One might agree with Taylor that posthumous harm is impossible, and if so, so is posthumous wrong. That is, if it is impossible to harm the dead, they cannot be wronged either, since to wrong is to harm. Not so, argues Taylor. 'Since it could be possible for a person to be wronged without being harmed it is possible that events that occur after a person's death might wrong her, even if they do not harm her.' (p. 52).2 Hence the need for chapter 4, 'Can the Dead be Wronged?' to which Taylor answers, 'no'.2 Taylor is here attacking what I would have thought was a conceptual truth, namely that to be wronged entails being harmed (even though one might be harmed without being wronged by, say, an accident or deserved punishment). Despite repeated assertions that one can be wronged without being harmed, so far as I can see Taylor offers one rather weak argument for thinking this is so. He imagines a person who is promised a ride being stood up, but who arrives at his destination anyway because someone else gave him a lift instead. If that person 'were not inconvenienced or upset by this state of affairs' (p. 19) then even though he was wronged (because the promise was broken) he was not harmed.2 But a moment's reflection generates many possible harms from this scenario: a general weakening of promise-keeping, a violation of the rideseeker's rights (which he should mind, even if he does not), the promise-breaker thinking he can wrong people without consequence, a violation of the norms of friendship and so on. In short, I am sceptical that this example overturns what seems like a conceptual truth. Finally, let me say a few words about Taylor's criticisms of my own contribution to discussions about death. I support a deprivation account for the evil of death. This means that when death is bad, it is bad because it deprives us of some good. The problem is to explain how this is so while avoiding Lucretius' symmetry argument. The symmetry argument purports to show that if death is bad because it deprives us of time we could have had if we had not died when we did, then so does birth; for if we had been born earlier than we were, we could have enjoyed that time as well. So we would be deprived on either end of our lives: the time after we die and the time before we are born. This seems preposterous to me, but figuring out what is wrong with the symmetry argument is not easy. I deny that the time before my birth is symmetrical with the time after my death; I argue for an asymmetry of possibilities. It is not possible for me to exist earlier than I do, whereas it is possible for me to die later than I will. Taylor does not adduce any new arguments against my view. Instead he rehearses arguments of my critics; hence my response to Taylor will in fact be a response to those other critics. Without engaging in a point by point disputation, I think that I can state my position very simply: Because it is metaphysically impossible for my physical organism (or my DNA or whatever we want to take to be my metaphysical essence which identifies the same individual across possible worlds) to exist much earlier than it does, it is also impossible for any person (read: biographical self ) associated with that particular organism to exist earlier as well. The fact that my organism could have grown up, say, in rural Spain is irrelevant, since in neither case could my organism and thus the me that matters to me-ie, my biographical self-have existed earlier. This is a real difference in possibilities: it is not possible for me to have existed earlier, whereas it is possible for me to die later (we just imagine a continuation of my established biography). Since this is a genuine difference of possibilities, we do not have to have similar attitudes toward them, and so we can think that death deprives without thinking that birth can too. This answers Lucretius' symmetry argument as well as Taylor's endorsement of the charge that I have conflated personal identity over time with personal identity across possible worlds. Competing interests None. Provenance and peer review Commissioned; internally peer reviewed. To cite Kaufman F. J Med Ethics 2014;40:639–640. Received 30 October 2013 Accepted 15 November 2013 Published Online First 17 December 2013 ▸ http://dx.doi.org/10.1136/medethics-2013-101627 ▸ http://dx.doi.org/10.1136/medethics-2013-101754 ▸ http://dx.doi.org/10.1136/medethics-2013-101756 ▸ http://dx.doi.org/10.1136/medethics-2013-101757 ▸ http://dx.doi.org/10.1136/medethics-2014-102336 J Med Ethics 2014;40:639–640. doi:10.1136/medethics-2013-101755 REFERENCES 1 Taylor JS. Death, posthumous harm, and bioethics. J Med Ethics, 2014;40:636–7. 2 Taylor JS. Death, Posthumous Harm, and Bioethics. New York: Routledge, 2012. Mortal harm and the antemortem experience of death Stephan Blatti As James Stacey Taylor correctly notes in his précis, practical ethicists today are engaged in a number of debates that take for granted a couple of ideas whose provenance may be traced all the way back to Aristotle.1 The first of these is the thought that death (typically) harms the one who dies; call this the 'mortal harm thesis' (MHT). The second is the idea that one can be harmed (and wronged) by events that occur after one's death; call this the 'posthumous harm thesis' (PHT). Taylor devotes two-thirds of his recent book to arguing against both theses and the remainder to working out the implications of their falsity for various bioethical concerns, including euthanasia, suicide, organ procurement, and so on.2 Here, I will concentrate on Taylor's case against MHT. Notwithstanding other suggestions that MHT and PHT stand or fall together (p. 174),3 Taylor rightly follows Bradley (p. 44)4 in acknowledging the possibility that MHT could be true even if PHT is false. So, having devoted the first four chapters to arguing against PHT, Taylor turns his attention to mortal harm in chapters 5 and 6; here he distinguishes four arguments against MHT. The first two are versions of the famous no-subject argument advanced by Epicurus in his Letter to Menoeceus5: the 'hedonic variant' and the 'existence variant.' The Correspondence to Dr Stephan Blatti, Department of Philosophy, University of Memphis, Memphis, TN 38152, USA; blatti@memphis.edu 640 J Med Ethics September 2014 Vol 40 No 9 Author meets critics: response group.bmj.com on August 13, 2014 Published by jme.bmj.comDownloaded from last two are versions of Lucretius' symmetry argument in his De Rerum Natura6: the 'ontological version' and the 'attitudinal version.' This looks like a lot of artillery trained on MHT. But it emerges in the course of Taylor's discussion that, in fact, MHT faces not so much a firing squad as a lone gunman. Indeed, the attitudinal version of the symmetry argument aims not at MHT at all, but at assuaging the distress one feels at the prospect of one's death. Taylor sets aside this argument for two reasons: first, it is irrelevant to the bioethical concerns of his book; second, either it is unnecessary (because its conclusion is established by the ontological version) or its conclusion cannot be established (because rational argumentation is ill-suited to assuaging fear) (p. 86).2 i The ontological version does aim to establish the falsity of MHT. But, as Taylor shows in the remainder of chapter 6, this argument 'cannot support this conclusion independently' (p. 101). Accordingly, the Lucretian case against MHT stands or falls with its Epicurean counterparts-or rather, counterpart (singular). For in chapter 5 we learn that the existence variant of the Epicurean argument cannot support its own weight either. In order to avoid a problem first raised by Feldman,7 Taylor shows how this variant must be revised in such a way that it comes to rely on premise (1) (below) of the hedonic variant of the Epicurean argument (pp. 72–73), with the result that 'the plausibility of the former is derived from that of the latter' (p. 73). The upshot is this: by Taylor's own lights, the case against MHT ultimately rests with the hedonic variant of the Epicurean argument. Here, then, is his presentation of that argument (p. 70): 1. An event or a state of affairs is a harm to a person only if it adversely affects her experiences. 2. Postmortem persons cannot experience anything. Thus, given (1) and (2): 3. An event or state of affairs can only harm an antemortem person by adversely affecting her experiences. Thus, from (3): 4. A person can only be harmed by an event or a state of affairs that occurs prior to her death. 5. A person's death does not occur prior to her death. Thus, from (4) and (5): A person's death is not a harm to her. Taylor identifies premise (1) as the linchpin of this argument, and in chapters 3 and 5 he defends it against two main objections: first, against the objection that 'persons can by harmed by events or states of affairs that do not adversely affect their experiences' and, later, against the objection 'that a person's death could harm her in that it deprives her of positive experiences that she would otherwise have had' (p. 82). Since the case against MHT boils down to this argument, Taylor is certainly justified in focusing on what he regards as its most controversial premise. But I want to focus on a turn in this argument that Taylor regards as utterly uncontroversial, namely the move from (3) to (4). About this inference, Taylor says next to nothing-only that 'premise (4) follows directly from premise (3), which, in turn, follows from the conjunction of premises (1) and (2)' (p. 73). Well, let us assume for the sake of argument that (1)–(3) are true. Does it follow 'directly' that a living person can be harmed by an event or a state of affairs only if that event or a state of affairs occurs prior to the person's death? Not, I suggest, if the event or state of affairs that harms the individual-call her S-just is S's death. Premise (4) follows from (1), (2), and (3) only on the assumption that S's death itself cannot adversely affect S's experiences-on the assumption, in other words, that S's death cannot harm her. Yet this assumption begs the very question at stake in case against MHT. Now perhaps it will be thought that this assumption is innocuous: S's death is not an event or state of affairs that S herself can experience because its occurrence consists in her non-existence, and one must exist in order to have experiences. But this is too quick. It is possible to accept that (a) S's death consists in her non-existence, that (b) S must exist in order to have experiences and that (c) S's death is an event or state of affairs that she herself can experience, provided one also accepts that (d) one can experience an event or state of affairs prior to its occurrence.ii Admittedly, spelling out how it is that S experiences her death before it occurs will take some work that cannot be undertaken in the present context. But here at least is a rough suggestion (no doubt there are other possibilities as well).iii Because she knows both that human persons will cease to exist when they die (p. 2) and that she is a human person, S knows that she will cease to exist when she dies. She does not know when this event will occur, but she knows both that it will occur and that it can occur at any moment she is living. At any moment of her existence, in other words, S knows that this moment may be her last. It is not implausible, I think, to suggest that the persistent threat of a future event that is certain to occur -S's death-adversely affects S's experiences prior to its occurrence all the while S is living and thinking about it. Once again, the preceding is just a speculative sketch of how (c) and (d) might be defended. But if it is the case that an event need not occur prior to an individual's death in order to adversely affect her, then premise (4) is false, and Taylor's neo-Epicurean case against the possibility that death can harm the one who dies is seriously threatened. In the meantime, at the very least, it seems to me that (4) begs the question against the advocate of MHT. Competing interests None. Provenance and peer review Commissioned; internally peer reviewed. To cite Blatti S. J Med Ethics 2014;40:640–642. Received 26 May 2014 Accepted 16 June 2014 Published Online First 15 July 2014 ▸ http://dx.doi.org/10.1136/medethics-2013-101627 ▸ http://dx.doi.org/10.1136/medethics-2013-101755 ▸ http://dx.doi.org/10.1136/medethics-2013-101756 ▸ http://dx.doi.org/10.1136/medethics-2013-101757 ▸ http://dx.doi.org/10.1136/medethics-2014-102336 iUnless otherwise indicated, all page references are to this work. iiI suspect that Taylor (pp. 14–15) would say that he has established the falsity of (d) with his challenge to Pitcher8 and Feinberg3 and his case for the impossibility of posthumous harm (chapter 3), and that these arguments would apply mutatis mutandis to mortal harm. I believe this is not the case, but space does not permit me to engage this material here. iiiA more extensive defence of a similar (if not quite the same) suggestion is given by Blatti.9 J Med Ethics September 2014 Vol 40 No 9 641 Author meets critics: response group.bmj.com on August 13, 2014 Published by jme.bmj.comDownloaded from J Med Ethics 2014;40:640–642. doi:10.1136/medethics-2013-101754 REFERENCES 1 Taylor JS. Death, posthumous harm, and bioethics. J Med Ethics 2014;40:636–7. 2 Taylor JS. Death, Posthumous Harm, and Bioethics. New York: Routledge, 2012. 3 Feinberg J. Harm to Others. In: Fischer J M, ed. The metaphysics of death. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1993:171–90. 4 Bradley B. Well-being and death. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009. 5 Epicurus. Letter to Menoeceus. In: Epicurus: the extant remains. Trans. C. Bailey. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1926:82–93. 6 Lucretius. De Rerum Natura. Trans. Rouse WHD, rev. Smith MF. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2006. 7 Feldman F. Some puzzles about the evil of death. In: Fischer J M, ed. The metaphysics of death. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1993:305–26. 8 Pitcher G. The misfortunes of the dead. In: Fischer J M, ed. The Metaphysics of Death. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1993:157–68. 9 Blatti S. Death's distinctive harm. Am Philos Q 2012;49:317–30. 642 J Med Ethics September 2014 Vol 40 No 9 Author meets critics: response group.bmj.com on August 13, 2014 Published by jme.bmj.comDownloaded from doi: 10.1136/medethics-2013-101754 2014 40: 640-642 originally published online July 15, 2014J Med Ethics Stephan Blatti of death Mortal harm and the antemortem experience http://jme.bmj.com/content/40/9/640.full.html Updated information and services can be found at: These include: References http://jme.bmj.com/content/40/9/640.full.html#ref-list-1 This article cites 1 articles service Email alerting the box at the top right corner of the online article. Receive free email alerts when new articles cite this article. 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