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On Death
Death sets the context of life, the boundaries of what counts as life and a constraint on finding life meaningful. Does Death take the meaning out of life or more clearly point toward the meaning of the universe? Our answer will depend on what we think death is. Does it leave us in a cold impersonal universe only to vanish into nothingness or a transition to another mode of existence? Of course it's difficult to know, since while your still living you cannot know for sure and once your dead its too late. But we can and must postulate, as resonably as possible, what our end has in store for us.
Amonst other things, Death raises issues of personal identity. If we 'survive' our death by transitioning to another mode of existence, we must be able to state what it is that continues. What are you? What ends when you end? Personal Identity is another perplexing issue. We are all persons, we can be sure of that. But it is notoriously difficult to establish necessary and sufficient conditions for personhood, and hence to say what exactly we are. Now we have to figure out not only what death is but what we as persons are.
Metaphysical Monism and Dualism is the larger picture in both cases above. Is the universe a purely physical system governed by exceptionless and deterministic physical principles, with no place for souls, minds and afterlives, or is the physical story just part of a universe that contains spiritual and religous dimensions? In the first instance, we recognize only one form of entity, physical ones, and we appropriately call this Monism (though there are non-physicalist Monisms as well). In the second case there are two ultimate categories of existence, spiritual being and material being. Now we have a third question to anwer: What is there?
Let's see what Robert Nozick has to say on these matters. Nozick's chapter is titled 'Dying', which is different from death because dying is something we do while alive. But we will consider both death itself and dying. We can relate to death indirectly through the lives of people we know which have come to an end during our lifetime. While this leads us to reflect on our own mortality, we do not directly experience death nor come to know what it is when we know it through others. But this definitely gives us data to begin formulating alternative hypothesis about death.
How unwilling should we be to die? Nozick presents a formula to determine this. Take the set of important things you want to do in your life, calculate the ratio of important things done to important things undone, and proportion your willingness to die to the ratio produced. The greater the ratio of important things done to important things undone, the more willing you should be to die. The lower the ratio, the less willing you should be to die - you have too many things to do still! Another variable is one's remaining capacity to do the important things left undone. If we have no meaningful chance of accomplishing more, perhaps from physical limitations, then this increases our willingness to die as compared to the case where we have sufficient capacity to do the important things left undone.
Nozick's formulas raise various questions. How do we determine what counts as 'important' and when exactly does it get 'done'? He does not really need to answer this question, since that is largely a personal matter. Whatever it is that one counts as important, it must get sufficiently executed according to your own standards. Developing the standards of value to apply to your own life will be an important topic in later chapters on Love, Emotion and Happiness.These are really questions about how we should feel about death, more so than the nature of death itself. That is Nozick's next topic. Be sure to check out Epicurus' Letter to Menoeceus for a great argument that it is irrational to fear your own death. It cannot reach you and hence cannot harm you.
Nozick considers various possible interpretations of life after death. Perhaps it is a permanent state of Samadhi or enlightenment, or the average of the states that you actualized in life, or becoming a computer program that can be run on various hardware, or, best of all, a universe created in your own image which reflects the degree of coherence, peace, stability, etc., that you actualized in your lifetime. I like that one.
I would suggested a broad bifurcation of theories of death: Annihilation vs. Transition. Every theory of death I know of falls into one category or the other, but I'm willing to admit a third or additional theories. See the concept diagram for more on these two main species of death, and Epicurus on Annihilition. There are definitely a number of sub-species of Transition theories of death, including Reincarnation and Judeo-Christian accounts of Heaven and Hell. We might have a reason to welcome death on a transition view, but we would have to know, or have good reason to believe, that the transition will be to a good place. In order to ground feelings about Death on a Transitional view, we have to be clear on where the transition will take us.
Compounding the problem, we also need to be able to say that 'I' survive the transition. How do we know that we continue if our soul does? What if your soul continued but it did not retain anything of your character, memories, personality and experience. Suppose this empty soul made it to heaven. Would 'you' be in heave. If you cannot see this empty soul as 'you' then the fact that your soul continues is really no benefit to 'you'. On the other hand, if you just are your soul, then the happy transitioning of the soul should inspire a healthy acceptance of your mortality. Well, there is certainly more to say about the concept of death. I hope this lecture has raised questions that deepen your understanding of this unavoidable facet of life.
Amonst other things, Death raises issues of personal identity. If we 'survive' our death by transitioning to another mode of existence, we must be able to state what it is that continues. What are you? What ends when you end? Personal Identity is another perplexing issue. We are all persons, we can be sure of that. But it is notoriously difficult to establish necessary and sufficient conditions for personhood, and hence to say what exactly we are. Now we have to figure out not only what death is but what we as persons are.
Let's see what Robert Nozick has to say on these matters. Nozick's chapter is titled 'Dying', which is different from death because dying is something we do while alive. But we will consider both death itself and dying. We can relate to death indirectly through the lives of people we know which have come to an end during our lifetime. While this leads us to reflect on our own mortality, we do not directly experience death nor come to know what it is when we know it through others. But this definitely gives us data to begin formulating alternative hypothesis about death.
How unwilling should we be to die? Nozick presents a formula to determine this. Take the set of important things you want to do in your life, calculate the ratio of important things done to important things undone, and proportion your willingness to die to the ratio produced. The greater the ratio of important things done to important things undone, the more willing you should be to die. The lower the ratio, the less willing you should be to die - you have too many things to do still! Another variable is one's remaining capacity to do the important things left undone. If we have no meaningful chance of accomplishing more, perhaps from physical limitations, then this increases our willingness to die as compared to the case where we have sufficient capacity to do the important things left undone.
Nozick's formulas raise various questions. How do we determine what counts as 'important' and when exactly does it get 'done'? He does not really need to answer this question, since that is largely a personal matter. Whatever it is that one counts as important, it must get sufficiently executed according to your own standards. Developing the standards of value to apply to your own life will be an important topic in later chapters on Love, Emotion and Happiness.These are really questions about how we should feel about death, more so than the nature of death itself. That is Nozick's next topic. Be sure to check out Epicurus' Letter to Menoeceus for a great argument that it is irrational to fear your own death. It cannot reach you and hence cannot harm you.
Nozick considers various possible interpretations of life after death. Perhaps it is a permanent state of Samadhi or enlightenment, or the average of the states that you actualized in life, or becoming a computer program that can be run on various hardware, or, best of all, a universe created in your own image which reflects the degree of coherence, peace, stability, etc., that you actualized in your lifetime. I like that one.
I would suggested a broad bifurcation of theories of death: Annihilation vs. Transition. Every theory of death I know of falls into one category or the other, but I'm willing to admit a third or additional theories. See the concept diagram for more on these two main species of death, and Epicurus on Annihilition. There are definitely a number of sub-species of Transition theories of death, including Reincarnation and Judeo-Christian accounts of Heaven and Hell. We might have a reason to welcome death on a transition view, but we would have to know, or have good reason to believe, that the transition will be to a good place. In order to ground feelings about Death on a Transitional view, we have to be clear on where the transition will take us.
Compounding the problem, we also need to be able to say that 'I' survive the transition. How do we know that we continue if our soul does? What if your soul continued but it did not retain anything of your character, memories, personality and experience. Suppose this empty soul made it to heaven. Would 'you' be in heave. If you cannot see this empty soul as 'you' then the fact that your soul continues is really no benefit to 'you'. On the other hand, if you just are your soul, then the happy transitioning of the soul should inspire a healthy acceptance of your mortality. Well, there is certainly more to say about the concept of death. I hope this lecture has raised questions that deepen your understanding of this unavoidable facet of life.
arete |
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| Started By | Thread Subject | Replies | Last Post | ||
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| EHerrera | Death | 2 | Dec 10 2008, 1:30 AM EST by jsalexander | ||
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Thread started: Nov 29 2008, 4:57 PM EST
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I don't like thinking about death especially my own. At an early age I had many family members pass and it has been a topic that I have spent time thinking about. I know that when it is your time to pass that a certain calm comes over you and you are no longer afraid. I know that it is not my time because I am totally frightened of dying. One of my biggest fears about dying is that you no longer can be part of something. You can no longer experience things. Also, people tend to forget about ones that have passes and I don't want to be forgotten. I want to see, smell, touch, taste, hear everything that this world has to offer. Death is too final for me to understand or accept. I get angry with God or whatever devine power there is that someone important in my life was taken away from me and I can no longer talk to them, laugh with them. It is final. I wish I could think of death as a passage to another level of existence, but I can't.
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| luluyi808 | ??????? | 0 | Oct 3 2008, 11:29 PM EDT by luluyi808 | ||
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Thread started: Oct 3 2008, 11:29 PM EDT
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The birth and death, is the basic principle which all lives must comply with ? died does not have the inexorable fate which a life could escape by luck to escape ? to have the death, only will then have the birth. The unceasing samara is lets the world myriad things and even the entire universe can the equilibrium cycle key. The death is the very simple truth actually, each one day must go calmly facing it. Perhaps the death is one kind of pain, perhaps dies is also one kind of extrication. Even if you, for this question frightened for a lifetime. Finally, must accept this fact.
liu |
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| 909409792 | Death | 0 | Sep 30 2008, 5:39 PM EDT by 909409792 | ||
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Thread started: Sep 30 2008, 5:39 PM EDT
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For those people who afraid of death because they are fearing to loss the one that they love or the things that would not belong to them after they die. They also afraid of how their lives going to be after they die. Where are they going to live? And whom are they going to meet with? When I was a child, I remember my grandmother said that “if you are a good person that always helping people and make people happy all the time, you will go to the heaven after you die; but if you are a bad person that always make people cry or do things to hurt people’s feeling, you will go to the hell. Hell is a place that punish bad people by using weapons to torture you everyday.” I think lots of people would believe what my grandmother said. But I believe that people would become dust or soil after they die (imagine that when a person die, he/she would send to crematory and cremate it). Once as you die, your soul and spirit would gone with the wind. For those people who believe heaven and hell exit, because that’s their reminders to remind them don’t do guity things, otherwise they would go to the hell after they die.
last name: zhao |
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