PHIL-360 Chapter Notes - Chapter Suits, David: Counterfactual Thinking
15 Nov 2016
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Why death is not bad for the one who dies (david b suits) reading notes. It is certainly not the kind the victim could conceivably complain about, because a dead person can neither know, nor appreciate, nor in any possible way experience any effects of death. Aim to show that the deprivation approach is flawed on three counts: First of all, death is not a deprivation on any reasonable understanding of what deprivation is. Second, the deprivation approach does not show that death is bad in any recognizable sense for the deceased. And third, some deprivation views rely on a life-life (or, more accurately, actual-life vs. counterfactually longer life) comparison, yet such a comparison does not yield the conclusion that death can be bad for the one who died. To say that firing a gun is risky is to say that even if actual harm does not result, it could easily have come about.
