Abstract
In addressing the Lucretian symmetry problem, the content-based approach attends to the difference between the contents of the actual life and those of relevant possible lives of a person. According to this approach, the contents of a life with an earlier beginning would substantially differ from, and thus be discontinuous with, the contents of the actual life, whereas the contents of a life with the same beginning but a later death would be continuous with the contents of the actual life. In this paper, I examine two versions of the content-based approach: the identity account and the preference account. The identity account holds that, in the sense of identity which is relevant to the evil of nonexistence, the subject of the actual life, though identical to the person in the life with a later death, is distinct from the subject of the life with an earlier beginning. The preference account maintains that, given one’s attachments to actual particulars, a life with an earlier beginning is not rationally preferable to one’s actual life, whereas a life with a later death is. I argue that each version of the content-based approach is implausible, while discussing some of the complications that face each of them.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Similar content being viewed by others
Notes
Lucretius, 2007: 101. The relevant passage reads as follows: “Look back again—how the endless ages of time come to pass before our birth are nothing to us. This is a looking glass Nature holds up for us in which we see the time to come after we finally die. What is it there that looks so fearsome? What’s so tragic? Isn’t it more peaceful than any sleep?”.
Belshaw 2000: 69. This locution suggests that we begin to exist at birth, which may not be true. Here I take his claim to mean that if someone had begun to exist earlier, then that person would not have been me. In this paper, I do not take a stand as to when exactly we begin to exist. However, I will be discussing the possibility that one might have begun to exist earlier than one in fact did and yet lived until the time of one’s actual death. That would have made one’s life longer than the actual life by adding to one’s past rather than to one’s future.
See Kaufman, 1995, 1996, 1999, 2000, 2011; Belshaw, 1993, 1998, 2000. Sometimes Belshaw seems more interested in expounding on people’s asymmetrical attitudes toward prenatal and posthumous nonexistence as opposed to the asymmetry itself. However, even in that case, his view can be faithfully employed to offer an account of the asymmetry between the two types of nonexistence, and that is how I construe his view in this paper.
Kaufman, 2000: 95. According to Kaufman, the metaphysical essence of a person is what makes her identical to its bearer across all possible worlds that contain it. It does not necessarily involve any of the psychological attributes she has in her actual life. For several candidates for metaphysical essence, Kaufman mentions “a certain human body, a particular genetic construction, a certain origin, the brain, [and] a Cartesian soul” (1999: 11, 2000: 95). We can sharpen the distinction between thick and thin selves by referring to a philosophical thought experiment involving a “brain-zap,” i.e., the complete and irreversible destruction of one’s psychological states and dispositions (Shoemaker & Swinburne, 1984: 86–88). If I undergo a brain-zap, my thick self would not survive, though my thin self would remain intact. I am grateful to an anonymous reviewer for Philosophia for inspiring me to make this observation.
See, e.g., Kaufman, 1999: 12, and 2000: 95. It is sometimes claimed that one could not have existed significantly earlier than one in fact did, on the grounds that any person who had existed significantly earlier would have been numerically distinct. See, e.g., Nagel, 1970: 79. This claim is often regarded as being associated with Kripkean genetic essentialism, according to which the identity of genetic material is essential to the identity of a person. This sort of essentialism has been rejected by many philosophers. For instance, Stephen Rosenbaum claims that “these theses about genetic origin are as questionable as the proposition that a person could not logically have been conceived earlier, and they are thus unconvincing reasons for the conclusion” (1989: 363). McMahan also observes that you “could have existed even if the same egg [from which you in fact developed] had been fertilized by a different though qualitatively identical sperm—even, perhaps, by a different sperm that would not have been qualitatively identical but would have carried copies of all the same active genes” (2006: 214). According to some critics, even if genetic essentialism is true, it does not follow that one could not have begun to exist earlier than one in fact did. Anthony Brueckner and John Martin Fischer maintain that “[t]he essentiality of the actual time of one’s birth is a highly contentious metaphysical claim, and even if one (controversially) held that generation from such and such gametes is an essential property of an individual, this would not commit one to the essentialist claim” (1993: Note 2). McMahan also argues that it is conceivable that “our parents’ reproductive systems [were] working a bit differently—for example, my mother’s ovaries could have released the egg from which my organism was formed earlier than they did, and that egg could have been fertilized earlier by a sperm that carried copies of the same chromosomes that were carried by the sperm that actually fertilized it” (2006: 215). Rosenbaum maintains that “for it to be logically impossible for the person to come into existence earlier, it would have to be logically impossible for the particular sperm and egg to exist at some earlier time and to fuse at some earlier time[; however,] this is not logically impossible” (1989: 363).
I find Kaufman’s usages of the thin and the thick selves to be rather vague. Perhaps what he really means here is that the person with an earlier existence would not have been qualitatively identical to me as I currently am, though he might have been numerically identical to me. If this is indeed what he means, then his view is significantly similar to the preference view. I will further discuss this point later.
In this line of thinking, Belshaw (2000: 70–71) observes that if I had begun to exist earlier, I would not have received the education, met the people, and had the experiences that shaped my life in its current form.
This statement suggests that there is some coherent alternative context in which I might not be me but someone else, which is impossible. It is not clear what exactly Belshaw means by this statement. My best guess is that he means that I want to retain various psychological features I currently have and I (or the past person psychologically continuous with me) had in the past.
I acknowledge that there may be circumstances in which one would not regret one’s unfortunate past, because one believes that a change in one’s past would have resulted in an undesired change in one’s identity. Suppose someone’s difficult past helped her grow to be an admirably strong person with a sturdy mind. Looking back at her past, she might say, “I do not regret the hardships in my past. Without them, I wouldn’t be quite myself now.” Nevertheless, such a sentiment is entirely compatible with my observation that our retractions of initial regrets are often unrelated to considerations about a loss of identity. In making this claim, I am not committed to the view that no withdrawal of regret stems from reflections upon identity, only that some withdrawal of regret does not stem from reflections on identity. I am grateful to an anonymous reviewer for Philosophia for urging me to clarify this point.
Belshaw, 1998: Note 27. One might argue that these remarks only make sense if they are interpreted as a claim about qualitative identity, given that the notion of numerical identity does not admit of degrees. If what Belshaw is offering is indeed an account of qualitative identity, as opposed to that of numerical identity, then his view may be regarded as a version of the preference view. Again, I will address this point later.
I would like to note that, even in this new construal, the identity account is not quite the same as the preference account. A notable difference is that, unlike the preference account, this construal does not appeal to our attachments to the particulars in our actual lives, but instead appeals to the difference of psychology in explaining why a life with an earlier beginning is not rationally preferable. However, what I will discuss as the problems of the preference account can mostly be applied to this newly interpreted version of the identity account.
The lines here are from the 1999 film directed by Anthony Minghella, as opposed to the novel of the same title by Patricia Highsmith.
This is based on the notion that I could have begun to exist earlier than I in fact did, while sustaining the same genetic material from my parents. One might raise a question about this supposition from the perspective of Kripkean genetic essentialism. However, I believe this view can be readily defended even if we grant the truth of genetic essentialism. To illustrate this point, imagine that a particular sperm and a particular egg had been frozen separately for a certain period of time before they fused with each other to generate an organism from which I developed. Assuming that I came into existence at the time of the fusion (or the generation of the organism subsequent to the fusion), it is true that I could have begun to exist significantly earlier with the same genetic structure. In a similar line of reasoning, Lukas J. Meier claims that, “as it is now possible to cryopreserve gametes, the time of origin of the same biological individual has become variable” (2019: 653). See also the related comments by other critics in Footnote 6.
I do not mean to suggest that a two-year-old baby can have the abilities to form the sorts of preferences we are considering here. What I am assuming is only that even two-year-olds can have interests as we rational human adults do, just as we can plausibly assume that severely mentally challenged individuals have interests even if they lack the ability to form preferences.
There are several presuppositions for the truth of this claim. For instance, it should be presumed that the person under discussion would have been similarly mentally disabled if he or she had begun to exist earlier. I think it is possible to adjust the story to accommodate the presuppositions.
John Martin Fischer and Daniel Speak make a similar observation (2000: 92). However, they bring up this point to argue against Belshaw’s conservation claim, whereas my main purpose here is to illustrate that the evaluation of the actual life and a relevant possible life with a different biography depends on various kinds of contingencies.
Here again, my preference would be based on the assumption that it is indeed possible for me to have begun to exist earlier. To see the plausibility of this assumption, see my remarks in Footnote 15.
I am indebted to Jeff McMahan for this example.
McMahan (2006: 222) provides the following example: “Suppose scientists tell me that I have the philosophy-writing gene, so that virtually any life I might have had would have been one in which I would have compulsively written philosophy.”
Admittedly, if I had begun to exist earlier, I might not have ended up being a writer or a monk. So, here I intend to delimit my observation to a particular context in which a person unswervingly sticks to her current profession, just as McMahan considers a case in which he is single-mindedly devoted to writing philosophy. However, if this postulation is too far-fetched, we can surely imagine a case in which someone yearns for wisdom in life and, for that reason, prefers to be older, regardless of what she does for a living.
References
Belshaw, C. (1993). Asymmetry and non-existence. Philosophical Studies, 70(1), 103–116.
Belshaw, C. (1998). Death, pain and time. Philosophical Studies, 97(3), 317–341.
Belshaw, C. (2000). Later death/earlier birth. Midwest Studies in Philosophy, 24(1), 69–83.
Brueckner, A. L., & Fischer, J. M. (1993). Death’s badness. Pacific Philosophical Quarterly, 74(1), 37–45.
Brueckner, A. L., & Fischer, J. M. (1998). Being born earlier. Australasian Journal of Philosophy, 76(1), 110–114.
Fischer, J. M., & Speak, D. (2000). Death and the psychological conception of personal identity. Midwest Studies in Philosophy, 24(1), 84–93.
Harman, E. (2011). Fischer and lamenting nonexistence. Social Theory and Practice, 37(1), 129–142.
Kaufman, F. (1995). An answer to Lucretius’s symmetry argument against the fear of death. The Journal of Value Inquiry, 29(1), 57–64.
Kaufman, F. (1996). Death and deprivation: Or why Lucretius’ symmetry argument fails. Australasian Journal of Philosophy, 74(2), 305–312.
Kaufman, F. (1999). Pre-vital and post-mortem non-existence. American Philosophical Quarterly, 36(1), 1–19.
Kaufman, F. (2000). Thick and thin selves: Reply to Fischer and Speak. Midwest Studies in Philosophy, 24(1), 94–97.
Kaufman, F. (2011). Late birth, early death, and the problem of Lucretian symmetry. Social Theory and Practice, 37(1), 113–127.
Lucretius. (2007). The nature of things. (A. E. Stallings, Trans.; introduction by R. Jenkyns). Penguin Books.
McMahan, J. (2006). The Lucretian argument. In K. McDaniel, J. R. Raibley, R. Feldman, & M. J. Zimmerman (Eds.), The good, the right, life and death: Essays in honor of Fred Feldman (pp. 213–226). Ashgate Publishing.
Meier, L. J. (2019). What matters in the mirror of time: Why Lucretius’ symmetry argument fails. Australasian Journal of Philosophy, 97(4), 651–660.
Minghella, A. (Director). (1999). The talented Mr. Ripley [Film]. Paramount, Miramax.
Morrison, T. (2008). A mercy. Vintage.
Nagel, T. (1970). Death. Noûs, 4(1), 73–80.
Rosenbaum, S. (1989). The symmetry argument: Lucretius against the fear of death. Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, 50(2), 353–373.
Shoemaker, S., & Swinburne, R. (1984). Personal Identity. Blackwell.
Acknowledgements
This work was supported by the National Research Foundation of Korea (NRF) Grant funded by the Korean Government (MSIP) (No. NRF-2015R1A5A7037825). Many thanks to Jeff McMahan and John Martin Fischer for reading earlier drafts of this paper and providing me with valuable comments. I am also grateful to Jaehyun Jeong and Jihee Han for suggesting illuminating examples from literary work and film. Finally, I thank an anonymous reviewer for Philosophia for urging me to clarify my arguments in several places.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Additional information
Publisher's Note
Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Yi, H. Lucretian Symmetry and the Content-Based Approach. Philosophia 50, 815–831 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11406-021-00388-6
Received:
Revised:
Accepted:
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11406-021-00388-6