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    Carmelics

    A reasoning platform. Break down any belief into clear reasons, explore both sides, and weigh the evidence honestly.

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    LoyalLoyalJusticeJustice
    Made withinDC&Austin
    Home/Original/inverse
    See Original
    Inverse View

    It is not the case that It might be possible to make death not bad for us by suitably preparing ourselves.

    ?Set your confidence on the premises below to see your aggregate.

    Reasons For

    2 perspectives
    Reason for 1 of 2
    ?
    • 1.Thanatizing desires does not eliminate the badness of death but merely prevents the subject from recognizing that badness, analogous to how a patient rendered incapable of feeling pain is not thereby unharmed by injury.
      ?

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    • 2.On the deprivation account (Nagel, Feldman), death is bad because it forecloses goods the person would otherwise have enjoyed, a fact that obtains independently of what desires the person currently holds.
      ?

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    • 3.A theory of welfare that makes wellbeing entirely hostage to manipulable desire-sets collapses the distinction between making one's life go well and merely arranging not to care that it goes badly.
      ?

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    Reason for 2 of 2
    ?
    • 1.Epictetus and the Stoics endorsed desire-modification as liberation from fear of death, yet even within that tradition Seneca acknowledged that what is extinguished by death—the rational agent itself—cannot be treated as merely one contingent interest among others.
      ?

      Think about whether this reason is strong or weak

    • 2.The self that survives thanatization is not the same self whose death is under evaluation; by eliminating future-directed desires one has effectively ended the psychologically continuous person, making the 'preparation' itself a form of ante-mortem death.
      ?

      Think about whether this reason is strong or weak

    Reasons Against

    1 perspective
    Reason against
    ?
    • 1.If some form of preferentialism is true, then something is bad for us only if it impairs our interests (i.e., thwarts our desires).
      ?

      Think about whether this reason is strong or weak

    • 2.By altering our desires, we could cease to have any interests that dying would impair.
      ?

      Think about whether this reason is strong or weak

    • 3.We might 'thanatize' our desires by abandoning all desires that death might thwart and replacing them with conditionalized versions (e.g., replacing 'let my project succeed' with 'should I live on, let my project succeed').
      ?

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