“Sailing Stones” of Death Valley / Wikimedia Commons
By Dr. Shelly Kagan / 03.01.2007
Clark Professor of Philosophy
Yale University
What Does It Mean to Die?
A Case for the Same Evolving Personality
Wikimedia Commons
We should distinguish two questions that we would normally be inclined to run together. We’ve been asking ourselves, what does it take for me to survive, for me to continue to exist? But it’s possible, I suggested, that we really shouldn’t focus on the question, what does it take for me to survive? but rather, what is it that I care about? What is it that matters in survival?” Because it’s possible, logically speaking, that there could be cases in which I survive, but I don’t have what I normally have when I survive, and so I don’t have what matters. I don’t have what I wanted, when I wanted to survive. It could be that in the typical cases of survival I’ve got that extra thing. But we can think of cases in which I would survive, but I don’t have that extra thing, and so I wouldn’t have everything that matters to me. So as it were, we might say, it might be that mere survival or bare bones survival doesn’t really give me what matters. What I want is survival plus something else.
I want you think about perhaps the possibility, if the soul view was the truth about personal identity, but imagine a case of complete irreversible amnesia, while nonetheless, it’s still your soul continuing. But the soul is going to then, having been scrubbed clean, get a brand new personality. A new set of memories, new set of desires, new set of beliefs. No chance of recalling your previous, current, personality. And when I think about that case, I find myself wanting to say, all right, I’ll survive, but so what? I don’t care. It doesn’t matter that it’s me, in that case. Because I don’t just want it to be me, I want to have there be somebody that’s me with my personality.
Similarly, suppose we thought that the body view was the correct view and we imagine, again, some sort of case of complete amnesia. And so then we get a new personality and you say, “Oh look, that’s going to be you, your body, your brain. You’re still around.” And I say, “It could be true, but so what?” It doesn’t give me what I want, when I want to survive. What I want isn’t just for it to be me. I want it to be me with my personality.
So should we conclude, therefore, that what really matters is not just survival but having the same personality? Would that — Suppose the personality view of personality identity was correct. Would that then give us not just personal survival, but what matters? I think that’s close, but no cigar. Not quite good enough.
To see that, recall the fact that according to the personality view, as a theory of personality identity, the crucial point isn’t that my personality stay identical. It’s not that I have to keep all exactly the very same beliefs, desires, and memories. Because of course, if we said that, then I’d die as soon as I got a new belief. I’d die as soon as I forgot anything at all of what I was doing 20 minutes ago. No, according to the personality theory, what personal identity requires isn’t item-for-item the same personality, but rather the same evolving personality. I gain new beliefs, new desires, new goals. I may lose some of my previous beliefs, lose some of my previous memories, but that’s okay as long as it’s a slowly-evolving personality with enough overlap.
Okay, so now let’s consider the following case. I start off. Here I am. I’ve got a set of beliefs, a set of — I believe I’m Shelly Kagan, a set of memories about growing up in Chicago. I have a certain set of desires about wanting to finish my book in philosophy and so forth. And I get older and older and older. And I get some new memories and some new desires and some new goals. Suppose that I get very, very, very old. I get 100 years old, 200 years old, 300 years old. Somewhere around 200, suppose that my friends give me a nickname. They call me Jo-Jo. Who knows why, they call me Jo-Jo. And after a while, somewhere the name spreads and by the time I’m 250 years old, everybody’s calling me Jo-Jo.
Nobody calls me Shelly anymore. And by the time I’m 300, 350, 400, I’ve forgotten anybody used to call me Jo-Jo [correction: Shelly Kagan]. And I no longer remember growing up in Chicago. I remember things about my youth when I was a lad of 100. But I can’t go back to what it was like in the early days, just like you can’t go back to what it was like to be four or three. And suppose that all this is going on as I’m getting older and older. My personality is changing in a variety of other ways. I lose my interest in philosophy and take up an interest in, I don’t know, something that completely doesn’t — organic chemistry holds no interest to me whatsoever. I become fascinated by the details of organic chemistry.
Photo of Anthony Hopkins as “Methuselah” from “Noah” (2014)
And my values change. Now I’m a kind — now, over here — I’m a kind, compassionate, warm individual who cares about the downtrodden. But around 300, I say, “The downtrodden. Who needs them?” And by the time I’m 500, I become completely self-absorbed and I’m sort of a vicious, cruel, vile person. Here I am, 800 years old, 900 years old.
Methuselah, in the Bible, lives for 969 years. He’s the oldest person. So okay, here I am, 969 years old. I’m like Methuselah. Call this the Methuselah case. And the crucial point about the case is that we stipulate that at no point was there a dramatic change. It was all gradual, slow, evolving. In just the way it happens in real life. It’s just that as Methuselah, I live a very, very, very long time. And by the end of it, and indeed, let’s say somewhere around 600 or 700, I’m a completely different person, as we might put it. I don’t mean literally. I mean in terms of my personality.
Now, remember, according to the personality theory of personal identity, what makes it me is the fact that it’s the same evolving personality. And I stipulated that it is the same evolving personality. So that’s still me that’s going to be around 600 years from now, 700 years from now. But when I think about that case, I say, “So what? Who cares?” When I think about that case, I say, “True, we’ll just stipulate that will be me in 700 years. But it doesn’t give me what I want. That person is so completely unlike me. He doesn’t remember being Shelly Kagan. He doesn’t remember growing up in Chicago. He doesn’t remember my family. He has completely different interests and tastes and values.” I say “It’s me, but so what? It doesn’t give me what I want. It doesn’t give me what matters.”
When I think about what I want, it’s not just that there be somebody at the tail end of an evolving personality. I want that person to be like me, not just be me. I want that person to be like me. And in the Methuselah case, I’ve stipulated, it ends up not being very much like me at all. So it doesn’t give me what I want. When I think about what I want — and I’m just going to invite you to, each one of you, to ask yourself what is it that you want, what matters to you in survival? — when I think about what matters to me, it’s not just survival. It’s not just survival as part of the same ongoing personality. It’s survival with a similar personality. Not identical, item for item, but close enough to be fairly similar to me. Give me that, and I’ve got what matters. Don’t give me that, and I don’t have what mattes.
In fact, I’m inclined to go a little bit further. Once you give me that, give me that there’s somebody there with my similar personality, I think that may be all that matters. Up to this moment, I’ve been saying, okay, survival by itself isn’t good enough. You need survival plus something else. And I’m now suggesting that in my own case at least, the something else is, something extra, is same, similar personality. It might be that I get what matters to me even if I have, as long as I have, similar personality, even if I don’t have survival.
Suppose there really are souls. And suppose the soul is the key to personal identity. And suppose the thing that Locke was worried about really does happen. Every day at midnight God destroys the old soul and replaces it with a new soul that has the very same personality as the one before midnight, similar personality, same beliefs, desires, and so forth and so on. If I were to discover that’s what was happening metaphysically and the soul view was the true theory of personal identity, I’d say, “Huh! Turns out I’m not going to survive tonight. I’m going to die. Who cares? There’ll be somebody around tomorrow with my beliefs, my desires, my goals, my ambitions, my fears, my values. Good enough. I don’t really care whether I’m going to survive. What I care about is whether there’ll be somebody that’s similar to me in the right way in terms of my personality.”
So it might be that the whole question we’ve been focusing on, “What does it take to survive?” may have turned out to be misguided. The real question may not be “What does it take to survive?” but “What matters?” And it might turn out that although, normally, having what matters goes hand in hand with surviving, logically speaking, they can come apart. And what matters, or so it seems to me, at least, isn’t survival per se, but rather having the same personality.
What Is It Like to Die? A Breakdown of Functions from a Physicalist’s View
Flatline / Wikimedia Commons
Since I’m inclined to think that the body view is the correct theory of personal identity, I want to say, look, somebody around tomorrow, if overnight God replaces my body with some identical looking body and keeps the personality the same, that won’t be me, but all right. It’s good enough. What matters to me isn’t survival per se. Indeed, isn’t survival, strictly, at all. It’s having the same personality.
Still, what does that leave us? That leaves us with the possibility that there could be cases where you die and you don’t survive. Maybe God swoops me up upon death. My body dies, but he sort of swoops up my information about my personality and recreates somebody up in heaven with that similar personality. It won’t be me, if it’s a different soul. It won’t be me, if it’s a different body. But still, I want to say, it will give me what matters!” That’s a possibility. But I don’t, in fact, think it’s going to happen. I believe — I’ve told you I’m a physicalist — I believe that what’s going to happen is, at the death of my body, that’s going to be the end.
Now, what I’ve been arguing is that, logically speaking, even if you are a physicalist, that doesn’t rule out the possibility of survival. Suppose you believe in the personality theory. Your body’s going to die, but your personality could continue. Or it might be, even as a body theorist, I’ll cease to exist but what matters will continue. These are possibilities. But for what it’s worth, I don’t in fact believe they’re actually what’s going to happen. Of course, these are also theological matters, and so I’m not trying to say anything here today to argue you out of the theological conviction that God will resurrect the body or God will transplant your personality into some new angel body, but if you believe in the personality theory, that will be you, or what have you. I’m not — it’s not my goal here to argue for or against these theological possibilities, having at least taken the time to explain philosophically how we could make sense of them.
But I do want to report that I don’t believe them. I believe that when my body dies, that’s it for me. There won’t be anything that’s me afterwards. There won’t be anything that’s — even though what I want per se isn’t survival. Not only won’t I survive, I believe after my death what matters to me in that situation won’t continue either. There won’t be somebody with a similar personality to mine after the death of my body.
All right, so having spent all this time getting clearer about the nature of personal identity, and getting clearer about what people are, and the possibilities of survival, and so forth, having argued against the existence of souls, and for a physicalist view — physicalism seems compatible with both the body view and the personality view, leave it to you to decide between them, I myself currently favor the body view — let’s ask, “So just what is death, anyway, on the physicalist view?”
It might seem as though it’s fairly straightforward. A person, after all, is just a body that’s functioning in the right way so as to do these person tricks. It’s P-functioning, as we’ve put it at one time or another. And so a person is just a P-functioning body, whether you emphasize the body side there or the personality side of that equation.
What exactly is it to die? When do I die? Let’s turn to that question. When do I die and what is death? Roughly speaking, the answer, presumably, on the physicalist view, is going to be something like — if I’m alive when we’ve got a P-functioning body, roughly speaking, I die when that stops happening, when the body breaks and it stops functioning properly. That seems, more or less, the right answer from the physicalist point of view, although as we’ll see probably later today, we need to refine it somewhat.
But first, let’s ask a slightly different question. Which functions are crucial in defining the moment of death? After all, we’ve got the idea that here’s the body, here’s a functioning body. Here’s one in front of you. Each one of you has got one. You’re a functioning body. There’s a variety of functions that your body’s engaged in. Some of them have to do with merely digesting food and moving the body around, and making the heart beat, and the lungs open and close. Call those things the bodily functions. And there’s also, of course, in each one of our cases, there’s these higher mental cognitive functions that I’ve been calling the person functioning, there’s the B-functions and there’s the P-functions.
Well, roughly speaking, I die when the functioning stops, but which functions? Is it the body functions or the personality functions? So let’s take a look at the normal situation. Here’s the existence of your body. And during most of the existence of your body, it’s functioning. The body functions. Over here, it’s no longer functioning. It’s a corpse. During some of the period when your body’s functioning, it’s doing the higher cognitive stuff. The personality functions. Now, this is the very early stuff when your body’s still developing and your brain hasn’t turned on yet, or your brain is turned on, but it hasn’t actually become a person yet, right? At least in the case of the fetus, it’s not self-conscious. It’s not rational. It’s not able to communicate. It’s not creative and so forth. That comes later.
All right, so there’s Phase A. There’s Phase B. There’s Phase C. [See Figure 14.1] That’s the normal situation, the normal case. The body exists. It functions for a while before the P-functioning begins. And then after a while the body and P-functioning are both going on. And then after a while they stop. In the normal case, I’m in a car accident or whatever it is, and my body stops functioning, my personality stops functioning, and you’re left with a corpse.
When did I die? Well, the natural suggestion is to say I died here. I’ll draw my little star, an asterisk. In the normal case, I die when my body stops functioning, in terms of the body functions. And it stops functioning in terms of the personality functions. That’s the normal case. But we could still ask the philosophical question. Since what we had here was simultaneously losing both the ordinary body functioning and the special personality functioning, which loss was the crucial one in terms of defining the moment of my death? Let’s come back to that question in a minute.
Identifying the Moment of Death for the Body
Brain death / Wikimedia Commons
First, I want to ask a slightly different question. When did I cease to exist? Or, to put it slightly differently, do I exist during Phase C, when the body has stopped functioning? Both in terms of body functions and personality functions, I’m just a corpse. Do I exist?
Now, let’s suppose we believe the personality theory of personal identity. According to the personality theory of personal identity, for something to be me, it’s got to have the very same personality, the same evolving, but still the same set of beliefs, desires, goals, so forth. Now, during period C, there’s nothing with my personality, right? Nobody thinks they’re Shelly Kagan. Nobody has my memories, beliefs, exact desires, goals and so forth. Pretty clearly then, on the personality theory, I don’t exist at Phase C. That’s why it’s natural to point to the moment of star when we say that’s when my death occurs. I don’t exist at Phase C.
But interestingly, things look rather different if we accept not the personality theory, but instead, the body theory. After all, according to the body theory of personal identity, for somebody to be me, they’ve got to have my body. Follow the body. Same body, same person. All right, here we are. Here’s my corpse. What is a corpse? It’s a body, and indeed, my corpse is my body. So follow the body means follow the person. The corpse is still around. It means my body’s still around. It means I’m still around. It’s like, I mean, I’m dead, but I still exist. It’s like a bad joke, right?
So here’s the question we started the class off with. Will you survive your death? Will you still exist after death? Well, there’s good news and there’s bad news. Since I believe in the body theory, the good news is, you will exist after your death. The bad news is, you’ll be a corpse. That seems like a bad joke, but if the body theory is right, it’s not a joke at all. It’s literally speaking the truth. I will exist, at least for a while. Eventually, the body will decay, turn into atoms or whatever it is, decompose. At that point my body no longer exists. At that point, I will no longer exist. But at least for a while,during period C, the body theorist should say, “Yeah, you will exist. You will exist, but you won’t be alive.”
It just reinforces the point that I was trying to make a few moments ago that the crucial question is not survival per se. The crucial question is, what did you want out of survival? And one of the things I wanted out of survival was to be alive. All right, so on the body view, I exist here, but I’m not alive, so it doesn’t give me what matters. On the personality view, I don’t exist when I’m a corpse.
Let’s go back and ask the question, well, so which is it? Which is the one that’s the crucial for defining the moment of death, right? Even on the body view, the fact that I exist isn’t good enough, because I’m not alive. I want to know, when am I alive? When am I dead?
So what’s crucial for defining the moment of death? Is it body functioning or personality functioning? Well, you can’t tell by thinking about the normal case, because the B-functioning and the P-functioning stop at the same time. But suppose we draw the abnormal case. All right, here’s C with the corpse again. Here’s a period when the body’s been functioning and goes like this. Here’s the period back here, A, where the body’s been functioning, but the personality hasn’t started yet. And now imagine, so this is personality. Over here we’ve got body. We’ll call this B again. [See Figure 14.2]
What I’ve done is imagine a case in which the personality functioning stops before the rest of the body functioning stops. Obviously, the phases are no longer in alphabetical order, but I introduced D in the middle so the other phases could keep their same labels. Well, here’s a case where — When does the body functioning stop? End of D. When does the personality functioning stop? End of B. So we’ve got two candidates. Star one and star two. Star one says death occurs when personality stops functioning. Star two says no, no, death occurs when bodily functioning stops.
Well, again, the question is, what should we say? I think we’re going to perhaps be drawn to different answers, depending on whether we accept the body view or the personality view. Suppose we accept the body view. Well, look, if the relevant question is “When do I die?” and I am a body, then presumably the straightforward answer at least is going to be “I die when my body stops functioning.” When is that? Star two. During period D, I’m still alive, but I’m no longer functioning as a person. I am no longer a person. That’s interesting. It’s not just that I exist. In C, I can exist without being a corpse; or rather, without being alive, as a corpse. In D, I’m alive but I’m not a person.
You recall when we talked about Plato, we introduced the notion of essential properties. And it seems that if we accept the body view, we have to say being a person is not an essential property of being something like me. It’s not one of my essential properties that I’m a person. I am, in fact, a person, but that won’t always be true of me. When I’m a corpse, I will cease to be a person, but I’ll still exist. And if we have this unusual case in which my brain has a stroke, loses its higher cognitive functioning, so that the body continues to breathe, eat, respirate, and so forth, the heart continues to pump, but there’s no longer anything capable of thinking, reasoning, we say, look, I still exist. Indeed, I’m alive, but I’m not a person. Being a person is something you can go through for a period of time and cease to be. In the same way that being a child is a phase you can go through for a period of time and then cease to be. Or being a professor is a phase you can go through and then cease to be. You can still exist without being a professor. I can still be alive without being a professor.
Well, on the body view, we have to say the same thing about being a person. Being a person is something that I, namely my body, can do for a while. It wasn’t doing it back here in A. It certainly won’t be doing it in C. And it won’t be doing it in D either. Being a person is something on the body view that I am only for part of my existence and indeed, only for part of my life.
Well, that’s what it seems we should say on the body view. What if instead we accept the personality theory? Then — actually, one more remark about the body view. Notice that if you accept this account of what the body view should say about when death is, my death is when I cease to be alive. I am my body. So my death occurs at star two, loss of bodily function. And being a person is just a phase.
Notice that if we say that, then there’s something somewhat misleading about the standard philosophical label for the problems we’ve been thinking about for the last couple of weeks. We’ve been worrying about the nature of personal identity. That is to say, what is it for somebody to be me. But notice that that label, “personal identity,” “the problem of personal identity,” seems to have built into it the assumption that whatever it is that’s me is going to be a person. Is it the same person or not? Now, it turns out that that assumption, standardly built into the usual label, may be false. On the body view, it could still be me without being a person at all. So the problem of existence through time, or persistence through time, shouldn’t be called the problem of personal identity, but just the problem of identity. You know, a footnote.
When Does Personality Begin or Cease to Exist?
Personality Functions
Normal: a | b | c |
a-b (body functions), c (a-pse)
Abnormal: a | b | d | c |
a-b-d (body), c (corpse)
Turning now again to the personality theory. If we accept the personality theory of personal identity, then for someone to be me, they’ve got to have the same personality. And so for something, for me to exist, my personality has to be around. Well, that’s why we said up here that in Phase C when there’s a corpse, I don’t exist. There’s nothing with my personality. As a corpse, I no longer exist.
What should we say about Phase D, on the personality theory? Here, my body is functioning, but my personality has been destroyed. Nothing exists with my beliefs, memories, desires, fears, values, goals, ambitions. Well, if I just am my personality, then I don’t exist in Phase D, because there’s nothing there to be me, nothing with my personality. According to the personality theory, follow the personality. The personality ended at star one. So I don’t exist at Phase D on the personality theory.
Okay good. I don’t exist. But what should we say? Am I alive or not? Well, my body’s still alive. So should we say that I’m alive? After all, my body’s still functioning until star two. During Phase D, my body seems to still be alive. Should we say that I’m alive? That’s rather hard to believe, right? Think about what it would mean to say that. We’d being saying on the personality theory, I don’t exist, but I’m alive. That seems like a very unpalatable combination of views. How can I be alive if I don’t even exist? So it seems we have to say I’m not alive during Phase D. Not only don’t I exist during Phase D, I’m not alive either. Yet, my body is alive; that’s the whole stipulation.
So it looks as though the personality theorist is going to have to introduce a distinction between my being alive, on the one hand, and my body being alive, on the other. In the normal case — up at the top, those two deaths occur simultaneously. My body stops being alive at the very same moment that I cease being alive. But in the abnormal case, the personality theorist needs to say, or so it seems to me, the two deaths come apart. The death of my body occurs at star two. My death occurs at star one. Notice that the body theorist didn’t need to draw that distinction. Because if I just am my body, then well, I’m just my body. My death occurs at the death of my body.
But still, even the body theorist needs a different distinction. We already learned, by thinking about the corpse case, that existence wasn’t good enough for the body theorist. He wanted to be alive. And when I think about Phase D, I want to say something more. It’s not good enough that I’m alive. I want to be a person. So what matters to me isn’t just being alive, but being back here during Phase B. So then it needs something like the same distinction. Not, my death versus my body’s death, but perhaps the death of the person, if we could talk that way, versus the death of the body. My death, for the body view, occurs with the death of my body. But in terms of what matters, it’s the death of the person and that’s star one, not star two.
Now, I want to take just a couple of minutes and mention some other puzzles, or at least questions, worth thinking about in terms of the physicalist picture. I’m only going to point to them, rather than explore them. But I’ve been focused on the question about the end of life. We might ask as well, what about the beginning? What should we say about Phase A, when the body is turned on and functioning, developing, but the brain has not yet gotten to the stage at which it’s turned on, or perhaps it hasn’t yet become, well, it’s not doing person functioning. It’s not reasoning. It’s not communicating. It’s not thinking. It’s not aware. It’s not conscious. There’s going to be some Phase A like that. What should we say about that phase? Do I exist during that phase or don’t I?
Well, on the body view, I suppose we should say I do exist. Being a person is a phase. We happen to have, in Phase A, the stage of my existence before I become a person.
Of course, if we take the version of the body view that what I am, essentially — the crucial body part — is my brain, then we really would have to subdivide A into two parts: early A and late A. In very, very early A, the brain hasn’t even developed yet. It hasn’t been constructed yet. If I just am my brain, in effect, then early A, I don’t exist yet. Not until late A, when the brain gets put together, that I start to exist. There is something there. It’s my body, but it’s not me, in early A. It seems sort of hard to believe, but maybe that’s the right thing to say.
In any event, the fans of the personality theory shouldn’t be laughing too hard, because they’re going to have to say something similar. Remember, if you accept the personality theory, follow the personality. Don’t got the same personality? I cease to exist. That’s why we said on the personality theory, as we went ahead in time, once the P-functioning stops, I don’t exist anymore. That’s what the personality theorist said.
But we can raise that same point going backwards. When did I begin to exist on the personality theory? Not until my continuing, evolving through time personality started. And that certainly wasn’t true way back at the start of A, as the fertilized egg first begins to split and multiply, subdivide and make organs. It’s a good long time till any kind of mental processing occurs at all. So on the personality theory, I did not exist when that fertilized egg came into being, when the egg and the sperm joined. That’s still not me, on the personality theory.
Clearly, these issues are relevant for thinking about the morality of abortion. I’m not going to pursue them here, but you can see how they’d be relevant. If we want to worry about when, if ever, is an abortion justified, it might be worth getting clear on, when do creatures like us start? Interesting question, but having noted it, let me put it aside.
Would it be plausible to say that at the early phases of A, strictly speaking, the body’s not functioning, because it’s so utterly dependent on help from the mother’s body? It needs the mother for respiration, for nutrients, and so forth and so on. That’s a great question. And it’s the sort of question and the reason why I said I wanted to glance in this direction without really going there. That’s a nice example of it. We might wonder, just when should we say the body functioning really does start? How much independence does it take? We could draw yet another picture of a different way a life could come to an end. Imagine a body towards the end of life, on life support machinery. Do we want to say the body’s functioning or not functioning? Well, hard cases there. So similarly, there’s going to be hard cases about the very, very early stages. And although they’re great questions and I’m happy to discuss them with you further, I don’t want to pursue them here and now.
What Has the Right to Live – Me or My Body?
Body and organs / Wikimedia Commons
I want to point to a different question that — I think it’s a crucially important question. My unwillingness to discuss them isn’t a matter of my judgment that they’re unimportant, just trying to keep at least roughly on track. Come back to the end of life. Think some more about Phase D and ask. All right, so this is something that’s — If the personality function’s been destroyed, can’t be recovered, can’t be fixed, but the rest of the bodily functioning is still going on. The heart’s pumping, the lungs are breathing and so forth. The body’s able to digest food. There we are in Phase D, in something like, perhaps, persistent vegetative state.
Now, imagine that we’ve got somebody who needs a heart transplant or a kidney transplant, liver transplant. And tissue compatibility tests reveal this body’s compatible, suitable donor. Can we take it or not? Well, you might have thought we answer that by asking “Am I still alive?” Well, rip out the heart, it’s going to kill me, right? So if I’m still alive, you can’t do that sort of thing. It’s killing me. Well, if we take the personality theory, we have to say, my body’s still alive, but I’m not still alive. That’s what we seem to want to say. If I’m not still alive, all we’d be killing isn’t me, but my body.
So now we have to ask, who or what has the right to life? Do I have the right to life, or does my body have the right to life? Or we might say, look, certainly I have a right to life. But is it also true that in addition to me, my body has a right to life? Is there something immoral about removing the organs during Phase D when the person is dead and the only thing that’s still alive is the body?
Don’t be too quick to assume the answer that’s got to be yeah, it’s still wrong. After all, on the body view, I still exist when I’m a corpse. But of course, there’s nothing wrong about taking my heart, even though I still exist. After all, I’m a corpse. Why not then say, similarly, even though my body’s still alive, nothing wrong about removing the heart if the person is dead. At least, the personality view opens the door to saying that.
What about the body view? On the body view, of course, I just am my body. I’m still alive. Now is it wrong? Well… Just like, with the body view, we wanted to say, “Being alive is not all it’s cracked up to be,” the real question is not, am I alive, on the body view? An interesting question is, “Am I still a person?” And indeed, although I’m alive on the body view, I’m not still a person. Maybe it’s not so much that I have a right not to be killed. Maybe I have a right not to be depersonified, to have my personality destroyed. If that’s the real right, then again, there’d be nothing wrong with removing the heart in D. Well, again, clearly, very, very important and very, very complicated questions. But having gestured toward them, I want to put them aside.
Instead, I want to raise the following question. So look, what I’ve just been talking about for the last half hour or so is the fact that we’ve got to get clear, in thinking about the nature of death, as to whether or not the crucial moment is the moment when the personality functioning stops or the moment when the bodily functioning stops. As we saw by thinking about the abnormal case, these things can come apart and we can have Phase D. But in the normal case, they happen at the same moment. And I’ve drawn a lot of different distinctions about what would you say if you’re a personality theorist to deal with this? What would you say if you’re a body theorist to deal with this? Having drawn all those distinctions, I’m going to just ride roughshod over them and put them aside. And let’s just suppose that we’re dealing with the normal case, where the body functioning stops at the same time as the personality functioning stops.
So what is death? What’s the moment of death? What is it to die, on the physicalist view? Well, at first glance, you might think the answer is, look, you exist, you’re alive, whatever it is — ;as I said, I’m just going to be loose now, I’m going to put aside all the careful distinctions I just drew — I’m still around as long as my body is P-functioning. And when my body’s not P-functioning, I’m not still around. Either I don’t exist or I’m not alive or I’m not a person, whichever precise way we have to put it. That seems like the natural proposal for the physicalist to make. To be dead is to no longer be P-functioning. But that can’t quite be right. Because imagine, don’t just imagine, just remember what happened to you last night around 3:20 a.m. Let’s just suppose that at 3:20 a.m. you were asleep and indeed, you weren’t dreaming. You weren’t thinking. You weren’t reasoning. You weren’t communicating. You weren’t remembering. You weren’t making plans. You weren’t being creative. You were not engaged in P-functioning.
If we take this simple straightforward view and say you’re dead when you’re not P-functioning anymore, then you were dead, on and off and on and off, last night. Well, that clearly doesn’t seem to be the right thing to say. So we’re going to have to revise the P-functioning or the end of P-functioning theory of death. We’re going to have to revise that theory. We’re going to have to refine it to deal with the obvious fact that you’re not dead all the times when you’re unconscious and not dreaming. But refining in just the right way is going to turn out to be a surprisingly not straightforward matter, at least that’s how it seems to me.
Believing You Will Die
Accommodating Sleep in the Definition of Death
Sleep / PsyPost, Creative Commons
So we ended above with the following puzzle or question: If we say that to be a person is to be a P-functioning body, it seems then as though we have to conclude that when you’re not P-functioning, you’re dead. That is, you’re dead as a person. Previously, we distinguished between the death of my body and my death as a person; let’s focus on my death as a person. If I’m not P-functioning, do we have to then say I’m dead?
Well, that may seem to be the most natural way to define death, but it’s not an acceptable approach. Because it would follow then, that when I’m asleep, I’m dead. Well, not during those times, perhaps, when I’m dreaming while I’m asleep. But think of the various periods during the night in which you are in a deep, deep dreamless sleep. You’re not thinking. You’re not planning. You’re not communicating. Let’s just suppose, as seems likely, that none of the P-functioning is occurring, at some point during sleep. Should we say then that you’re dead? Well, that’s clearly not the right thing to say.
So we need to revise our account of what it is on the physicalist picture to say that you’re dead. What is it to be dead? It can’t just be a matter of not P-functioning. Well, one possibility would be to say, the question is not whether you are P-functioning. It’s okay if you’re not P-functioning, as long as your not P-functioning is temporary. If you will P-function again, if you have been P-functioning in the past and you will be P-functioning again in the future, P-functioning for person functioning, you will be P-functioning again in the future, then you’re not dead. Well, that’s at least an improvement, because then we say, look, while you’re asleep, even though there’s no P-functioning going on, the lack of P-functioning is temporary, so you’re still alive.
But I think that won’t quite do either. Let’s suppose that come Judgment Day, God will resurrect the dead. And let’s just suppose the correct theory of personal identity is such as to put aside any worries we might have along with van Inwagen, that we discussed previously, as to whether or not on resurrection day that would really be you or not. Suppose it would be you. So God will resurrect the dead. Judgment Day comes. The dead are resurrected. Well, now they’re P-functioning. So it turns out that during that period in which they were dead, they were only temporarily not P-functioning. But if death means permanent cessation of P-functioning, then it turns out the dead weren’t really dead after all. They were only temporarily not P-functioning, just like we are temporarily not P-functioning when we’re asleep. Well, that doesn’t seem right either. On Judgment Day, God resurrects the dead. It’s not that He simply wakes up those in a deep, deep sleep. So the proposal that death is a matter of permanent cessation of P-functioning versus temporary, that doesn’t seem like it’s going to do the trick. But what else do we have up our sleeves?
Specification: The Ability to Engage in P-Functioning
P-functioning / School of Public Health, Boston University
Here’s a different proposal that I think is probably closer to the right account. We might say, look, while you’re asleep, it’s true that you’re not P-functioning. For example, you’re not doing your multiplication tables. But although you are not engaged in P-functioning, it does seem true to say that you still can P-function. You still could do your multiplication tables. Although it’s not true that you are speaking French — let’s suppose that you know how to speak French — it’s still true of you while you’re asleep that you can or could speak French. How do we know this? Well, all we have to do is just wake you up. We wake you up and we say, “Hey John, what’s three times three?” And after you stop swearing at us, you say, “Well, it’s nine.” Or we say, “Linda, hey, conjugate such and such a verb in French.” And you can conjugate it. Even though you were not engaged in P-functioning while you were asleep, it’s still true that while you were asleep, you had the ability to engage in P-functioning.
Abilities aren’t always actualized. Your P-functioning is actualized now, because you’re engaged in thought, but you don’t lose the ability to think during those moments when you’re not thinking. Suppose we say then that to be alive as a person is to be able to engage in P-functioning. And to be dead then, is to be unable to engage in P-functioning. Why are you unable? Well, presumably because whatever cognitive structures it takes in your brain to underwrite the ability to P-function, those cognitive structures have been broken, so they no longer work. It’s — When you’re dead, your brain is broken. It’s not just that you’re not engaged in P-functioning, you’re no longer able to engage in P-functioning.
That, at least, seems to handle the case of sleep properly. Although you’re not engaged in P-functioning, you’re able to, so you’re still alive. Take the dead who will be resurrected on Judgment Day. Although they will be engaged in P-functioning later on, it’s not true right now that they can engage in P-functioning. Their bodies and brains are broken until God fixes them. So they’re dead.
All right, that seems to give the right answer and, in fact, it gives us some guidance how to think about some other puzzling cases. Take somebody who is in a coma, not engaged in P-functioning. Their body, let’s stipulate, is still alive. Their heart’s still beating, the lungs are still breathing and so forth. But we wonder, is the person still alive? Does the person still exist? Well, they’re not engaged in P-functioning. That’s pretty clear. We want to know, can they engage in P-functioning?
Now, at this point we’d want to know more about the underlying mechanics about what’s gone on in the case of the coma. If the following is the right description, then we perhaps should say they’re still alive. Look, when somebody’s asleep, we need to do something to, in effect, wake them up, something to turn the functioning back on. The cognitive structures are still there, but the on-off switch is switched to off. Perhaps that’s what it’s like when somebody’s in a coma, or perhaps at least certain types of comas. Of course, to turn the on-off switch on is harder when somebody’s in a coma. It’s a bit more — to continue with the metaphor of the on-of switch — as though not only is the switch turned to off, there’s a lock on the switch. And so we can’t turn the switch on in the normal way. Pushing the person in the coma and saying, “Wake up, Jimmy” doesn’t do the trick. But for all that, although the on-off switch may be stuck in off, if the underlying cognitive structures of the brain are such as to still make it true that, flip the on switch back to on and the person can still engage in cognitive P-functioning, maybe the right thing to say is the person’s still alive.
Coma case two. I’m not sure whether this really should be called a coma. I don’t know the biological and medical details. But imagine that what’s gone on is there’s been decay of the brain structures that underwrite the cognitive functioning. So now it’s not just that the on-off switch is stuck in off, the brain’s no longer capable of engaging in these higher order P-functions. This might be a persistent vegetative state with no possibility of turning it on, even in principle. Of such a person we might say, they’re no longer capable of P-functioning. And then perhaps the right thing to say is the person no longer exists, so they no longer exist as a person, even if the body is still alive. So far, so good.
Here’s a harder case to think about. Suppose we put somebody in a state of suspended animation, cool their body down so that the various metabolic processes come to an end. They stop. As I’m sure you know, we’re able, with various lower organisms, to put them in a state of suspended animation and then, the amazing thing is, if you heat them back up again properly, they start functioning again. Now, we can’t do that yet with humans. But it doesn’t jump out at us, at least, that that should be an impossibility. So suppose we eventually learn how to do this with humans. And now, suppose we take Larry and put him in a state of suspended animation. Is he dead? Well, most of us don’t feel comfortable saying that he’s dead. Just like we don’t feel comfortable saying that the — I suppose we could do this with a fruit fly. I don’t know whether we can or can’t. Suppose we can. Suppose we do it with a fruit fly. We don’t feel comfortable saying the fruit fly’s dead. Rather, it’s in a state of suspended animation. Well, similarly then, perhaps we wouldn’t want to say that Larry is dead. And the “brokenness” account of death allows us to say Larry’s not dead. The structures in the brain which would underwrite the ability to engage in P-functioning, they’re not destroyed by suspended animation. So perhaps in the relevant sense, the person can still engage in P-functioning, so they’re not dead. Good enough.
On the other hand, it doesn’t seem so plausible, it doesn’t seem intuitively right, to say that they’re alive. Is Larry alive when he’s in a state of suspended animation? No. It seems like he’s not alive either. Now that’s a bit puzzling, right? It’s as though we need — Normally, we think that look, either you’re alive or you’re dead. The two possibilities exhaust the possibilities. But thinking about suspended animation suggests that we may actually need a third category, suspended — neither alive nor dead.
Well, all right, if we do introduce a third possibility — I’m not sure this is the right thing. It’s not clear what’s the right or best thing to say about suspended animation. But at least that doesn’t seem like an unattractive possibility. If there are three possibilities — dead, alive, or suspended — to be dead, we could still say you’ve got to be broken, incapable of P-functioning. Suspended isn’t broken. It’s just suspended. But then what do you need to be alive? In addition to not being broken, what do you need to be alive? Well, the initially tempting thing to say is not only aren’t you broken, but you’re actually engaged in P-functioning. But if we say that, then we’re back to saying that somebody who’s asleep isn’t really alive. That doesn’t seem right either. So we need some account to distinguish between suspended animation and out and out being alive. And I’m not quite sure how to draw that line. So I’ll leave that to you as a puzzle to work on on your own.
Nobody Believes That They Will Die: An Analysis
Southland Beaver, Creative Commons
That puzzle aside, it seems to me that once we become physicalists, there’s nothing especially deep or mysterious about death. The body is able to function in a variety of ways. When some of those lower biological functions are occurring, the body’s alive. When all goes well, the body is also capable of engaging in higher order personal P-functioning. And then you’ve got a person. The body begins to break, you get the loss of P-functioning. At that point, you no longer exist as a person. When the body breaks some more, you get the loss of biological or B-functioning, and then the body dies. There’s nothing especially mysterious about death, although there may be a lot of details to work out from a scientific point of view. What are the particular processes that underwrite biological functioning? What are the particular processes that underwrite personality or person functioning?
Still, there are a couple of claims about death that get made frequently enough, about death being mysterious in one way or another, that I want — or special or unique — that I want to focus on. In effect, from the physicalist point of view, although death is unique because it comes at the end of this lifetime of various sorts of functions, there’s nothing especially puzzling, nothing especially mysterious, nothing especially unusual or hard to grasp about it. But there are a handful of claims that people make about death suggesting that they think, and they think we all think, that death is mysterious or unique or hard to comprehend. I want to examine a couple of these.
Sometimes people say that we die alone or everybody dies alone. And this is something — This is supposed to express some deep insight into the nature and uniqueness of death. So although we’re able to eat meals together, we’re able to go on vacations together and take classes together, death is something we all have to do by ourselves. That’s the claim. We all die alone. That’s a claim I’ll come back to.
What I want to look at first is the suggestion that somehow, at some level, nobody really believes they’re going to die at all. Now, having distinguished between what we’ve called the death of the body and the death of the person, the question whether or not you’re going to die needs to be distinguished. The question whether or not you believe you’re going to die needs to be distinguished. If somebody says, “You know, nobody really believes they’re going to die,” they could mean one of two things. They could mean nobody really believes they’re going to cease to exist as a person, first possibility. Second possible claim, nobody really believes they’re going to undergo the death of their bodies. Let’s take these in turn.
Is there any good reason to believe that we don’t believe that we’re going to cease to exist as a person? Well, the most common argument for this claim I think takes the following form. People sometimes say, since it’s impossible to picture being dead, it’s impossible to picture being dead — , That is to say, it’s impossible to picture your own being dead. Each one of us has to think about this from the first person perspective or something like that. Think about your dying, your being dead — Since that’s impossible to picture, that’s impossible to imagine, nobody believes in the possibility that they’re going to die, that they’re going to cease to exist.
The idea seems to be that you can’t believe in possibilities that you can’t picture or imagine. Now, that hypothesis, that thesis, that assumption, could be challenged. I think probably we shouldn’t believe the theory of belief which says that in order to believe in something, you’ve got to be able to picture it or believe it. But let’s grant that assumption for the sake of argument. Let’s suppose that in order to believe in something, you’ve got to be able to picture it. What then? How do we get from there to the conclusion that I can’t believe that I’m going to die, I’m going to cease to exist as a person? Well, the thought, of course, is I can’t picture or imagine my death. I can’t picture or imagine my being dead.
It’s important here to draw some distinctions. I can certainly picture being ill. There I am on my deathbed dying of cancer, growing weaker and weaker. I can perhaps even picture the moment of my death. I’ve said goodbye to my family and friends. I’ve the — Everything’s growing greyer and dimmer. It’s growing harder and harder to concentrate. And then, well, and then there is no “and more.” The claim, however, is not that I can’t picture being ill or dying. The claim’s got to be, I can’t picture being dead. Well, try it. Try to picture being dead. What’s it like to be dead?
Sometimes people claim it’s a mystery. We don’t know what it’s like to be dead, because every time we try to imagine it, we fail. We don’t do a very good job. I’m inclined to think that that way of thinking about the question is really confused. You set yourself the goal of trying to put yourself in the situation imaginatively of what it’s like to be dead. So I start by trying to strip off the parts of my conscious life that I know I won’t have when I’m dead. I won’t hear anything. I won’t see anything. I won’t think anything. And you try to imagine what it’s like to not think or feel or hear or see. And you don’t do a very good job of it. So you throw your hands up and you say, “Oh, I guess I don’t know what it’s like.” So it must be a mystery.
It’s not a mystery at all. Suppose I ask, “What’s it like to be this cell phone?” The answer is, “It’s not like anything,” where that doesn’t mean there’s something that it’s like to be a cell phone, but different from being anything else. So it’s not like anything else; it’s a special way of feeling or experiencing. No. Cell phones don’t have any experience at all. There is nothing that it’s like on the inside to be a cell phone. Imagine that I try to ask myself, “What’s it like to be my ball point pen?” And I try to imagine, well, first, imagine being really, really stiff, because you’re not flexible when you’re a ball point pen. You can’t move. And imagine being really, really bored, because you don’t have any thoughts or interests. No. That’s completely the wrong way to go about thinking what it’s like to be a ball point pen. There’s nothing that it’s like to be a ball point pen. There’s nothing to describe, nothing to imagine. No mystery about what it’s like to be a ball point pen. No mystery about what it’s like to be a cell phone.
Well, similarly then, I put it to you, there’s no mystery about what it’s like to be dead. It isn’t like anything. What I don’t mean, “Oh, it’s like something, but different from everything else.” I mean, there is nothing there to describe. When you’re dead, there’s nothing happening on the inside to be imagined. Well, should we conclude therefore, given that we’ve got the premise, “If you can’t picture it or imagine it, then you can’t believe in it,” since I’ve just said, look, you can’t imagine being dead, but that’s not due to any failure of imagination, that’s because there’s nothing there to imagine or picture. Still, granted the premise, if you can’t picture it or imagine it, you can’t believe in it — Should we conclude, therefore, that you can’t believe you’re going to be dead? No. We shouldn’t conclude that.
After all, not only is it true that you can’t picture from the inside what it’s like to be dead, you can’t picture from the inside what it’s like to be in dreamless sleep. There is nothing that it’s like to be in dreamless sleep. When you’re in dreamless sleep, you’re not imagining or experiencing anything. Similarly, it’s not possible to picture or imagine what it’s like to have fainted and be completely unconscious with nothing happening cognitively. There’s nothing to picture or imagine. Well, should we conclude, therefore, so nobody really believes that they’re ever in dreamless sleep? Well, that would be silly. Of course you believe that at times you’re in dreamless sleep. Should we say of somebody who’s fainted or knows that they’re subject to fainting spells, they never actually believe that they pass out? That would be silly. Of course, they believe they pass out.
From the mere fact that they can’t picture it from the inside, it doesn’t follow that nobody believes they’re ever in dreamless sleep. From the mere fact that they can’t picture from the inside what it’s like to have fainted and not yet woken up, it doesn’t mean that nobody believes that they ever faint. From the mere fact that you can’t picture from the inside what it’s like to be dead, it doesn’t follow that nobody believes they’re going to die.
But didn’t I start off by saying I was going to grant the person who is making this argument that in order to believe something, you’ve got to be able to picture it? And haven’t I just said, “Look, you can’t picture being dead”? So aren’t I taking it back? Since I say you can believe you’re going to die, yet you can’t picture it from the inside. Haven’t I taken back the assumption that in order to believe it, you’ve got to be able to picture it? Not quite.
Although I am skeptical about that claim, I am going to continue giving it to the person who makes this argument, because I’m not so prepared to admit that you can’t picture being dead. You can picture being dead, all right. You just can’t picture it from the inside. You can picture it from the outside. I can picture being in dreamless sleep quite easily. I’m doing it right now. I’ve got a little mental image of my body lying in bed asleep, dreamlessly. I can picture fainting, or having fainted, quite easily. Picture my body lying on the ground unconscious. I can picture my being dead quite easily. It’s a little mental picture of my body in a coffin. No functioning occurring in my body. So even if it were true that belief requires picturing, and even if were true that you can’t picture being dead from the inside, it wouldn’t follow that you can’t believe you’re going to die. All you have to do is picture it from the outside. We’re done. So I conclude, of course you can and do believe you’re going to die.
Can Imagining Death Work? Flaws in Freud’s Argument
Dr. Sigmund Freud / Wikimedia Commons
But at this point, the person making the argument has a possible response. And it’s a quite common response. He says, “Look, I try to picture the world — admittedly from the outside — I try to picture the world in which I don’t exist, I’m no longer conscious. I’m no longer a person, no longer experiencing anything. I try to picture that world. I picture, for example, seeing my funeral. And yet, when I try to do that, I’m observing it. I’m watching the funeral. I’m seeing the funeral. Consequently, I’m thinking. So I haven’t really imagined the world in which I no longer exist, a world in which I’m dead, a world in which I’m incapable of thought and observation. I’ve smuggled myself back in as the observer of the funeral.”
Every time I try to picture myself being dead, I smuggle myself back in, conscious and existing as a person, hence, not dead as a person. Maybe my body — I’m imagining my body dead, but I’m not imagining myself, the person, dead. From which it follows, the argument goes, that I don’t really believe I’ll ever be dead. Because when I try to imagine a world in which I’m dead, I smuggle myself back in.
This argument shows up in various places. Let me mention, let me quote one case of it, Freud. Freud says, this is, I’m quoting from one of the Walter Kaufman essays that you’ll be reading, called “Death.” He quotes Freud. Freud says,
After all, one’s own death is beyond imagining, and whenever we try to imagine it we can see that we really survive as spectators. Thus, the dictum could be dared in the psychoanalytic school: at bottom, nobody believes in his own death. Or, and this is the same: in his unconscious, every one of us is convinced of his immortality.
All right, there’s Freud. Basically, just running the argument I’ve just sketched for you. When you try to imagine your being dead, you smuggle yourself back in as a spectator. And so, Freud concludes, at some level none of us really believes we’re going to die.
I want to say, I think that argument’s a horrible argument. How many of you believe that there are meetings that take place without you? Suppose you’re a member of some club and there’s a meeting this afternoon and you won’t be there, because you’ve got to be someplace else. So you ask yourself, “Do I believe that meeting’s going to take place without me?” At first glance, it looks like you do, but here’s the Freudian argument that shows you don’t really. Try to imagine, try to picture that meeting without you. Well, when you do picture it, there’s that room in your mind’s eye. You’ve got a little picture of people sitting around the table perhaps, discussing the business of your club. Uh-oh, I’ve smuggled myself in as a spectator. If, like you — , I think most of us picture these things up from a perspective in a corner of the room, up on the wall, looking down, kind of a fly’s perspective. All right, I’ve smuggled myself in as a spectator. I’m actually in the room after all. So I haven’t really pictured the meeting taking place without me. So I guess I don’t really believe the meeting’s going to take place without me.
If Freud’s argument for death, that is to say, none of us believe we’re going to die, was any good, the argument that none of us believe meetings ever take place without us would have to work as well. But that’s silly. It’s clear that we all do believe in the possibility, indeed, more than a mere possibility, the actuality of meetings that occur without us. Even though when I imagine that meeting, I’m in some sense, smuggling myself in as an observer. From which I think it follows that the mere fact that I’ve smuggled myself in as an observer doesn’t mean that I don’t really believe in the possibility that I’m observing in my mind’s eye. I can believe in the existence of a meeting that takes place, even though I smuggle myself in as an observer when I picture that meeting. I can believe in the possibility of a world without me, even though I smuggle myself in as an observer when I picture that world without me.
Freud’s mistake, and it’s — although I’m picking on Freud, it’s not only Freud that runs this sort of argument. One comes across it periodically. Within the last year, a member of our law school here put forward this very argument and said he thought it was a good one. So people think the argument’s a good one. It strikes me as it’s got to be a bad one. The confusion, the mistake I think people are making when they make this argument, the mistake I think they’re making is this. It’s one thing to ask yourself, what’s the content of the picture? It’s another thing to ask, when you look at the picture, are you existing? Are you looking at the picture from a certain point of view?
Suppose I hold up a photograph of a beach with nobody on it. All right, am I in that beach, as pictured in that photograph? Of course not. But as I look at it, whether in reality or in my mind’s eye, I’m looking at it from a perspective. As I think about it, I’m viewing the beach from a point of view which may well be on the beach, if somebody draws a painting of a beach. But for all that, that doesn’t mean that within the picture of the beach, I’m in the beach. Looking at a picture doesn’t mean you’re in the picture. Viewing the meeting from a point of view, doesn’t mean you’re in the meeting. Viewing the world without you from a point of view, doesn’t mean you’re in the world. So although of course it’s true, when I imagine these various possibilities without me, I’m thinking about them. I’m observing them. And I’m observing them from a particular perspective, from a particular standpoint. For all that, I’m not in the picture that I’m thinking about. So I think the Freudian argument just fails. Now, maybe there’s some other reason to believe the claim that nobody believes they will cease to exist. But if there is another argument for that claim, I’m eager to hear it, because this argument, at any rate, seems to me to be unsuccessful.
Nobody Believes in Bodily Death: The Death of Ivan Ilyich
Illustration of The Death of Ivan Ilyich / From Peter Bianchi, Creative Commons
Now, at the start, I distinguished two claims people might have in mind when they say, “Nobody believes they’re going to die.” The first possibility was the claim was, nobody believes that they’ll ever cease to exist as a person. And I’ve just explained why at least the most familiar argument for that claim, I think, doesn’t work. The second possible interpretation was this. Nobody believes their body is going to die. That is, the more familiar humdrum event of death where your body ceases functioning and you end up having a corpse that gets buried and so forth. Sometimes it’s suggested that nobody believes that either. Of course, often, I think, people run together these two questions. When they say you don’t believe you’re going to die, do you mean, you don’t believe your body’s going to die? or you don’t believe you’re going to cease to exist as a person? Maybe when people make the claim, it’s not clear which of these things they’ve got in mind.
But let’s, at least, try to now focus on the second question. Could it be true, is there any good reason to believe it is true, that nobody believes they’re going to undergo bodily death? Now, after all, even if you believe that, well, your soul will go to heaven so you won’t cease to exist as a person, you might still believe that your body will die. Most of us presumably do believe our bodies will die. At least, that’s how it seems to me. So it’s a bit odd to suggest, as it nonetheless does get suggested, that no, no, at some level, people don’t really believe they’re going to die.
Let me point out just how odd a claim that is. Because people do all sorts of behaviors which become very, very hard to interpret if they don’t really believe their bodies are going to die. People, for example, take out life insurance so that — well, here’s what seems to be the explanation. They believe that there’s a decent chance that they will die within a certain period of time. And so, if that happens, they want their children and family members to be cared for. If you didn’t really believe you were going to die, that is undergo bodily death, why would you take out life insurance? People write wills. “Here’s what you should do with my estate after I die.” If you didn’t really believe that your body was going to die, why would you ever bother writing a will? Since many people write wills, many people take out life insurance, it seems as though the natural thing to suggest is that many, or at least perhaps most, at least many people believe they’re going to die.
Why would we think otherwise? Well, the reason for thinking otherwise, the reason for not being utterly dismissive of this suggestion, is that when people get ill, terminally ill, it often seems to take them by surprise. So I’ve been having you read Tolstoy’s novella, The Death of Ivan Ilyich. Ivan Ilyich falls, he hurts himself. The injury doesn’t get better. He gets worse and worse and eventually it kills him. The astonishing thing is that Ivan Ilyich is shocked to discover that he’s mortal. And of course, what Tolstoy is trying to convince us of, what he’s trying to argue, by illustrating the claim, I take it, that Tolstoy is making, is that most of us are actually in Ivan Ilyich’s boat. We give lip service to the claim that we’re going to die, but at some level, we don’t really believe it.
And notice again, just to emphasize the point, the relevant lack of belief here has to do with the death of the body. That’s the thing that Ivan Ilyich is skeptical about. Is his body going to die? Is he mortal in that sense? This is what takes him aback, to discover that he’s mortal. For all we know, Ivan Ilyich still believes in souls, believes he’s going to go to heaven and so forth. So it’s not his death as a person that he’s puzzled by. He may not think he’s going to die as a person. It’s his bodily death that surprises him, his bodily mortality that surprises him. Tolstoy draws a highly realistic and believable portrait of somebody who is surprised to discover that he’s mortal. As he puts it, there’s a famous syllogism that people learn in their logic classes from Aristotle. All men are mortal. Socrates is a man, so Socrates is mortal. Ivan Ilyich says, “Yes, yes, I knew that. But what did that have to do with me?” Well, it may be a kind of irrationality. It may be a kind of failure to conduct the logic. But we’re not asking, is it rational or irrational to not believe that your body’s going to die, we’re simply asking, noting the fact that, there to seem to be cases where people are surprised to discover that they’re mortal.
Now, for all that, notice, I presume that Ivan Ilyich had a will. And for all I know, Ivan Ilyich had life insurance. So we’re in the peculiar situation where on the one hand, some of Ivan Ilyich’s behaviors indicate that he believed he was mortal, that his body was going to die. And yet, the shock and surprise that faces, that overcomes him when he actually has to face his mortality, strongly suggests that he’s reporting correctly. He didn’t believe he was going to die.
How could that be? There’s a kind of puzzle there as to — even if, before we move to the question, how widespread are cases like this? there’s a puzzle as to how are we even to understand this case? We need to distinguish perhaps between what he consciously believes and what he unconsciously believes. Maybe at the conscious level he believed he was mortal, but at the unconscious level he believed he was immortal.
Or maybe we need to distinguish between those things he gives a kind of lip service to, versus those things he truly and fundamentally believes. Maybe he gives lip service to the claim that he was mortal. If you would have asked him “Are you mortal?” he would have said “Oh, of course I am.” And he buys life insurance accordingly. But does he thoroughly and truly and fundamentally believe he’s mortal? Perhaps not. We need some such distinction if we’re going to make sense of Ivan Ilyich.
Well, let’s suppose we’ve done it. Still have to ask, not, are there are ever cases of people who don’t believe they’re going to die? but rather, is there any good reason to think that we’re all or most of us are in that situation, are in that state of belief where, although we give lip service to the claim that we’re going to die, is there any good reason to believe that fundamentally we don’t actually believe it?