Abstract
While all psychologically competent persons know that they will one day die, this knowledge is typically held at a distance, not fully assimilated. That is, while we do not doubt that we will die, there is another sense in which we cannot fully believe it either. However, on some rare occasions, we can grasp the reality of our mortal nature in a way that is seemingly revelatory, as if the fact is appreciated in a new way. Thomas Nagel calls this experience ‘the expectation of nothingness’. But how can I be shocked by what I already know? After illustrating this phenomenon via examples including Tolstoy’s The Death of Ivan Ilyich, I draw on the work of Thomas Nagel, Tamar Szabo Gendler, Mark Johnston and others to articulate and explain our typical state of believing-yet-not-believing in our inevitable death, and offer a hypothesis as to how this condition is occasionally overcome, so that we grasp our mortality in a more psychologically integrated manner.
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Notes
Due to the proliferation of neologisms and other terms of art in this paper, a referee recommended adding a Glossary at the end. I have acted on this good advice.
The subjective ‘I’ should be distinguished from the subjective self, which is contrasted with Nagel’s notion of the objective self.
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Acknowledgments
This paper has taken a very long time to write. Jason Hagen and Ted Parent both gave extensive comments on early drafts. More recently, John Martin Fischer gave advice and encouragement. Many discussions with Richard Askay helped me to appreciate Heidegger. Finally, I thank this journal’s referees for their helpful comments.
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Glossary
Glossary
- N-states :
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The normal way to occurrently believe in one’s own inevitable death.
- E-states :
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The unusual way of occurrently acknowledging one’s mortality, that Nagel calls the ‘expectation of nothingness’.
- A-states :
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Absorption in everyday tasks, with little reflective consciousness, and where beliefs about one’s mortality are merely dispositional. (See also the subjective self)
- Alief (Gendler):
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a state with representational-affective-behavioral content activated by features of one’s internal or external environment
- Objective self (Nagel):
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One who adopts a relatively objective view of the world and one’s place in it.
- Subjective self :
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One who takes an unreflective view of himself and the world
- Subjective–objective spectrum: :
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The range of viewpoints on the world and oneself, at different degrees of objectivity.
- Arena of presence and action (Johnston):
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The structured set of perspectival modes of presentation of the contents of one’s consciousness
- Indexical ‘I’ (Johnston):
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The way of thinking about oneself as a publically accessible person.
- Subjective ‘I’ (Johnston):
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The one at the center of this arena of presence and action.
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Baillie, J. The expectation of nothingness. Philos Stud 166 (Suppl 1), 185–203 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11098-012-0081-7
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11098-012-0081-7