The Solution Manual on Death: Homo Sapie
Kiyotaka Akabori
PHIL 100: T/ Th @11:00
Instructor: Joe White
There have been a number of questions addressed to human beings regarding death: what happens to a person after he dies, why humans are afraid of their death, and what death really means. Answers to these questions vary according to each individual, but the one thing common in all humans is that every person eventually dies no matter how one lives and sometimes one dies without the answers. In his essay “Death: What Does It All Mean?” Thomas Nagel shows his solutions to the two primary problems about death; the first concerns life after death, which he does not believe to exist because of insufficient evidence, and the second concerns one’s feeling about death, which seems, to the author, more reasonable and logical to be regretful rather than fearful. In this paper, I wish to examine the arguments that Nagel makes and find a better solution for the problems about death by doing so.
According to Nagel, the way to conceive of one’s nonexistence is to think of it in such a way as looking at yourself who is dead from the outside. It is impossible to think how you would feel when you die and do not exist anymore “because there’s nothing it would be like [to be totally annihilated].” You cannot imagine something if you have never seen or experienced anything equivalent or similar to it. Obviously, no one alive at present has ever experienced a situation where he knows his consciousness stays inside of his body and thinks, sees, and feels things in the same way as he does in his ordinary life but he also knows he does not exist. This is a contradictory situation but probably an example of how one could “conceive of [one’s] own nonexistence from the inside.” However, as Nagel points out, one can imagine his annihilation from the outside, in the same way as by looking at his own funeral “through someone else’s eyes.” In this way, we can think of what it would be like not to exist and discuss the quality of death and nonexistence later on.
Before we discuss whether or not life after death exists, let us examine the possibility of life after death, that is, if it can be possible in any case. Generally, life after death, or afterlife, is meant to be life without the old body. Suppose there exists no separable soul within humans and mental processes “are entirely dependent on the biological functioning of the brain and the rest of the organism.” Then, mental life after death with all the experience that the old body had been through will require every single cell of the old body, but it is already dead and not functioning any more. Therefore, an afterlife is not possible without a soul-body relationship, in another word, dualism. This concept supports Nagel’s argument on life after death, a part of which states that life after death is possible if dualism is true as well as the survival of the soul and its continued consciousness do not depend “on the support and stimulation it gets from the body in which it is housed.” However, one can argue against the concept of impossibility of an afterlife by assuming that a new body consisting of exactly the same cells that the old body consisted of will be created in one’s afterlife. In this case, mental life after death can be maintained without no such concept as a separable soul. To say this is wrong, we must define an afterlife to be life without not only the old body, but any physical property.
It is unclear whether there is an afterlife. Nagel argues that since ordinary, or scientific, observation gives us “no reason to believe in an afterlife,” we can conclude that “there is not an afterlife.” At a glance, the conclusion seems to make sense, but he is actually committing a fallacy called ad ignorantiam, a fallacy from ignorance. A proposition that there is no reason to believe in an afterlife is not a reason sufficient to believe that an afterlife does not exist. This is because it is possible that we might be in a situation where we merely do not have technology to observe life after death. This fallacy can be seen easily in the following example: Suppose a person whose name is Neo Anderson was born in an isolated island called Ignorance Island, grows up there with only people of his race called the Native Ignorant, and has never been outside of his little island. He claims that he has never seen people that visited his island from the outside, so there must be only one kind of race called the Native Ignorant. Apparently, he has no reason to believe in other kinds of race such as the white, black, and Asian because he has never encountered these races; however, his claim is clearly wrong. Nagel basically makes an error in reasoning similar to that of Mr. Anderson. Therefore, his argument that there is not an afterlife can be refuted easily in the same manner as Mr. Anderson’s can be.
Presupposing that there is not an afterlife and death is the complete end of our existence enables us to determine the value of death as either a negative good or evil. Nagel defines that a negative good is something good for a person because of “the absence of something bad” and a negative bad is something bad for a person because of “the absence of something good.” As the author points out, “since in itself it is nothing, [death] can’t be either pleasant or unpleasant,” resulting in a concept that death must have a negative value. If someone’s death is a negative good, he was probably in a terrible situation; for instance, he had considerable amount of debts that seemed impossible for him to pay off while he was alive and the only way to escape from the debts was to commit a suicide. In this case, the death sets him free from the hopeless repayment of his debts and, therefore, is a negative good. In contrast, if the person enjoys himself in his life, death means a negative evil to him for the reason that “the ending of everything good in life, because of stopping of life itself, seems clearly to be a negative evil for the person who was alive and is now dead.” Thus, death has a value of a negative good or evil.
According to Nagel, if death is a negative evil, then it seems reasonable to regret death. When one dies, he will no more be able to enjoy all the good things in his life. This is analogous to the time when you have to give up what you like to do as a result of something bad that happened to you. You feel sorry for yourself and wish it had not happened to you. Although what Nagel argues seems to make sense, it can be illogical because of the word, regret. As in the context of “I regret that I said it to him,” we sometimes use the word to refer to what we did rather than merely something that happened in the past. In this way, it is your action that causes yourself to give up enjoying good things. However, death is not something one can do; rather, some sort of external force leads you to death unless you commit a suicide. Therefore, it can be irrational to regret death, depending on how Nagel defines the word “regret.” It seems that when he uses it he simply means to feel sorry though.
Although regret about death is understandable, the fear of one’s own annihilation is not, as claimed by Nagel. He believes that people can be afraid of death only if they believe that they “will survive it, and perhaps undergo some terrifying transformation.” He argues that although “the prospect of nonexistence is frightening, at least to many people” if there is not an afterlife, “there’s nothing to look forward to,” so there must be nothing to afraid of. This is true because when we fear something we essentially look at the future and think that it might turn out to be bad and harmful to us, that we might suffer from it. However, after you die, you do not exist; therefore, you do not suffer from being dead.
Nagel also rationalizes his position by claiming that nonexistence after our death is the same as nonexistence before our birth. Nagel believes that since we do not have fear of “the fact that there was a time before we were born, when we didn’t yet exist,” it is nonsense to be afraid of going back to the state of nonexistence again. Although he tries to equalize the past nonexistence with nonexistence after death, they are not really equivalent to each other. One reason is that your existence is being forgotten after you die whereas nobody even thinks about your existence before you are born. 10 years before your birth, no one in the world probably expected you to exist. On the other hand, 10 years after your death, there will be people that remember who you were or wish you were alive; in another word, your existence remains in their memory. However, unless you make a remark in a certain field as Newton or Beethoven did, your existence will probably be forgotten sooner or later, and perhaps forever. The fact that at some point no homo sapiens will have memory of your existence is unavoidable and, for some reason, unbearable for most people. The reason why humans are social beings is probably that they naturally desire to be memorized by other people and to be remembered they communicate with each other and live together. Fear of death might result from the unaccountable desire of being remembered, or more precisely, the fear of being forgotten forever.
From our experience, most of us know that one does not want others to forget that he exists. For that reason, the idea that people will no longer remember you is itself frightening. If one assumes that there is not an afterlife, death really means to cease to exist, resulting in a realization that one is at risk of being forgotten forever after his death. Then, he will seek for a solution to release himself from fear of death. He might try to make a great achievement like the ones that Beethoven and Newton made, or chooses to change his mind and believe in an afterlife so that he does not have to be afraid of death. This seems to construct a part of reason why humans are likely to be ambitious to do something great and obtain fame, or believe in something without reasonable justification. Although Nagel does not “fully understand how this kind of faith-inspired belief is possible,” I see why.
© Rakuten Group, Inc.
