Abstract
What is it for a thing to be dead? Fred Feldman holds, correctly in my view, that a definition of ‘dead’ should leave open both (1) the possibility of things that go directly from being dead to being alive, and (2) the possibility of things that go directly from being alive to being neither alive nor dead, but merely in suspended animation. But if this is right, then surely such a definition should also leave open the possibility of things that go directly from being dead to being neither alive nor dead, but merely in suspended animation. I show that Feldman’s own definition of ‘dead’ (in terms of ‘lives’ and ‘dies’) does not leave this possibility open. I propose a new definition that does.
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Notes
Briefly, my reasons in the case of ‘dies’ are as follows. (The discussion of ‘lives’ resists brief summary.) According to what Feldman dubs the standard analysis, to die at t is to cease to be alive at t. This analysis faces two main problems. (1) When a living thing enters suspended animation, it’s arguable that it does cease to be alive but it doesn’t die. Eventually Feldman tentatively endorses the following repair: “x dies at t = df. (a) x ceases to be alive at or before t, and (b) at t, internal changes occur in x that make it physically impossible for x ever to live again” (1992b: 172). But (contrary to what Feldman appears to think) it seems that a thing can die at a time without satisfying clause (b). Consider any tree that is still standing but that has clearly died. No doubt the tree lacks any disposition to live, and it is extremely improbable that it ever lives again. But is it physically impossible? This is doubtful. The sentence “This tree has died but it is physically possible for the tree to live again; there is a nomically possible world that duplicates the actual past and present and in which this tree lives in the future” does not strike me as analytically false. So the repair seems unsuccessful, and no adequate alternative suggests itself. (2) In a case of ‘terminal biological fission’, a living thing ceases to exist and ceases to be alive by dividing into some other living things. Feldman suggests that in some cases of terminal biological fission the thing involved seems to die, whereas in other cases it does not. (When an amoeba undergoes fission, Feldman thinks, it ceases to exist and thereby ceases to be alive but does not die. However, a mouse does die when it is sent through a ‘cell-separator’ that emits a puree of living mouse cells.) Absent some principle for distinguishing between deathless and deadly cases of terminal biological fission, a definition of ‘dies’ remains elusive.
Feldman 1992b, p. 170.
See Weatherson 2004 for a survey of the literature attempting to clarify the notion.
This case for the conclusion that such organisms are not dead differs somewhat from Feldman’s case. Speaking of these organisms, he says, “... since they can return to life again later, it seems that they have not died.” (Feldman 1998: 819). Here, Feldman seems to suggest that the mere fact that something is such that it is possible for it to live later (presumably, compatible with the conjunction of the actual laws of nature and a complete description of the actual past and present) entails that the thing is not currently dead. This argument, on the other hand, supports the conclusion that O is not dead by appeal to the fact that O’s internally-grounded dispositions to engage in life-functions are fully intact and that O could be revived so easily, and without first being repaired. As to the suggestion that it is physically impossible for dead things to return to life, I find this highly implausible, for reasons mentioned in note 2. Elsewhere, Feldman is very explicit about his wish to remain neutral as to the possibility of dead things returning to life: “So far as I can tell, none of the principles or definitions so far introduced here entails either than life after death is possible or that it is impossible. I find myself without clear intuitions on the question, and accordingly I shall not commit myself” (Feldman 1992a: 113).
Hoffman and Rosenkrantz (1997: 158, 208), who also quote the passage, concur.
Wreen (1987: 89) writes that “suspended animation is a state not readily assimilated to either life or death.”
It seems to me that Feldman’s definition can be formulated somewhat more explicitly (though less elegantly) as follows: x is dead at t = df. there is some time t* such that (1) t* is earlier than t, (2) x dies at t*, (3) x is not alive at t or at any time between t* and t. (Instant t2 is between instants t1 and t3 iff t1 is earlier than t2 and t2 is earlier than t3.)
To say that a thing x ceases to be present at t is to say that there is some interval I1 leading up to t and some interval I2 beginning at t such that x is present at each instant in I1 and x is not present at any instant in I2.
One often finds philosophers who endorse eternalism (roughly, the view that the past, present, and future entities are all equally real, all equally in existence) saying things like, “Although dinosaurs exist in that there are such things (they are real), they are entirely confined to the past, and so no dinosaur exists at any time in the year 2007.” See, e.g., Sider (2001: 55). Here, the phrase ‘exists at’ expresses a locational relation that (existing) entities can bear to some times and fail to bear to others. To avoid confusion, I prefer to use the phrase ‘is present at’ to express this relation.
For simplicity I will assume that properties are abundant, and in particular that for any plurality of properties, there is a property that is their conjunction and that is intrinsic if they all are. I believe that my definitions could be re-stated so as to avoid relying on this assumption, though I will not attempt this here.
Some substance dualists may hold that we are immaterial souls, that we continue to be present after we die, and that a soul dies at a time t just in case it undergoes a certain relational change at t – namely, becoming disembodied. In that case, it is plausible that a soul can be dead at a time t even if it does not then have any intrinsic property whose acquisition by a living thing would entail that the thing immediately dies. Those who are moved by this worry can replace toxicity2 with toxicity2*: F is toxic2* = df. F is a temporally local property, and necessarily, for any x and time t, if x is alive at each instant in some interval that immediately precedes t and x has F at t, then x dies at t. Roughly, a property F is temporally local just in case whether or not a thing x has F at t depends only on the intrinsic properties of the world at t. Temporally local properties need not be intrinsic themselves; being disembodied, e.g., seems to be temporally local but not intrinsic.
Consider some organism O in stasis whose temperature is just above absolute zero; let Fo be the conjunction of its intrinsic properties. Suppose you think that it is metaphysically impossible for a thing to go directly from being alive to having Fo. (Perhaps such a change would necessarily involve too great a discontinuity in a thing’s intrinsic properties to be nomically or even metaphysically possible.) In that case Fo counts as toxic2, despite being compatible with being in stasis. Those who are moved by this worry can replace toxicity2 with toxicity3: F is toxic3 = df. F is an intrinsic property, and necessarily, for any x and instants t1 and t2, if x is alive at t1 and has F at t2, then x dies at t2 or some time between t1 and t2. Roughly, a property is toxic3 iff it’s impossible for a thing to go from being alive at one time to having that property at a later time without dying. Presumably it is possible for a thing to go from being alive to having Fo without dying, so that property is not toxic3. Consider, on the other hand, Lenin-likeness, the conjunction of the intrinsic properties that V. I. Lenin has now. It does seem impossible to go from being alive at one time to being Lenin-like at a later time without dying, so that property is apparently toxic3. Similarly for the overall intrinsic condition of any dead thing that is present now (if there are any).
Suppose that I am alive at 11:00 am, that I die at 11:30 am, remain dead for 1 min, and am revitalized at 11:31 am. I then die at 11:45 am, remain dead for 30 s, and am revitalized at 11:45:30 am. I then die at 11:52:30 am, remain dead for 15 s, and am revitalized at 11:52:45 am, and so on. Let us further stipulate that I have Lenin-likeness at noon and permanently thereafter. (Lenin-likeness is the conjunction of all of Lenin’s current intrinsic properties.) Am I dead at 12:01 pm? Intuitively, yes. But it may seem that D3 tells us that I am not dead then, given that, for any instant prior to noon at which I die, there is a later instant prior to noon at which I am alive and hence non-abiotic. However, it remains open to us to hold that in addition to all of my deaths in the morning, I also die at 12:00 pm sharp. Since I am abiotic thereafter, D3 would in that case tell us that I am dead at 12:01 pm. (This does, however, force us to reject the initially appealing principle that, necessarily, if a thing x dies at t, then there is some interval I leading up to t such for each instant t* in I, x is either alive or in stasis at t*.) Thanks to Ted Sider for prompting me to think about some related cases.
Suppose that we had defined ‘dead’ as follows: (D3*) x is dead at t = df. (1) x dies at some time earlier than t, and (2) x is abiotic at t. D3* yields the result that Gamma is dead at t4, and it does so even if Rosenberg and Feldman are right that Gamma doesn’t die at t3. For this reason I prefer D3 to D3*.
The temporal concepts I have invoked are those expressed by: ‘earlier than’, ‘is an instant’, ‘is an interval’ and ‘interval I immediately precedes [or follows] instant t.’ The general-purpose metaphysical concepts I’ve invoked are those expressed by: ‘x is present at t’, ‘x1 ... xn are necessarily such that’, ‘F is an intrinsic property’, and ‘x instantiates [has] F at t’.
Or ‘acquires’ if, as in my case, the thing was dead just prior to having the capacity.
Throughout this paper I have ignored the possibility of worlds in which things travel backward in time. (See Sider 2001: 101–109 and references therein.) If there are any such worlds, I suspect that they would supply counterexamples to D3. Suppose, e.g., that Lenin’s corpse = Lenin, and that the corpse is transported to the year 1776. Then it may seem correct to say that Lenin is dead at some time t in 1776, even though there is no earlier time at which Lenin died. However, I also suspect that D4 could be modified in a way that salvages much of its structure and basic insights. Perhaps this could be done by judiciously replacing (1) talk of instants and intervals of time in parts of D3 and T2 with talk of instants and intervals of proper (or ‘personal’) time and (2) talk of the earlier than relation in parts of D3 and T2 with talk of the earlier than with respect to proper time relation. I will not offer any specific proposal as to how this should be done.
For helpful comments and suggestions, I am grateful to Yuri Balashav, Morwenna Borden, Jerry Cederblom, Andrew Cortens, Fred Feldman, Laura Grams, Brian Kierland, Halla Kim, Noah Lemos, Andrew Newman, Tony Roark, Adam Sennet, Ted Sider, two referees for this journal, and audiences at Boise State University, the College of William and Mary, and the University of Georgia.
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Gilmore, C. Defining ‘Dead’ in Terms of ‘Lives’ and ‘Dies’. Philosophia 35, 219–231 (2007). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11406-007-9062-z
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11406-007-9062-z