alexandria/2024/documents/by-course/phil-1/paper-2/main.typ

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#import "prelude.typ": indented-argument

#show: ams-article.with(
  title: [On the Argument Against Fearing Death],
  bibliography: bibliography("refs.bib"),
)

#show: word-count.with(exclude: (
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        Perm: A2V4847
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        Word Count: #total-words
        #footnote[
          Figure computed programmatically during document compilation. Discounts
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)

= Introduction

The argument Against Fearing Death says that you should not fear being dead
because it is not bad for you. In this paper, I reject this thesis by showing
that the argument from hedonism with which the author supports their premises
forces us to draw incorrect conclusions.

The author states the argument against fearing death as follows on
#cite(<Korman2022-KORLFA>, supplement: [p. 74]):

#indented-argument(
  title: "Against Fearing Death",
  abbreviation: "FD",
  [ You cease to be conscious when you die ],
  [ If you cease to be conscious when you die, then being dead is not bad for you ],
  [ So, being dead is not bad for you ],
  [ If being dead is not bad for you, then you should not fear death ],
  [ So, you should not fear death ],
)

First off, the author does not argue that you should not fear the _process_ of
dying. A painful death is something to be rationally feared. The author only
argues that _being dead_ itself is not bad. That is, you may fear the way by
which you die, but you should not fear the state of being dead itself.
Furthermore, if there was a high likelihood you may die painlessly, perhaps
under anesthesia during a risky surgery, you should not fear that either, as
you will painlessly transition from being alive to being dead, and there is
nothing to fear about being dead.

The author justifies FD1 by denying the only possibility of rejecting it, which
is the notion that your consciousness continues after the death of your
physical body, perhaps in an afterlife. He rejects this idea by arguing that
you, the consciousness reading this, and your physical human body, are one and
the same (i.e. they are _numerically equivalent_). So, if your physical human
body biologically ceases to be conscious after death (which it does), then you
also cease to be conscious when you die.

Premise FD3 is the direct result of FD1 and FD2, so its validity is dependent
entirely on FD1 and FD2. We've already shown why FD1 should be accepted. Let us
first examine FD4 before returning to FD2.

FD4 makes a lot of intuitive sense. Indeed, upon close inspection, there are no
glaring issues. It is rational to fear something if and only if it is bad for
you. Sure, you may fear things that are not bad for you, but these fears are
_irrational_, you should try to resist them. The only things that it is
rational to fear are things that are actually bad for you, such as burning your
hand on a hot stove, or stubbing your toe.

Finally, we return to premise FD2. This is perhaps the most questionable
premise as it is not immediately clear why being unconscious implies that being
dead is not bad.

We first need a rigorous account of what exactly characterizes something as
"bad." The author defines the following hedonist principle:

#pad(
  left: 16pt,
  [ (HD\*) Something is bad for you if and only if it results in
    more pain than you would otherwise have had ],
)

Then, he constructs the following #smallcaps[Argument from Hedonism] to support
FD2.

#indented-argument(
  title: "The Argument from Hedonism",
  abbreviation: "AH",
  [
    If you cease to be conscious when you die, then being dead doesn't result in more pain than you otherwise would have had
  ],
  [
    Something is bad for you if and only if it results in more pain than you otherwise would have had
  ],
  [
    $<==>$ (FD2) So, if you cease to be conscious when you die, then being dead isn't bad for you
  ],
)

I've slightly modified the author's numberings to emphasize that the conclusion
AH3 is equivalent to the premise FD2. That is, if the #smallcaps[Argument from
Hedonism] holds, then FD2 must be true.

We've shown that the author's argument for why you should not fear death is
substantiated by what appear to be valid premises. I object in section 2 by
arguing that we should _not_ accept the author's hedonist principle, and
therefore should not accept premise FD2, because it leads us to the conclusion
that we should kill ourselves. In section 3, I address various potential
responses to my objection.

= Don't kill yourself

I will advance the argument that we should reject HD\* because its logical
conclusion is that you should kill yourself. HD\* implies that being dead is
not bad for you, but it also implies that _being alive_ is bad for you.

#indented-argument(
  title: "Argument for Killing Yourself",
  abbreviation: "KYS",
  [You are occasionally conscious when you are alive],
  [If you are conscious, you experience more pain than you otherwise would have if you were unconscious],
  [$<==>$ (HD\*) Something is bad for you if and only if it results in more pain than you otherwise would have had],
  [So, being alive is bad for you],
  [If you are unconscious when you are dead, then being dead isn't bad for you],
  [If being alive is bad for you, then: if being dead isn't bad for you, you should stop being alive],
  [So, you should stop being alive],
)

In other words, KYS7 plainly states that you should kill yourself to stop being
alive. This is clearly a ridiculous conclusion and one we should not accept. In
order to reject this conclusion, we must reject KYS3, which is HD\*. All of the
other premises can be substantiated easily, as follows.

KYS1 is trivial. KYS2 is true because you experience no pain when unconscious,
and we certainly experience pain at some point while conscious. So, we must
experience more pain while conscious than we otherwise would have (while
unconscious).

KYS6 essentially just says that if being alive is bad and being dead is good,
then you should take action to stop being alive and start being dead. After
all, why continue doing something that is bad for you when the alternative not
bad for you?

Clearly, our own avenue forward is to reject HD\* as our principle of hedonism.
Without HD\*, the #smallcaps[Argument from Hedonism] no longer stands, and
therefore the argument for FD2 fails.

= Possible objections

One might attempt to object to KYS without rejecting HD\*. The only other
premises to object against are KYS1 and KYS2. In particular, one might raise
the concern that someone could be alive without ever being conscious (as an
objection to KYS1), and that someone may not experience any pain while
conscious (an objection to KYS2).

These criticisms are not substantial enough for us to reject KYS. KYS1 brings
up a valid point, but being unconscious for the rest of your life is not really
substantially different from being dead. Regardless, we could modify our
argument to

#pagebreak()

#[
  = AI Contribution Statement

  #quote[I did not use AI whatsoever in the writing of this paper.]
]<wordcount-exclude>