Abstract
In his recent book, Death and the Afterlife, Samuel Scheffler argues that it matters greatly to us that there be other human beings long after our own deaths. In support of this “Afterlife Thesis,” as I call it, he provides a thought experiment—the “doomsday scenario”—in which we learn that, although we ourselves will live a normal life span, 30 days after our death the earth will be completely destroyed. In this paper I question this “doomsday scenario” support for Scheffler’s Afterlife Thesis. In particular, I suggest that Scheffler has underestimated the importance of a good ending.
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Notes
At least I read Scheffler as offering the doomsday scenario as support for the Afterlife Thesis. For another interpretation, see Sect. 4 below.
Note that my categorization below does not fully correspond to the one in Scheffler (2013: 42). For present purposes, I have lumped together some of his categories, and added one (the third one below).
References
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Johansson, J. The Importance of a Good Ending: Some Reflections on Samuel Scheffler’s Death and the Afterlife . J Ethics 19, 185–195 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10892-015-9197-2
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10892-015-9197-2