On Whether B-Theoretic Atheists Should Fear Death

Abstract

In this paper I revisit a dispute between Mikel Burley and Robin Le Poidevin about whether or not the B-theory of time can give its adherents any reason to be less afraid of death. In 'Should a B-theoretic atheist fear death?', Burley argues that even on Le Poidevin's understanding of the B-theory, atheists shouldn't be comforted. His reason is that the prevalent B-theoretic account of our attitudes towards the past and future precludes treating our fear of death as unwarranted. I examine his argument and provide a tentative defense of Le Poidevin. I claim that while Burley rightly spots a tension with a non-revisionary approach to our ordinary emotional life, he doesn't isolate the source of that tension. The real question is how to understand Le Poidevin's idea that on the B-theory, we and our lives are 'eternally real'. I then suggest that there is a view of time that does justice to Le Poidevin's remarks, albeit a strange one. The view takes temporal relations to be quasi-spatial and temporal entities to exist in a totum simul.

Forever and Again

“…Intuitively, it seems that the more potential there is for the causal connection between copies, the better it is for the likelihood that MI is true, but it is not clear how well-grounded this intuition might be. There is even a point of view that if all moments of time actually exist, there should be no fear of death, as each moment will continue to exist (Deng 2015).…”

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.…”