死亡剝奪說與對稱論證

The Deprivation Account of Death and the Symmetry Argument

死亡剝奪說主張雖然人們在死亡之後不復存在，也不再有任何知覺經驗，但死亡這個事件對此人而言仍可能是不好的，因為死亡會讓他失去如果繼續存活可能獲得的快樂經驗。藉由死亡剝奪說，物理主義者成功說明即使人們在死亡之後不再有任何知覺，卻仍能宣稱死亡對其本身而言是不好的。然而，死亡剝奪說卻必須面臨對稱論證的挑戰。對稱論證主張出生前和死亡後都是不存在的狀態，人們對待兩者的態度應該要是相同的，既然人們對於出生前的不存在狀態不覺得有任何損失，那麼也不應該覺得死亡後的不存在狀態有任何損失。不過，這個結論顯然和許多人的直覺大相逕庭。一般而言，大部分的人對於出生前與死亡後不存在狀態的態度是不對稱的。本文目的便是要論述人們對死亡後與出生前不存在狀態的不對稱態度是合理的，或者說對稱論證並不會對死亡剝奪說的觀點產生威脅。

The advocates of the theory of deprivation account of death contended that although people no longer exist after death and no longer have any perceptual experience, the event of death may still bad for him because death will make him lose the possible cheerful experience if he continues to live. I agree that some physicalists have successfully demonstrated that even if people no longer have any perception after death, death is bad for them with the aid of the deprivation account of death. However, the theory of deprivation account of death can be challenged by the symmertry argument. The symmetry argument argues that prenatal and postmortem states are the same in the sense of non-existence, so people should have the same attitude toward these two states. Since people do not feel any lose in the state of prenatal non-existence, they should not think there is any lose in the state of postmortem non-existence state. In my opinion, this conclusion obviously violates the intuition of many people. Generally speaking, most people have asymmetric attitude toward the of prenatal and postmortem non-existence states. The aim of this paper is to argue that people’s asymmetry attitude is reasonable, or that is, the symmetry argument will not threaten the viewpoint of deprivation account of death.