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Inverse View
It is not the case that A person may be benefitted or harmed by things that happen while she is dead (i.e., posthumous harm exists).
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Reasons For
2 perspectives
Reason for 1 of 2
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1.
Harm requires a subject who can experience or have interests frustrated at the time the harmful event occurs.
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2.
A deceased person lacks both sentience and active interests, and thus cannot constitute a subject of harm at any post-mortem moment.
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3.
Therefore, posthumous events may wrong the living (who held relational expectations) without harming the dead person herself.
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Reason for 2 of 2
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1.
Epicurus's symmetry argument establishes that the pre-natal and post-mortem states are relevantly identical: in neither does the person exist to be affected.
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2.
If deprivation before birth does not harm the non-existent person, there is no principled asymmetry that makes deprivation after death harmful to the deceased.
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Reasons Against
1 perspective
Reason against
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1.
A man's life includes much that does not take place within the boundaries of his life.
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2.
There is a simple account of what is wrong with breaking a deathbed promise: it is an injury to the dead man.
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