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    We should not be indifferent about the extent of our pasts. — Carmelics
    Home/Afterlife & Death
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    We should not be indifferent about the extent of our pasts.

    Afterlife & Death
    ?Rate how convincing each reason is below to see the overall strength.
    1 reason for
    2 reasons against

    Reasons For

    1 perspective
    Reason for
    ?
    • 1.Being in the grip of forward-looking pursuits is important, but we have passive interests as well, which make a more extensive past preferable.
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    • 2.Having been devising and pursuing plans in the past is worthwhile.
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    • 3.If fated to die tomorrow, most of us would prefer to have a thousand years of glory behind us rather than fifty.
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    Reasons Against

    2 perspectives
    Reason against 1 of 2
    ?
    • 1.The value of a past life is fully captured at the moment of death; after death, no subject exists to benefit from having had an extensive past.
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    • 2.Without a surviving subject who can be benefited or harmed, retrospective preferences about past duration are merely sentimental and carry no normative weight.
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    • 3.Epicurus's symmetry argument entails that our rational indifference to prenatal non-existence should extend to any preference about the magnitude of past experience.
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    Reason against 2 of 2
    ?
    • 1.Buddhist and Stoic traditions converge on the view that attachment to accumulated personal history is a source of suffering rather than genuine flourishing.
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    • 2.If the self is constituted moment-to-moment rather than as a continuous narrative accumulation, then preferring 'more past' conflates quantity of lived time with the quality of present awareness.
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    • 3.Parfit's reductionist account of personal identity undermines the notion that a numerically identical subject persists across a thousand years to 'own' and benefit from that history.
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    Afterlife & Death

    Related

    Being in the grip of forward-looking pursuits is important, but we have passive ...Buddhist and Stoic traditions converge on the view that attachment to accumulate...Epicurus's symmetry argument entails that our rational indifference to prenatal ...Having been devising and pursuing plans in the past is worthwhile.
    +6 moreShow less
    If fated to die tomorrow, most of us would prefer to have a thousand years of gl...If the self is constituted moment-to-moment rather than as a continuous narrativ...Parfit's reductionist account of personal identity undermines the notion that a ...The value of a past life is fully captured at the moment of death; after death, ...We want to have lived well.Without a surviving subject who can be benefited or harmed, retrospective prefer...

    Similar

    Our attitude about future life should match our attitude about past li...74%The argument that our attitude about future life should match our atti...72%We have a far-reaching bias toward preferring that good things be in o...72%It is not surprising to find ourselves with no desire to extend life i...71%

    Source

    AI-extracted3/3 agreementValid
    SEP: death
    Nevertheless, it does not follow that we should be indifferent about the extent of our pasts.
    View source passageHide passage
    Nevertheless, it does not follow that we should be indifferent about the extent of our pasts. Being in the grip of forward-looking pursuits is important, but we have passive interests as well, which make a more extensive past preferable. Moreover, having been devising and pursuing plans in the past is worthwhile. If fated to die tomorrow, most of us would prefer to have a thousand years of glory behind us rather than fifty. We want to have lived well.
    Extraction notes

    Validity: The premises—passive interests favoring a more extensive past, the worth of past plan-pursuing, the intuitive preference for more years of glory, and the desire to have lived well—are all explicitly stated in the passage and collectively provide rational support for the conclusion that we should not be indifferent about the extent of our pasts.

    Confidence: The argument is clearly structured: the conclusion that we should care about the extent of our pasts is supported by multiple premises about passive interests, the value of past pursuits, and our preference for longer lives of accomplishment.

    Details

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