Year: 2018
Type: article
Abstract: Many efforts are directed towards philosophical accounts of life from life's meaning to how it should be led.Often overlooked are no less important issues concerning the end of life.Questions like what is death?, is immortality desirable?, is death 'bad' for the person who dies?, can the dead be harmed or punished?and what, if any, obligations do we have towards the dead?-these are but a few key concerns deserving greater attention.This special issue brings together three contributions that chart promising new perspectives on this timeless philosophical pastime.The first piece by Ben Curtis asks 'when do persons die?' 1 Curtis focuses on the general thesis that death is constituted by the death of the human organism.Not all agree: some critics defend a 'two-deaths thesis' maintaining that the death of an organism is not the same as the death of a person.So which view is most compelling?Curtis begins by examining Jeff McMahan's critique of the 'one-death' thesis that my personal identity is the same as my identity as an organism. 2 The problem is that what a person is can change over time, starting as a zygote.The claim is that my personal identity is not fixed, but separable to my existence as an organism.Furthermore, identical twins -as organisms -exist as a single zygote that undergoes twinning developing into two different persons.This raises questions about whether my personal identity can be the same as my being an organism, at least in cases like this.For Curtis, these claims fail as knock-out arguments against the 'one-death' thesis.A person's existence in some organism form may change, but it is suggested &
Source: The Journal of Value Inquiry
Author: Thom Brooks
Language: English
Subfield: Anthropology
Field: Social Sciences
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: hybrid
Estimated APC paid: $3,190
OpenAlex ID: W2803553682