Tip:
Highlight text to annotate it
X
Professor Shelly Kagan: All right.
Last time we started asking ourselves about what are some of
the other aspects of death that might contribute to its badness,
or at least other features of death that are worth thinking
about. Conceivably,
some of them might reduce the badness of death,
in some way. We talked about the
inevitability of death; we talked about the
variability, that people have different lengths of time before
they die. And we turned to a discussion
of the unpredictability of death, the fact that because we
don't know--we can't predict--how much more time
we've got, we may, as it were,
pace ourselves incorrectly. You may take on a long-term
project and then die before you've been able to complete it;
or alternatively, you may peak too soon and then
continue to stick around in an anti-climactic way.
These are bads of life that could presumably be avoided if
only we knew how much exactly we had--how much longer we had.
On the other hand, we have to ask ourselves--and
this the question that I left us with last time--whether it would
really, all things considered,
be better to know how much time you had.
After all, if you knew--suppose we had the birthmarks that told
you when you were going to die--if you had that kind of a
birthmark, you would face your entire life
with the burden of knowing, I've got 48 years left,
47 years left, 50 years left. I should've been counting
down--35,30, 25 and so forth. Many of us would find that was,
as I say, a burden--something hanging constantly over us
interfering with our ability to enjoy life.
Suppose that there were some sort of genetic marker and,
although we didn't have a tattoo that you would just have
to look at, but you could have genetic
counseling--have your DNA examined and you could tell,
if you had the DNA testing, how much time you had left.
Would you want to get that testing done?
Now, that's of course science fiction, and I presume it's
going to stay science fiction--though we're on the
cusp of having something at least approximating that as we
learn more and more about the various genes that carry various
diseases, we--more and more of us face
the question of whether or not we want to get tested for those
diseases. Suppose there was a test.
Indeed, one occasionally reads in the newspaper about this sort
of thing where you can get tested for such and such a
disease. You might know already that
you've got a 50 percent chance of having it,
but you don't know whether you yourself have it.
If you do have it, the disease will always have
onset by age 40,50 or what have you.
Would you want to have that kind of information?
Closely related question. If you did know how much time
you had left, how would you act differently
from what you're doing now? Would it focus your attention
on making sure you did the things that were most important
to you? And it's worth--;it's sort of a
useful test for asking yourself what are the things you must
value in life--to ask, what would you choose to do if
you knew you had five years, ten years, what have you?
There's an old Saturday Night Live routine where one
of the actors is in the doctor's office,
and the doctor gives him the very sad news that he's got two
minutes left to live. And he says,
"I'm going to pack a lifetime of enjoyment into those two
minutes." And then of course,
the point of the skit is he presses the down button on the
elevator and a minute and a half goes by while he's waiting for
the elevator to come. If you knew you had a year left
or two years left, what would you do with that
time? Would you be in school?
Would you travel? Would you spend more time
hanging out with your friends? A very, for me,
extremely striking example of this question occurred in this
very class. There was a student in this
class some years ago who was dying.
And he knew that he was dying. He'd been diagnosed with,
if I recall correctly, cancer as a freshmen--and his
doctor had told him that he pretty much had no chance of
recovery and indeed had only a couple more years to live.
Faced with that question, he had to ask himself,
"Well, what should I do with my remaining years?"
It was astonishing enough that somebody--but perhaps
understandable--that somebody in that situation would decide to
take a class on death and then have himself,
submit himself, to my getting up here week
after week, talking about how there's no soul,
there's no prospect for an afterlife, it's a good thing
that we're all going to die. But faced with the question
what should he do, what did he want to do with his
remaining couple of years, what he decided he wanted to do
was finish his Yale degree--thought he'd set himself
the goal of graduating college before he died.
And he was taking this class second semester of his senior
year. At least, he was taking it
until Spring Break. By Spring Break he'd gotten
sufficiently sick that his doctor basically said,
"You can't continue in school anymore.
You've got to go home." Basically, "You've got to go
home to die." And indeed, he got
progressively and then rapidly deteriorated at that point.
The faculty members who were teaching his classes that
semester then all faced the question posed to them by the
administration, based on the work he's done so
far this semester, has he--what kind of grade are
you prepared to give him? Because, depending on which of
his classes he passed and which of his classes he failed,
the question was going to be,was he going to graduate or
not? In fact, of course,
he did manage to graduate. And Yale, to its,
I think, real glory and credit sent a member of the
administration down to his deathbed to award him his degree
before he passed away. So, as I say,
it's a very striking story. I'm not sure how many of us
would decide the last thing we wanted to do with our remaining
years is to spend it in college. Well, what is it that
you'd want to do? And again, to move back and ask
ourselves a larger question, would knowing how much time you
have be something that would allow you to actually embrace
those choices, or would it instead just be a
burden? That's the kind of question we
have to face when we think about the fact that we don't know how
much time we've got. Is that something that
increases the badness of death, or does it reduce its
significance somewhat? Here's another feature.
In addition to the inevitability,
in addition to the variability, in addition to the
unpredictability, there's the fact that death is,
as I like to think of it, ubiquitous.
I don't just mean the fact that people are dying all around us,
but I mean rather, you yourself could die at any
time. There's never any getting away
from the possibility that you'll die now.
Even if we didn't have unpredictability,
I mean rather, even if we had
unpredictability, it wouldn't necessarily follow
that death was pervasive in this way.
The point I've got in mind here is this--even when you think
you're perfectly safe, you could of course die of a
stroke. You could die of a heart attack.
Even somebody who's young could have an aneurysm.
Or one of my favorite examples, you could be sitting in
your--you read this sort of thing in the newspaper
periodically--you could be sitting in your living room when
suddenly an airplane crashes into your house,
killing you. These sorts of things happen.
You thought you were safe. You were watching reruns on
television--the next minute, you're dead.
The fact that you could die and you don't know when you're going
to die doesn't yet entail that you could die at any minute,
at any moment. But in fact,
that's true of us as well. Yet another example close to
heart. I remember--before I taught
here I used to teach at the University of Illinois at
Chicago. And once I was driving down the
highway and a car pulled in without looking and clipped my
car, and caused my car--you know,
so pulled in from the entrance--caused my car to go
careening across three lanes of traffic spinning out of control.
And I remember quite clearly thinking to myself as that
happened--the whole thing lasted only a few moments--but I
remember thinking quite clearly, "I'm going to die."
Now, as it happens, I didn't die.
I walked away from the accident, and the damage to my
car was rather minimal. But it could've have happened
like that. Death is--the possibility of
death--is ubiquitous. It's pervasive.
We have to ask ourselves then, does this make things worse?
It certainly feels, to my mind, as though it's an
extra bad about the nature of death.
It would be nice to get a breather.
Imagine, if you will, that there were certain
locations, certain vacation spots, where as long as you were
there you couldn't die. Wouldn't it be nice to be able
to go someplace and just for a period think to yourself,
"Well, you know, right now I don't have to worry
about that. It doesn't even have to cross
my mind." Maybe if there were these sort
of death-free zones, they'd get rather crowded.
So perhaps we should change the example.
Instead of having death-free zones, imagine that there were
death-free times. Just suppose,
for whatever reason, nobody could die between twelve
and one. You could just put it out of
your mind. Wouldn't that be nice?
All right, one o'clock, you take the mantle back on.
But wouldn't it be nice to just have a certain period of time
every day when you didn't have to even have it be so much as a
remote possibility? Or suppose there were certain
death-free activities. Maybe reading philosophy would
be something that as long as you were doing it you couldn't die
or, as perhaps some religious
traditions might've taught, as long as you were engaged in
prayer you couldn't die. Wouldn't that be nice?
Or turn the entire thing the other way around.
Suppose that most times and most activities were death free,
but certain activities introduce the possibility of
dying. So you couldn't die unless you
were engaged in certain activities.
So you would be immortal but not in the sense of immortal
against your will. There'd be certain activities
perhaps, for example putting a gun to your head,
that would put an end to your life.
So even if immortality would be bad, there would be certain
things you could do that could end it.
Ask yourself, what sorts of activities would
you engage in if you knew that those activities carried with
them the risk of dying? So most of the time you
couldn't die. What things would be so
important to you that you'd be willing to suddenly risk death
for the sake of doing those things?
You like art. Is art important enough to you
that you'd be prepared to watch, look at a masterpiece,
if you knew that while you were enjoying it you could die,
but that wouldn't happen otherwise?
Is sex great enough that you'd be prepared to run the risk of
dying while you were engaged in sex?
Again, it's a nice lens for asking yourself,
what are the things that are most valuable to you?
by asking, which of them are so valuable you'd be prepared to do
them even if they would introduce what isn't otherwise
there, namely, the risk of death?
Now, in the posing the question that way, I've been assuming
that these are things you'd do despite the fact that
they run the risk of death. I suppose there's a further
question we have to ask, are there things that would be
worth doing precisely because of the fact that
they introduced the risk of death?
Now, I've got to admit that when I pose that question,
that sounds rather bizarre. At least, putting aside the
possibility that we've now lived our hundred thousand years and
have exhausted all that life's got to offer for us,
certainly to engage in activities now,
while life still has so much more to offer--to engage in
activities now where, precisely for the chance
of dying, that strikes me as bizarre.
And yet, it seems to me that there are many activities,
and if not many at least several activities,
that people do precisely for that reason.
For example, let me tell you something I
know that's going to shock you. Did you know there are people
who jump out of airplanes? Now, admittedly they've got
this little piece of cloth that gives them a decent chance of
not killing themselves when they jump out of airplanes.
But these things do fail. Every now and then you read in
the newspaper about somebody whose parachute failed to open
and so they died. And I ask myself, why?
What could possibly drive somebody to jump out of an
airplane with nothing but a little piece of cloth between
them and death? And the answer that strikes me
as most plausible is, it's the very fact that there's
a significant chance of death that helps explain why people do
this. Now, I know if you talk to some
of these people, they'll often say,
"Oh, no, no, no.
The views are so glorious," or something like that.
But I think this is rather an implausible suggestion because,
of course, you could have these glorious views just by going up
in the airplane and looking down from the safety of your
airplane. Part of the thrill has got to
be--or so it seems to me--part of the thrill has got to be the
very fact that they now have an increased risk of death.
The chance of dying is part of what drives somebody to jump out
of an airplane. Well, if that's right,
then should we say that the pervasiveness of death,
ubiquitousness of death--the thing that I was earlier
suggesting was oppressive--wouldn't it really
be nice to have a death-free time or a death-free location or
death-free activities? Maybe I was wrong in suggesting
that. If the chance of death would
add a kind of zest, then perhaps the ubiquity of
death is actually a good thing rather than a bad thing.
Well, I'm inclined to think, at least in my own case,
that that's not right. And perhaps the explanation has
got to be the ubiquity of death is this kind of background,
constant hum. And the fact that we're always
facing some risk of death recedes into the background in
the way that most of us don't hear background noise--that what
jumping out of an airplane does for you is it spikes the risk of
death. So, it's not really good enough
to just have some risk of death--it's got to be greater
risk than usual. If that's right,
if that's the psychology, then even for those death
thrill seekers, the ubiquity of death won't
necessarily be a good thing because of it being constant.
It just recedes into the background.
All right. So again, what I've been asking
us to think about are various aspects of death that might
contribute to either increase or perhaps in certain ways reduce
somewhat the badness of death. There's one more aspect that I
want to take a couple of minutes and have us think about,
and that's this. Previously to this most recent
discussion, I talked about the value of life.
Some rival theories about what makes life worth living.
And for the last lecture or so I've been talking about,
in addition to the deprivation account,
the additional things that contribute to the badness of
death. So you might think,
well, what about the human condition as a whole?
What about the fact that it's not just that we live,
or for that matter it's not just that we die.
What's true about humans is that we live and then we
die. That's the human
condition--life followed by death.
You might ask, what's the value of that entire
combination? Now, the most natural thing to
suggest would be, well, you get clear on your
favorite theory about the value of life, whatever that is.
You get clear about the kinds of questions we've just been
asking about the badness of death, whatever that is.
What's the overall assessment of the human condition?
You might think, well, that's just a matter of
adding up the goodness of life and subtracting the badness of
death and summing whatever it comes to.
I suppose, again, the optimist says,
"Yeah, death is bad, but life is good,
sufficiently good to outweigh the badness of the fact that
we're going to die. On balance, it's a good thing
to be born." And pessimists might be those
who say, "No, no.
On balance, the negative of death outweighs the
positive-ness of life." But I want to pause for a
moment and note that this assumption that the way to think
about the value of the combination as just a matter of
adding the goodness of life and the badness of death and just
summing them that way--that may not be right.
Because sometimes the value of a combination is different than
the value you would get by just thinking about each one of the
parts in isolation and then adding them up.
A kind of addition approach to values of wholes may not always
be correct. Here's a nice simple example to
make that point. My two favorite foods in the
world are probably pizza on the one hand and chocolate on the
other. I know I've shared my love of
chocolate with you before. I don't recall having shared my
love of pizza with you before, but there it is--two favorite
things I love--love pizza, delicious, love chocolate,
delicious. Take these two delicious things
and combine them into a chocolate covered pizza.
Oh my God! The whole idea just sounds
disgusting. And it is, I take it,
disgusting. But you wouldn't notice the
disgustingness if you just thought about the value of pizza
in isolation and the value of chocolate in isolation.
The value of chocolate-covered pizza is not just a matter of
summing up the value of the parts taken in isolation.
You've got to think about what we might dub "the interaction
effects." So let's ask ourselves,
are there any interaction effects when we talk about the
human condition that it's life followed by death?"
We've thought about the value of life in isolation;
we've been, in effect, thinking about the value of
death in isolation. Does the fact that death
follows life--does that produce any interaction effects between
the two, which need to be added into our
formula--added into the mix as well?
Well, there's obviously, I suppose, two possibilities.
Well, really three. Possibility number one is,
no it doesn't make any difference--uninteresting
possibility. More interestingly--two
remaining possibilities. Yeah, there are actually some
ways in which the combination ends up becoming worse.
The interaction effects make things even worse,
and we can't overlook those negative interaction effects.
Also, the possibility that there might be some
positive interaction effects.
Let me start briefly by mentioning a possibility for a
positive interaction effect. Because of the fact that you're
going to die, obviously enough,
it's not just that you'll get whatever life you get,
but there's a finite amount of life that you're going
to get. Life is a scarce resource.
It's precious. And we might be attracted to
the thought that the value of life is increased by its very
preciousness. There's a kind of aspect of
value for many of us where we feel that something's especially
valuable if it won't endure, if it's fragile,
or if it's rare. This can enhance the value of
something. And so, arguably,
the fact that life is precious, that it won't endure,
could actually increase its value for us.
There's a short story by the science fiction writer Orson
Scott Card, where the basic point of the story is that of
all the life forms in the universe,
we, here on Earth, are the only ones that are
mortal. And because of this we are the
envy of the rest of the universe.
It's not so much that immortality, what the rest of
them have, is unattractive or boring.
It's perfectly fine, but they envy us for our finite
lifespans, because what we've got and they don't have is
something that's for each individual rare--something
that's not lasting, something that's precious in
that way. All right, it's a possibility.
So, it's possible that the very fact that we're going to die
causes an interaction effect with our life so there's an
upside to it. It makes our life fragile,
ephemeral, and as a result of that, more precious.
But it's also possible--actually compatible
with accepting that fact--there are two additional
possibilities, that there might be some
negative interaction effects.
It could be that in thinking about the nature of the
combination we're led to see that in certain ways the
combination--the interaction effects--are negative,
are bad ones. Well, here are two
possibilities for that thought. First possibility I think of
under the heading "A Taste is Just a Tease."
It's as though we live life for a while, getting a feel for all
the wonderful things life could offer us,
and then a moment later, as it were, it's snatched away
from us. It's sort of adding insult to
injury that we're offered just a whiff.
It's as though somebody brought in this delicious meal to a
hungry--before a hungry person--allowed them to see what
it looked like, allowed them to smell the
delicious aromas, perhaps gave them just one
little tiny forkful to see just how beautifully delicious the
food was. And then they snatched the
whole thing away. You can imagine somebody who
says, "Look, it would be better never to have had the taste at
all than to have the taste and then not be allowed to have the
entire meal." That's something that you might
not notice if you just focus on the intrinsic nature of the
taste. After all, the intrinsic nature
of the taste was positive. Or, if you just focused on the
intrinsic character of the not-having the meal.
After all, not having the meal is just an absence of a certain
experience. To capture what's
excruciatingly undesirable about the two, you need to think about
the two in combination. It's an interaction effect.
And we might think, look, this is one of the
negative things about the human condition that we get a taste of
life--nothing more--before it's snatched away.
That's one possibility. The second possible thought
that comes to mind for me, in thinking about the negative
interaction effects, I call under the title--I think
about under the title--"How the Noble Have Fallen."
Right now, there's something amazing about us.
We are people. In the universe we--Who knows
what is out there in the universe but at least on Earth
we may well be the only people there are.
Now, who knows? Maybe dolphins or certain--some
of the great apes. But at any rate,
it's a rather select club. We are, as I said,
early in the semester when I said I'm a physicalist,
I believe that people are just machines, but we're not just any
old machine. We're amazing machines.
We're able to love. We're able to write poetry.
We're able to think about the farthest reaches of the universe
and ask what our place is in the universe.
People are amazing. And we end up rotting.
We end up corpses. There's something--For many of
us, there's something horrifying about the thought that something
as amazing as us, as exalted and valuable as us,
could end up something as lowly and unimportant as a piece of
rotting flesh. Again, think about it.
The image here that comes to mind for me is one of these
deposed kings who ends up waiting on tables to make a
living in New York. And it's--you might think,
"All right. The life of a waiter is not the
worst thing in the world." But there's extra,
again, insult to injury, when the person's got to
remember that he used to be something extraordinary,
a ruler. Again, if you just thought
about life as a ruler, well pretty good thinking about
it in isolation. Life as a waiter,
not so bad thinking about it in isolation.
To see the nature of the problem you've got to think
about the fact that it's a combination package.
There is something especially insulting about having gone from
king to waiter. How the mighty have fallen.
And that fate is waiting for all of us.
It's a fact about the human condition that the amazing
things we are don't stay amazing.
We turn into pieces of rotting flesh, decaying.
So two possible negative effects--the taste is just a
tease, the how the noble have fallen--on the one hand.
One possible positive effect, the extra preciousness of life.
I'm not quite sure where, on balance, we should say how
these things play out. Again, I suppose we could have
different views. On the one hand,
the optimists might say, "Even when we throw in the
extra interaction effects, even the negative interaction
effects, the overall nature of the human condition is positive.
So that it's a good thing to be born, even though your life is
going to be followed by death." And against that,
we could have the pessimists who say, "The negative side,
especially once we throw in the negative interaction effects,
the negative side is so great that it would be better never to
have been born at all." That's the pessimist view.
Given that we're going to die, this fact seeps back in and
poisons the nature of life or perhaps poisons the nature of
the whole, life followed by death,
so that on balance the whole thing's negative.
Better to have not had any of it, better to have not been born
at all, say the pessimists, than to have this combination
package of life followed by death.
Now, for myself, I'm sufficiently optimistic
that I'm inclined to think life's wonderful.
The negative combination effects that I was talking about
are certainly there, but on balance I think the
human condition for must of us is a good one.
It's better to have been born than never to--even though
that's followed by death--than never to have been born at all.
But I do want to emphasize the point that even if we were to
accept the pessimist's conclusion that it would be
better never to have been born at all,
it doesn't follow, at least doesn't follow without
further argument, that the right response to the
realization--if it is the correct realization that it
would be better never to have been born at all--doesn't follow
that the right response is to commit suicide.
It's a tempting thought right? To go philosophically from
life's so bad given the nature of the human condition,
life followed by death, that better to never have had
any of it than to have just had a taste and a tease and so
forth. But it's a tempting
philosophical thought to say, "Once I've shown it's better
never to have been born, it follows that suicide is the
appropriate response." But in fact,
as a matter of logic, that doesn't follow at all.
Because if you think about it, suicide doesn't change the
fundamental nature of the human condition, life followed by
death. It's not as though if you kill
yourself you somehow bring it about that you've never been
born at all. It's still the case that if
there's something horrible about having just a taste--well,
indeed, if you commit suicide you've made it an even shorter
taste. If there's something sort of
degrading or unnoble about being a person who is going to become
a corpse, committing suicide doesn't
alter that fundamental fact either.
It just makes the insult come sooner.
So, even if we were to agree with the pessimists that it
would be better never to have been born at all,
as the old joke goes, show me one person in a
thousand who's so lucky, right?
We have all been born. And from the fact,
even if we were to agree with it, that it would've been better
if we hadn't been born--instead of feeling sorry for unborn
Larry, perhaps we should envy
unborn Larry; that's what the pessimists
say--even if that were true, it wouldn't follow that suicide
was an appropriate response. It doesn't mean of course that
suicide isn't ever an appropriate response.
We're coming on toward the end of the semester,
and the last topic we'll be talking about is indeed the
topic of suicide. When, if ever,
is suicide an appropriate, rational or moral response to
one's situation? Let's hold off on thinking
about that question a bit further.
Before we get to suicide, you might say,
the question that's going to entertain us for the remaining
few weeks is this. How should one live,
in light of the facts about death that I've been laying out
in the semester up to this point?
How should we live, in light of the facts about
death? And one possible response,
the last one we'll look at, is, what you should,
at least sometimes, is kill yourself.
We'll come to that. We're going to spend the next
couple of weeks asking ourselves different aspects of the
question, what should our response be to
the fact of our death and the specific features of death and
the nature of death that we've been exploring?
But the very first question I suppose we really need to ask is
this. Should we be thinking about all
this at all? Well, I realize that for you
guys it's too late, right?
It's sort of late in the day for students who have been
through the better part of a semester thinking about the
nature of death to argue, maybe, it wasn't such a good
idea for you to take this class in the first place.
But as theorists, we could be interested in the
theoretical possibility that the right response is to not think
about the facts of death at all. Look, in principle I suppose
there are three different reactions.
So, I make various claims of the sort that I've been making
about, "Well look, you know, we're just physical
objects. When these objects break,
we cease to exist. The objects don't get put back
together," and so forth and so on.
One possibility, of course, is simply to
disagree with me about the facts.
And so you--of course, if you do disagree I think
you're mistaken, so I'll think of you as denying
the facts, but all right, that's a possibility.
Another possibility, the one I'll turn to a little
bit later, is admit the facts and live accordingly.
Of course, we haven't yet asked ourselves, how should you
live if you recognize and take into account those facts?
That's the question we'll turn to.
But there's the middle possibility, which is not so
much think about them and deny them,
not so much think about them, accept them and act
accordingly, but simply don't think about them.
Maybe the best response to the facts of death is just put it
out of your mind. Don't give it any thought at
all.
Now, on the one hand you might think, that can't possibly be
the right response, the appropriate response.
After all, how can it be appropriate to disregard,
to put out of your mind, facts?
Well, that all sounds very nice, but I think that claim has
got to just be mistaken. There's nothing unacceptable or
inappropriate or misguided about not thinking about all sorts of
facts that you might have learned at some point or the
other. Here's my favorite example of
stupid facts I was forced to learn when I was younger--state
capitals, right? I've gotten pretty far in my
life, and as far as I can tell I've never, ever,
ever had to remember the capitals of the 50 states.
So, I just don't think about it. Pretty much I think about it
only once a year, when I'm giving this very
lecture. I start asking,
how many state capitals can I remember?
And the answer is, really not all that many of
them. Not thinking about those facts
that I knew at one point--just not all that objectionable.
So, the mere fact, if it is a fact,
suppose the facts about life and death are as I've described
them. Until we say something more,
it's not clear that we shouldn't just,
all right, note it, store it away,
and forget about it, just like the facts about the
state capitals. That seems odd;
that seems misguided. But why?
What is it about the facts about life and death that seem
to make it misguided to think we should just put them aside and
pay no attention to them? Presumably because we're led to
the thought, we're attracted to the thought,
that the nature of death, the facts about death--whatever
they are--should have an impact on how we live.
The appropriate way to live gets shaped, at least in part,
by the fact that we're going to die, that we won't be around
forever. If that's right,
then it seems as though there'd be something irrational and
inappropriate about simply disregarding those facts.
Let me tell you two stories that might--well,
look, before I tell you the stories here's the other side.
Suppose somebody said, "Yeah, it's true if I thought
about the nature of death, the fact that the 50,80,
90 years I've got on this Earth is all I'm going to have.
If I thought about that fact, it would just be overwhelming.
It would be crushing. I'd be unable to go on with my
life." People sometimes claim that
that's the case and, because of that,
the right thing to do is to not think about it.
You've read at this point, long since, Tolstoy's Death
of Ivan Ilych. The people in the Tolstoy story seem to have
put facts of mortality out of their mind.
Why? Presumably because they think
that facing it is just too crushing and overwhelming.
So the way they cope with it--they think the appropriate
response is put it aside, disregard the facts about
death. Well, as I say,
there seems to be something amiss about that reaction.
That was certainly the point that Tolstoy was trying to get
us to see. There's something wrong about
lives, something inauthentic about lives that are lived
without facing the facts of our mortality and living
accordingly, whatever the appropriate
responses might be. Here are two stories not having
to do with death per se that may help us get a feel for the
oddity of trying to disregard these facts.
Suppose that you're on a hot date, or about to go out on a
hot date, with Peggy Sue or, depending on your preferences,
Billy Bob. And your roommate holds up an
envelope and says, "Written in this envelope are
certain facts about Peggy Sue or Billy Bob.
I'm not going to tell you what these facts are yet.
They're in the envelope. But I'll give you the envelope
and you can open it up and read them.
But I do want to tell you this one thing.
It is indeed the case that if you were to read these facts,
if you were to think about these facts,
if you were to know the things written down in the envelope,
you would not want to go out with Peggy Sue."
And you say to yourself, well, let's see.
Right now I want to go out with Peggy Sue, but if I knew these
true--It's not that you think, oh your roommate has made it
up, that these are lies; these are slander.
You really believe, and it is in fact the case that
the things written down in the envelope are true.
And so you know that if only you were to read these things in
the envelope, you would change your mind and
no longer want to go out with her.
And so what you say is, "Don't show me the envelope."
That seems odd. It doesn't seem like it makes
sense. If there are things that would
change your mind and you know that they would change your mind
about your behavior, how can it be rational to
disregard them? Here's another story.
You're about to drink a milkshake, and your roommate
comes rushing in and says, "I've got the lab report.
I had my suspicions about the milkshake, and so I took a
sample and I rushed it down to the lab.
I've got the lab report." You're about to drink it,
right, because you're thirsty, it's a hot day,
you love milkshakes. And your roommate says,
"Inside the envelope are facts about this milkshake that if--I
promise you it is indeed the case--if you knew these facts,
you would not drink the milkshake anymore."
And you say, "Oh, thank God. Don't open the envelope," and
you drink the milkshake, disregarding the facts.
That seems inappropriate. Well, if it really was true
then that if only we faced the facts about our mortality that
we would live life rather differently,
how could it be reasonable for us to disregard those facts?
Well, that's the puzzle. Or maybe we shouldn't call it a
puzzle at all. Maybe the answer is,
that just shows the disregard option is not really all that
reputable. What we either have to do is
deny the claims I'm made about the nature of death,
or else go on to ask--supposing they are true--how should we
live in light of them? Maybe the disregard option just
is one that we can't actually take on as an intellectually
acceptable alternative. But I suspect that that's
probably a little bit too quick, because really there are two
different ways in which facts could influence our behavior.
And if we're not careful we'll disregard this distinction,
even though I think it's an important one.
Here's the two ways. On the one hand,
it could be that certain facts, if you knew them,
would cause you to behave differently without
actually giving you any reason to behave
differently. That's possibility number one.
Possibility number two is the facts change your behavior by
giving you a reason to behave differently.
Let me show you an example of the first possibility,
because that's the one I think we may be overlooking when we
assume that disregarding can't ever make any sense.
So, there you are kissing, making out with Peggy Sue or
Billy Bob--whoever it is--and your roommate bursts in and
says, "I have in the envelope certain
facts such that if you were to think about them you would no
longer want to kiss Peggy Sue, Billy Bob."
Let me just tell you what the facts in the envelope are.
They're certain facts about the nature of Peggy Sue's digestive
system. Now, well, you're making out
after having had dinner, and while you're sitting there
making out, food is making its way down
Peggy Sue's digestive tract, being turned into ***.
And eventually it's going to be excreted.
And if you started picturing to yourself the feces inside Peggy
Sue's digestive tract, and the fact that she's
eventually going to be wiping the feces off of her behind,
you might find it difficult to continue to engage in making out
with Peggy Sue. It's not so--now these are just
facts, right? I didn't make any of these up,
but there you are, as I'm talking about them,
you're just being grossed out as I describe them.
Now, do any of these facts about the digestive system make
it inappropriate to kiss another human being?
Well, of course not. But for all that,
thinking about those facts make it rather difficult,
while you're thinking about the facts, to continue enjoying
kissing the person. So there are certain facts
about the digestive tract such that if you think about them you
can't do something, kiss the person.
But for all that, it's not because you've got any
good reason not to kiss the person.
It's not that the facts about the human digestive process give
you reason not to kiss her. They cause you to change
you behavior without giving you any reason to change your
behavior. So, when the roommate comes
running in, holding the envelope, and says,
"I have in this envelope certain facts such that if you
read these facts, and thought about these facts,
you would stop kissing this person," the question you should
put to your roommate is, "Are these facts that would
merely cause me to change what I'm doing,
or are these facts things that would give me some good
reason to change?" If these are facts about how
Peggy Sue likes to kiss and tell, or then goes around and
talks about who's a good kisser and who's a bad kisser,
maybe that gives you a reason to not continue what you're
doing. So the facts could be things
that would give you reason to change your
behavior. But the mere fact that they
would change your behavior doesn't yet tell you
whether they're reason-generating facts.
If they're mere causes and not reasons, then maybe it's
perfectly okay to disregard them.
If your roommate comes in and starts trying to tell you facts
about the human digestive system, you say,
"Not now." Disregarding is sometimes the
appropriate thing to do.
Well, what about the facts about death?
Are the facts about death things that it's appropriate to
disregard? A bold claim would say, "Yes."
A bold claim would say, "The facts about death,
if I thought about them, would change my behavior,
but not because it would give me a reason to change my
behavior--simply because it would influence my
behavior." And, given that,
we might say, better to not think about them.
That would be the bold claim to make at this point.
Suppose, for example, that, the right way to live,
in light of the facts about death, is to live life to the
fullest. But suppose if you think about
death you just get too depressed and you can't live life to the
fullest. It's not that the facts about
death give you reason to stay in your room and sulk.
It's just that the facts about death cause you to stay
in your room and sulk. If that was the case,
then disregarding, always disregarding,
the facts about death might well be the appropriate
response. Well, that would be a rather
bold claim. I'm not inclined to believe
that the bold claim is right. Should we conclude therefore
that, no, you should always be thinking about the facts about
death? No, I'm inclined to think that
that other bold claim, on the other side,
is probably mistaken as well. So there you are,
one more time, one last time,
making out with Peggy Sue or Billy Bob and your roommate
comes in and starts trying to tell you about the fact that
he's taken Shelly Kagan's class on death or he's been studying
in some biology class, and he wants to tell you about
how human bodies decay when they turn into corpses.
As he begins to tell you this story, you start picturing Peggy
Sue as a rotting corpse. Suddenly, you don't really feel
like kissing her anymore. It's sort of like the digestive
tract story. It's not that,
as far as I can see, the fact that she's going to be
a corpse gives you any reason not to kiss her.
It's just that thinking about the fact that she's going to be
a corpse causes you to not want to kiss her,
not be able to enjoy kissing her.
So, I'm inclined to think that the right position here is a
kind of moderate one, a modest one.
There are times and places for thinking about the facts of
death. When you're kissing
somebody--that is not the time and that is not the place.
The position that says, you should always have the fact
of your mortality forever before your mind's eye--I think that's
misguided. Similarly, though,
anybody who says, you should never think about
the facts of mortality and the nature of death--I think that's
misguided as well. There's a time and place.
But that still leaves us with the question.
All right, so suppose this is the time and place.
If ever there was a time and place for thinking about the
facts of death and how it should influence our life,
it's right now, in a class on death.
So, we still have to face the question, how should you live?
What is the appropriate response to the facts about life
and death? That's the question we have to
turn to next time.