論死亡剝奪說與對稱問題

Abstract

Thomas Nagel曾指出至少有三種問題與死亡哲學有關：第一類問題是關於某人實際並未感受到不愉快的事情是否可能對他是一件壞事。具體來說，針對死亡這件事，它的壞處並不建立在死亡會帶來任何痛苦的感覺，而是死亡者某種可能的好處會受到剝奪。第二類問題是如何把上述死亡的壞處歸屬於一個已經不存在的主體。換言之，當死亡者不復存在，我們如何將死亡的不幸加諸在某個已經不存在的主體上，以及這個主體是在何時經歷這個不幸？第三類問題涉及到人們看待死亡和出生前期間的態度。如果死亡的壞處是因為死亡者不存在所帶來的損失，同樣的，出生以前的不存在也應該具有同等的損失。然而，大多數人實際上不會為自己出生前的不存在而感到懊惱，因此似乎也沒有理由為死亡感到擔憂。\n\n本文以上述三個問題為主軸展開研究。在第一類問題中，筆者將探討死亡剝奪說及其相關爭論，接著說明第二類及第三類問題，以及它們如何對死亡剝奪說的理論構成威脅。第三類問題又稱為「對稱問題」。過去在學術界主要有兩種回應該問題的方式，一種是來自Nagel的觀點，他認為人不可能提早出生，這說明出生前的可能經驗與死亡所剝奪的可能經驗不同。另一種觀點來自Derek Parfit對未來偏見的研究。這個觀點訴諸於人們擁有對未來和過去的不同時間偏好，藉此回應對稱問題。本文將依次分析這兩種觀點，並指出這兩種觀點各自遭受到的批評。經過上述研究，筆者進一步修正這兩種回應方式，並提出以重要之事來理解主體的方式，試圖解決與死亡哲學有關的三種問題。

Thomas Nagel suggests that at least three questions are related to the philosophy of death (Nagel, 1970). The first one is about whether it is a bad that someone does not feel any unpleasantness. To be more specific to death, its badness does not lie in any pain the death brings, but the deceased are deprived of some kind of possible experiences. The second question is how to make the badness in question possessed by a non-existing subject, and when this subject underwent this misfortune. And the last question involves the attitude toward how people treat the death and the time before the birth. If the badness of death is because of the loss which the nonexistence of the deceased brings, then likewise, the pre-vital nonexistence should involve the loss. However, most people do not concern with the pre-vital nonexistence. Therefore, it seems that there is no reason to feel worried about death.\n\nThis thesis takes these three questions as the main axis. For the first question, I review and explore the deprivation account of death and its arguments, and subsequently elaborate on the second and third questions, about how they threat to the deprivation account of death. The third question is also known as the symmetry problem. In the past, there were two ways in response to this problem. One was from Nagel’s perspectives: he holds that people could not exist earlier than it was actually born. This reveals the differences between the prenatal possible experiences and the posthumous possible experiences. The other point of view was from Derek Parfit’s research on future bias. This perspective resorts to the fact that people have different time preferences for the future and the past in response to the symmetry problem. This thesis analyzes the two perspective respectively and discusses their criticism. Through studies mentioned above, I further modify these two ways of responding, and proposes the way to use what matters to understand the subject, attempting to resolve the three questions about the philosophy of death.