Fischer

Question 1

Fischer: Response to Williams’ Dilemma of the Attractiveness Condition

Answer 1

Williams is mistaken about boredom, one need not exhaust the goods of life

Williams is mistaken to think that not being able to recognize the desires of our future self problematic

a) even if we could not recognize that person, we still might find their existence preferable to death

b) our finite mortal lives already challenge our capacity to recognize our future selves

Question 2

Two Kinds of Pleasure (Fischer)

Answer 2

1. Self-exhausting pleasures
2. Repeatable pleasures

(Williams incorrectly thinks that all pleasures are of the self-exhausting kind)

Question 3

Self-exhausting Pleaures

Answer 3

are compete in the sense that once having done them, there is no desire to do them again (e.g. goal oriented pleasures)

the desire consists in achieving the goal, once it has been achieved, the desire to pursue the activity is extinguished

Question 4

Repeatable Pleasures

Answer 4

those where the enjoyment is inherent to the activity, they are satisfying in the moment, one can desire to repeat the activity (e.g. drinking fine wines, seeing great art, listening to music)

as long as we have a sufficient variety of these pleasures we can rotate through, there is no reason to think that we will ever get bored of them

Question 5

Identifying With One’s Future Self

Answer 5

Fischer challenges Williams’ claim that we must understand our characters as relatively fixed to be able to identify with our future selves

• so long as we can see how our characters will change as the result of certain experiences, then we can identify with our future selves
• even if we cannot identify our future selves, that doesn’t particularly mean we soul prefer death over that person’s existence

Question 6

Finite Life and Futures

Answer 6

in a finite life span we project ourselves into the future (e.g. train for a career, save for retirement, look after health)

when we make these plans, we think in terms of the desires that we expect to have when they come to fruition rather than the desires that we have now

there is no reason that this will not hold true when thinking about immortality