ABSTRACT

Most philosophers in the death literature believe that death can be bad for the person who dies. The most popular view of death’s badness—namely, deprivationism—holds that death is bad for the person who dies because, and to the extent that, it deprives them of the net good that they would have accrued, had their actual death not occurred. Deprivationists thus face the challenge of locating the time that death is bad for a person. This is known as the Timing Problem, which is thought to be one of the biggest challenges facing views holding that death can be bad for the person who dies. Every possible answer to this question has been defended in the literature, yet each answer can seemingly be shown to be subject to compelling objections. In this paper, I argue that the force of the Timing Problem is illusory. Specifically, I argue that the problem, as formulated in the literature, is underspecified. Any adequately precise form of the question ‘When is death bad for the person who dies?’ is one to which there is a clear, decisive, and unproblematic answer.

摘要

死亡文学中的大多数哲学家认为，死亡可能对死去的人有害。最流行的关于死亡之恶的观点——即剥夺主义——认为死亡对死者不利，因为并且在某种程度上，它剥夺了他们本应获得的净利益，如果他们没有真正的死亡发生。因此，剥夺主义者面临着确定死亡对一个人不利的时间的挑战。这被称为时间问题，这被认为是认为死亡对死者不利的观点所面临的最大挑战之一。这个问题的每一个可能的答案都在文献中得到了辩护，但每一个答案似乎都受到了令人信服的反对意见。在本文中，我认为时序问题的力量是虚幻的。具体来说，我认为，正如文献中所阐述的那样，这个问题没有得到充分说明。“死亡什么时候对死者不利？”这个问题的任何足够精确的形式？是一个有明确、决定性和没有问题的答案的问题。