How A-theoretic Deprivationists Should Respond to Lucretius

Abstract

ABSTRACT:What, if anything, makes death bad for the deceased themselves? Deprivationists hold that death is bad for the deceased iff it deprives them of intrinsic goods they would have enjoyed had they lived longer. This view faces the problem that birth too seems to deprive one of goods one would have enjoyed had one been born earlier, so that it too should be bad for one. There are two main approaches to the problem. In this paper, I explore the second approach, by Anthony Brueckner and John Martin Fischer, and suggest that it can be developed so as to meet deprivationists’ needs. On the resulting view, metaphysical differences between the future and the past give rise to a corresponding axiological difference in the intrinsic value of future and past experiences. As experiences move into the past, they lose their intrinsic value for the person.

Lucretian Puzzles

“…There are, 2. Writings at least partly on Lucretius' Puzzle include Belshaw (2000), Brueckner and Fischer (1986;1993;, Deng (2015), Feldman (1991), Finocchiaro and Sullivan (2016), Harman (2011), Johansson (2013), Kamm (1993: Chapters 2-4), Kaufman (1995;1996;1999;, McMahan (2006), Meier (2019), Nagel (1979;1986: 223-31), Rosenbaum (1989), Sorensen (2013), and Timmerman (2018). I am gliding over a complication: Some of these writers treat Lucretius' Puzzle as the question whether it is the case that earlier-rather-than-later death can be bad for one but later-ratherthan-earlier creation cannot be bad for one.…”

The Lucretian Puzzle and the Nature of Time

“…(Deng 2015;Robson 2014; see also Le Poidevin 1996) Specifically, it has been argued that some versions of the ''A-theory''-according to which there is an absolutely present timeprovide deprivationists with a promising response to the Lucretian. I shall devote most of my discussion to Natalja Deng's suggestion, according to which, on some suitable A-theoretic views, a person's death deprives him of intrinsic goods, whereas his prenatal nonexistence does not (Sects.…”

Four-dimensionalism, eternalism, and deprivationist accounts of the evil of death

“…See, e.g.,Silverstein (1980),Bradley (2010),Sider (2013),Mullins (2014) andDeng (2015a;2015b).2 To say that "x overlaps y" is to say that there is some z such that z is a part of x and z is a part of y.…”