X-Message-Number: 13006 From: Keith Rene Dugue <> Subject: It is a DAFy world Date: Sun, 26 Dec 1999 12:31:16 -0800 To George Smith Unfortunately, fallacies exist independently of how well the individuals that they affect understand them or are able to understand them. So , yes the arguments of those who claim they can escape suffering through death are Death Advantage Fallacious (DAFy) To Robert Ettinger You wrote " It is not a question of how your future self would feel (there would be no future self), but how you feel now and how you would feel in the future if you chose to continue." When we decide between one of two mutually exclusive options we extrapolate into the future how we would feel if we had taken each of the options. Next ,we compare them to our goals to determine which option would bring us closer to our goals. This process is repeated as new information becomes available. The problem arises in being able to extrapolate into a state of nonexistence. It is impossible. So with nothing to compare to the state that you would be in if you "choose to continue" you can not say which option would be better or worse for that matter. You simply can not say anything. But escaping suffering through death relies on nonexistence as being the superior option. As a sidelight , we extrapolate our states of mind into the future during our entire existences even when we run out something to extrapolate to. This extrapolation is an evolved survival mechanism and does not shut off. It does not know when to shut off because nature does not act to optimize our happiness. It would always benefit an organism to think about it's future no matter how unpleasant just in case it might survive. Our basic problem is that we have a tendency to extrapolate off into the water where we have run out of firm ground for our arguments. Once we become aware of our impending inescapable undesirable future, we might avoid thinking about it. I am not just arguing that there are not things to be gained. I am also saying that one would be unable to realize any gain. To Mike Perry You wrote "On the face of it, it doesn't seem intuitive that a state of non-existence should be considered "worse" than any state of existence however horrible." I did not say that a state of non-existence should be considered , or actually is, "worse" than any state of existence. What I did say was that "There can be no death advantage simply because once one does not exist one can no longer appreciate the purported advantage. Moreover ,one can not even appreciate that there is a difference. In fact, one can not appreciate anything at all." "If Jones is non-existent it seems reasonable to regard S as "not true," for the simple reason that S can be *true* only if Jones exists." The instant Jones ceases to exist he will from thereon never be able to appreciate that he is not suffering or that suffering should even matter. Nothing matters in the least to someone who is buried and decayed and non-existent. For Jones, when he dies, can not change the only thing that matters to him which is that he will suffer for the rest of his life. He may feel ,however erroneously, that his death will end his suffering. But this is not due to his actual death but his anticipation of his death. The benefit comes from anticipation regardless of what actually happens to him. So the real and only advantage comes from anticipation and not death. This would be true for *any* scenario we could construct. "Another way to look at it is that S is really equivalent to the longer statement, "There exists a conscious being named Jones and that being is suffering inconceivable amounts of intolerable pain." So to say "it is not the case that S is true" it is not necessary to presuppose that Jones exists or is conscious in any sense, including that of an afterlife." You seem to be saying that suffering is dependant on existence. But so is one's ability to comprehend ,be aware and appreciate that one is not suffering. What one can not be aware of is irrelevant to that individual. My garbage can is not suffering (for reasons other than nonexistence) It also can not be aware that it is not suffering so the fact that it is not suffering is irrelevant. If Jones were imprisoned because of debt and he performed some action that caused his debt to be repaid but he was unaware of this repayment then the action would not have any significance whatsoever. The nonexistent are stateless entities because there is nothing to define their states. They can be neither happy nor unhappy neither suffering nor free of suffering. They simply aren't. They do not have abilities such as appreciation because they can't do anything. So they can not appreciate the difference between any two states. Even though we can not say whether they are happy or unhappy etc. we can say that they can not appreciate the difference between happiness and unhappiness etc. Reasons Greetings Keith R. Dugue NO SPAM -----BEGIN PGP PUBLIC KEY BLOCK----- Version: PGPfreeware 5.5.5 for non-commercial use <http://www.nai.com> Comment: !!! 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