Mini-Seminar 3

Speaker: Taishi Yukimoto
Title: Priority Presentism
 
 
Speaker: Wataru Sasaki
Title: Presentism and Self-regarding Preferences about Death
If the death is bad for the one who dies, it gives us (at least partially) the self-regarding reason to avoid death. However, since presentism posits that only present things exist, it gets into trouble about this matter. If we posit that dead person no longer exists after death and that she incurs the harm of death at least some times after death, presentists should say that it is not the person who dies, but at best her surrogate who incur the death’s badness. In this presentation, I will explore some possible responses to this problem. First, I will consider (a)Lewisian Response and (b) Meinongian-Williamsonian-Yourgrauian Response, and reject them all because this manner of responses doesn’t sufficiently work. Then, I will consider the way to detach the badness/goodness discussion from the comparison of well-being and claim that (c)the total well-being approach is the only way that presentists can make it.