Desire satisfaction, death, and time

Abstract

Desire satisfaction theories of well-being and deprivationism about the badness of death face similar problems: desire satisfaction theories have trouble locating the time when the satisfaction of a future or past-directed desire benefits a person; deprivationism has trouble locating a time when death is bad for a person. I argue that desire satisfaction theorists and deprivation theorists can address their respective timing problems by accepting fusionism, the view that some events benefit or harm individuals only at fusions of moments in time. Fusionism improves on existing solutions to the timing problem for deprivationism because it locates death’s badness at the same time as both the victim of death and death itself, and it accounts for all of the ways that death is bad for a person. Fusionism improves on existing solutions to the problem of temporally locating the benefit of future and past-directed desires because it respects several attractive principles, including the view that the intrinsic value of a time for someone is determined solely by states of affairs that obtain at that time and the view that intrinsically beneficial events benefit a person when they occur.

Epicureanism and Skepticism about Practical Reason

“…Eternalism: The state of being dead is eternally good or bad for the subject who dies (Feldman 1991). Fusionism: The state of being dead is good or bad for the subject at some fusions of times t and t*, where t is during the life of the subject and t* is after the event of their death (Purves 2017).…”

Well‐being, part 2: Theories of well‐being

“…53 53 Baber (2010a); Bruckner (2013); Dorsey (2013); Purves (2017). Heathwood (2016, p. 144) entertains the possibility that although the satisfaction of past‐directed desires can benefit one even if there is no overlap between those desires and their obtaining objects, the satisfaction of future‐directed desires cannot. …”

“…18–30) argues that because there is no plausible answer to this question and because concurrentism about benefit is also implausible, desire theories should be rejected. For attempts to answer this question, see Bruckner (2013), Dorsey (2013), Lin (2017b), and Purves (2017). Bradley (2016) comments on some of those attempts.…”

Value after death

“…This sort of maneuver would not work for a related view, Fusionism(Purves, 2017), which holds that harm and benefit occurs at the fusion of the time the harming or benefitting thing occurs and the time that one holds the relevant attitude. For death and posthumous harms, such a fusion would include times the person is dead.…”