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How A-theoretic Deprivationists Should Respond to Lucretius


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Authors

DENG, NATALJA 

Abstract

jats:titleABSTRACT:</jats:title>jats:pWhat, if anything, makes death bad for the deceased themselves? Deprivationists hold that death is bad for the deceased iff it deprives them of intrinsic goods they would have enjoyed had they lived longer. This view faces the problem that birth too seems to deprive one of goods one would have enjoyed had one been born earlier, so that it too should be bad for one. There are two main approaches to the problem. In this paper, I explore the second approach, by Anthony Brueckner and John Martin Fischer, and suggest that it can be developed so as to meet deprivationists’ needs. On the resulting view, metaphysical differences between the future and the past give rise to a corresponding axiological difference in the intrinsic value of future and past experiences. As experiences move into the past, they lose their intrinsic value for the person.</jats:p>

Description

Keywords

A-theories, death, deprivationism, symmetry problem

Journal Title

Journal of the American Philosophical Association

Conference Name

Journal ISSN

2053-4477
2053-4485

Volume Title

Publisher

Cambridge University Press (CUP)
Sponsorship
The work was mostly carried out while the author was a member of the Swiss National Science Foundation project ‘Intentionality as the Mark of the Mental: Metaphysical Perspectives on Contemporary Philosophy of Mind’ (Sinergia, CRSI11-127488), and partly while the author was a member of the Templeton World Charity Foundation project ‘Theology, Philosophy of Religion, and the Natural Sciences’