Abstract
Samuel Scheffler postulates that we derive more value and meaning from our lives because we have confidence in the indefinite continuation of humanity (what he calls the collective afterlife) than we do from our own or our loved ones’ continued existence. Scheffler believes that this shows humans to be less egocentric than some believe. He offers two thought experiments to motivate this intuition. The first thought experiment depends on the second to control for certain intuitions that run counter to the intuitions Scheffler wants to elicit. So, Scheffler is committed to using both thought experiments. The second of the two, and the one on which the first depends, is a scenario in which people become infertile and humanity dies out over the course of a single generation. I argue that this scenario can be more reasonably taken to show that value and meaning in life does not depend on a collective afterlife. I argue that the particulars we value in such a scenario from both a normative and descriptive perspective may change, but that a robust notion of value, and consequently meaning, can exist despite the knowledge that humanity will not continue indefinitely into the future. I also address the reason we might find the slow extinction of humanity unsettling for reasons unrelated to the loss of a collective afterlife. I conclude by presenting a thought experiment challenging the idea that the afterlife conjecture deals any substantial blow to the supposed extent of human egocentrism.
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Notes
The companion book, containing the lecture and commentary, has been published by Oxford University Press under the title Death and the Afterlife.
According to Scheffler, “valuing is an attitudinal phenomenon that has doxastic, deliberative, motivational, and emotional dimensions.”
In this case I am supposing that someone really does not place a significant amount of value in whether or not what they are doing will help sufficiently distant generations. They are primarily concerned about being able to help the nearest of their descendants.
All except, perhaps, for the last of the last generation. I think most of us would think that loneliness would be a problem for the final people alive, of course that does not mean that value rests on a collective afterlife so much as it may rest on simply having someone around with whom to talk.
See Wolf, Susan. “The Significance of Doomsday.” 2013.
It would do Scheffler no good to give up the “infertility scenario” since it would just raise questions about the “doomsday scenario” that the infertility scenario is meant to answer.
This was the idea behind the good life for philosophical sects from antiquity. (e.g. the Stoics and the Epicureans)
I use “perhaps” because it is not clear to me that continuing to work on a problem that you do not believe you will be able to completely solve cannot be seen as an intrinsically valuable use of intellect. From an Aristotelian point of view Eudaimonia must be complete (i.e. you only achieve it after death), but it does not require that you, or because of your work someone in the future, will have gotten all of the correct answers to the greatest questions (those that involve philosophical contemplation). I fail to see why pursuing an intellectual venture couldn’t be seen as valuable in itself and part of a meaningful life (irrespective of having confidence that a solution will be reached).
References
Cholbi, M. (2015). Time, value, and collective immortality. The Journal of Ethics, 19, 197–211.
Feldman, F. (1991). Some puzzles about the evil of death. The Philosophical Review, 100, 205–227.
Nagel, T. (1979). Death. In T. Nagel (Ed.), Mortal questions. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Scheffler, S. (2013). Lectures 1 and 2: The afterlife (Parts I & II). In N. Kolodny (Ed.), Death and the afterlife. New York: Oxford University Press.
Wolf, S. (2013). The significance of doomsday. In S. Scheffler (Ed.), Death and the afterlife (pp. 113–129). New York: Oxford University Press.
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Gray, J.D. Scheffler’s “Afterlife Conjecture” is Not That Compelling: How His “Doomsday” and “Infertility” Scenarios Might Robustly Preserve Value and Meaning. Philosophia 45, 637–646 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11406-016-9794-8
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11406-016-9794-8