MGTA02H3 Lecture Notes - Lecture 14: Brain Injury, In Death, Counterexample
In “Death,” Nagel argues that the billions of years before you were born are different from the billions
of years after you die. For the time before you were born, the fact that you lacked the intrinsic goods
of life (e.g. feeling, perception, thought, etc.) was not a deprivation that you suffered. But for the time
after you die, the fact that you lack these intrinsic goods is a deprivation that you suffer. Why does
Nagel believe in this asymmetry? Explain his argument. Do you agree with his position? Why or why
not?
Why does Nagel believe in this asymmetry? Explain his argument.
• Death is an evil as it deprives us of life, what we feel, experience, etc.
• life itself is positively/intrinsically valuable
• “… brings to an end all the good things” in life (Nagel, 1)
• He says life is worth living (middle of page 2)
o Experience is everything, even if the bad experiences in life outweigh the good. Having
experiences
• If death is an evil, it is a “loss of life” (Nagel, 3) instead of the idea of inexistence
o Deprivation exists only in the absence of goods
• First time he mentions asymmetry: the idea of what is good about life and what is bad about
death
o How can the way we perceive posthumous be bad, when the idea of prenatal
nonexistence is not (Nagel, 4)
• life is all we have and the loss of it is the greatest loss we can sustain.
• On the other hand it may be objected that death deprives this supposed loss of its
subject, and that if we realize that death is not an unimaginable condition of the
persisting person, but a mere blank, we will see that it can have no value whatever,
positive or negative (Nagel, 1)
• He uses an example of bethoven to further enhance his argument where he says, “The fact
that Beethoven had no children may have been a cause of regret to him, or a sad thing for
the world, but it cannot be described as a misfortune for the children that he never had”
(Nagel, 7) PARAPHRASE THIS
• All of us, I believe, are fortunate to have been born. But unless good and ill can be assigned
to an embryo, or even to an unconnected pair of gametes, it cannot be said that not to be
born is a misfortune.
• MAIN ARGUMENT: “It is true that both the time before a man's birth and the time after
his death are times when he does not exist. But the rime after his death is time of which his
death deprives him” (Nagel, 7)
• “we cannot say that the time prior to a man's birth is time in which he would have lived”
(Nagel, 8) – this is saying how the time before birth is time without experiences, unlike the
time after, the time after death prevents him from living, but this is not true for the time
before, it cannot be considered a loss of life
• “…death, no matter how inevitable, is an abrupt cancellation of indefinitely
extensive possible goods” (Nagel, 9)
•
• If time, talk about can something be bad for someone, without actually experiencing the bad
things (what I don’t know can’t hurt me) – use example of being adopted
o Nagel’s example: Brain injury: Suppose a person endures a brain injury and is
reduced to the cognitive capacity of a child. The person appears happy, and is
happy (from their subjective point of view). This seems like a bad thing for the
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Document Summary
In death, nagel argues that the billions of years before you were born are different from the billions of years after you die. For the time before you were born, the fact that you lacked the intrinsic goods of life (e. g. feeling, perception, thought, etc. ) was not a deprivation that you suffered. But for the time after you die, the fact that you lack these intrinsic goods is a deprivation that you suffer. Death, no matter how inevitable, is an abrupt cancellation of indefinitely extensive possible goods (nagel, 9) Disagree on what i don"t know cant hurt me lead into idea of truth, it will end up hurting you in the long run, . Life is all we have and the loss of it is the greatest loss we can sustain (nagel, 1) Loss, betrayal, deception, and ridicule are on this view bad because people suffer when they learn of them (nagel, 5)
