Re: On the ethical importance of death


"Lance" <LanceGary@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:1141731381.625848.82770@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Andrew Coleman quotes Lucretius:

""Be sure then that you have nothing to fear in death. Someone who no
longer
exists cannot suffer, or differ in any way from someone who has not
been
born."
Lucretius (c95-55BCE) On the Nature of the Universe "

--------------

I am quite ambivalent about this claim. If suffering is ended by death
then this seems logical. But why then do most of us (even some who
would support Lucretius) find ourselves agreeing that the "death
penalty" is a punishment, and why do those of a humanist persausion so
often find ourselves opposing the death penalty?

Part of me wants to question the claim that death is the end of
suffering. I know it possible to think of suffering as coming in
differnt kinds - for example mental anguish over the fate of a loved
one, or guilt over a past misdeed, as well as the physical pain of
cancer or the stIng of a jelly fish. Skinnerian theory one of the most
aversive conditions for animals is being ignored. Research in that
tradition suggests that physical punishment if often preferable to
being excluded from the situation. Taking this idea as an analogy, it
seems possible to argue that death is being excluded from all the
conversations and interactions in which one built one's life. Of course
being dead one won't "feel" that pain of exclusion, but the person who
is condemned knows that all of those conversations and lives will take
place without him. So in that sense death is a severe penalty because
it is saying that these things to which you have been integral in the
past will proceed without you.

So a man who loves his wife and children, or a man who has built a
career in science and so wants to know what the true theory of
everything might look like, must feel loss in the face of death. Death
is the end of the conversation, the ultimate ostracism.

Anyway, this is just me thinking aloud...

Good thinking aloud, Lance.

If one feels bad about being excluded against one's desire (which seems
likely), then to be permanently and irreversibly excluded from everything
would only be a positive thing if it meant the exclusion from a majority of
undesirable stuff.

By the way, I don't know who Andrew Coleman is, but it ain't me. :-)

A.


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