Mortal Questions. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1979. Print Read More