Philosophical Studies 176 (1):241-257 (2019)
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Perhaps death’s badness is an illusion. Epicureans think so and argue that agents cannot be harmed by death when they’re alive nor when they’re dead. I argue that each version of Epicureanism faces a fatal dilemma: it is either committed to a demonstrably false view about the relationship between self-regarding reasons and well-being or it is involved in a merely verbal dispute with deprivationism. I first provide principled reason to think that any viable view about the badness of death must allow that agents have self-regarding reason to avoid death if doing so would increase their total well-being. I then show that Epicurean views which do not preserve this link are subject to reductio arguments and so should be rejected. After that, I show that the Epicurean views which accommodate this desideratum are involved in a merely verbal dispute with deprivationism.
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DOI | 10.1007/s11098-017-1014-2 |
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References found in this work BETA
Reasons and Persons.Joseph Margolis - 1986 - Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 47 (2):311-327.
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Citations of this work BETA
A Simple Analysis of Harm.Jens Johansson & Olle Risberg - forthcoming - Ergo: An Open Access Journal of Philosophy.
Causal Accounts of Harming.Erik Carlson, Jens Johansson & Olle Risberg - 2021 - Pacific Philosophical Quarterly.
Well-Being Counterfactualist Accounts of Harm and Benefit.Erik Carlson, Jens Johansson & Olle Risberg - 2021 - Tandf: Australasian Journal of Philosophy:1-11.
Dissolving Death’s Time-of-Harm Problem.Travis Timmerman - forthcoming - Australasian Journal of Philosophy.
Reply to Klocksiem on the Counterfactual Comparative Account of Harm.Erik Carlson - 2020 - Ethical Theory and Moral Practice 23 (2):407-413.
View all 8 citations / Add more citations
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