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    Even if an afterlife is impossible, it would not be point... — Carmelics
    Home/Afterlife & Death
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    Even if an afterlife is impossible, it would not be pointless to reflect on whether the impossibility of an afterlife should dominate our values in this life.

    Afterlife & Death
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    1 reason for
    2 reasons against

    Reasons For

    1 perspective
    Reason for
    ?
    • 1.Our values about present persons, things, and events have a bearing on the future, including the possibility of a future for individuals after their death.
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    • 2.The question of the implications for our lives now if at death we pass into oblivion remains significant regardless of whether an afterlife is possible.
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    Reasons Against

    2 perspectives
    Reason against 1 of 2
    ?
    • 1.If an afterlife is genuinely impossible, Epicurus's symmetry argument shows death is not bad for the subject, removing its normative urgency.
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    • 2.Without death's badness as a motivating premise, reflection on its implications cannot generate substantive revisions to how we ought to live.
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    • 3.Philosophical reflection is only non-pointless when it can in principle alter justified normative commitments, not merely rehearse foregone conclusions.
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    Reason against 2 of 2
    ?
    • 1.Bernard Williams argued that immortality would drain life of meaning, implying mortality's finitude is itself constitutive of what makes values matter.
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    • 2.If finitude is the source rather than the enemy of value, then accepting afterlife's impossibility already vindicates our present values rather than threatening them.
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    • 3.Reflection premised on afterlife's impossibility as a problem to be managed misdiagnoses mortality and thus produces distorted rather than illuminating normative guidance.
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    Afterlife & Death

    Related

    Bernard Williams argued that immortality would drain life of meaning, implying m...If an afterlife is genuinely impossible, Epicurus's symmetry argument shows deat...If finitude is the source rather than the enemy of value, then accepting afterli...Our values about present persons, things, and events have a bearing on the futur...
    +4 moreShow less
    Philosophical reflection is only non-pointless when it can in principle alter ju...Reflection premised on afterlife's impossibility as a problem to be managed misd...The question of the implications for our lives now if at death we pass into obli...Without death's badness as a motivating premise, reflection on its implications ...

    Similar

    We cannot rationally rule out the possibility of an afterlife for huma...85%Speculation on an afterlife would be pointless if we know it is imposs...84%If we know that it is impossible for individual persons to survive bio...81%If there is no afterlife, the problem of evil becomes impossible to so...81%

    Source

    AI-extracted
    SEP: afterlife
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    So, one reason why the topic of an afterlife is of historical and contemporary interest is because our values about present persons, things, and events have a bearing on the future, including the possibility of a future for individuals after their death. If we know that it is impossible for individual persons to survive biological death, speculation on an afterlife we might expect or hope for would be pointless (unless it serves some purpose in terms of fiction), but it would not be pointless to reflect on whether the impossibility of an afterlife should dominate our values in this life. What ...

    Details

    Type
    claim
    Perspectives
    3 (1 for, 2 against)
    Edits
    1 edit