#import "@preview/unequivocal-ams:0.1.1": ams-article, theorem, proof #import "@preview/wordometer:0.1.3": word-count, total-words #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: ( heading, , table, figure, footnote, )) #set cite(style: "institute-of-electrical-and-electronics-engineers") #set text(fractions: true) #set table(inset: 8pt, align: center) #align( center, pad( x: 20%, table( columns: (1fr, 1fr), [ Perm: A2V4847 ], [ Word Count: #total-words #footnote[ Figure computed programmatically during document compilation. Discounts content in tables and the AI contribution statement. ] ], ), ), ) = 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(, 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.] ]