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Accommodating Counterfactual Attitudes: A Further Reply to Johansson

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Abstract

Here we respond to Johansson’s main worry, as laid out in his, “Actual and Counterfactual Attitudes: Reply to Fischer and Brueckner.” We show how our principle BF*(dd*) can be adjusted to address this concern compatibly with our fundamental approach to responding to Lucretius.

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Notes

  1. We have reformulated our principle BF*(dd)*C in order to show how it could avoid Johansson’scritique. Johansson believes that the issues concerning prenatal and posthumous nonexistence should not be resolved by considering the rationality of attitudes that are actually held, but rather by considering the rationality of attitudes that would be held in pertinent counterfactual situations. Although we have shown how our basic approach can be adjusted to avoid these worries, we remain somewhat dubious about this counterfactual approach. The traditional puzzle about the asymmetry between prenatal and posthumous nonexistence begins with consideration of the rationality of attitudes that we actually have. The data for consideration include facts like the following: whereas man-in-the-street Oliver in fact fears and regrets his impending death (which will deprive him of future pleasures), Oliver in fact holds no such attitude toward prenatal nonexistence (which constitutes a similar deprivation of pleasure which he would have had, had he been born earlier). The key question, it seems to us, is whether actually held attitudes like Oliver's are rational. It is not clear to us why, in treating this nest of issues, we need to scrutinize counterfactual situations in which Oliver is bound to be somewhat different from the way he actually is. Maybe in some pertinent counterfactual situations, Oliver is a philosopher who is persuaded by symmetry considerations and takes symmetric attitudes toward prenatal and posthumous non-existence. Or maybe in counterfactual situations he is psychologically different in various other ways. How is that relevant to the evaluation of Oliver's actually held asymmetric attitudes? And isn't such an evaluation of actually held attitudes the goal toward which we are striving in the discussion of the Lucretian Mirror Image Argument and the plausibility of the deprivation account of death’s badness?

References

  • Johansson, J. 2014. Actual and counterfactual attitudes: Reply to Fischer and Brueckner, Journal of Ethics, 18: 1. doi:10.1007/s10892-013-9156-8.

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Correspondence to John Martin Fischer.

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Fischer, J.M., Brueckner, A. Accommodating Counterfactual Attitudes: A Further Reply to Johansson. J Ethics 18, 19–21 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10892-013-9157-7

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10892-013-9157-7

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