Death - Short Answer

Question 1

Consider the position we called Experientialism. Offer one possible counterexample to this claim.
Experientialism An event e is bad for a person only if e causes the person pain when it occurs

Answer 1

Miss A thinks her life is swell because she has enviable psychological and material conditions

• Miss A’s best friend, Miss B, has betrayed her. Whenever Miss A leaves the room, Miss B ridicules and spreads malicious lies about Miss A, but Miss A never discovers any of this.

Seems like experientalism is false because Miss A seems to be harmed by Miss B’s actions without them making a difference to her experiences

Question 2

Briefly present and explain Nagel’s example (in the paper Death) of the severely brain damaged person, and explain what
that example is supposed to show

Answer 2

An intelligent adult suffers severe brain trauma that reduces his cognitive abilities to that of a contented infant. We pity the adult but wouldn’t pity the contented infant. The adult is the subject of the misfortune.
• This example is supposed to show that the intelligent adult has disappeared and we should not pity nonexistent entities, such as the dead.