This seems like a universal counterargument against consequentialism. For example, it also works as a pro-death/anti-immortality argument.
Alice: “If there is death, then there will be bad phenomenon X. People suffer when they die (X1). Their family and friends also suffer (X2). When happy people die the total happiness of the world is reduced (X3). Humanity loses the knowledge, wisdom, and memories of the person who died (X4). Therefore immortality is necessary.”
Bob: “This is just four different examples of the universal counterargument against death, which is that death is bad because it conflicts with some other value Y (happiness, knowledge). If there is a way to achieve the value of Y while people are dying, then death can be good.”
“For example, if at death each person’s memory is read by a mind lace and archived in a digital format, then the loss of knowledge of dying people will cease to be a problem. Loss of knowledge at death is only a problem because of our current technology level.”
“Your counterargument also doesn’t work because it is not central. The negative X phenomenon can persist even if death is ended. Ignorance and suffering are possible in societies where people are immortal.”
Alice: “Sure, get back to me when you’ve invented the mind lace. I promise I’ll reconsider my position on death then.”
Reading your comments below, it looks like you place intrinsic value in life, and you are arguing that discussions about the consequences of death (positive and negative) do not alter that intrinsic value. That’s fine as far as it goes. But I don’t think it goes as far as defeating all arguments for mortality. Some reasons:
Some people don’t place intrinsic value in life. Some people place intrinsic value in mortality.
Some arguments for death are not consequentialist. Some people are not consequentialists.
Some people care about acting in this world, as it exists, today.
Good point that the argument works in other way if we do not postulate “death is bad” as a moral axiom and instead try to derive the badness of death from some other values.
Some people don’t place intrinsic value in life.
Actually who? Most examples I can imagine, like samurai, buddhists, drug addicts or suicide people – still have some value for not dying, but are overwhelmed by another value.
You don’t have to imagine, you already read Dagon in this comment section, who writes: “Death is neither bad nor good, it’s just a part of the world which has formed our ideas of identity and experience”.
Virtue ethics places intrinsic value in virtues, and deontology places intrinsic value in rules, so straight-forwardly neither of those ethical frameworks places intrinsic value in life and death as states of the world. That is a majority of philsophers, per this 2009 EconLog survey.
Also, religions that view death as a reunification with a higher power can place intrinsic positive value in death, or at least not place negative value in death. Or religions can place intrinsic value directly and solely in the higher power. Likewise, I roughly model Buddhism as placing intrinsic value on ending suffering and rebirth, with human life instrumentally valuable to achieve those goals.
If everyone placed positive intrinsic value on immortality, in addition to the convergent instrumental value of avoiding death, I imagine that immortality wouldn’t be a topic of debate like this.
[note: still thinking somewhat abstractly, and unsure of my own actual values on this topic—my revealed and introspected preferences don’t scale very well to global, let alone future quantities. ]
One can feel intrinsic value in life, without particularly caring WHICH lives are being valued. Being pro-life (or pro-intelligent-experience, or pro-qualia-level-complexity, or many other similar formulations) does not require being anti-death. It just implies that one hopes that creation happens faster than cessation.
One of the reason for this type of conclusions is thinking in “far mode”, as was suggested by Robin Hanson. If we speak, say, about the perspective that “your grandmother will die tomorrow”, we start to think in near-term mode, and we don’t like death in near-term mode. But every death will be eventually in near-term mode.
I can only wish my grandmother was able to die tomorrow, instead of years ago. It’s sad when people die. But that’s selfish and wrong, and only sees part of the context.
Her death was also freeing to those of us still healthy and alive. The amount of expense and effort to keep them alive a bit longer was significant, and it was on balance best. I think it was accepted and freeing for her as well, but of course it’s impossible to tell.
Extending healthy, creative, productive portions of individual lives seems like a pure good to me. If it results in immortality, great! If not, that’s probably OK to. I think it’s a mistake to focus on death as the problem, rather than the decay and loss of dynamism that currently comes with aging.
No apology needed—I appreciate the summary, and it gives me the opportunity to clarify (and to think further; as I say, I don’t trust my intuitions here).
Quotes from H.P. Lovecraft’s Nietzscheism and Realism (full text):
It must be remembered that there is no real reason to expect anything in particular from mankind; good and evil are local expedients—or their lack—and not in any sense cosmic truths or laws. We call a thing “good” because it promotes certain petty human conditions that we happen to like—whereas it is just as sensible to assume that all humanity is a noxious pest and should be eradicated like rats or gnats for the good of the planet or of the universe. There are no absolute values in the whole blind tragedy of mechanistic nature—nothing is good or bad except as judged from an absurdly limited point of view. The only cosmic reality is mindless, undeviating fate—automatic, unmoral, uncalculating inevitability. As human beings, our only sensible scale of values is one based on lessening the agony of existence. That plan is most deserving of praise which most ably fosters the creation of the objects and conditions best adapted to diminish the pain of living for those most sensitive to its depressing ravages. To expect perfect adjustment and happiness is absurdly unscientific and unphilosophical. We can seek only a more or less trivial mitigation of suffering.
It is good to be a cynic—it is better to be a contented cat—and it is best not to exist at all. Universal suicide is the most logical thing in the world—we reject it only because of our primitive cowardice and childish fear of the dark. If we were sensible we would seek death—the same blissful blank which we enjoyed before we existed.
Of course, H.P. Lovecraft was not suicidal, but that might be because (a) death is inevitable so there’s no reason to rush the road to blissful oblivion, and (b) he’s human just like everyone else, so he is just as valuable as everyone else. But note that he is in favor of the mitigation of suffering, and attaches no intrinsic value with life itself. He probably would be okay with life extension, but only if you are able to mitigate suffering in the process. If you can’t do that, he’ll probably complain. Conversely, if you do find a way to convince people to give up their “primitive cowardice” and thereby ease humanity’s suffering that way...well, he may consider it.
This seems like a universal counterargument against consequentialism. For example, it also works as a pro-death/anti-immortality argument.
Alice: “If there is death, then there will be bad phenomenon X. People suffer when they die (X1). Their family and friends also suffer (X2). When happy people die the total happiness of the world is reduced (X3). Humanity loses the knowledge, wisdom, and memories of the person who died (X4). Therefore immortality is necessary.”
Bob: “This is just four different examples of the universal counterargument against death, which is that death is bad because it conflicts with some other value Y (happiness, knowledge). If there is a way to achieve the value of Y while people are dying, then death can be good.”
“For example, if at death each person’s memory is read by a mind lace and archived in a digital format, then the loss of knowledge of dying people will cease to be a problem. Loss of knowledge at death is only a problem because of our current technology level.”
“Your counterargument also doesn’t work because it is not central. The negative X phenomenon can persist even if death is ended. Ignorance and suffering are possible in societies where people are immortal.”
Alice: “Sure, get back to me when you’ve invented the mind lace. I promise I’ll reconsider my position on death then.”
Reading your comments below, it looks like you place intrinsic value in life, and you are arguing that discussions about the consequences of death (positive and negative) do not alter that intrinsic value. That’s fine as far as it goes. But I don’t think it goes as far as defeating all arguments for mortality. Some reasons:
Some people don’t place intrinsic value in life. Some people place intrinsic value in mortality.
Some arguments for death are not consequentialist. Some people are not consequentialists.
Some people care about acting in this world, as it exists, today.
Disclaimer: I don’t like it when people die.
Good point that the argument works in other way if we do not postulate “death is bad” as a moral axiom and instead try to derive the badness of death from some other values.
Actually who? Most examples I can imagine, like samurai, buddhists, drug addicts or suicide people – still have some value for not dying, but are overwhelmed by another value.
You don’t have to imagine, you already read Dagon in this comment section, who writes: “Death is neither bad nor good, it’s just a part of the world which has formed our ideas of identity and experience”.Virtue ethics places intrinsic value in virtues, and deontology places intrinsic value in rules, so straight-forwardly neither of those ethical frameworks places intrinsic value in life and death as states of the world. That is a majority of philsophers, per this 2009 EconLog survey.
Also, religions that view death as a reunification with a higher power can place intrinsic positive value in death, or at least not place negative value in death. Or religions can place intrinsic value directly and solely in the higher power. Likewise, I roughly model Buddhism as placing intrinsic value on ending suffering and rebirth, with human life instrumentally valuable to achieve those goals.
If everyone placed positive intrinsic value on immortality, in addition to the convergent instrumental value of avoiding death, I imagine that immortality wouldn’t be a topic of debate like this.
[note: still thinking somewhat abstractly, and unsure of my own actual values on this topic—my revealed and introspected preferences don’t scale very well to global, let alone future quantities. ]
One can feel intrinsic value in life, without particularly caring WHICH lives are being valued. Being pro-life (or pro-intelligent-experience, or pro-qualia-level-complexity, or many other similar formulations) does not require being anti-death. It just implies that one hopes that creation happens faster than cessation.
One of the reason for this type of conclusions is thinking in “far mode”, as was suggested by Robin Hanson. If we speak, say, about the perspective that “your grandmother will die tomorrow”, we start to think in near-term mode, and we don’t like death in near-term mode. But every death will be eventually in near-term mode.
I can only wish my grandmother was able to die tomorrow, instead of years ago. It’s sad when people die. But that’s selfish and wrong, and only sees part of the context.
Her death was also freeing to those of us still healthy and alive. The amount of expense and effort to keep them alive a bit longer was significant, and it was on balance best. I think it was accepted and freeing for her as well, but of course it’s impossible to tell.
Extending healthy, creative, productive portions of individual lives seems like a pure good to me. If it results in immortality, great! If not, that’s probably OK to. I think it’s a mistake to focus on death as the problem, rather than the decay and loss of dynamism that currently comes with aging.
If aging will be defeated in 2030 (say, by superinteligent AI), then surviving even in poor state is reasonable.
[edited]
Generics will be soon available
Ack. Sorry for the misrepresentation. Scrubbed that line of the post.
No apology needed—I appreciate the summary, and it gives me the opportunity to clarify (and to think further; as I say, I don’t trust my intuitions here).
Quotes from H.P. Lovecraft’s Nietzscheism and Realism (full text):
Of course, H.P. Lovecraft was not suicidal, but that might be because (a) death is inevitable so there’s no reason to rush the road to blissful oblivion, and (b) he’s human just like everyone else, so he is just as valuable as everyone else. But note that he is in favor of the mitigation of suffering, and attaches no intrinsic value with life itself. He probably would be okay with life extension, but only if you are able to mitigate suffering in the process. If you can’t do that, he’ll probably complain. Conversely, if you do find a way to convince people to give up their “primitive cowardice” and thereby ease humanity’s suffering that way...well, he may consider it.