Benatar on Annihilation and the Existence Requirement

Herewith, the eighth installment in a series on David Benatar's The Human Predicament (Oxford UP, 2017). We are still in the juicy and technically rich Chapter 5 entitled "Death." This entry covers pp. 102-118. People who dismiss this book unread are missing out on a lot of good philosophy. You are no philosopher if you refuse to examine arguments the conclusions of which adversely affect your doxastic complacency.

Epicurus, you will recall, is the presiding shade. His core idea, presented very simply, is that death can be nothing to us since when we are, it is not, and when it is, we are not. How then can death be bad for the person who dies? But for Benatar, being dead is bad, objectively bad, and for all. So our man faces an Epicurean challenge. I concluded a few entries back that he met the challenge in its Hedonist Variant.

If the only intrinsic goods and bads are conscious or experiential states, then being dead can't be bad since the dead don't experience anything. But there are intrinsic goods and bads that are not experiential. If so, then being dead can be bad in virtue of depriving the decedent of goods that would otherwise have accrued to him. A good or a bad can accrue to one even if it cannot be experienced by the one to whom it accrues.* That, roughly, is the Deprivation Response to the Epicurean challenge.

Benatar supplements it with the Annihilation Response: death is bad for the person who dies because it annihilates or obliterates him, whether or not it deprives him of future goods that he would otherwise have had. (102-103) One has an interest not only in future goods, but also an "independent interest" in continued existence.

The Existence Requirement

One fairly intuitive objection to the Deprivation Response, even when supplemented by the Annihilation Response, runs as follows. How can a person be deprived of anything, whether positive feelings or non-experiential goods, if he does not exist at the time the deprivation occurs? The Existence Requirement, then, is this:

ER. In order for something to be bad or good for somebody, that being must actually exist at the time at which the bad occurs. (111, 115)

It is not enough for the person to exist; the person must exist at the time at which the bad occurs. But when a person is dead, he is no more, so when is the badness of death upon him? Not when he is dead, given the truth of (ER). Recoiling from "Subsequentism," some have adopted "Priorism," the view that death is bad before the person dies. But how can being dead be bad for me if I am alive and kicking? Benatar goes on to consider three other unlikely views. But brevity is the soul of blog, and so I will ignore this discussion and jump to what I consider the heart of the matter.

The Aporetics of Being Dead

I lay it down that a philosophical problem is in canonical form when it is expressed as an aporetic polyad. When the problem before us is poured into the mold of an inconsistent triad, it fairly jumps out at us:

1) Mortalism: Death ends a person's existence.

2) Existence Requirement: For something to be bad for somebody, he must exist at the time it is bad for him.

3) Badness of Death: Being dead is bad for the one who dies.

The limbs of the triad are collectively inconsistent: they cannot (logically) all be true. Any two of the above propositions, taken together, entail the negation of the remaining one. For example, the conjunction of (1) and (2) entails the negation of (3). And yet each of the propositions makes a strong claim on our acceptance.

How do we solve this bad boy? Given that logically inconsistent propositions cannot all be true. we need to reject one of the propositions. Which one?

The Epicurean denies (3) and accepts (1) and (2). Benatar denies (2) and accepts (1) and (3). Benatar

. . . see[s] no reason why we should treat the existence requirement as a requirement. To insist that the badness of death must be analyzed in exactly the same way as other bad things that do not have the distinctive feature of death is to be insensitive to a complexity in the way the world is. (115)

Now is there any way to decide rationally between the two positions? I don't see a way.

I was initially inclined to hold that the Existence Requirement holds across the board, even for the 'state' of being dead. To put it rhetorically, how can it be bad for me to be dead when there is no 'me' at the times I am dead? It seems self-evident! Epicurus vindicatus est. But what is the source of the self-evidence?

The source seems to be the assumption that the 'state' of being dead and the state of having a broken leg are states in exactly the same sense of the term. If they are, then (ER) follows. But Benatar has brought me to see that it is not obvious that being dead is a state like any other.

The bad of a broken leg is had by me only at times at which I exist. This makes it natural to think that the bad of being dead, if a bad it is, is had by me only when I exist, which implies that being dead is not bad. But death is very different from other bad things. (115) Perhaps we can say that the bad of death is sui generis. If so, then we ought not expect it to satisfy the Existence Requirement.

We seem to be at an impasse. On the one hand we have the strong intuition that death is bad for the one who dies in that it (a) deprives the person of the goods he would otherwise have enjoyed or had non-experientially, and (b) annihilates the person. This is part of the explanation why Epicurean reasoning smacks of sophistry to so many. On he other hand, The Existence Requirement obtrudes itself upon the mind with no little force and vivacity. Our Czech colleague Vlastimil V finds it self-evident.

Benatar, however, thinks it merely "clever" to adopt the Existence Requirement, but "wise" to recognize that death is different from other bad things. (115-116) The wise course is to "respond to difference with difference and to complexity with nuance." (116)

Given my aporetic bent, I am inclined to say that the triad is rationally insoluble. I see no compelling reason to take either the side of Benatar or that of Epicurus.

What say you, Vlastimil?

________________

*The following example, mine, not Benatar's, might show this to be the case. A philosopher is holed up, totally incommunicado, in a hermitage at a remote monastery in the high desert of New Mexico. While there, the Schopenhauer Gesellschaft awards him its coveted Pessimist of the Year Award which brings with it a subtantial emolument. Unfortunately, our philosopher dies at the very instant the award is made. Not only does he not become aware of the award; he cannot become aware of it. And yet something good happened to him. Therefore, not everything good that happens to one need be something of which one is aware or even can be aware. And the same goes for the the bad.

Posted

January 27, 2018

Aporetics, Benatar, David, Death and Immortality, Epicureanism, Existence

Bill Vallicella

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8 responses to “Benatar on Annihilation and the Existence Requirement”

Jacques

January 31, 2018

Hi Bill,
Fischer uses an example similar to your (Pessimist of the Year) example in “Death, Badness and the Impossibility of Experience”.
In that paper he also makes the following argument, which you might like. (I think it’s pretty good anyway :))
(1) The only plausible reason for imposing an Existence Requirement is some prior acceptance of an Experience Requirement, i.e., the belief that x could be bad for me only if x could possibly cause me to have some kind of bad experience (i.e., an experience that I the subject wouldn’t like or wouldn’t want or something like that); of course I do have to exist in order to have bad experiences.
But (2) The Experience Requirement is false (as shown by examples such as the case of being betrayed behind one’s back, even when we add conditions making it impossible ever to have a bad experience as a result of the betrayal).
Therefore, (3) There’s no plausible reason for imposing an Existence Requirement.
This seems pretty convincing to me, unless (1) is false (i.e., there’s some reason for an Existence Requirement other than an Experience Requirement).
**** A question:
How can Benatar think we have an “independent” interest in continuing to exist while also thinking that our mere existence, apart from any contingent details, is always so bad that we’d have been better off not existing in the first place? If he thinks it’s no longer _that_ bad given that we did in fact begin to exist, that seems inconsistent with his anti-natalism (since on this view natality alone would make our actual existence good enough overall, even if it wasn’t good enough when merely possible). If he thinks it really is that bad even though we did begin to exist, what is it _about_ our continued existence such that it’s in our interest to keep existing _regardless_ of any good experiences we might have or not have? Surely continuing to ‘do’ some activity A, such that it would be better for the agent never to have started A, is not in the agent’s interest unless there is something over and above A, contingently associated with A, that it is in the agent’s interests to do… But then it seems that continued existence is worthwhile for us only because, in existing, we get to do or experience things…?

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Elliott

January 31, 2018

Hello, Gentleman. Some thoughts:
First, it might help to clarify the sense of ‘good’ under discussion. For example, if it’s Aquinas’ view – that good and being are the same; that a thing’s good is, or contributes to, its being – then it seems incoherent to hold that a good can accrue to a thing that does not exist. How could there be a contribution to a thing’s being if that thing doesn’t exist? Mutatis mutandis if good is taken to be identical to pleasure, as Aristippus is said to have held.
Second, Jacques suggests that the only plausible reason for imposing the Existence Req. is some prior acceptance of an Experience Req. Perhaps there is another plausible reason. Call it the Relation Requirement. If g is good for S, g stands in relation to S. And if g relates to S, S exists. This can but need not be an experiential relation.
For example, we could modify Bill’s example about the PoY award so that the philosopher doesn’t die, yet for some reason never becomes aware of the award. Perhaps a necessary condition of one’s receiving the award is that he not be aware of it, lest he become an optimist!

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BV

January 31, 2018

Jacques,
Thanks for the comments and the reference to Fischer’s paper. I haven’t read it. I need to.
It is clear that one has to exist in order to have bad experiences, or any experiences. (Or at least it is clear if one is not a Meinongian, and I am not.) It is also clear that one has to exist at the times one is having the experiences.
It is not clear that (1) is true. I think I can give a reason for the ER other than the ExpR. The reason is that ER is just a special case of a generalized ER: No x is such that it has a predicate true of it unless x exists at the time the predicate is true of it. Now let the predicate be ‘___ is deprived of a non-experiential good’ and let the values of ‘x’ be restricted to sentient beings. Then you get ER as a special case.

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BV

January 31, 2018

>>How can Benatar think we have an “independent” interest in continuing to exist while also thinking that our mere existence, apart from any contingent details, is always so bad that we’d have been better off not existing in the first place?<< I don't think B. holds that mere existence, apart from contingent details, is bad. I read him as saying that it is the objective preponderance of the bad over the good for every sentient being, even those most fortunate, that makes it better never to have come into existence. In fact, I think his view is that mere existence is good. Being dead is bad not only because it deprives one (or in many cases deprives one) of goods one would otherwise have had, but also because it obliterates or annihilate ones. Annihilation is a further bad only because mere existence is good. It would have been better had I never come to exist, not because to exist is bad as such, but because the nature of our world is such that the bad outweighs the good for all. For example, pain is far far worse than pleasure is good. This is consistent with saying that sentience, as such, is good.

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Jacques

January 31, 2018

“I don’t think B. holds that mere existence, apart from contingent details, is bad. I read him as saying that it is the objective preponderance of the bad over the good for every sentient being, even those most fortunate, that makes it better never to have come into existence.”
Maybe I was unclear about this. What I meant was that, as I understand him, he’s saying that any (actual) human life is so bad that anti-natalism holds for that life–regardless of any (actually) possible contingencies, i.e., even if some people have lives that are maximally good relative to whatever is humanly possible in this world. And that’s what you’re attributing to him too, right?
But then, on that kind of view, to exist _as one of us_ in this actual world is always such that anti-natalism holds for that existence. To me there seems to be a tension, at least, between that claim and the claim that _continued_ existence would be some kind of good for the person who dies. What is good about it for him? Intuitively, the only answer possible seems to be: the good activities or experiences or other things that would or could have accompanied that existence. But if those would or could have been good _enough_ that, overall or on balance, the whole continued existence counts as a good rather than a neutral or bad thing for him, wouldn’t that imply that his actual existence was likewise a good rather than a neutral or bad thing while it was actually continuing, i.e., up to his death?
Maybe I’m misunderstanding something here…?

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Jacques

January 31, 2018

Hi Elliot,
I agree about this:
“Perhaps there is another plausible reason. Call it the Relation Requirement. If g is good for S, g stands in relation to S. And if g relates to S, S exists. This can but need not be an experiential relation.”
And the Relation Requirement seems true, but maybe only because it’s so abstract. Logically, it couldn’t be that something is good for me despite being in no relation to me; after all, being-good-for is a relation. Some goods and bads might be related to me atemporally or eternally; or they might be related in such a way that they exist only at some time when I don’t. I think what we’d need in order to motivate the Existence Requirement is a stronger Relation Requirement, something like this:
“If g is good for S, g stands in a relation R to S such that R(g, S) only if g and S exist at the same time.”
But then the stronger requirement would just assume the Existence Requirement, and it wouldn’t be an independent reason for accepting that other requirement. Is there a plausible version of the Relation Requirement strong enough to be a reason for the Existence Requirement but not so strong that it begs the question?

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Elliott

February 1, 2018

Hello, Jacques.
Here’s a quick response. I need to go teach an ethics class. Interestingly, we’re addressing the value of human life and its relevance to topics such as euthanasia.
Your modification of RR is helpful. It clarifies the presupposition of presentism. If P-a-P or some version of the B-theory is true, then we wouldn’t need “at the same time.” So, RR would seem to presuppose ER, though perhaps not presentism. But I wasn’t trying to avoid ER. I only wanted to provide a reason for thinking ER holds by broadening it beyond ExpR.
ExpR, then, is one way to satisfy RR. Another way is the *having* relation. sRg such that S stands in the asymmetrical relation of having g. Socrates has rationality, for example. A third way to satisfy RR is the *earlier than* relation. Plato is earlier than us. Presumably, that’s good for those of us who do philosophy in his footnotes.
Is there a plausible version of RR strong enough to be a reason for ER but not so strong that it begs the question?
How about this? (Again, this is a quick reply. I’d want to consider it more thoroughly.) In the *having* relation, S’s having of a property is explanatorily prior to S’s existence. So, S’s having a property (say, some non-experiential property) would be a reason for accepting ER without ExpR.
Would this avoid begging the question in favor of ER?

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Vlastimil

February 19, 2018

Bill,
Excuse the delay.
You consider:
“In order for something to be bad or good for somebody, that being must actually exist at the time at which the bad occurs.”
I do not consider that self-evident or obvious, though you think I do. Perhaps my death tomorrow is bad for me during the time I exist as it deprives me of valuable future. See my comments to your maverickphilosopher.typepad.com/maverick_philosopher/2018/01/death-and-deprivation.html
I consider obvious rather this:
“In order for something to be bad for somebody AT t, that being need not actually exist at the time at which the bad occurs but must exist at t.”
You ask: “how can being dead be bad for me if I am alive and kicking?” My answer: Again, death (if it annihilates you) deprives you of valuable future (supposing it would be valuable).

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Benatar on Annihilation and the Existence Requirement

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