A333 Key Questions in Philosophy, Book 4 The Value of Life

A333 Key questions in philosophy
Book 4
The Value of Life
Christopher Belshaw
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1.1
Contents
Preface v
1 Is life sacred? 1
2 Is it bad to die? 47
3 Is it good to be born? 89
4 Does life have meaning? 129
Readings 171
Glossary 196
Acknowledgements 199
Index 201
Preface
Preface
To say that life is valuable is – on the face of it – to say something
uncontroversial, perhaps too obvious to be worth stating. But how that
claim can best be understood, and what it implies, are matters of
considerable dispute. In this book, Christopher Belshaw investigates
four key questions about the value of life.
The opening chapter focuses on the value of life. It is often suggested,
not only that life has value, but that it has a special kind of value. One
familiar way of expressing this thought is by saying that life is sacred. But
what might people mean when they make this claim? One possibility is
that they are making a religious claim: the idea is that life is, in some
sense, granted by God. But is it possible to make proper sense of this
claim even in a secular context? Chapter 2 focuses on some questions
about death. If life is good, it seems natural to assume that death is
bad, not only for those left behind, but also for the person who dies. Is
that right? And if so, how should we characterise the harm that people
suffer when they die? Does death harm animals – or even plants?
Chapter 3, in contrast, is concerned with birth. If we think that it is bad
to die, does it follow that we should think it good to be born? And why
have some philosophers argued that it would be better not to be born
at all? The final chapter addresses a perennial philosophical question:
does life have meaning? There Christopher Belshaw considers some
different ways of understanding this question and explores the
relationship between the meaningfulness of life and the inevitability of
death.
You have already encountered questions concerning matters of life and
death, when you read Jon Pike’s book War. You may find, though, that
there is a difference of approach between the two books. Jon Pike
begins from a particular kind of situation – war; his aim is to find
general principles that will enable us to resolve particular practical
dilemmas that arise in war. In contrast, Christopher Belshaw starts with
some very general claims about the value of life; his primary concern is
to try to reach a clear and precise understanding of those claims, so
that we can better understand what they might imply across a broad
range of cases. The two books then might be seen as exemplifying
different, though complementary, ways of discussing questions about
ethics or value. Moreover, there is a significant difference in the kinds
of view under consideration. In particular, you may wish to contrast
v
The Value of Life
Walzer’s rights-based theory with the claim, examined in this book, that
life has a special value.
You will find further significant points of connection and contrast with
the other module books that you have read. In particular, there are
some important parallels between The Value of Life and the discussion of
well-being in Reason and Action. There, Alex Barber distinguished
between three theories of well-being: preferentism, hedonism and
objective-list theories. You will find those distinctions echoed here in
Chapter 2, where you will meet two different ways of characterising the
harm done by death – one that focuses on pleasure and one that
emphasises desire; and in Chapter 4, where you will find a contrast
between subjective and objective conceptions of meaningfulness. More
generally, you might want to reflect on the relationship between well
being and meaningfulness. On the face of it, these are two different
ways in which a life might be valuable. But what is the difference
between them? Can we offer the same type of account in each case?
Connections with Truth in Fiction are harder to spot; but they are there.
Pleasure, again, is an important theme in both books. And when you
come to the discussion of intrinsic value in the opening chapter, you
may wish to think about Ronald Dworkin’s suggestion that some art is
inherently valuable. How does that relate to the views about the value
of art that you considered earlier in the module? Might some artworks
be considered sacred?
As you study this book and the audio-visual and independent study
materials that accompany it, you will find plenty of opportunities to
practise the skills of analysis and argument that you have been
developing through the module. Like Book 2, War, this book raises
some contentious issues, including issues of which you, or other
students in your tutor group, may well have direct personal experience.
Once again, you may well find that you react quite strongly to some of
the examples and views discussed in the materials. As before,
though, it is important to focus on the philosophical claims that are
being made and to remain open to views that challenge your own.
You will notice that the audio-visual material that accompanies this
book differs from the audio recordings used in the rest of the module:
you will be asked to study extracts from a television and a radio
programme produced by the BBC; and two group discussions recorded
at the University of Cumbria in 2013. In these discussions, Christopher
Belshaw talks to a group of students about the sanctity of life and life’s
vi
Preface
meaning. You are asked to think carefully about their initial responses
and the difficulties they encounter in answering these questions, and
compare them with the responses you might give.
Carolyn Price, Module Team Chair
vii
Chapter 1
Is life sacred?
Contents
Aims 5
Materials you will need 6
1.1 Introduction 7
1.2 Meanings 8
Life 10
Sanctity 11
Respect for life 14
Killing is wrong 16
A special value 17
1.3 Value 20
Instrumental value 23
Personal value 23
Intrinsic value 25
1.4 Sanctity and value 29
Types 29
Reasons 29
Degrees 30
Consequences 33
1.5 Further views 35
Value 37
Life 37
Postulates 39
Incommensurability 40
1.6 Sanctity and religion 42
Summary 44
References 46
Aims
Aims
By the end of this chapter, you should:
. be able to identify and distinguish between some different ways in
which it is possible to interpret the claim that life is sacred, and
understand the implications that might be drawn from the claim
. understand the distinction between instrumental, personal and
intrinsic value
. understand Regan’s suggestion that we should postulate that certain
lives have a special value
. have considered some of the difficulties that arise for the claim that
human lives have a special value.
5
Chapter 1 Is life sacred?
Materials you will need

You will need to listen to the following audio recordings (available on
the A333 website):
. The sanctity of life (Part 1)
. The sanctity of life (Part 2).
You will need to watch the following video (available on the A333
website):
. Interview with Singer.

You will need the following reading, which can be found at the end of
this book:
. Reading 1: Regan on the value of life.
At the end of this chapter you will be directed to the A333 website for
guidance on independent study and other activities.
6
1.1 Introduction
1.1 Introduction
Many people believe in the sanctity of life. Many others deny that life is
sacred. Still others take a middle position, not wanting to come down
on one side or the other. Before we think about our own beliefs and
those of others, we should first ask exactly what it is that people believe
when they say, or deny, that life is sacred. This is not going to be easy,
and will take some effort and time. But only when we understand what
the claims are, will we have any hope of deciding whether these claims
are true. And so only then will we have any hope of deciding whether
or not life is sacred.
These questions are not merely of academic interest. The idea of the
sanctity of life plays a key role in many things: in bombing abortion
clinics in the USA, in medical treatment of the terminally ill and aged
across the world, in people’s attitudes to fighting in war, and in their
views about eating meat, hunting, animal experimentation. For some, it
links to a respect for nature, for ancient trees and certain locations.
Obviously, these are important matters of life and death. But it is of
academic interest nevertheless: only by some hard thinking, careful
analysis, and level-headed consideration of different views and positions
can we hope to sort things out.
7
1.2 Meanings
You will have heard people talk – in person, on the radio, on TV or in
newspapers – about the sanctity of life, and you may talk about it
yourself. Some – popes, archbishops, George Bush, Tony Blair – clearly
believe in it and promote it, while others – and I might mention here
the philosopher Peter Singer and the scientist Richard Dawkins – are
firmly against. But what do people mean, when they say, or deny, that
life is sacred? The following activity will help you to start exploring
some of these different meanings.
Activity
Read the quotations below, which are examples of the views you might
hear about the sanctity of life. These particular examples, one from
American president Ronald Reagan and one from the Catholic Church,
relate to politics and religion. Once you have read the quotes, make
some notes on what you think people might mean when they talk about
the sanctity of life in this way.
As a nation today, we have not rejected the sanctity of human

life. The American people have not had an opportunity to
express their view on the sanctity of human life in the unborn.
I am convinced that Americans do not want to play God with
the value of human life. It is not for us to decide who is worthy
to live and who is not. Even the Supreme Court’s opinion in
Roe v. Wade did not explicitly reject the traditional American
idea of intrinsic worth and value in all human life; it simply
dodged this issue.
(Reagan, 1983)
Human life is the basis of all goods, and is the necessary

source and condition of every human activity and of all society.
Most people regard life as something sacred and hold that no
one may dispose of it at will, but believers see in life
something greater, namely, a gift of God’s love, which they are
called upon to preserve and make fruitful.
(Catholic Church, 1980)
8
1.2 Meanings
Now listen to the audio recording ‘The sanctity of life (Part 1)’1, which is
the first part of my discussion about the sanctity of life with students –
trainee teachers – from the University of Cumbria. Their views, coming at
this topic for the first time, may be in some respects similar to yours.
After hearing what they have to say, you might like to add to your notes.
Now look back at your notes. In your view, are some of the things people
might mean better or worse accounts of sanctity than others? Is it
possible to organise and rank the different suggestions?
Remember, you are not being asked to decide whether life is sacred,
only to think about what people might mean when they say it is.
Discussion
Ask people what is meant by claiming that life is sacred and these are
among the responses you might hear:
1 Life is created by God.
2 Life is a gift from God.
3 Life has a special value or importance.
4 Life is always good.
5 Life should always be respected or revered.
6 We should never end life, but always, where possible, try to prolong
it, and always wish it to be prolonged.
7 Everyone has a right to life.
You will have heard several of these responses in the audio discussion,
and I imagine that some of them were already present within the notes
that you made. And now, having made such a list, we can begin to
organise it. Here are two preliminary comments.
First, there is a big question as to whether ideas of sanctity are at bottom
religious ideas, involving (usually) talk of God. Some think there can be
religious and non-religious versions of the sanctity view, others think it is
an essentially religious notion.
Second, some of the items on the list above are better than others in
suggesting what talk of sanctity might mean. Consider the last three
suggestions (items 5–7 in the list). These, I think, are best seen as
implications of the sanctity view, rather than explanations of it. Someone
might say, for example, that because life is sacred, then it follows that
everyone has a right to life. Or similarly, because life is sacred, then
killing is wrong. Or, because it is sacred, then we should respect or
1
There are a few passing references to philosophers and philosophical views in these
discussions. Don’t worry if not all of these are familiar – you will still be able to follow
the discussions.
9
revere it. However, we can still ask, but what do you mean in saying it is
sacred? And then one or other of the first four suggestions might be
offered.
Having made a start, we need to go further, and consider some of the

terms and notions we are using in more detail.
Life
An important question, of course, is about the meaning of ‘life’ in this
sanctity talk. Following in part points raised in the audio discussion, I
want to make a couple of suggestions here.
First, many of the people who talk about the sanctity of life have only
human life in mind. It is only human life that has special value or
importance, that is never to be ended, that is often to be prolonged, etc.
This does not necessarily mean that other life has no value or
importance, or that we can do with other lives whatever we please.
Many of those who believe in the sanctity of human life still think it is
wrong, for example, to be cruel to animals. But they might think it is all
right to kill and eat animals, and very probably think it is all right,
maybe even required, painlessly to kill animals when their lives are no
longer good. Can we say more about those who put the emphasis on
human life? The view here is one we might most associate with the
monotheistic religions of Christianity, Islam and Judaism. These are the
religions that are most inclined to separate the human from the rest of
nature, and to see the human, at its best, as being close to the divine.
Other religions often take a broader view of what is sacred. Hindus, but
not only they, think that cows are sacred, and Jains extend this to all
animal life. Druids go still further, and include tree and plant life. And
some non-religious people, or, at least, people who are not
conventionally religious, also sometimes hold that all animal life, and
sometimes vegetable life as well, is in some way sacred. Perhaps no one,
or at least no recognisable group, holds that every microbe or bacterium
is sacred.
Second, think just about human life. Do people think that all human life
is sacred? Some supporters of the sanctity view, religious and non
religious, believe also in capital punishment. And many of them believe
there can be just wars, in which enemy soldiers are targeted and killed.
10
1.2 Meanings
Figure 1.1 A sacred place. Aisinai´pi, in Alberta, Canada, is a sacred site of

the Canadian First Nation Peoples. Photo: © David Muenker/Alamy.
The sanctity view is often restricted to innocent human life, with

children, babies and fetuses held up as paradigms of innocence. (You
came across some different ways of understanding the notion of
innocence in Book 2 War.)
One final question here: when people talk of the sanctity of life, or even
of the sanctity of human life, is it life, in the singular and abstract, or is
it a plurality of actual and concrete lives they have in mind? My
suggested answer is that we should not worry about this. Whether we
talk of lives or life, or human lives or human life, seems to make little
or no difference.
Sanctity
It is going to be more difficult to get a grip on the notion of sanctity,
or sacredness. But we can, first by revisiting the list in the activity
above, make some progress here.
I said that the last three items were best seen as implications of claims
about sanctity. But this does not mean we should not discuss them. For
if a view has some untenable consequences, then that is a mark against
the view.
11
Consider the last claim – everyone has a right to life. Talk of rights
often has a contemporary and legalistic flavour that is at odds with the
overtones in talk of sanctity. And although there is some overlap, many
people think there is a right to life without thinking that life is sacred.
These people might think, as most believers in sanctity will not think,
that suicide is morally unproblematic. For it is often said that we have
also a right to end our own life. And many think that life is sacred
without thinking there is a right to life. Because our focus here is on
the sanctity claim, I will say little more about rights in this chapter,
indeed in this book.
Sanctity and rights

Is there a right to life? Whether there is a legal right is easily
enough established – we just look to national and/or international
laws and lawyers for the answer. But whether there is a moral right
is harder to determine. Just as people disagree about whether life
is sacred, so they disagree too about whether there is, in the moral
sense, a right to life. This is not, though, the same thing in
different words – the ideas of rights and sanctity contrast in
important ways. Here are three of those ways:
. First, a right to life is often thought of as conditional – if you
become, for example, a mass murderer you might lose this
right. And some hold that you can waive, or give up, the right.
But sanctity does not come and go in this way.
. Second, the connection with value is weaker. Your having a
right to life does not imply your life is worth living, just as
your right to free speech does not imply you have anything
worth saying.
. Third, weaker too is the connection with religion. Doubts
about sanctity can to some extent by relieved by invoking God
as its source. There is not, however, any correspondingly easy
way of pinning rights down. It is this that led Jeremy Bentham
to say of rights talk that it is ‘nonsense on stilts’.
The preceding claim, about the wrongness of killing, is more clearly

linked with ideas of sanctity. But there are several complications here,
and we will need to look at this one in more detail in Section 1.4.
12
1.2 Meanings
What about item 4, the claim that life is always good? As emerged in
the audio discussion, this does not seem on target as an account of
sacredness. The point of sanctity talk is often to say that life is sacred
whether it is good or not. The objections to euthanasia, for example,
often accept that someone’s life is going badly, but insist that it is
sacred, and therefore should not be ended. Yet there is a detail here.
My life might be sacred while living on is not good for me. But in
saying it is sacred I do seem to be saying it has some sort of value, so it
is in some way or other good.
Looking now at more defensible suggestions, claims 1 and 2 both link
sanctity talk with religion, but in somewhat different ways. If there is a
God, then he probably created everything, life included. But not many
of us think that everything is sacred. So to say that life is created by
God is not enough. The idea of life as a gift, however, seems to come
closer to what a lot of people think, and links up with claim 3 – the
idea that life has some kind of special value. It also gives us reason to
emphasise the latter claim. For if life is a gift from God, then
presumably God sees it as in some way valuable, and wants us to value
it in turn. And it might then link up also with claim 5 – it is because
life has this special value that it should be respected or revered.
So my suggestion here is that there are a number of interconnected
ideas embedded in sanctity views. And isn’t this what we should expect?
Ideas of life’s being sacred have, after all, developed over centuries in
various different traditions, have adapted themselves to changing
circumstances and flourish today perhaps more than might be expected.
Am I suggesting also that sanctity views always have some religious
dimension? Perhaps, and I will return to this later. What I want us to
do now is to explore in more detail three of the items on this list –
those about respect and special value just mentioned, and the one about
killing set aside earlier.
Method
I began this chapter with the question as to what people actually
mean when they say, or deny, that life is sacred. I then suggested
we might need to do some preliminary work before we were in a
position to answer that question. But this was oversimplifying. And
we should slow down.
13
It is often very tempting, when asked a question, to assume you

know what it means, that this meaning is pretty straightforward,
and that the question should be given a simple, even a simple yes
or no, answer. But often it is better to assume none of this. On
the radio recently the writer Jonathan Safran Foer was asked
whether he was a religious believer. He said that though he might
describe himself as agnostic he thought it important also to be
agnostic about the question. For ‘religious believer’, he said, might
mean many different things, and we need to sort out just what the
questioner has in mind before making a stab at an answer.
I choose this example deliberately. I have said that sanctity views
are often linked to religious views. And I am suggesting now that
words like ‘sacred’ and ‘religious’, and I might throw in also ‘God’
and ‘faith’, are all of them such as to resist clear and precise
definitions. So we should not assume we can give simple answers
to the question of whether someone is religious or not, whether or
not God exists, whether life is or is not sacred. But to say we
cannot give simple answers is not, of course, to say that we cannot
give answers at all.
Respect for life

Some versions of the sanctity view centre on a respect or reverence for life.
There is not a big difference here, but talk of reverence gives this view
a clearer religious or spiritual dimension than talk of respect alone.
What, though, is it to respect or revere life?
Activity
Read the extract below. How does its author, Albert Schweitzer, want us
to behave, where life is concerned? And what is curious about his
construal of life, and the examples he uses?
A man is really ethical only when he obeys the constraint laid

on him to help all life which he is able to succour, and when
he goes out of his way to avoid injuring anything living. He
does not ask how far this or that life deserves sympathy as
valuable in itself, nor how far it is capable of feeling. To him
life as such is sacred. He shatters no ice crystal that sparkles
14
1.2 Meanings
in the sun, tears no leaf from its tree, breaks off no flower, and
is careful not to crush any insect as he walks. If he works by
lamplight on a summer evening, he prefers to keep the window
shut and breathe stifling air, rather than to see insect after
insect fall on his table with singed and sinking wings.
(Schweitzer, 1923)
Discussion
Schweitzer, long associated with the reverence for life view, is probably
now better known for his quasi-philosophical writings than for his
missionary work in Africa or for playing Bach on the organ. And he
appears, in this extract, to ask us at least to take care in our dealings
with life, and not to interfere with, damage or end it more than is
necessary. But what is this about icicles? Reverence for life is spilling
over here into a reverence for all of nature’s works, living or not. You
might see this simply as carelessness, a mere slip of the pen, but I think
it shows how difficult it is to maintain, from an ethical or value point of
view, a sharp distinction between living and non-living things. It seems to
Schweitzer, as it does to many contemporary environmentalists, as if all
of nature should be treated with respect.
Suppose we agree that nature deserves respect. But then why stop
there? Shouldn’t we also treat with respect the things, or at least many
of them, that human beings have made – books, paintings, temples,
gardens? Respect for life seeps with apparent inevitability into respect
for things.
Just what is it, though, to revere or respect life, or nature, or a building?
It is, at least, to treat it appropriately, thoughtfully, not carelessly, and
not wantonly or gratuitously to damage or destroy it. Is it more than
that? If the respect view is to warrant our attention, especially if it is, as
I have suggested, wide-ranging, it had better not be much more. We can
hope to avoid wantonly or carelessly killing insects, or smashing icicles,
or destroying books, but to hope never to kill an insect, damage some
icicle or rock formation, drop a book or split its spine, is to hope in
vain. But respecting life (and who would deny that they do this?) in the
more modest way is not overly demanding, and is something it is
possible for us to do.
15
Figure 1.2 Albert Schweitzer in the hospital he founded in Lambaréné,

Gabon. Scene from the documentary film Albert Schweitzer, dir. Gerome
Hill, 1956. Photo: akg-images.
Suppose we should, in this way, revere or respect things, life included.
If this is the thinking behind the sanctity view, then holding that life is
sacred is, similarly, not overly demanding. But many of its proponents,
perhaps most, have a different, stronger, more demanding interpretation
in mind. Let us consider this now.
Killing is wrong
Item 6 on the list above – we should never end life, but always, where
possible, try to prolong it, and always wish it to be prolonged – is
complicated. You might sign up to some parts without signing up to
others. You might think we should never end life – think that it is
wrong to kill – without thinking we should always work, or hope, for
life to be prolonged. You might, then, distinguish between killing, and
letting die. But someone might think that the sanctity view implies also
that we should aim to prolong life, and hope for it to be prolonged, say
in a hospital situation. Why think these things? And why think them
even in circumstances, often encountered in a hospital situation, when
life is no longer, in any ordinary sense, good? Again, it seems as if
16
1.2 Meanings
behind this is the idea of life having some special value or importance.
This is why it should not be ended, why it should be prolonged.
This view, that killing is always wrong, is almost impossible to believe.
If killing is always wrong then, it seems, we should never kill. And this,
as well as being scarcely credible, is unliveable.2 Literally so. If you do
not kill you die. Think about pulling up carrots, or all the things in a
blackberry and apple pie. Restrict it to the killing of human beings, and
especially to innocent human beings, however, and, contrived examples
apart, it is possible to believe and to live by this. But should we believe
and live by it? Should we agree never to kill?
You might already be thinking of situations, perhaps to do with
abortion or euthanasia, perhaps to do with war, where it seems that
killing, and killing the innocent, is permitted or even required. Or you
might be firmly against killing in all such cases. I am not arguing here
for either side. The point is just that these are controversial areas. And
so if the sanctity view is to be understood as involving or implying that
killing is always wrong, then it will also be controversial, and not a
position commanding immediate and widespread support.
A special value
Many sanctity supporters, as we have seen, think that life, or human
life, has a special value or importance. Sometimes people simply insist
on this, from the outset. But even if they do not, it is often there, just
beneath the surface. So those who think we should respect life often
think there is something about life, some value it contains, that
demands this respect. Those who emphasise the wrongness of killing
typically hold there is something special about life, or human life, or
innocent human life, that makes this killing wrong. And many of those
who prefer to avoid sanctity talk will nevertheless agree that life, or
human life, has some special value. But what is this special value? And
why think that life has it? This – something we consider in the next
section – will take longer.
2
Someone might say, ‘By killing is always wrong I mean that there is always something
wrong about killing. Or, other things being equal, you should not kill. And this is credible,
and liveable.’ We will consider in the next chapter whether this sort of argument carries
conviction.
17
Activity
Right now though, and by way of a review, you should read the following
passage, which is an extract from Unsanctifying Human Life by the
Australian philosopher Peter Singer. I mentioned Singer earlier as an
opponent of the sanctity view. After you have read the extract, answer
the three questions that follow it.
People often say that life is sacred. They almost never mean
what they say. They do not mean, as their words seem to
imply, that all life is sacred. If they did, killing a pig or even
pulling up a cabbage would be as contrary to their doctrine as
infanticide. So when in the context of medical ethics people
talk of the sanctity of life, it is the sanctity of human life that
they really mean. It is this doctrine that I shall be discussing
from now on.
In discussing the doctrine of the sanctity of human life, I shall

not take the term ‘sanctity’ in any specifically religious sense.
Although I think that the doctrine does have a religious origin
… it is now part of a broadly secular ethic, and it is as part of
this secular ethic that it is most influential today. Not all those
who talk about ‘the sanctity of life’ are religious, and of those
that are religious, in many cases their affirmation of the
sanctity of life is independent of their religious views. In the
secular context in which the problems of medical ethics are
usually discussed today, those who talk of the sanctity of
human life are trying to say essentially that human life has
some very special value; and a crucial implication of this
assertion is the idea that there is a radical difference between
the value of human life and the value of the life of some other
animal – a difference not merely of degree, but of quality or
kind.
It is this idea, the idea that human life as such has value, that
I shall criticize.
(Singer, 2002, p. 217)
1 Is it as clear as implied in the first paragraph that people who say life
is sacred ‘almost never mean what they say’?
2 Are you persuaded by Singer’s separation of religious and secular
views?
18
1.2 Meanings
3 Is Singer right to claim that on a widespread version of the sanctity

view there is a radical difference – a difference in kind – between
human and other animal life?
Discussion
1 Perhaps matters are less clear than this. Singer seems to believe that
almost all those who talk of sanctity hold a view about the wrongness
of ending human life. But many people hold a wider view, one about
animal and maybe plant life also; and many hold a milder view,
allowing some killing, perhaps if it is done respectfully. Even if the
view he targets is important and widespread, things are not as black
and white as Singer makes out.
2 I do not know about you, but I am not persuaded. There are, as I
have said all along, different versions of the sanctity view, but many
of those people insisting, in a medical ethics context, on the sort of
view outlined here are religious believers, and think of their ethics as
having a religious underpinning.
3 He probably is right to claim this. On the version of the sanctity view
most widespread in the West, it is usually held that human beings
alone have a special value. Even if animals have some value, it is
value of a different kind. Again, the religious dimension is relevant
here. Believers in divine creation are more likely to think there is a
difference in kind. Believers in evolution are more likely to think the
difference is one of degree.
Activity
Singer is probably the most influential moral philosopher of recent times.
To find out more about him, and his views, you should now watch the
video ‘Interview with Singer’ on the A333 website. Notes to guide your
viewing are provided on the website.
19
1.3 Value
The idea of life’s having some special value, I have suggested, is very
prominent within sanctity views. It would be good to have a firmer
grasp of what is involved here. And in order to achieve this it would be
good to explore the notion of value more generally. So that is what we
will turn to now.
Activity
Read the extract from Life’s Dominion by the American philosopher
Ronald Dworkin below, in which he distinguishes different sorts of value.
Then answer the questions that follow it.
Something is instrumentally important if its value depends on

its usefulness, its capacity to help people get something else
they want. Money and medicine, for example are only
instrumentally valuable: no one thinks that money has value
beyond its power to purchase things that people want or need,
or that medicine has value beyond its ability to cure.
Something is subjectively valuable only to people who happen
to desire it. Scotch whiskey, watching football games, and
lying in the sun are only valuable to people, like me, who
happen to enjoy them. I do not think others who detest them
are making any kind of mistake or failing to show respect for
what is truly valuable. They just happen not to like or want
what I do.
Something is intrinsically valuable, on the contrary, if its value

is independent of what people happen to enjoy or want or
need or what is good for them. Most of us treat at least some
objects or events as intrinsically valuable in that way: we think
we should admire and protect them because they are
important in themselves, and not just if or because we or
others want or enjoy them. Many people think that great
paintings, for example, are intrinsically valuable. They are
valuable, and must be respected and protected, because of
their inherent quality as art, and not because people happen to
enjoy looking at them or find instruction or some pleasurable
aesthetic experience standing before them.
20
1.3 Value
Is human life subjectively or instrumentally or intrinsically

valuable? Most of us think it is all three. We treat the value of
someone’s life as instrumental when we measure it in terms of
how much his being alive serves the interests of others: of
how much what he produces makes other people’s lives better,
for example … We treat a person’s life as subjectively
valuable when we measure its value to him, that is, in terms of
how much he wants to be alive or how much being alive is
good for him. So if we say that life has lost its value to
someone who is miserable or in great pain, we are treating
that life in a subjective way.
Let us call the subjective value a life has for the person whose
life it is its personal value. It is personal value we have in mind
when we say that normally a person’s life is the most
important thing he or she has.
If we think, however, that the life of any human organism,

including a fetus, has intrinsic value whether or not it also has
instrumental or personal value – if we treat any form of human
life as something we should respect and honor and protect as
marvellous in itself – then abortion remains morally
problematical. If it is a horrible desecration to destroy a
painting, for example, even though a painting is not a person,
why should it not be a much greater desecration to destroy
something whose intrinsic value may be vastly greater?
(Dworkin, 1993, pp. 72–3)
1 How many different sorts of value does Dworkin distinguish?

2 Suppose someone says that football is like money or medicine. It is
merely instrumentally valuable – valuable just because it gives us
pleasure. How might Dworkin, or someone sympathetic to his view,
respond?
3 Does Dworkin think that abortion is wrong?
Discussion
1 The first question here is not easy to answer. Dworkin clearly
distinguishes between three kinds of value – instrumental value,
intrinsic value and what he first calls subjective value. But then he
talks also of personal value. Is this a fourth kind? It seems to me
that he is thinking of it as a subspecies of subjective value, and not
21
as something altogether distinctive. So, three kinds then (but I return

to this below).
2 Dworkin will reject this view. He does not think we use football to get
pleasure. Rather he supposes that we value football for its own sake,
and it is not seen simply as a means to an end. Similarly, as I read
him, Dworkin is claiming to value whisky for its own sake, and not
simply as a means to getting drunk.
3 Dworkin does not say anything that suggests he thinks abortion is
wrong. Does he think, though, that it is ‘morally problematical’? It
might seem so, but it is worth treading carefully here. He says that if
we think life is intrinsically valuable then abortion will appear morally
problematical. He also says that ‘most of us’ think life is intrinsically
valuable. So you might conclude that he thinks it morally
problematical if he thinks what ‘most of us’ think. But he does not
actually say what he thinks.
Life’s dominion
Philosophers are not always concerned just with a disinterested
pursuit of the truth. Sometimes they have more practical and real
world concerns. In the book from which the extract is taken,
Dworkin is trying to help settle the abortion debate in the USA,
and his tactic here is to suggest that both sides – the pro-lifers and
the pro-choicers – really agree about a lot, and differ only in detail.
In particular, he claims that they are basically in agreement about
the sanctity of life. Most people, he says, think that life is sacred.
But he does not say whether he thinks this. And so he does not
say, anywhere in the book, that life actually is sacred.
In trying to understand someone’s overall argument, then, we need
always carefully to distinguish between views they are reporting, or
considering, and views which they are endorsing, or themselves
committing to. In pursuit of his overall aim – bringing the two
sides together – Dworkin, I am suggesting, sometime fudges this.
Let us consider now in more detail the different sorts of value under
discussion here.
22
1.3 Value
Figure 1.3 Anti-abortion protesters attending the March for Life,

25 January 2013, Washington, DC. Photo: Brendan Hoffman/Getty Images.
Instrumental value
As I have just suggested, to see something as having instrumental value
is to see it as a means to an end. Its value depends both on our valuing
the end, and its efficacy as a means. A lot of people used to value
typewriters as a way of writing letters to friends. But fewer people these
days have this as an end – more often they phone them. And for those
who do write, email or texting is usually preferred. So, on two counts,
typewriters have lost their value. Similarly, valuable medicines lose value
as more effective treatments are discovered. There are better means to
the same end. And there are many fewer cigarette lighters on sale. The
end they served – smoking – is less widespread than it was. So the
means, or tools, for smoking have fallen in value.
Personal value
When Dworkin first talks about subjective value, he links it with the
things people ‘happen to want’. But when he talks about life’s having
personal value it seems he has a broader idea in mind. My life is of
personal value if I happen to want to stay alive. But isn’t it also of value
to me if it is a good life, if it will be good for me to stay alive, if my
life is something I ought to value? Similarly, there may be things, like
23
football and whisky, that some people, or millions of people, just

happen to want and enjoy for their own sake. But arguably there are
also things, perhaps great art, perhaps your child’s first drawings, that
people ought to want and enjoy. Perhaps, to give another example, you
ought to value your friends.
Figure 1.4 Children's artwork. Photo: © Eleanor Anderson.
I want to suggest, then, that we extend the term personal value to cover
this whole range – the things that either a few people, or most people,
happen to value, just for their own sake, and also the things that either
a few people, or most people, ought to value, just for their own sake.
Why this ought? Perhaps you owe it to your friends, or your children,
to value them, and some of what they do. Perhaps it will be good for
you, help your life go better, if you value these things.
It is important to see that personal value, understood this way, differs
from instrumental value. As football is not just a tool, or a means to
pleasure, so also your friends and family are not there simply to be used
24
1.3 Value
for your convenience, or to make your life go better, and then to be

discarded if you get a new family, or better friends. So personal value is
not instrumental value.
Intrinsic value
First, a reminder. Dworkin says most people believe there are things
that have intrinsic value. But he does not clearly commit to this value
himself. This should ring warning bells, and suggest that unpacking the
idea of intrinsic value, and identifying things that have this value, might
not be straightforward.
Those who think it is straightforward have perhaps made some
understandable mistake. If there are things that we value as means to an
end, surely there must also be things we value as ends. Fair enough, but
why then jump to the conclusion that these things are intrinsically
valuable? Why assume that there are only two sorts of value to
consider?3 The mistake here – as often in philosophy – is in going a
little too quickly. We might think that if there are instrumental values
there are, as well, non-instrumental values. But, of course, things that
are of personal value – football and friendship – are themselves non
instrumentally valuable. It does not follow that there are also things that
have intrinsic value. Whether there are will depend first on how
‘intrinsic’ in this context is to be understood, and second whether, when
it is properly understood, we should think there are things having this
value.
Dworkin helps us here. Things that are intrinsically valuable have a
value that is ‘independent of what people happen to enjoy or want or
need or what is good for them’. So, even if we were to change
completely, things that have intrinsic value would still be valuable. What
this suggests is that a thing’s intrinsic value derives from its intrinsic or
internal properties alone, and so does not depend on how things stand
outside, or its relations with other bits of the universe, or with us. If we
change, or disappear, or if the rest of the universe changes, or
disappears, a thing’s intrinsic value, if it has such a value, remains the
3
In Book 3, Alex Barber does seem to suggest there are two kinds of value – instrumental
and final. The latter is not a term I have used in this chapter. Whether we might use this
term to stand in for all varieties of non-instrumental value, whatever they might be, or
whether it picks out a further kind of value is a matter for further discussion. Also, in the
audio recording associated with Chapter 2 of Book 3, Harriet Baber seems to suggest
that instrumental values are to be contrasted simply with intrinsic values. Whether this is
the best way to navigate the terrain of value is again a matter on which there are
conflicting views.
25
same. The Cambridge philosopher G.E. Moore, friend of Wittgenstein

and Russell, in his most famous work puts it thus:
The method which must be employed in order to decide the

question ‘What things have intrinsic value, and in what degrees?’
has already been explained … In order to arrive at a correct
decision on the first part of this question, it is necessary to
consider what things are such that, if they existed by themselves,
in absolute isolation, we should yet judge their existence to be
good …
He goes on to claim that this method helps guard against various

mistakes, one of which
consists in supposing that what seems absolutely necessary here

and now, for the existence of anything good – what we cannot do
without, is therefore good in itself. If we isolate such things, which
are mere means to good, and suppose a world in which they alone,
and nothing but they, existed, their intrinsic worthlessness becomes
apparent.
(Moore, 1903, p. 187)
So perform the isolation test. Things that have intrinsic value will pass
the test, while things that have only instrumental value will fail it.
Perhaps, however, the difference between intrinsic value and personal
value is not yet clear. It needs to be. And there are two pointers. First,
though Moore does not make the point, things having only personal
value will also fail the isolation test. Something that is only of value to
me will not retain that value in a world where I do not exist. Second,
and related to this, we can distinguish between things that are valued for
themselves, and things that are valuable in themselves. I value my child’s
painting for itself, and not as means to some further end. But I do not
think it is valuable just in itself, independently of all further facts about
the universe. I would not value the painting if it were not the work of a
child. And I probably would not value it if it were not the work of my
child. Something that is intrinsically valuable, in contrast, is valuable just
in itself, independently of its relations to other things.
26
1.3 Value
Figure 1.5 Cambridge Moral Science Club, 1915. Left to right (standing):
G.E. Moore, Mary Fletcher, H.T.J. Norton, Bertrand Russell, Prof. G. Dawes
Hicks; (seated): Prof. W.R. Sorley, Karin Stephen (formerly Costelloe),
W.E. Johnson, Mrs McTaggart. Photo: akg-images/Album/Oronoz.
Is there anything that is valuable in this way? Dworkin’s claim was that
many of us think that great works of art have this sort of value, even if
they are also instrumentally or personally valuable. Most of us, he says,
think that if the Mona Lisa were destroyed, even in a world where all the
people have already died, that would be a change for the worse.4 And
he says also that most of us think human life is intrinsically valuable,
again even if it is often of instrumental or personal value also. So most
of us think that if, in a world where all the rest of us have been killed,
the sole surviving fetus is itself later killed, that again would be a
change for the worse. It is good to ask yourself now whether you agree
with these claims. Do most people think these things? Do you yourself
think these things?
4
You might remember that Alex Barber, in Chapter 1 of Book 3, suggests that this is not
true. We are not in disagreement here. I am simply reporting what Dworkin says. (And,
in turn, he is simply reporting what he believes most people think.) You might want to
form your own view on which of these is correct.
27
Figure 1.6 Art alone in the universe. The ‘Marathon Boy’, c.325–300 BC,
bronze. National Archaeological Museum, Athens. Photo: © Erin Babnik/
Alamy. 3D render illustration of the universe. Photo: © Paul Paladin/Alamy.
28
1.4 Sanctity and value

Suppose we agree, at least tentatively, that there are some things that are
intrinsically valuable, and that life is among them. Is this the special
value that supporters of sanctity views have in mind? Plausibly it is.
Certainly they are not thinking of life just as something to be used as
an instrument on the way to some further end. Nor are they thinking of
life just as something we personally happen to value. Rather, they are
thinking that life has value just in itself, whatever its condition, and
whatever we happen to think about it. Still, there are important
questions that we will need to ask.
Types
Do all lives, or all types of life, have this value? Or is it only some?
We have already considered this. Of the three main candidates – all life,
animal life, human life – views about the sanctity of life most often focus
on human life alone. But there are many people who hold that animals
also have a special value. And there are many who think that trees and
plants are also in this way valuable.
Reasons
Surely there must be something – something about life, some features it
has – that explains why it has this special value, or gives us reason to
believe it has this value. Even if you think life is a gift from God, there
is presumably something about life that makes it seem to God suitable
as a gift. Remember, we are thinking now that the special value is
intrinsic value – value that a life has whether or not there are other lives
around. So the features that give it this value – the value-conferring
properties – will be properties that are intrinsic or internal to it. What
might they be?
The problem with holding that all life has a special value is in finding
something to fit the bill. As I have already suggested, in pointing to
Schweitzer’s slide from life to nature, and then the difficulty in
preventing a further move to things, it is hard to insist that life alone
should be an object of respect. And it is similarly hard to see what
could give all and only life a special value. What internal or intrinsic
properties do all and only lives have that seem in the right sort of way
important?
29
If we focus in on animal life (including human life), things begin to

look up. There are some noticeable differences between animals and
plants. First, animals can fairly easily move about. Plants cannot.
Second, most animals are conscious and can in some way feel pleasure
and pain. Plants are not, and do not. It is hard to see why the first
difference, real though it is, should make animals specially valuable. But
the other differences do seem as if they might be relevant. You will
remember that one of the students in the audio suggested
consciousness as the property that gives animals a special value. And
the fact that animals can suffer – a particular factor related to
consciousness – again seems the sort of thing that might give animals a
special value. At least this is true – because they can suffer it matters,
for their sakes, how we treat them.
And now if we consider just human beings there are perhaps further
value-conferring properties to be considered. Unlike other animals, we
are self-conscious, have the ability to engage in abstract reasoning, have
a moral sense and are able to act morally, and are held responsible for
what we do. And, it might plausibly be claimed, these properties give us
a special and intrinsic value.
Do not misinterpret what I have said here. I am not endorsing the
claim that human beings, or animals, or lives of all kinds really are in
any way special. The point is just that someone who makes
pronouncements about special value surely needs to say something to
support or explain their stance. And the properties identified here seem,
I think, plausible candidates for the kinds of things that could confer
value on their owners. That is all that is being claimed.
Degrees
How valuable are different lives? Let me voice here just two options.
On the first, all lives that have this special value have it to an equal
degree. On the second, all lives of a particular kind that have this value
have it to an equal degree. The first view implies that if human and
animal lives are valuable then they are all equally valuable. The second
implies that all human lives are equally valuable, that all elephant lives
are equally valuable, and that all snail lives are equally valuable, but
allows that human lives might be worth more (or less) than elephant
lives, and elephants more (or less) than snails. This second is the more
widespread view. Even if you think that only human lives are sacred,
you are still thinking all lives of this one kind have a special value.
30
Let us suppose, from here on, that believers in the sanctity of life
believe, at least, that all human lives are of equal value.
But now there is an obvious problem. It is something I have already
hinted at, and it is hinted at too in the title to this section.
Activity
Now listen to the audio recording ‘The sanctity of life (Part 2)’, which is
the second part of my discussion with students from the University of
Cumbria. What is the point that Tim is making around 3.34? And what is
the point I made earlier, to which Tim’s point is linked?
Discussion
Tim asks whether, in talking about sanctity, we should be focusing on
individuals or on kinds. He raises this question after some comments
about someone in a coma (who we can assume is not going to recover).
We might think that ‘normal’ human beings have some special properties,
and so have a special value, but it is harder to see how every human
being can have this value. For some of them lack these properties.
This point is linked to my claims earlier in this part of the audio that there
are objective differences, real differences, between us and cats (and by
implication other living things) that explain why we have a special value.
The problem for the sanctity view, then, is that a plausible account of
why most human beings might be especially valuable – they have certain
value-conferring properties – falls down when applied to all human
beings. But it is a defining feature of the sanctity view that it applies to
all human beings, or at least to all innocent human beings.
Peter Singer holds that believers in the sanctity of life are here guilty of
speciesism, holding that merely being a member of the species Homo
sapiens is enough to give all human beings a special value, and enough to
make it the case that killing a human being is always wrong. But he
rejects this, saying, on the video you watched earlier: ‘I don’t think that
being simply biologically human gives you a special right to life. I say
that the seriousness of killing a being must depend on the capacities
and qualities it has’. So, for Singer, the value of life will vary from
individual to individual, and will not be equal across a species. Even
supposing that, in general, human beings will be equally valuable, and
more valuable than elephants, there will be particular cases where this is
31
not so. Some human beings have lives that are of less value than others.
And some human beings have lives that are of less value than that of
an elephant. Let us call this – a rival to the sanctity view – the quality
view. It says that the value in life will depend on the particular qualities
or properties or capacities found in that life. So value will very much
vary from case to case.
Can we get round the difficulty here, and revive the sanctity view? Tim
suggests that we might go back to the distinction between individuals
and kinds, and hold that all human beings are sacred, and have a special
value, because they belong to a kind whose normal or paradigm
members have special value-conferring properties. Does this solve the
problem? Well, the first thing to note is that certain key claims are true.
It is true that all human beings, no matter what their condition, and
what their abilities, belong to the kind ‘human being’, or that they are
all members of the species ‘Homo sapiens’. It is true, also, that normal or
paradigm members of that species – the likes of you and me – have
some special and valuable properties, such as those mentioned above.
None of us should be coy about thinking of ourselves in this way – we
do not need to believe we are superior to other creatures, but in this
universe of dust and gas we stand out as marvels. But how do we make
the final move, and explain how other human beings, who lack these
properties, are also special?
Well, someone might say this: millions of human beings who lack these
value-conferring properties will in the future acquire them. Embryos,
fetuses, babies, will, if appropriately cared for, become adult human
beings who are self-conscious, able to reason, equipped with a moral
sense. They have the potential for acquiring these properties. And
millions of others who lack these qualities only recently had them.
People in comas, or a persistent vegetative state (PVS), or with
Alzheimer’s were self-conscious, reasoning, moral agents. These claims
are true. But there are still two problems for supporters of the sanctity
view. The first is to explain how it follows, from the fact that the
millions will have or did have the value-conferring properties, and so
will have or did have the special value, that they have this value even
now. The second is what to say about those, for example babies born
without brains, who never had and never will have these properties. Can
they really have this special value by proxy?
32
Consequences
Suppose that, in spite of the points above, we agree that human lives,
and all human lives, are of special value. Suppose we agree also that
lives have this value equally. So far as this special or intrinsic value is
concerned, no life has more worth or value than any other. So all lives
are sacred, and they are all equally sacred.
What follows if we accept this? In particular, does it follow that killing
is always wrong, and does it follow that it is equally wrong? These, of
course, are the claims that sanctity believers support. But it seems there
are several sorts of case that threaten this.
First, I might kill one to benefit many. If I shoot innocent Jim then a
hundred innocent prisoners will go free, otherwise they die. Perhaps you
do not like the idea of killing. Then just think about sacrifice, or letting
someone die. If I save Alice, trapped on the island’s northern tip, then
100 people trapped on the southern tip will die; if I save them, she will
die.5 The moral is the same – even if the individual lives are equally
valuable, a number of lives together is surely worth more than one
alone. And this appears to have implications for what we should do. It
is not clear why, much as I might regret it, I should not kill one, or let
one die, in order to save many others.
Second, I might kill one to benefit another. Either the mother or the
fetus will die. It seems I might reasonably choose to kill the fetus in
order to save the mother. And I might do this even while allowing that,
so far as intrinsic value is concerned, their lives are of equal value. But
how come? Well, we have agreed for a long time that there are different
sorts of value to consider – intrinsic value, special or not, is one among
several. So, even assuming that all lives are equally intrinsically valuable,
they will differ in terms of instrumental value (there is reason to value
the life of the heart surgeon above that of the serial killer) and in terms
of personal value (a healthy and happy 30-year-old might reasonably
value her life more than an unhappy and seriously suffering 80-year
old).6
Third, I might kill one to benefit the one. Joe is 83, terminally ill and in
great pain. He wants to die. I might reasonably kill him even while
acknowledging his life is intrinsically valuable, since, again, other values
5
The example of Jim and the Indians is taken from Williams (1973) while that of the
island rescue comes up in Taurek (1977) and, before that, in Anscombe (1967).
6
More accurately, value the continuation of life, or future life. Looking back, the 80-year
old might reasonably think that she’s had a very valuable life.
33
also need to be considered. In his case, the personal value of his life is
negative – there is for him immense disvalue in staying alive. And
plausibly, the negative outweighs the positive.
The point made here is hinted at by Shona in the audio (11.32), where
she suggests a distinction between sanctity and quality. Lives might be
equally valuable in one respect, while differently valuable in other
respects. But it seems that in deciding what to do we surely need to
take all values into account. And this might have consequences for
killing.
I hope it is clear that I am not advocating killing in any of these cases.
The point is only that a case for killing can be made. And I make this
point only in response to those who think that if we hold that life is
sacred, and interpret this as meaning it has a special value, and an equal
value, then it follows that killing is always wrong. It does not follow.
34
1.5 Further views
1.5 Further views

What we still need, in support of a sanctity view, is some way of
understanding how either, on the one hand, life or, on the other, lives –
and maybe all lives, or maybe just some – might have some special
value or importance. This is going to be some sort of non-instrumental
value, for sure, but the candidates considered so far – personal value
and intrinsic value – have not clearly delivered the goods. Are there
more varieties of non-instrumental value to be considered? And might
one of these offer any way round some of the problems with intrinsic
value identified above? What we can do now is consider some further
views about the value of life which, even though they are not
themselves sanctity views, are their close cousins, and help reveal their
contours.
Activity
Read, think about and contrast the two extracts below and then consider
the questions that follow. Neither extract is altogether perspicuous, and
the second contains some technical terms. But do not worry too much
about these right now (for example, you can read ‘conceptually distinct’
just as ‘distinct’). I will discuss them in more detail below.
There are elements which, if added to one’s experience, make
life better; there are other elements which, if added to one’s
experience, make life worse. But what remain when these are
set aside is not merely neutral: it is emphatically positive.
Therefore life is worth living even when the bad elements of
experience are plentiful, and the good ones too meagre to
outweigh the bad ones on their own. The additional positive
weight is supplied by experience itself, rather than by any of
its contents.
(Nagel, 1979, p. 2)
The inherent value of individual moral agents is to be
understood as being conceptually distinct from the intrinsic
value that attaches to the experiences they have (e.g. their
pleasures or preference satisfactions), as not being reducible
to values of this latter kind, and as being incommensurate with
these values …
35
The postulate of inherent value might be made clearer by

recalling the cup analogy … The cup (the individual) does
‘contain’ (experience) things that are valuable (e.g., pleasures),
but the value of the cup (individual) is not the same as any
one or any sum of the valuable things the cup contains.
(Regan, 1983, pp. 235–6; also part of Reading 1)
1 How might these writers, on the basis just of these extracts, be

thought to be providing some sort of support for a sanctity view?
2 What is it about life (or a life) that, on the basis of each extract in
turn, gives it a special value?
3 What sorts of lives might have this value?
Discussion
1 Both writers appear to think there can be value in a life that is over
and above the value of the experiences that it contains. And of
course this is a key feature of the sanctity view.
2 Thomas Nagel claims that life is worth living (and so is of value) even
in some circumstances where the content of experience is overall bad
or negative. For having experiences is valuable, irrespective of the
content of those experiences. (He is not saying that the value of
having experiences can outweigh any bad content – so life is worth
living however bad the experiences it contains – only that it can
outweigh some bad content.)
Tom Regan’s view is similar. But rather than contrasting experience
with its contents, and claiming that experience is valuable, regardless
of content, Regan takes what might appear a further step, appearing
to insist that the life itself has value. This is the point made by his cup
analogy.
3 Nagel is not at all explicit about which lives he is considering here,
but you might take references to ‘one’s experience’ to suggest he is
talking of human lives. But not all human lives; only those that contain
experience.
Regan, in talking of moral agents, seems to be considering a
narrower set of lives. Moral agents are those capable of acting
morally, those who can be held responsible for what they do. The
focus here is on normal adult human beings.
36
1.5 Further views
A rival to the sanctity view that has been identified earlier is the quality
view – lives have their value because of the particular shapes and
contents that they have. Such a view has been evident in many of the
comments in the audio, in several of my discussion points above, and is
there just below the surface in the extract from Singer that you read
earlier (2002, p. 217). Both Nagel and Regan, concerned as they are
with beings that are at least able to have experiences, are making no
suggestion that life, or human life, as such, has value. However, they
share with sanctity believers the view that at least some lives have value
independently of their contents, independently of how things are going
within those lives. This is why I think of their views as in some ways
akin to sanctity views.
I want now to look at the Regan extract, the background to it, and its
complex terminology, in more detail.
Activity
Turn now to Reading 1 ‘Regan on the value of life’, at the end of this
book. This is from Regan’s well-known book The Case for Animal Rights,
and it includes the short extract in the previous activity. There are four
notions here that I want to explore – value, life, postulates and
incommensurability – so bear these in mind as you read.
Value
Regan talks of the inherent value of life, or the cup, and contrasts this
with the intrinsic value of experiences, or the cup’s contents. Is this
then a new candidate for the special value that the sanctity believer is
after? I think it is not. Regan has introduced a new term, but not, so
far as I can tell, a new idea. So should we think that life, on the one
hand, and good experiences, on the other, are both intrinsically
valuable? Regan’s view could be that good experiences are valuable just
in themselves, or it could be they are of value to us. If it is the latter,
then we might use the term ‘personal value’ instead.
Life
Although in the short passage above Regan might seem to suggest that
inherent value is something possessed just by moral agents – the likes
of you and me – this is far from his final view. And it becomes clear
37
later in his book, as the argument unfolds, that he holds that many
animals – and he thinks of most animals as moral patients, as things
regarding which we have direct moral duties – have inherent value. I say
many animals, but in more detail he holds that at least animals
(including human animals) that are subjects of a life have this value. These
are animals that have reasonably complex psychologies, including beliefs
and desires, a sense of the future and memories of the past. Regan
suggests that we should be thinking here of ‘mentally normal mammals
of more than a year old’ (Regan, 1983, p. 78).
Figure 1.7 Subjects of a life? Photo: © Christopher Belshaw.
Regan’s is, then, an interesting mid-point position. The standard view on

sanctity is that lives have value irrespective of their content. It is wrong
to kill a human embryo and wrong also to kill someone in a PVS. The
opposing quality view, held by Singer, for example, is that it is the
content of our lives that gives them value. Regan seems to believe that
all and only the lives that have or could have valuable content also have
value apart from the value of that content. It is as if unfinished cups,
and broken cups, lack value.
Animals and humans

Suppose Regan is right to hold that at least some animal lives have
a special value. This, even if you disagree with it, is hardly bizarre.
Indeed, many will say that a contrasting view – all and only human
lives have a special value – is blatantly speciesist. Suppose we
think, also, that animal lives are less valuable than human lives.
38
1.5 Further views
Even so, there is inevitably raised the question of whether some

large number of animal lives can outweigh a single human life.
Suppose you can save from a painful death either one stranger, or
a thousand antelopes. (I choose antelopes rather than something
cute and rare, like pandas, to avoid unnecessary complications.)
What will you do? What should you do?
Postulates
Why should we believe that any lives, human or animal, have this
special value? Look again at the short passages quoted above. Nagel
simply asserts that a life that contains experiences has some positive
value, independently of the value of those experiences. He does not give
us any reason for believing this. We might ask – how do you know?
Regan’s view is interestingly different. He refers to the postulate of
inherent value, suggesting here, and elaborating elsewhere, that we
should act, or behave, as though, or try to believe that, some lives have
this special kind of value. In Reading 1 he often says that we should
view some individuals as having value. It seems, then, that he is not
thinking that there is some fact of the matter, which then needs to be
discovered, as to what things have this value. Rather, we are able to
stipulate, or postulate, or suppose that a particular thing is valuable.
Does this mean we can postulate or say what we like, while really there
is no reason to say one thing rather than another? No. And we might
distinguish two sorts of reasons – theoretical and practical.
Is there reason to believe in God? Someone might think there is little or
no evidence that God exists. Theoretical reasons are hard to come by,
even though there are practical reasons for having such a belief – we
might benefit, in terms of an afterlife, we might see the world as a
better, more organised place and we might be better able to cope with
adversity. Regan seems to be claiming here that postulating inherent
value will help us make better sense of, cohere better with, other things
we want to do and say, even if there is no direct evidential support for
there being this value.
Perhaps there is something in this. Perhaps human life, or even life
generally, is something we ought to value, even if we do not in fact
value it. And we ought to value it, not because it is good just in itself,
or intrinsically valuable, but because it will be good for us, or personally
39
valuable, to value such life. And this applies not just to paradigm lives.
It will be good for us to value, for their own sake, the weak and
defenceless, the sick and ailing also.
One difficulty with this suggestion is in fleshing out the details, and the
problem here connects with the comments about judgement and
responsibility that you heard in the audio. It might be good for us, as
well as for others, if we act thoughtfully and respectfully towards the
sick and the weak. But if it is insisted that we should always try to
sustain life, or at least that we should never end it, even if it appears
best ended, then it is less clear why this might be good for us.
This points immediately to a complication. Suppose it is good for us,
our lives go better, if we postulate inherent value. Then it might seem
that Regan’s view is that it is of value to us – of personal value – to
suppose there is some impersonal, inherent or intrinsic value out there.
But unless this notion of impersonal value really makes sense, it is not
clear that we are able to postulate it.
Incommensurability
A final complexity. Nagel talks about one value outweighing another.
Regan says nothing like this but talks instead of incommensurability.
What does he mean?
His idea seems to be that the value of life cannot be directly compared
with, and so cannot directly outweigh or be outweighed by, the value of
experience. For, ‘Like proverbial apples and oranges, the two kinds of
value do not fall within the same scale of comparison’ (and you might
have noticed that Shona makes a similar point in Part 2 of the audio,
3.16–3.33). But it is not clear that this analogy is helpful. Think about
apples and oranges. What should we say about them?
Well, one thing is that they are importantly different. There are
circumstances where, if you need an orange, no apple, not even a box
of apples, will do. But they are far from completely different. You can
compare them in terms of sweetness, energy values, growing conditions,
and so on. And there are circumstances where trading an orange for an
apple, or a box of apples, or a vanload, might be the right thing to do.
So even if there is not a precise and universal measure for weighing the
value of apples against the value of oranges, they are in many respects
roughly comparable.
40
1.5 Further views
We might think the same about values in other contexts. Consider again
the man who judges his life no longer worth living. One way to think of
this life is as having simply an overall negative value – the bad
outweighs, or cancels out, the good. Another way is to think of it as
continuing to have both a positive intrinsic or inherent value and also
negative personal value. The latter does not simply outweigh or cancel
out the former. Even so, we might think that on balance the life is
better ended. Again, there is rough comparability between the two
values.
Suppose Regan insists that this is wrong – different values are not even
roughly comparable. The question then is why we should think the
intrinsic or inherent value is the more important of the two, and the
one that should determine what we do.
41
1.6 Sanctity and religion

Let us return now, briefly, to a question raised very close to this
chapter’s beginning. Is the view that life is sacred at bottom a religious
view? I think we can ask this question without pinning down exactly
what religion is. Certainly it is very much associated with religion. But
Singer and Dworkin both suggest there are now secular versions of this
view. Is this right? Of course, you can say you believe in the sanctity of
life, and say, at about the same time, that you do not believe in God or
religion. But is it possible to give a defensible version of the sanctity
view, or the special value view, that does not in the end depend on
religion? That is less clear.
The question very much depends, of course, on how that view is to be
understood. But we have seen how at its centre is often embedded the
claim that human life has a special value, such that killing the innocent
is always wrong, and abortion, suicide and euthanasia always forbidden.
Many of us, looking at these matters in purely secular terms, find this
difficult to understand. What will make it true that killing is always,
rather than often, or in general, wrong?
Is understanding easier if we adopt a religious perspective? Remember
an early suggestion, that life is a gift from God. Would this, if it were
true, give us reasons to think life is sacred, has a special value, and that
killing is always wrong? You might continue to have doubts. For if life
is truly a gift then it is surely up to us to do with it as we think best.
Obviously, though, even when it seems to us that ending life would be
best, this is not an option open to us, on the sanctity view. So it is hard
to see how life can have been a gift. But consider a variant. What if life
is not so much a gift as a loan – something God lets us have use of but
continues himself to own?
This, it seems to me, provides a very good explanation of the
predominant sanctity views. God sees clearly that life has a special value
– it is not something he wants simply to give away. Even so, things can
interfere with life, make it less good for us to remain alive. But even if
we can see this, and in some circumstances not unreasonably wish to
die (or see it for someone else, and wish for them to die), still, as life is
not ours but God’s, it is up to God to determine whether and when life
should end. We are not permitted to kill, but we are permitted to hope
for, even pray for, a release.
42
1.6 Sanctity and religion
Figure 1.8 The Creation of Adam, a detail from The Grabow Altarpiece by
Master Bertram of Minden, 1379–83, tempera on panel. Hamburger
Kunsthalle, Hamburg. Photo: The Bridgeman Art Library.
If we are going to think that killing the innocent is always wrong, and
so endorse the central claim in the sanctity view, then here is an
essentially religious view that gives us support. But, clearly, this sort of
support is not available to the agnostic or atheist. Clearly, too, the
religious believer might still feel some need to explain and justify her
view, especially when a consequence of the view is quite weighty
interference in the lives of others.
43
Summary
We have tried to unpick what might be meant by claiming that life is
sacred. This, as I said at the outset, is a preliminary to deciding whether
it really is sacred, or whether the claim ‘life is sacred’ is true. But this
has not been straightforward. Though certainly we have made progress,
it is not easy finally to pin down the sanctity view.
One important question is the extent to which a belief in the sanctity of
life is at bottom a religious belief. It seems clear that there are historical
and contemporary links between the two. But some people think there
are wholly secular versions of the sanctity view available. My view here
is that anyone talking about the sanctity of life is likely to be at first
taken as discussing a religious view. The very terms ‘sanctity’ and
‘sacred’ carry these overtones. It is then up to them to make clear
whether there is a way to understand these terms in a wholly
secular way.
A second question is about the extent to which sanctity views can
differ. I focused earlier in the chapter on two contrasting views. We can
think of the respect view as broad but shallow, and of the do not kill view
as narrow but deep. That is, the former takes a wide view about which
lives are sacred, but then issues no rigid prescriptions with regard to
them. Do not kill is, of course, rigid, but the purview is narrower,
typically taking in only innocent human lives. It is possible, I suggested,
to live by either or indeed both of these views, but the latter is, in
principle if not for most of us in practice, much more demanding, and
considerably more difficult to explain.
All sanctity views seem to hold that life, or some forms of life, have a
special value. Even though almost everyone, when first asked, will want
to agree that at least human life is in some ways special, you have seen,
particularly in the chapter’s later sections, that unpacking this idea is
not easy.
In looking at questions about sanctity we have been able to explore a
number of views about the value of life, all of them important and
deserving attention, even if some are not clear or well expressed, or in
some tension with other things we believe. In the next chapter we can
consider in more detail some questions about the ending of life, while
in the one after that we will think about life’s beginning.
44
Summary
Activity
You should now go to the A333 website for:
. information about the independent study associated with this chapter
. a quiz, which you can use to revise this chapter
. suggestions for optional further reading related to the chapter.
45
References
Anscombe, G.E.M. (1967) ‘Who is wronged?’, Oxford Review, vol. 5, pp. 16–17.
Catholic Church (1980) ‘Declaration on euthanasia’, Sacred Congregation for the
Doctrine of Faith, 5 May [Online]. Available at http://www.vatican.va/
roman_curia/congregations/cfaith/documents/rc_con_cfaith_
doc_19800505_euthanasia_en.html (Accessed 10 February 2014).
Dworkin, R. (1993) Life’s Dominion, London, HarperCollins.
Moore, G.E. (1903) Principia Ethica, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press
(this edition 1968).
Nagel, T. (1979) Mortal Questions, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press (this
edition 1992).
Reagan, R. (1983) ‘Abortion and the conscience of the nation’, The Human Life
Review, Spring [Online]. Available at http://www.humanlifereview.com/index.
php/archives/54 (Accessed 10 February 2014).
Regan, T. (1983) The Case for Animal Rights, Berkeley, CA, University of
California Press (this edition 2004).
Schweitzer, A. (1923) Civilization and Ethics, London, A.C. Black.
Singer, P. (2002) ‘Unsanctifying human life’ in Unsanctifying Human Life: Essays
on Ethics (ed. H. Kuhse), Oxford, Blackwell, pp. 215–32.
Taurek, J. (1977) ‘Should the numbers count?’, Philosophy and Public Affairs,
vol. 6, no. 4. pp. 293–316.
Williams, B. (1973) ‘A critique of utilitarianism’ in Smart, J.J.C. and Williams, B.
(eds) Utilitarianism: For and Against, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press.
46
Chapter 2
Is it bad to die?
Contents
Aims 51
2.1 Introduction 53
2.2 The Epicurean View 54
The Epicurean View considered 56
The Epicurean View rejected 60
2.3 The Deprivation View 63
2.4 Amending the view 66
Persons 66
Desires 69
The Deprivation View amended 70
2.5 Differences 72
Non-persons 72
Persons 73
2.6 Objections and replies 75
Animals 75
Fetuses 77
Adults 80
2.7 How bad is death, for the one who dies? 82
Comparisons 82
Incommensurability 85
Summary 87
References 88
Aims
Aims
. understand why Epicurus denied that dying is bad for the person
who dies, and have considered some objections to that view
. be acquainted with the Deprivation View and two different ways in
which that view might be developed
. see why these two versions of the Deprivation View have different
implications in particular cases
. have considered reasons for and reasons against adopting one or
other of these views.
51
Chapter 2 Is it bad to die?

this book:
. Reading 2: Kagan on death as deprivation.
52
2.1 Introduction
2.1 Introduction
We think that death is bad. We hate war, murder and disasters; we hope
for a long life, obey doctors, and take health and safety seriously. But
suppose you die tonight, suddenly, painlessly and unexpectedly in your
sleep? Has something bad happened to you?
We need to focus on the question. It is not a question about dying. I
think we can agree that dying – often a long drawn out process, painful
and distressing, that occurs only to the living – can be bad for
someone. Similarly, knowing that you are going to die – suppose you
are a prisoner on death row, or suffering some painless but terminal
disease – can be bad for you. It is depressing. Nor is it a question
about side-effects. When someone dies, this can, in various ways, be bad
for others. A doctor, on the point of finding an effective treatment for
arthritis, is killed in a car crash. This is bad for those suffering from the
disease. Your partner dies. This, in a different way, is bad for you. So
my question sets these issues aside. Is death itself bad for the one who
dies?
We might agree also that in some cases it is not bad – maybe it is even
better, or good, to die. So we can refine the question further and ask, is
a sudden, painless, unanticipated death ever bad for the one who dies?
Activity
Consider your own view on this right now and make some notes outlining
what you think and why. It will be interesting to see if your position has
changed by the end of the chapter.
53
2.2 The Epicurean View

It might seem obvious that this question about death’s badness is
important. Yet, interestingly, through much of human history it has
been very little considered. Perhaps the dominance of Christianity, with
its fairly firm views on life and death, in large part explains this. But it
has been vigorously discussed over the last fifty or so years. And it was
a hot topic long ago. The Greek philosopher Epicurus (c.341–270 BC)
said:
Become accustomed to the belief that death is nothing to us. For

all good and evil consists in sensation, but death is deprivation of
sensation. … So death, the most terrifying of ills, is nothing to us,
since so long as we exist, death is not with us; but when death
comes, then we do not exist. It does not then concern either the
living or the dead, since for the former it is not, and the latter are
no more.
(Epicurus, Letter to Menoeceus)
There are some questions about exactly what this means, and it may be
that Epicurus was more concerned to limit our fears of death than to
insist that there is nothing at all bad about ceasing to be. But certainly it
at least appears that a clear and controversial position – death is not
bad for the one who dies – is being advanced. We can call this the
Epicurean View. Yet what brings anyone to believe it? There are two
important philosophical positions to which Epicurus and his followers
subscribe. First, and perhaps the more important, they are hedonists,
holding that what is good for us is pleasure, what is bad for us is pain.1
Second, they are atomists, maintaining that all that exists in the
universe is composed of bits of matter. So there is on their view no
immaterial soul that can be tormented after death. Both views play key
roles in the argument.
Given hedonism, and given that there is, after death, no sensation or
sentience, no feeling or experience, and so no pain, the Epicureans
claim that there is nothing bad in death. Why insist that death is the
deprivation of all sensation? Given atomism, and given the physical
changes wrought in our bodies by death, there is no possibility of our
1
You have already encountered the term hedonism, and explanations as to how it should
be understood, in Books 1 and 3.
54
Figure 2.1 Epicurus (c.341–270 BC), second century AD, marble, copy of a
Greek statue of the first half of the third century BC. Metropolitan Museum of
Art, New York. Photo: © Tarker/The Bridgeman Art Library.
55
feeling anything at all after death. And there is a further, more radical,
view embedded in this passage. Again, given atomism, and the view that
we are made just of bits of stuff, it may seem that death brings about
our total annihilation, as the stuff is destroyed, or at least separated and
scattered. And so, when dead, we no longer exist. This makes even
clearer that when dead we can feel no pain, and so gives even stronger
support to the view that death is not bad for us. For, surely, nothing
can be good or bad for a non-existent thing.
In its atomism, its rejection of immaterial souls and related notions of
life after death, this will seem in many ways a modern view, one that we
might be surprised to find established so long ago. Not only is it at odds
with Christianity, but it is importantly also different from the views of
some of the better-known Greek philosophers. In its hedonism, too,
Epicureanism will find many present-day supporters. Pleasures and pains
– getting more of the former, less of the latter – seem to many people to
be the things that matter. And so the Epicurean message will likely come
across as good news – surely it is comforting to learn that there is
nothing to fear in, nothing bad about, death.
The Epicurean View considered

Comforting or not, this is a counterintuitive position, and most of us
are disinclined to believe it. Moreover, there are a number of places where
these claims and arguments can be challenged. First, many people will reject
the atomism, believing that there is more to us than matter, that there are
also souls, that these survive the death of the body, and that their survival
can give us life after death. It is almost certainly true that most people in
the world today believe in this, and it may be that most people in the UK
believe it also. But many do not, and I will proceed as if we can take a
secular view for granted, holding that death really is the end of things, at
least so far as thinking and feeling are concerned. Why? First, most of the
philosophical work in this area makes this assumption, and second, at least
many in our society today make the assumption also. What if they are all
wrong, and there is some sort of existence even after death? Then there
will be many questions about what that will be like, how we can know
about it, how we can best prepare for it. But deciding between sacred and
secular world views is not something we can do here, and if it is at least
possible that this secular view might be true, then it is surely worthwhile
considering what we should think about death, on the assumption that it is.
Even if we accept atomism, however, it is not clear that all of the
Epicureans’ related claims go through. Do we go out of existence when
56
we die? This can look plausible if you think we are in some way
essentially thinking, or psychological, beings of a non-immortal kind.
For with death (though it can happen before death) the thinking stops.
But this sort of view is in some tension with atomism, and it seems
obvious to me – though I should say that several philosophers disagree
here – that we do not normally cease to exist with death. There are
dead people in mortuaries and graveyards, just as there are dead animals
in butchers and fishmongers. I return briefly to this point below.
Figure 2.2 Are there people here? Or just bones? Photo: © Christopher
Belshaw.
Second, there is a challenge from those wanting to reject hedonism.

Hedonism is popular, but it is by no means a universally held view. And
many people insist that bad things can happen to you, and that you can
be harmed, even without your feeling any pain, even without your
experience or sensations being affected at all. We should spend longer
on this, and consider first a passage from a well-known and much
anthologised essay that was in large part responsible for reviving interest
in the Epicurean View. Just after considering what we should say about
a case where ‘an intelligent person receives a brain injury that reduces
57
him to the mental condition of a contented infant’ Thomas Nagel

insists:
it is arbitrary to restrict the goods and evils that can befall a man
to nonrelational properties ascribable to him at particular times. As
it stands, that restriction excludes not only such cases of gross
degeneration, but also a good deal of what is important about
success and failure, and other features of a life that have the
character of processes. I believe we can go further, however. There
are goods and evils which are irreducibly relational; they are
features of the relations between a person, with spatial and
temporal boundaries of the usual sort, and circumstances which
may not coincide with him either in space or in time. A man’s life
includes much that does not take place within the boundaries of
his body and his mind, and what happens to him can include
much that does not take place within the boundaries of his life.
These boundaries are commonly crossed by the misfortunes of
being deceived, or despised, or betrayed. (If this is correct, there is
a simple account of what is wrong with breaking a deathbed
promise. It is an injury to a dead man. For certain purposes it is
possible to regard time as just another type of distance.)
(Nagel, 1979, p. 6)
Nagel is making, even if not altogether clearly, two points here. First,
something might be bad for you, not because it leaves you in a bad
state, but because it leaves you in a worse state than before. His brain
damage case is an example of this, and I will return to it below. Second,
something might be bad for you even if it makes no difference to your
physical or mental state at all. The broken deathbed promise is an
example of that. Obviously, this second claim, even if you agree with it,
is more controversial than the first. We should consider it here.
Activity
Here are a few things that might happen to you. You might: (a) be
cheated behind your back, in such a way that you never find out;
(b) be the target of cruel jokes after you are dead; (c) be conned into
entering an experience machine; (d) fall unconscious for a week;
(e) stub your toe.
Suppose these things (one at a time) do happen to you. Do they affect
your experience? Are they bad for you? Think about each case, and
58
make some notes. If in some of the cases you find there are things to be
said on both sides, so much the better.
Discussion
I included (e), stubbing your toe, as an easy option. This does affect your
experience, it gives you pain, and plausibly is bad for you. What about
(d)? This certainly does affect your experience, even if it causes you no
pain. Is it bad for you? Many will say yes. We can return to it below. The
experience machine example (c) was discussed in the previous book. If
you enter such a machine, you will probably get different experiences
from those you would otherwise have had. Some think that even if the
experiences are in themselves better, it is at least in one way bad for you
to be in the machine. For, the claim is, the fact that the experiences do
not square with reality is a mark against them. What about (a) and (b)?
Suppose your partner is betraying you behind your back but you never
find out about it, and he or she – and everyone else – behaves towards
you just as they would have done had the betrayal never occurred. So –
though perhaps this is hard to imagine – your experience is just the
same as if there were no betrayal. Is this cheating nevertheless bad for
you? Many say yes. If you think this is bad, you are rejecting hedonism.
Similarly with an easier case to imagine, (b). People made jokes about
Princess Diana after her death. One question is whether it was bad of
them, or wrong of them, to make these jokes, another is whether it was
bad for Diana. People who think it was bad for Diana believe that people
can be harmed after they are dead, after experience ceases, and again
reveal themselves as non-hedonists.
As I said, one way to challenge the Epicurean View is to challenge the

hedonism that underpins it. If you believe that bad things happen to
you in cases like (a) and (b), then you reveal that you are not among
hedonism’s friends. But is this really the right place to be?
Many people are sceptical about posthumous harms. As I have
suggested, we might want to criticise people who made jokes after
Diana’s death without needing to say that Diana herself was harmed, or
suffered, as a result of their activity. How could she be harmed? She is
dead. It is hard to see how the jokes can affect her. And without
affecting her, it is hard to see how they could be bad for her. Many
people are similarly sceptical about posthumous benefits. You work hard
all your life to ensure that Venice survives and can be visited by your
great-great-grandchildren. And it does survive, and they do visit.
Something you very much wanted to happen has happened, and your
59
efforts have not been in vain. But is it good for you that it survives? It
is hard to see that what happens long after your death can affect you.
And many people are sceptical about the badness in the betrayal case.
Such betrayal will affect you if you find out. But on the assumption that
you do not, and that your experience continues as before, then, perhaps,
it is not clear that anything bad has happened to you. As with the
jokers, we might want to criticise your partner’s behaviour. Someone
you would hope is on your side, someone you think you can trust, has
behaved badly, and has at the very least risked causing you harm. And
in the case given by Nagel, we might say that promises, once made,
should be kept, even if no one is injured by breaking them.2
The Epicurean View rejected

We might argue further about these cases, about Nagel’s controversial
claims, and about the truth or falsity of hedonism generally. But,
importantly, we do not need these arguments in order to make more
progress with the question in hand. Even assuming that hedonism is true,
the Epicurean View can still legitimately be criticised. Let us see how.
I said we would return to the examples of being unconscious for a
week and of the man reduced to something like infancy. The questions
we considered earlier were, first, whether something affects your
experience, and, second, whether it is bad. Now it seems altogether
clear that falling unconscious affects your experience. At least
temporarily, it ends it. And a brain injury that puts you into a persistent
vegetative state (PVS), or the mental condition of a newborn child,
similarly affects your experience. So too does death itself, unlike things
happening after your death, or behind your back. It affects your
experience by bringing it to an end. John is a happy-go-lucky 30-year
old, but he is killed in an instant, by a bus. If he had not been killed, he
would have continued with the partying. He would have had lots more
good experiences. The bus encounter brings this all to an abrupt end.
Was this bad for him? The Epicurean wants to say that all that is bad is
experienced as bad – pain, frustration, disappointment. If this is right
then we need to agree, nothing bad happens to John. For he feels no
such things. But is it right? It did not seem so to a mid-twentieth
century poet brooding, in the middle of the night, on death:
2
Or we might not. You might see the deathbed promise as something akin to the white lie.
The dying man wants you to promise to tend his dahlias after he is gone. Isn’t it easier,
and better, to promise you will rather than explain you do not have the time and anyway
prefer mosses and ferns?
60
… Not to be here,
Not to be anywhere,
And soon; nothing more terrible, nothing more true.
This is a special way of being afraid
No trick dispels. Religion used to try,
That vast moth-eaten musical brocade
Created to pretend we never die,
And specious stuff that says No rational being
Can fear a thing it will not feel, not seeing
That this is what we fear – no sight, no sound,
No touch or taste or smell, nothing to think with,
Nothing to love or link with,
The anaesthetic from which none come round.
(Larkin, 1990, p. 208)
Figure 2.3 Philip Larkin (1922–1985). Photo: © D. Bayes/Lebrecht Music &

Arts.
61
Most of us believe that at least two things, or sorts of things, are bad.
First, having more pain. Second, having less pleasure. Hedonism, if it is
going to be a plausible position, has to take both these forms of
badness on board. If we accept this then we should note that John’s
death (a) affects his experience, by ending it, and (b) affects it adversely,
by reducing his pleasure. So, even given hedonism, his death is bad for
him. And the Epicurean View, in denying this, gets things wrong.
In fact, the view needs to be a little more complicated. John’s life, had
he not died, would have contained a mix of pleasures and pains. In
reducing his pleasures, death is bad for him. In reducing his pains, it is
good for him. So we might say that his death is in one respect bad for
him, and in another respect good for him. Whether it is overall bad or
good depends on whether his future life would have been overall good
or bad. If his life would have had more pleasure than pain, then death
is overall bad for him. Similarly, being unconscious for a week (say as a
result of a road accident) might be bad when, had you not been, you
would have been on a great holiday; and it might be good (or at least
better than being conscious) when, had you not been, you would have
been awake and in agony. But this complication, in most of what
follows, can be ignored. I will focus on the case where someone in
good health, with a lot to live for, dies suddenly.
Two claims
What you don’t know about doesn’t harm you. You often hear this. Is it
true? And is it the position that I have been arguing for above? I
think it is not true, and certainly I have not argued for it. We need
to make an important distinction. I poison Darren with a laced
drink. He does not know he has been poisoned. While he is eating
the canapés, the poison takes effect, and in an instant he dies. I
have harmed him, but he doesn’t know, never knows, about this. I
have harmed him by making a big and adverse difference to his
life. I poison Bev also. But immediately afterwards, and
coincidentally, she chokes on an olive, and dies. My poisoning does
her no harm. Not only does she not know about the poison, it
makes no difference to how her life goes. We might, instead of the
above, say, What makes no difference to you doesn’t harm you. This, I
think, is true.
62
2.3 The Deprivation View

What I have been outlining here is often referred to as the Deprivation
View of death’s badness. The idea is that death is bad in so far as it
deprives us of something good. Let us just assume that a simple version
of hedonism is true. So death is bad in so far as it deprives us of
pleasures. This is the view in a nutshell, but we can give more detail.
The Deprivation View is one instance of a general, and surely plausible,
view about harms. You are harmed not only by being put into a bad
state – say, by being tortured – but also by being deprived of a good
state – say, by losing half your fortune. Let us suppose you are worse
off, but still not badly off, because of this. Worse off when? You are
worse off than you were in the past, but the critical point is that you
are worse off than you would have been, now and in the future. That is
where the harm lies. Another critical point: you are harmed in this case
by being made worse off than you would have been, even if you do not
know it. You are due to inherit a fortune from an aunt you have never
heard of, but crooked lawyers siphon off the funds. You have no
inkling of your loss, and your life continues just as before, though not
as it would have done had they been straight. Very plausibly, these
lawyers harm you.
On the Deprivation View, the badness, or harm, of death is just like
this. Though you are never aware of it, there are good things and good
times that, because you die, you are prevented from having. And now
this invites a further distinction that needs to be made. Earlier, I
distinguished early death from dying, and said we should concentrate on
the former. But we can also distinguish death – the momentary event –
from being dead – an ongoing state. This distinction leads some to puzzle
further over death’s badness, holding that neither this momentary event
nor the ensuing state is bad for you. So just how can death be bad for
you? But the puzzle can be solved. Focus first on the state. Going back
to terms used in the previous chapter, we can agree that being dead is
not intrinsically bad – the Epicureans are right to say it will not feel bad
to be dead. Nor is being in this state instrumentally bad – it will not act
as a means or tool for getting you into an intrinsically bad state. But it
is relatively or comparatively bad. You are worse off being dead and in a
neutral state, than you are being alive and in a good state. (Similarly,
you are worse off being unconscious on the floor of a boxing ring than
in getting the adulation the winner deserves.) What gets you to be dead,
and so worse off in this way? Focus now on the event. Again, it seems
63
this is not intrinsically bad. But it is instrumentally bad. Death – the

event – is bad in that it puts you into a worse state – being dead – than
you would otherwise have been in. Or it is bad in that it deprives you of a
good state, takes it from you, prevents you from continuing to enjoy it.
Two further points can be made here. First, the Deprivation View
provides some account of how bad it is die. Again the emphasis is on
comparisons. Roughly, the more you lose, the worse death is. Consider
Jack and Jill, who are both 60 and who both should live to 90. But
these thirty years will be very good for Jack, only moderately good for
Jill. Suppose they die now. Death is worse for Jack than it is for Jill, as
he loses more. And consider Diana and Elizabeth. Both should live to
100. But Diana dies at 35, and Elizabeth dies at 95. According to the
Deprivation View, Diana’s is the worse death. In the first of these cases
the difference is one of quality, while in the second it is one of quantity.
Clearly there will be cases where there are differences in both respects.
Second, the Deprivation View, in itself, needs to take no stand on what
sorts of things are good, and so what sorts of things it is bad for you
to be deprived of. So far, I have been assuming hedonism is true, and
that goodness and badness consist in pleasures and pains. On this view,
death can be bad for human beings, and also for animals, or at least for
animals that feel pleasure and pain. It cannot be bad for trees and plants.
But we could have a non-hedonist view, holding that life itself is good. And
on this view death can be bad for trees, by depriving them of life.
Activity
In order to get a better grasp of the Deprivation View, read Reading 2
‘Kagan on death as deprivation’ at the end of this book. This is an extract
from the book Death by the American philosopher Shelly Kagan. Consider
whether there are any important differences between views expressed there
and the views you have encountered so far in this chapter.
Discussion
Though we agree about a lot, Kagan’s view differs from mine in one
striking respect. He insists that when we are dead we do not exist. I have
said there are grounds to doubt this. Striking, but perhaps not that
important. He and I both think that when we are dead our experiences,
and so our good experiences, are over. And this is the key to death’s
badness.
64
Figure 2.4 Is it bad for a tree that its life is over? Fallen dead tree in a field,
Cuckfield, West Sussex. Photo: Johnny Greig/Science Photo Library.
65
2.4 Amending the view

The Deprivation View is widely accepted. Many writers agree with
Kagan that it ‘basically has it right’. But we can contrast a standard
reading of the view with an amended version. It may be that the second
improves on the first. In order to distinguish between these different
versions we need to explore two notions: first the notion of a person and
second the notion of desires.
Persons
The word ‘person’ is an ordinary and familiar English word whose
plural is ‘people’. It is often used synonymously with ‘human being’. But
philosophers often employ the term in a semi-technical way, when its
plural is ‘persons’; the abstract term ‘personhood’ is also used. When so
used it relates to a being’s mental activity – a person is a self-conscious
being, aware of itself in contradistinction to other beings, rational, aware
of its having, or possibly having, a future, aware of its past. This
account of personhood was put forward by John Locke back in the
seventeenth century and it has survived. It has echoes in Regan’s notion
of a subject of a life, in that it picks out things as persons because they
possess some complex of psychological properties. But it is narrower.
Many of the animals that Regan would count as being subjects of a life
will not count as being persons.3
Activity
Which of the following are, in this philosophers’ sense, persons?
Barack Obama, a baby lamb, Superman, Napoleon, someone in a coma,
someone suffering from Alzheimer’s, a newborn baby, a chimpanzee.
Discussion
Barack Obama is, as I write, a person. Napoleon was a person, but is so
no longer. He is now – at best – a corpse. Superman is also a person
(or, at least, a fictitious person). Even though he is not a human being,
he behaves, in person-relevant ways, like a human being – Lois is taken
in. But a lamb is not a person. It does not have enough of the complex
psychology. A chimpanzee? It is perhaps a borderline case, but many will
3
This notion of a person was beginning to surface – although I did not use the term there
– in Chapter 1, Section 1.4, in the subsection on ‘Reasons’, where I considered what
might give human beings more special value than other animals.
66
say that higher apes (and maybe elephants and higher cetaceans also)
have self-consciousness, rationality, etc., and so are persons. So being a
human being is not necessary for personhood.
Figure 2.5 Are they persons? Killer whales or orcas (Orcinus orca),
Kristiansund, Nordmøre, Norway, February 2009. Photo: © Wild Wonders of
Europe/Aukan/naturepl.com.
Is being a human being sufficient for personhood? Perhaps I have

already suggested the answer here. Napoleon is a human being, though
dead, but not a person. So not all human beings are persons.4 Some of
the other remaining cases are harder. Suppose that after a car crash
Nikki is in a very deep and irreversible coma. There is no thought going
on, and there will be none again. She is alive, but not a person. If a
coma is temporary, however – Nigel is knocked out for 11 seconds during
a boxing match – we probably want to say he remains a person
throughout. It is hard, but perhaps not that important, to establish what is
the right thing to say here. If, indeed, there is a right thing. Another hard
case is that of the Alzheimer’s patient. Here the condition is irreversible,
and deteriorating, but there is still thought going on. Is there enough
thought, or the right kind of thought, the right complexity of thought, to
warrant ascriptions of personhood? We should probably conclude that
personhood is not all or nothing, and that there is a period where there is
no yes/no answer.
4
But earlier I said that there are dead people in cemeteries. Am I contradicting myself ?
No. For there I was using the ordinary English words person/people while here I am using
the philosophical terms person/persons.
67
The uncertainty or grey area here, where we consider human beings who
were persons but perhaps are persons no longer, is paralleled at the
beginning of life. A newborn baby is not, in this semi-technical sense, a
person, but of course will, in the normal run of things, develop into a
person. Again, this is not a matter of some overnight change. Is an 18
month-old infant a person? There will be a period when there is no yes/
no answer.
Persons
The view that you and I are persons, in this philosophical sense, is,
I think, completely uncontroversial. But another view is
controversial. That is, that we are essentially persons. The difference
here is sometimes put in terms of a substance/phase distinction.
. Uncontroversial – we are right now going through a person
phase of our lives, as we are also, right now, going through a
philosopher phase.
. Controversial – a person is the substance or the essence of
what we are, so that if/when we are not persons we do not
exist.
This view links with the view I questioned earlier – that when we
die we cease to exist. If I am essentially a person then I cannot
exist as a lifeless corpse. But neither can I exist as a fetus or
newborn baby, or as a living human being in a PVS.
The view also links with a debate about the nature of death. On
one view, we die when respiration and circulation are irreversibly
lost. On another, we die when brain, or brainstem, function is
irreversibly lost. The second view has been very popular but is
perhaps now becoming less so. It says that you are dead even
when (though aided by machines) you continue to breath, to be
pink and warm, to digest food, fight infection and so on. Is this
view credible? It is a very odd view, if you think that we are
essentially human beings, or animals. But if you think we are
essentially persons, and that without brain activity we no longer
exist, then it becomes more plausible.
68
Desires
Read this passage from an essay by Bernard Williams.
It is admittedly true that many of the things I want, I want only on

the assumption that I am going to be alive; and some people, for
instance some of the old, desperately want certain things when
nevertheless they would much rather that they and their wants
were dead. It might be suggested that not just in these special
cases, but really all wants, were conditional on being alive … But
surely the claim that all desires are in this sense conditional must
be wrong. For consider the idea of a rational forward-looking
calculation of suicide: there can be such a thing, even if many
suicides are not rational … In such a calculation, a man might
consider what lay before him, and decide whether he did or did
not want to undergo it. If he does decide to undergo it, then some
desire propels him on into the future, and that desire at least is not
one that operates conditionally on his being alive, since it itself
resolves the question of whether he is going to be alive. He has an
unconditional, or (as I shall say) a categorical desire.
The man who seriously calculates about suicide and rejects it, only
just has such a desire, perhaps. But if one is in a state where the
question of suicide does not occur, or occurs only as a total
fantasy – if, to take just one example, one is happy – one has
many such desires.
(Williams, 1973, pp. 85–6)
Focus just on future-directed desires – things that you want to happen

later this afternoon, or tomorrow, or next week. Then focus further on
the things that you want to make happen, or see happen – things that
involve you. Williams’s point is that we need to distinguish here between
two sorts of desire – the things we want to happen on the assumption we
are still alive and the things we want to happen which give us reason to stay
alive. Often the distinction may not be clear to us, but sometimes it will
be. Williams suggests that someone who is thinking about suicide might
find that they do have reason to go on living. Alternatively, suppose it is
discovered that you have some painless but life-threatening condition.
You either live for a month and then die, or you have some painful life
saving operations. Which will you choose? Suppose also that you have
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two future-directed desires. One is for promotion at work, the other is

to visit the Inca sites in Peru. Do these desires give you reason to have
the operations? You might decide the second does. You want so much
to see these sites it is worth putting up with pain in order to live on.
But you might decide also that the first does not. You want the
promotion in order to help pay off the mortgage, worry less about
heating bills, have more for the pension fund. But these are concerns
you have on the assumption you stay alive. They do not give you
reasons to stay alive. So the desire for promotion does not give you
reason to have the operations. You have, in Williams’s terms, a
categorical desire to visit Peru, but only a conditional desire for
promotion.
Reasons
We can ask about reasons relating to means, and reasons relating
to ends. Is there reason to take the means to some end, when the
desire for that end is conditional? The means to promotion
includes, in the above scenario, having the operations. But as you
want promotion only on condition that you stay alive, then perhaps
it is not clear you have reason to undergo these operations.
Is there reason to take the means to some end, when the desire
for that end is categorical? Here it is clear. There is reason. But
notice that it does not follow from this that it is reasonable to
have that end. Visiting Peru sounds reasonable enough, but
suppose you want instead to cartwheel from Paris to Moscow
while whistling the Marseillaise. That is a strange thing to want to
do. Still, Williams will say, if this is something you categorically
desire, you have reason – that is, some reason – to accept the
operations. Categorical desires need not be reasonable desires, even
though they give you reasons.
The Deprivation View amended

With these two discussions in mind, let me now offer a revised view
about the badness of death. This holds:
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Death is bad only for (a) persons who (b) have some categorical
desires.
So the suggestion is that if it is going to be bad for you to die, then
first you need to be a person, and second you need to have some of
those desires which give you a reason to want to live on, and so not to
die. These are two necessary conditions on death’s being bad for the
one who dies. The suggestion is not that these are sufficient conditions.
The word ‘only’ is important. I am not saying here that if you are a
person with some categorical desires, then death is inevitably going to
be bad for you. Why not? Imagine playwright Will. He is very ill, and
living on only in great agony. But he is certainly a person. And he
certainly wants to live on and to finish what will be his last play. We
might think, however, that it would be better for him to die than to
suffer any longer.
Do I need both (a) and (b) in the above? Or could I focus on (b)
alone? If the only things that can have categorical desires are persons
then, looking to economy, (a) could be dropped. And, given the way
these notions have been unpacked, it is hard to see how non-persons
could have categorical desires. But there is more than economy to take
into account, there is clarity also, and I think the formulation above
best expresses the view I want us to consider. What, in effect, it says is
that if you have a non-person on your hands, do not even bother trying
to decide what sort of desires it has. You know already that death
cannot be bad for this thing.
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2.5 Differences
How does this version of the Deprivation View, with its emphasis on
personhood and future-directed desires, differ from the original? There
are several points to note.
Non-persons
On the original view, death can be bad (and often is bad) for some
non-persons. So it can be bad for (a) an animal, (b) a fetus, (c) a
sufferer from certain sorts of brain damage. And it will be bad in all
cases when, if they don’t die, these things will have in their futures
more pleasure than pain. On the amended view, death is not bad in all
such cases. We need more than simply to be deprived of pleasures for
death to be bad. So consider first animals.
Some people think that animals feel neither pleasure nor pain, but are
simply automata or quasi-machines. Descartes was of such a view. Most
people reject this, holding that at least many animals can feel pain in
something like the ways we do. Focus on mammals. They often behave,
in circumstances where it might be appropriate to feel pain, as if they
are feeling pain; their anatomies, and in particular their brains and
neural systems, are similar to ours in important pain-relevant respects;
their feeling pain plausibly serves some evolutionary purpose. Assume
that this widespread belief that at least mammals can feel pain is
correct. Then dying, where that involves pain, can be bad for them. For
similar reasons, it is plausible to believe that they can feel pleasure, and
that on a warm day, with plenty of food and no predators about, things
can go well for them. And so on the standard Deprivation View, death
can be bad for them, in preventing their having these good times. But
on the amended account this is less clear. Set aside the chimps, whales
and elephants. These may be borderline cases. Most animals are
certainly not persons. And they lack categorical future-directed desires.
Even if, supposing they live on, things will be good, they do not
actually want to live on. It is not bad for them if their life is abruptly
ended.
A key difference between the animals considered here and a human
fetus is that the latter will, in normal circumstances, develop into a
person. Death will prevent a fetus from going on to have a happy,
healthy, flourishing life, one that is very much like yours or mine. There
will come a time, in this organism’s future, when it will be bad for it to
72
2.5 Differences
Figure 2.6 Are they having a good life? Photo: © Christopher Belshaw.
die. But that time is not now. No one is looking forward to that life.
The fetus has no desires to live. Death now, on the amended view, is
not bad for it.
The third case here is that of someone who was a person but is a
person no longer, and never will be a person again. Someone who, as a
result of a car crash, is in an irreversible coma is in this condition, but
so too is someone – call her Maia – who remains conscious and is able
to experience simple pleasures and pains. The future, for Maia, in
hedonist terms, might be very good. And on the original Deprivation
View death will be bad for her. But on my amended account, as she is
not and will not again be a person, and so has no categorical desires
regarding this future, then it is not bad for her if she dies a painless
death.
Persons
On the amended Deprivation View, there are cases also where death is
not bad for persons. You are a person. Suppose your future overall will
be bad. Then death will not be bad for you. The original and amended
views agree about this. Suppose your future will be good. Here the
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views come apart. The original view says death will be bad. The
amended view says, in some of these cases, that death is not bad.
Here is such a case. Danny has a brain tumour. Untreated, it will kill
him within a month, but painlessly, and it will not affect his mind. The
doctors, if they are quick, can remove it, but at a price. Post-op Danny
will be happy and healthy, but he will not remember anything of his
pre-op life, and his character will be much changed. Should he have the
operation? Arguably, pre-op and post-op Danny, though both persons,
are different persons. Now you can choose to sacrifice yourself for the
sake of others – a soldier might do this in a war, or a mother to save
her children – and Danny might for some reason think it very
important to bring a new person into existence. But, in so far as he is
concerned to sustain his own existence, his best option seems to be to
live – as himself – for a month, and to refuse the operation.
Danny is a person who has categorical desires. And if he lives on, the
future will be good. The original version of the Deprivation View says,
of this case, that living on is better than dying soon. Living on provides
more of a good life. The amended version says dying soon is better
than living on. Dying soon provides more of Danny’s good life. Danny’s
situation, and the difference between the two futures, is extreme.5 I will
consider a related case involving a milder condition later. As it is less
extreme, it will be more controversial.
5
Even though it is extreme it remains a real case. People often have to make these sorts of
difficult decisions about medical treatment.
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2.6 Objections and replies

Let us take stock. I began this chapter by asking whether death can ever
be bad for the one who dies. Against the Epicurean View, most people
think it clearly can be. And the Deprivation View succeeds in explaining
how death can be bad, by preventing us from enjoying the good times
that would otherwise have come our way. But is the Deprivation View
correct? I have suggested that it is certainly on the right lines, but is
perhaps improved by narrowing its focus: death is bad for us by
preventing us from enjoying the good times that we are looking forward
to and want to have. Is this now too narrow? Many people think it is.
What we should do next is consider certain objections to this revised
account, and consider too whether the objections can be met.
Animals
Suppose we are attempting to put forward some sort of desire account
of the badness of death. In the extract below, Peter Carruthers is
answering his own question about which desires we need to take into
consideration in such an account.
Suppose it is replied first, that only presently existing desires are to

be considered. Then the desires of animals – for example, to avoid
present suffering – may make it wrong to hunt them or factory
farm them. But since animals do not, it is supposed, have desires
for their own continued existence, it will not be wrong to bring
about their deaths. For the future desires of an animal … are not
to be counted at all, on the present proposal. Since human beings,
in contrast, do generally desire continued existence, we are obliged
to respect that desire, and killing will normally be wrong in
consequence.
Notice that the position we have reached here is in many ways a
curious one. For so long as an animal has active preferences – so
long as it is hungry, or thirsty, or is wanting to play – then the
principle of equal consideration of interests will require that we
should, other things being equal, try to satisfy those preferences.
… But as soon as the animal no longer has any active preferences
– is sitting contentedly after eating, for example, or has fallen
asleep – then you would not be failing to fulfil any of its desires if
you killed it. So you are obliged to feed the dog while it is hungry,
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but as soon as it is satisfied you may kill it. This combination of

views seems strange, to say the least.
(Carruthers, 1992, p. 84)
It can seem harsh to apply the amended Deprivation View to animals,

and to hold that death is not bad for them. But is it, as Carruthers
seems here to imply, confused and incoherent?
Activity
Answer the following questions about this passage. The first two should
help clear the ground for the last, which is perhaps a little harder.
1 What does Carruthers mean by ‘future desires’?
2 What, in this passage, is the alleged key difference, in terms of
desires, between humans and animals?
3 What active or present preferences might an animal have, and what
means might we take to satisfy them?
Discussion
1 He means desires that will come into existence in the future. He does
not mean present desires directed towards the future.
2 Both humans and animals have future desires. But humans also have
future-directed desires. Animals do not.
3 There are, I think, two ways to consider this key point. If an animal is,
for example, hungry you might say its preference or desire is to enjoy
the pleasures of food. So to satisfy that preference you should feed it.
Alternatively, you might say its preference or desire is to avoid the
pains of hunger. In which case, there are two ways to satisfy the
preference – you can feed it or kill it.
The response I have suggested to the third question helps avoid the
puzzle that Carruthers raises. It would indeed be odd to suggest that we
should promote an animal’s pleasures and refrain from killing it so long
as it desires pleasure, but that when, and only when, those desires are
satisfied or abated we can kill it. But it is not clear that the amended
account has this consequence. We can kill it before its desires are
satisfied. Granted, it might be harsh to suggest we can kill animals, but
it is not obviously muddled. Of course, this is just one point. You may
76
think that it is clear, on other grounds, that even though they lack
categorical desires, death is bad for animals.
Fetuses
I said that there is a real and seemingly important difference between
two sorts of non-person. Fetuses and young babies have ahead of them,
though not behind them, a time when they will be persons with
categorical desires. People with severe Alzheimer’s or in PVS have no
such time ahead of them, though they have such times behind them.
But how important is this difference? On the revised account, as fetuses
are not persons, and have no categorical desires, then death now is not
bad for them. Not surprisingly, many people object to this view. The
American philosopher Don Marquis is one of these:
Since we do believe that it is wrong to kill defenceless little babies,

it is important that a theory of the wrongness of killing easily
accounts for this. Personhood theories of the wrongness of killing
… cannot straightforwardly account for the wrongness of killing
infants and young children. Hence, such theories must add special
ad hoc accounts of the wrongness of killing the young. … The
claim that the primary wrong-making feature of a killing is the loss
to the victim of the value of its future accounts for the wrongness
of killing young children and infants directly; it makes the
wrongness of such acts as obvious as we actually think it is. This is
a further merit of this theory. Accordingly, it seems that this value
of a future-like-ours theory of the wrongness of killing shares
strengths of both sanctity-of-life and personhood accounts while
avoiding weaknesses of both. In addition, it meshes with a central
intuition about what makes a killing wrong.
The claim … has obvious consequences for the ethics of abortion.
The future of a standard fetus includes a set of experiences,
projects, activities and such which are identical with the futures of
adult human beings and are identical with the futures of young
children. Since the reason that is sufficient to explain why it is
wrong to kill human beings after the time of birth is a reason that
also applies to fetuses, it follows that abortion is prima facie
seriously morally wrong.
(Marquis, 1989, pp. 191–2)
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So Marquis’s future-like-ours view holds a middle ground. The lives of

persons, as opposed to animals, are of special value. But they have this
value even before there is a desire to live such a life.6
Figure 2.7 There is a good life ahead. But would it be very bad for her if
she died now? Ultrasound scan of a fetus at 13 weeks. Photo: Zephyr/
Science Photo Library.
Activity
Answer the following three questions about Marquis’s account.
1 What is the major difference, not in conclusion, but in areas of overall

concern, between Marquis’s account and this chapter?
2 On Marquis’s account, which is going to be worse, the death of an
adult or the death of a young child?
3 Is Marquis now under pressure to say that contraception is wrong? If
so, why?
6
Notice that Carruthers takes a desire account, Marquis a personhood account, as the
target. These, of course, are the two components I said we should emphasise in
amending the Deprivation View.
78
Discussion
Here are my suggested answers to these questions.
1 Marquis is concerned here with the wrongness of killing. This

chapter’s concern is with the badness of death. These are obviously
related, but are different nevertheless.
2 I said earlier that the Deprivation View seems to imply that, other
things being equal, the earlier death is worse. Marquis has neither
reason nor access to relevant facts to question that. So he is also
likely to say the young child’s death is worse.
3 It seems he is under such pressure. Kill a one-day-old embryo and
you put an end to a being with a future like ours. But, equally, prevent
the sperm from reaching the egg, and you prevent a being with a
future like ours from coming into existence. If the first is wrong, it is
tempting to say the second is also, and equally, wrong. (You might
even think it a little bit worse. The embryo has, after all, had a few
days’ life before ceasing to exist. And isn’t that good?)
You might think that Marquis is tending towards a somewhat

counterintuitive position here. There are two factors, in particular, that
suggest this. First, while many people think it worse when a baby dies,
with all its life ahead of it, than when an adult dies, whose life is already
half over, few have the same view when a very young embryo dies, for
example when someone recently pregnant suffers a miscarriage. But
Marquis’s account is not subtle enough to make relevant distinctions
between these cases. Second, he seems to lack, similarly, the means to
distinguish, where wrongness is concerned, between ending a life and
preventing it from starting. But the view that contraception is wrong,
and as wrong as killing a young child, is very strongly counterintuitive.
Can he avoid this? Here is one suggestion: if you kill an embryo there is
a victim – something is killed. Arguably (though also arguably not) an
embryo is the very same thing that is later a child and then an adult. If
you prevent the formation of an embryo, there is no victim. Nothing is
killed. But this might not be enough to rescue Marquis’s position. An
embryo will, in normal development, result in a particular child. If the
embryo is killed, that child will not live. But a particular sperm, if it
links with a particular egg, will in normal development result in a
particular child. If the sperm is deflected, that child will not live. Here is
another suggestion: killing a child is worse than killing an embryo
because – quite naturally – more people will be upset by this. Similarly
79
for the difference between post-conception termination and

contraception. But the differences here relate to side-effects, and it
should be noted that Marquis’s discussion is mostly focused on the
direct wrongness of killing, and not wrongness related to side-effects.
There are, then, at least some obstacles for Marquis to overcome if he
wants his position to appear altogether plausible.
Adults
A further problem for the revised account is that it seems to require
that we say of some adults who are certainly persons, and who appear
to have a good future ahead of them, that, as they have no categorical
desires right now, their deaths right now are not bad. And surely this is
unacceptable. Remember Danny. If the doctors operate, he loses all his
current categorical desires, even though he later acquires new and
different ones. This is an extreme case, but I promised something less
extreme. So here it is:
Consider a depressed teenager who commits suicide. At the time

of her death, she likely does not desire the future she would have
had. But her death is still very bad for her. The problem is that
people sometimes do not desire what is really good for them, and
in those cases, what seems relevant to the evaluation of their
deaths is what would really have been good for them, not what
they want (except insofar as just getting what one wants is good).
(Bradley, 2009, p. 128)
Bradley here sketches a case and gives a verdict. I want to flesh out the
case and suggest a different verdict.
Call this teenager Sally. Sally had a happy childhood, an outgoing
personality, interests in sports, the outdoors, animals, her friends. She
had talked about going to university and pursuing a career as a vet.
Now, at 15, she is seriously depressed, withdrawn, anorexic. She says,
repeatedly, that she wants to die. Consider three scenarios:
(a) She remains like this for fifteen years, and then, at 30, commits
suicide.
(b) She recovers after five years, regains her interests, becomes again
recognisably the person she was. She lives to be 80.
80
(c) She recovers after five years, but now develops wholly different
interests, say in music and painting, has different friends, and is, as
both she and those close to her attest, a different person. Again she
lives to be 80.
Something like (b) is in such cases the most likely, and most welcome,
outcome. But cases like (a) are sadly not uncommon. Outcomes like (c)
– and I deliberately echo the Danny case here – are rare.
Activity
Consider Sally’s case, and the later death, in each of the three
scenarios. For each of these, consider an alternative – dying now. Do
you think that dying now, compared with the alternative, is bad for Sally?
Discussion
I think dying now is bad in scenario (b) which, as I say, is the one most
frequently encountered. It would be good for Sally to recover and pick up
the life she left off. Compared with this, death would be bad. If this is the
sort of situation Bradley has in mind, then we are in full agreement. What
about (a)? The question is not: is it bad that Sally becomes clinically
depressed and suffers an early death, either at 15 or 30? That surely is
bad. Rather the question is: given that the alternative is unending
depression for fifteen years and then death at 30, is it bad that she
should, instead, die now? And I suggest that this is not, relative to that
alternative, bad for her. It is not a worse option. And – controversially – I
want to make the same claim for scenario (c). Death now is not worse for
her than living on to 80.
Why claim this? In (c) Sally lives a long and happy life. It is, however, a
life that is not well connected with her earlier life. It is, in the
philosopher’s sense, the life of a different person. It is not worse to die
than to become a different person. It might even be better. If she dies
now she avoids a further five years of illness and depression. But there
is an important difference between (c) and (a). In (c), though death is not
bad for the person, it is bad for the organism. That organism has before
it overall a long and healthy life. In (a) death is not bad for the person or
for the organism. The organism has only a few unhealthy years ahead.
81
2.7 How bad is death, for the one who

dies?
Suppose we agree that death is, in some cases, bad for the one who
dies. How bad is it? We have touched on this question already, but I
want to return to it here. And it is surely an important question, both
on practical and theoretical grounds. Imagine an end-of-life hospital
scenario. We might want to know how much effort, how much money,
we should spend in diverting or delaying death. And consider again the
opening dispute. Defeat of the Epicureans might seem to be
compromised if it turns out that death, though bad, is trivially so. So it
seems it would be good to know, when death is bad, just how bad it is.
Comparisons
The first thing to note is that, as with headaches and comas, death’s
badness will vary from case to case, depending what other factors are
involved, and what state we would be in had this evil not occurred. So
not only is death not ‘nothing to us’, as the Epicureans maintain, but
also it is not ‘the most terrible of evils’, as contended by their rivals.
But nor does death, in general, occupy some particular area of the
middle ground. Rather, the way seems open to maintain that some
deaths are very bad, others much less so, still others hardly bad at all
and perhaps yet others actually good, or at least better than the life they
replace. Some rankings of deaths, some comparisons between them,
seem to be possible.
I want to suggest, however, that we cannot proceed very far, and not as
far as we might anticipate, down this route. A first stage is reasonably
secure. As I suggested above, we might claim that, other things being
equal, it is worse for Diana to die at 35 than it is for Elizabeth to die at
95. Similarly, we might say that Beth’s death at 60 is worse than Duff ’s
at 60, if Beth would have lived to 90, Duff only to 70. And similarly
again, Nancy’s death at 80 rather than 90 is worse than Ronnie’s death
at 80 rather than 90, if she would have had ten good years, he the same
number of mediocre years. In all these cases we are comparing one
death against another, and deciding which is worse. And we do that by
seeing what death costs its victims, in terms of pleasure or the
good life.
82
2.7 How bad is death, for the one who dies?
Can we, though, compare deaths against other evils, and determine then
which is the worse for someone to undergo? Again, there is some
progress to be made. Death is different from, but can be compared to,
an irreversible coma. Plausibly, it is just as bad for Kevin to die at 50 as
it is for him to enter an irreversible coma at that time and die some
twenty years later. Plausibly, too, if we assume life will be good, and
there is no downside to recovery from a coma, then it is worse to die at
30 than to be comatised at 30 and then recover some twenty years later.
More controversially, we might hold that it is worse to die at 30 than to
suffer brain damage at 30, living thereafter a reduced but still good
quality of life. Death and coma are both privative evils. Their badness
consists in depriving us of something good. Their only difference is that
from one recovery is sometimes possible. Brain damage might deprive
us of something good, and does so in the case imagined here. But it
might have further properties also, causing us some pain or distress, or
permitting regret. This is why that case is more controversial.
Can we go still further? Reconsider a worry raised earlier – the thought
that the badness of a sudden unanticipated and painless death might not
be that bad, not be as bad as it first seems, and is certainly a long way
from being the most terrible of evils. What does this mean? Well,
perhaps the most terrible of evils is to see your whole family tortured
for a week and then killed, and then for you to be slowly tortured and
killed. Your sudden painless death is, uncontroversially, not as bad for
you as that. But how bad is it? Suppose the evil is targeted on you
alone. Is it worse for you to die now, a sudden and painless death, or to
be tortured for a week and then released? How are we to decide?
Activity
Consider the following case and the questions I ask about it.
Anne has ahead of her a good life, and wants to live it. But she has
crashed her car and is now in a coma. She is, however, not the only
person to be injured. Also in the car is her brother. In one version (a)
of this story he is in danger, not of death, but of losing his legs. And,
as resources are limited and time is short, we can save either her life
or his legs, not both. In another version (b) he is in extreme agony
now, but is not in any long-term danger. Again, resources are limited,
and we can either save her life or end his agony, not both.
Should we put saving one person from a painless death above saving
another from serious and permanent injury? And should we put saving
one person from painless death above saving another from extreme, but
83
Figure 2.8 Death or torture – which is worse? (top) ‘Execution of a man,

probably King Charles I’, seventeenth century, English School, woodcut.
Private Collection. Photo: © Look and Learn/Bernard Platman Antiquarian
Collection/The Bridgeman Art Library. (bottom) ‘A True Description of the
Racking and Cruell Handling of Cuthbert Simson in the Tower’, from John
Foxe, Acts and Monuments, sixteenth century, English School, woodcut.
Private Collection. Photo: The Bridgeman Art Library.
84
2.7 How bad is death, for the one who dies?
relatively short-term agony? What are your decisions here? And how do
you explain or justify those decisions?
Discussion
In the first case, you can prevent either a death or a permanent injury.
The injury is not in itself painful, but will, through life, cause at least
inconvenience. Life will go less well. In the second, you prevent either
death or short-term agony. It is perhaps tempting to say that death is
clearly the greatest evil here. But if in your own case you might – and not
irrationally – choose death over disability or agony, then making the
same choice on behalf of another person might also be the better choice.
But if it might be the better choice for one person, then it is not, surely,
clearly the worse choice where two people are involved. For me, making,
explaining and justifying a decision are all of them hard.
Of course there is a further question lurking here. Which is worse –

short-term agony or long-term inconvenience? If we think of
inconvenience as causing some succession of minor pains, then it may
be there is some hope of weighing this against agony. But if
inconvenience is understood as costing you in terms of pleasure, then
the comparison is harder to make.
Incommensurability
In Chapter 1 I considered the claim that the values of life, on the one
hand, and experiences in life, on the other, are incommensurable, and
cannot be measured on a common scale. The puzzle here might appear
to be similar – just one version of a widely acknowledged, even if not
widely accepted, view about the incommensurability of values generally.
Two careers might both be good for you, without their being equally
good, or one being better for you than the other.7 But my worries are
not, and have no need of being, this extensive. I can hold that we are
able to rank both pleasures and pains, and that we can claim someone
is irrational in not preferring, other things being equal, the higher
pleasure to the lower, or the lower pain to the higher. The worry is just
about comparing pleasures on the one hand with pains on the other, or
more accurately – for someone will say pleasures are always to be
preferred – the deprivation of pleasures on the one hand with pains on
the other. But even the particular area of concern needs to be
7
The example here is derived from a discussion given by Fred Feldman (1992, p. 137).
85
circumscribed. Suppose the choice is that you either have dental work
now, and are able to eat ice cream next week, or you have to tolerate a
restricted diet indefinitely. Perhaps it is not easy to decide.
The difference between this sort of case and that of death is, perhaps,
one of degree rather than kind, but it is of a pronounced degree
nevertheless. And the puzzle remains.
Activity
Think again about your own view on the question asked at the beginning
of this chapter: ‘Is a sudden, painless, unanticipated death ever bad for
the one who dies?’ Has your view changed from what it was then?
86
Summary
Summary
The important question of whether it is bad for us to die a painless
death is not easy to answer. A surprising number of people seem to
want to agree with Epicurus that it is not. But this view is hard to
sustain, and goes against many of our everyday beliefs. The argument of
this chapter is that some version of the Deprivation View is correct.
But I have contrasted two versions of this view: one which says death is
bad whenever a life worth living is thereby lost, whether desired or not;
the other of which says that death is bad only when the lost life is one
that someone – some person – wanted to live. Does this also go against
everyday beliefs? And the argument of the chapter’s end is that, though
we can confidently say that some deaths are worse than others, we
should perhaps be less confident when comparing death’s badness with
that of other evils.
Activity
87
References
Bradley, B. (2009) Well-Being and Death, Oxford, Oxford University Press.
Carruthers, P. (1992) The Animals Issue, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press.
Epicurus, Letter to Menoeceus, in Bailey, C. (trans.) (1926) Epicurus, The Extant
Remains, Oxford, Clarendon Press. Also available online at http://alien.dowling.
edu/~cperring/epicurustomenoeceus.html (Accessed 12 February 2014).
Feldman, F. (1992) Confrontations with the Reaper, Oxford, Oxford University
Press.
Larkin, P. (1990) ‘Aubade’ in Collected Poems (ed. A. Thwaite), London, Faber
and Faber.
Marquis, D. (1989) ‘Why abortion is immoral’, Journal of Philosophy, vol. 86,
no. 4, pp. 191–2.
edition 1992).
Williams, B. (1973) ‘The Makropulos Case: reflections on the tedium of
immortality’ in Problems of the Self: Philosophical Papers 1956–1972, Cambridge,
Cambridge University Press (this edition 1992).
88
Chapter 3
Is it good to be born?
Contents
Aims 93
3.1 Introduction 95
3.2 Procreation 96
Reasons: general concerns 97
Reasons: the child 98
Reasons and values 101
3.3 Procreative asymmetry 103
Asymmetry: explanations and rejections 103
Symmetry: space and time 104
Symmetry: transitivity and betterness 105
3.4 Procreative beneficence 108
Parfit’s girl 108
Procreative beneficence: some concerns 112
The deaf child 113
3.5 Is it always wrong to have children? 116
Benatar’s argument I 116
Benatar’s argument II 119
Benatar’s argument: some concerns 120
3.6 Anti-natalism 124
Wholes and parts 124
Different lives 125
Numbers/probabilities 125
Summary 127
References 128
Aims
Aims
. be able to distinguish between different kinds of questions that
might be asked about the value of starting new lives
. understand the principle of ‘procreative asymmetry’ and some
different responses to it
. understand the principle of ‘procreative beneficence’ and some
criticisms of it
. have worked through and considered David Benatar’s argument for
the claim that (in so far as we are thinking of the good of the child)
it is always wrong to have children.
93
Chapter 3 Is it good to be born?

this book:
. Reading 3: Benatar on why it is better never to come into existence.
94
3.1 Introduction
3.1 Introduction
For many people, having children and raising a family is one of the
most rewarding and satisfying things they can do. Robert Edwards, the
pioneer of in vitro fertilisation (IVF), described having a child as ‘the
most important thing in life’ (quoted in Gallagher, 2013). Is this just a
pleasure for the parents? Or is it good for the child? Is having a family
something that is merely permitted? Or is it also required? In this
chapter I will consider various issues surrounding the important
business of having, or not having, children.
95
3.2 Procreation
We can start by considering a question that you, or some people you
know, might already have thought about.
Activity
Imagine that you and your partner are considering whether to have a
child. You have been thinking about this but are not sure whether you
ought to go ahead, or whether you should hold off, at least for the time
being. What reasons might there be for having a child now? And what
reasons might there be for refraining? Do not spend too much time, but
make two lists, one of reasons for and one of reasons against. Do not
worry too much about how good these reasons are – if you think
something might be suggested as a reason, note it down.
Discussion
Here are some of the things that might be offered as reasons for:
You want a child. The child you already have would do better if there
were a sibling. Your parents want you to have children – they want to be
grandparents. One child has died, and you feel you need a replacement.
Everyone has children – you do not want to be the exception. You will
need someone to look after you in old age. One of your existing children
needs a kidney, and if you have a second child, then hopefully there will
be a spare kidney that is a good match. Your business will need
assistants, and children can help out. You want to continue the family
line. You believe you can give a child a good life. A happy child will add
to the sum of happiness in the universe.
And these might be suggested as reasons against:
You do not particularly like children. You want a child, but your partner is
much less sure. Having a child now will interrupt your career. The world
is already pretty full, and having a child is environmentally unfriendly, bad
for the planet. Given the way things are going, and how full the world is,
you are not sure that any child born today will have much of a life in the
future. It is not clear you can afford a child. You and your partner were
both born deaf, and so there is a strong chance your child will also be
deaf. Doctors have told you that any child you have will, because of a
genetic mismatch, have a very short and very bad life, almost all of it in
pain. An unhappy child will add to the sum of unhappiness in the
universe.
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3.2 Procreation
Reasons: general concerns

In answer to my question about reasons I have offered fairly long lists.
Yours might well have been shorter. Moreover, you might have doubts
about whether all the items here are really reasons for or against. I
think they are. They are the sorts of things you might expect someone
to say in explaining their position on children. But this is certainly not
to say they are all good reasons. And even if they are, individually, good
reasons, we would still need to weigh up reasons for and reasons
against in order to decide, on balance, what to do. This would take a lot
of time, and rather than discuss all these reasons at length, I want to
suggest a preliminary broad distinction: some of these reasons concern
what is good or bad for people other than the child, yourself included;
others focus on what is good or bad for the child him- or herself. In
reasons for, there is only one like this – your being able to give a child a
good life. But in reasons against it seems there are three suggestions that
might be picked out – no child born today will have much of a life in
the future; there is a strong chance your child will be born deaf; your
child will have a very short and painful life.
Now here is a view: we should, in considering whether to have a child,
be thinking only of the child – only of what is good or bad for him or
her. You might think this is far too extreme. It is like the view that is
often expressed these days, that parents should do everything possible
to give their children the best start in life. This is also extreme – doing
everything possible may involve unfairly neglecting your existing
children, or other members of your family, or society as a whole, or
yourself. If you are poor, it may even involve stealing food from the
neighbours. When thinking about bringing someone into existence, the
effects on people already in existence need to be taken into account.
Should we think, though, only about others, or should we think both
about the child and about others? The first option here might also look
extreme. It seems to imply that whether a child will have a blissful, or
average, or wretched life makes no difference to whether we should go
ahead. All we need to consider are effects on other people. It suggests
that it is all right to bring someone into existence who will live a
wretched life, if this life will benefit – say, perhaps, in using the body
for transplants – someone else.1 Clearly there will be doubts about
whether this can be right. So it seems that the second option is
probably overall the best: in thinking about having a child we need to
1
Notice that the kidney case above is not this controversial case. Someone can have a
happy, good, worthwhile life with just one kidney.
97
consider the effects both on the child’s quality of life and on other
people.
We will need to decide, as we go on, whether this really is the best view,
and whether considering only others really is extreme. And a good
procedure here will be to focus on effects on the child. Effects on
others are obviously relevant to our decision, and at least in principle
we can work out what they will be. Effects on the child are more
puzzling, and so are more in need of our attention. Just as in the
previous chapter we focused on the question of whether death is bad for
the one who dies, so we can focus here on whether coming into existence
will be good for the one who will live. This will be a major, but not the
only, concern in this present chapter.
Reasons: the child

Can coming into existence be good for the one who is born? Suppose
you can have a happy child. Is there reason (for the sake of the child,
and discounting side-effects) to have this child? Let us begin by
attending to some details.
First, life. We can talk of the happy child, of a life worth living, or of a
good life. I will use these and some obviously connected terms
interchangeably. And we can talk of the wretched or miserable child,
one who has a bad life, or a life that is not worth living. Again, I will
use these terms interchangeably. The major concern is with whether life
is good or bad for the child. So by a good life I do not mean one that
is useful for others, and I do not mean one that is morally good.
Similarly if I talk of a bad life.
Second, reasons. You might have a reason, or some reasons, to have a
child and yet not have a child. For there might be a reason, or some
reasons, against. But I am going to assume that if you have reason
(unqualified) to have a child, then you ought to have a child, and are
required to have a child. Put this another way: if there is reason, all things
considered, to have a child, then you are required to have a child, for
everything relevant has been taken into account. But if there is reason,
other things being equal, to have child you are maybe not required to have
a child. For other things might not be equal – there might be something
more to take into account.
Third, we can consider, though here very briefly, a pair of surprisingly
negative responses. Some pessimists think there is no such thing as a happy
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3.2 Procreation
person. All actual lives are bad. The nineteenth-century German

philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer thought this. If he was right, then there
is just no option of making happy people. Should we make miserable
people? Presumably not. Closely connected to this is the view of the South
African philosopher David Benatar – he holds that even if lives can be
happy overall they should not be started (2006, 1997). Not only is there no
reason to start a happy life, there is reason not to start such a life.
Figure 3.1 Arthur Schopenhauer (1788–1860), from a painting by Ludwig

Ruhl, c.1815. Photo: © Pictorial Press Ltd/Alamy.
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On both of these views the claim seems to be that if we are thinking

only of the value of the life to come, and not of side-effects, then we
should not have children. But, I want to suggest, both views are flawed.
There is no good reason to think life is as bad as Schopenhauer makes
out. And if lives can be good, then, contra Benatar, starting such lives is
permitted. I will say no more about Schopenhauer. But I will consider
Benatar’s arguments in more detail below.
Suppose you can have a happy child. Is there reason to have this child?
This question was famously raised, in the context of a contrast, by Jan
Narveson back in the last century. Narveson (1967) asks whether we
should be concerned to make happy people, or to make people happy. Now
about the second option there is not much of an issue. At least a part
of what a morally good person will do, and a part of what we all of us
have some reason to do, is make better the lives of others – making
miserable people less miserable, and if possible happy, and making
happy people even happier. But what the contrast highlights is that we
can be concerned with the pursuit of happiness in some way, without it
following that we should bring more happy people into existence.
Ought we to do this?
Some people think we should. It is a part of many Catholics’ view, but
hardly theirs alone, that, other things being equal, the world is better the
more happy people there are in it. But many people – and perhaps
most – have a different view. They think it is important to know, or to
know as far as possible, whether yours will be a happy child. If it will
be then, they say, it is acceptable to go ahead. But you still do not have
reason to go ahead. Giving birth to happy children is permitted but not
required.
What about the wretched child? Matters here can seem less
controversial. No one thinks we ought, for their sakes, to bring such
children into existence. Moreover, it can seem clear that we ought not
to do this. Deliberately and knowingly to start such a life might seem a
perversion. Three related points need to be contrasted with this. First,
as already mentioned, things might be different if we consider starting
such a life for the sake of others. Second, if there already is such a life
– either the child has been born, or at least conceived – then it might
be wrong to end it. Third, some people will think it is not important to
know what your child will be like – we should take what is offered,
rather than prejudge. We will not go further into these matters here.
The claim is, if you know that a not-yet-existing child will have a
wretched life, then in so far as we are thinking only of the good of the
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3.2 Procreation
child, it would be wrong to start that life. Starting such lives is neither
required nor permitted, but is forbidden.
Here, though, there is a puzzle. If we are forbidden from starting bad
lives, why are we not required to start good lives? There is an apparent
asymmetry in play here.
Reasons and values

Before going further it will be useful to link up some of the distinctions
in value we made in Chapter 1 with the distinctions in reasons that we
are making here.
Activity
Go back to effects on others. Suppose, first, your reasons for having a
child concern a spare kidney, or getting some help in the shop. And
suppose, second, you want a child as it seems a natural expression of
the love between you, and you both look forward to family life. What
sorts of value are in play here?
Discussion
In the first examples, it seems you are thinking of this child in terms of
instrumental value. You want to make use of the child. In the second, the
emphasis is on what I earlier called personal value. The child is valued,
for himself or herself, by other people.
Consider next the final item I offered on my list – a happy child will
add to the sum of happiness in the universe. If that is a reason for
going ahead then, surely, the child is being thought of as having intrinsic
value – it is just good in itself that this new life is started, good in itself
that the sum of happiness increases. Of course, if you have worries
about the idea of intrinsic value, then you will have worries about how
good this alleged reason is.
And consider now the penultimate item – the child will have a happy
life. Suppose you think that because its life will be good, or worth
living, then you have reason to have a child. How does it fit in with our
taxonomy of values? It seems that we are again thinking of the child’s
coming into existence in terms of personal value, but this time the life
is being valued by the child him- or herself. But perhaps you will have
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worries about this value also. While the idea of personal value, in many
contexts, is unproblematic, there are some difficulties in employing it
here. Once in existence, a child may come to value their own life, but it
is certainly not clear that they can value their own life before they exist.
So far as procreation is concerned, then, the only unproblematic values
are those relating to people other than the child. We might value a child
for their own sake, or we might value them as a tool or means to an
end. But whether some future child can be of value to himself or
herself, or to the universe, are neither of them clear.
There are two further points to be made here. First, given that neither
of these claims about value is clear, perhaps the seemingly extreme
claim is less extreme after all. Perhaps it just is not possible to start a
life either for the sake of that life, or for the sake of the universe. But if
that is so, then there are, after all, only effects on others to consider.
Second, the asymmetry in reasons, noted above, might link with an
asymmetry in value. We might think that if starting good lives is not
required, then there is no intrinsic value in such lives. For if they were
good just in themselves wouldn’t we, other things being equal, be
required to start them? But if starting wretched lives is forbidden, then
perhaps there is intrinsic disvalue in bad lives. It is because they make
the universe a worse place that we are forbidden from starting such
lives. More might be said, but I must leave it to you to consider these
points, and the relations between them, further.
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3.3 Procreative asymmetry

Return to the puzzle. If we are forbidden from starting wretched lives,
why aren’t we required to start happy lives? If we should avoid the bad,
why not seek out the good? Why is there this asymmetry where matters
of procreation are concerned?
Asymmetry: explanations and rejections

Some people simply accept the procreative asymmetry, while others
try to explain it. Here is one way. If we do start a bad life, someone can
then complain, asking why we did such a terrible thing. But if we fail to
start a good life, there is no one around to complain about being left
just outside the door of existence. This sort of explanation can allow
that, where existing people are concerned, a more symmetrical situation
is in play: there are equal obligations both not to harm and also to
benefit existing people.
A second explanation takes issue with this, and claims, altogether
generally, that the prohibitions on harming are stronger than the
requirements to benefit. So for existing and not-yet-existing people alike
there is an asymmetry in play, and the emphasis should be on avoiding
harm.
Here is a third view. Our concern should be to improve the lot of
actual people. So we should reduce their harms, increase their benefits.
In extremis the only way to reduce someone’s harms is to kill the person,
and end their life. This, of course, constitutes the main argument for
euthanasia. Suppose a child will have a life that is from the outset not
worth living. Surely it is better not to bring them into existence than to
bring them into existence and then immediately end their life. So
reducing harms can imply that we refuse to start a life. But now there is
an asymmetry – improving lives by increasing benefits does not in the
same way imply that we should start lives.
These are just sketches of ways the asymmetry might be explained. I am
not saying here that any of these is successful – indeed, I am not saying
the asymmetry can be explained at all, or even that we should accept it.
Though many think we should, many others are unconvinced and,
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rejecting the asymmetry claim, consider how a symmetrical situation

might be reinstated. Here are two such ways:
We are permitted, but not required, to start good lives, and permitted, but not
required, to avoid starting bad lives. As I have said, no one thinks we ought
to start bad lives. But some people think that starting bad lives is
permitted. It is not altogether forbidden. This seems at first an odd,
perhaps even outrageous, position, but the thinking behind it echoes a
point made above: while there are prohibitions against harming existing
people, there just cannot be parallel prohibitions regarding the non
existent. Non-existent people cannot be harmed. And so we cannot be
forbidden from bringing them into existence.2 This view allows, then,
the seemingly extreme position I outlined above. It allows that we can
bring into existence wretched people in order to benefit existing people.
We are forbidden to start bad lives, and are required to start good lives. This,
surely, appears a less odd, less outrageous, way of restoring symmetry.
Indeed, it is, as I have said, a position to which many are drawn. Should
we accept it? Well, there are two arguments that can be offered in its
favour.
Symmetry: space and time

Here is one claim: other things being equal, there should be happy
people in as many places as possible. Some, but only a minority, think
this is true. Here is another claim: other things being equal, there
should be happy people at as many times as possible. Many more
people, perhaps most, think it would be a terrible thing if our species
became extinct. They think that there should be some human beings
around for as long as possible, and hope that our descendants will
continue to have children, right on through the ages. But is there an
important difference between time and space here? If we should keep
going in time, maybe we should also keep going in space. And so there
is an argument for adding to the populations of Slough, Siberia, Saturn,
and so on. The force of this argument is further strengthened in so far
as we have such an intuition, not just about future times, but about past
times also. Suppose scientists discover that human beings evolved a
million years earlier than is currently believed. So there have been in
existence millions more happy people. Is this a cause for celebration? If
you think it is, then you are likely to celebrate, too, when humans
colonise Mars, or humanoids are discovered on Venus.
2
See, for example, Heyd (1992).
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Figure 3.2 Martians, looking as if they are enjoying life, illustration from
H.G. Wells, The War of the Worlds, nineteenth century, engraving. Private
Collection. Photo: Giraudon/The Bridgeman Art Library.
If you are inclined to think that our continuing through time would be
good, then either you should point to some relevant difference between
space and time, or you should feel some pressure to think also that our
extending through space would be good. But in that case you are feeling
pressure, surely, to give up the belief in procreative asymmetry.
Symmetry: transitivity and betterness

The second argument derives from the work of the contemporary
English philosopher John Broome.3 It runs like this. If we accept
procreative asymmetry then we accept there is no reason to create extra
happy lives. As he puts it, creating happy lives is ethically neutral –
neither good nor bad. But suppose we believe also that if we do create
an extra life, there are reasons to make that life as good as possible.4
Now let us consider different possible situations and rank them in
terms of value, or betterness:
Situation A: we just have the world, its people, its contents as they are
today.
Situation B: just as in A, plus an extra person with a pretty good life.
Situation C: just as in A, plus an extra person with a very good life.
3
See Broome (1999, pp. 228–42).
4
Though perhaps Broome overstates this – ‘intuition also says that if they do have a child,
they should make sure she is as well off as possible’ (1999, p. 234). This is overstated as,
perhaps, stealing from the neighbours is demanded if she is to be as well off as possible.
105
Suppose we have to choose B or C. Which should we prefer? Surely it

is better to choose C, with the extra life at the higher level. So it seems
that C is better than B. But now there is a problem. If creating extra lives
is ethically neutral we should believe that B is not better than, but just as
good as, A. And for the same reason we should believe also that C is not
better than, but just as good as, A. But, Broome insists, if C is better than
B they cannot both be equal in value to A. For betterness is transitive. So
if C is better than B but equal to A, then B is worse than A; while if C is
better than B and B is equal to A, then C is better than A. Either way, two
seemingly plausible claims – first, that adding extra lives is not good,
second, that some lives are better than others – are in evident tension.
This is elegant, concise and apparently powerful. And it suggests that
symmetry can be restored. For just as we are forbidden from starting
bad lives so perhaps we are also required to start good lives. But
Broome does not himself want to press this – he seems to think that a
belief in procreative asymmetry – what he calls the basic intuition – is
pretty robust, and is disinclined to dump it. Nevertheless, the puzzle
remains. And although he explores at length several ways around the
problem, none of these, he judges, is successful. I am not going to look
at these purported solutions. What I shall do is consider in more detail
some differences there might be in the two scenarios involving an extra
life. For there may be issues here that bear on this objection to the
basic intuition, and so behind that to procreative asymmetry.
Different people. Imagine that in B we are considering adding to the stock
of existing people the further person Jim, who will have a happy life. If
we opt for C we add instead the different person Jane, who lives a
considerably better life. Someone might think that all of the following
things are clear: (a) that Jim and Jane will both live happy lives, (b) that
Jane will be happier than Jim, so (c) that there is more overall goodness
in the world that contains Jane than in the world containing Jim. But it
might not yet be clear also (d) that we should therefore choose to bring
Jane rather than Jim into existence.
Same people. Contrast this with another way of understanding the
difference between B and C. In B Billy exists, has a happy life until he
dies at 80, but he goes blind at 40. In C Billy exists, has a happy life
until he dies at 80, and never goes blind. Let us assume that going blind
is bad for Billy, even though it is not so bad as to make his life no
longer worth living. If he goes blind, Billy continues to be overall
happy; but if he stays sighted, he is overall even happier. Clearly, (a)
Billy lives an overall happy life either way, (b) he is happier if he does
106
not go blind, and so (c) there is more overall goodness in C than in B.

Should we also (d) prefer to bring about C than to bring about B,
choosing sighted Billy over blind Billy?
I think this is also clear. If we are considering the same person in the
two scenarios, we should, other things being equal, prefer the situation
in which that person is overall better off, or happier, or has a higher
level of well-being. And so there is a contrast. If we are considering
different people in the two scenarios it is less clear we should prefer the
situation with the highest level of well-being.
I am going to say more about this difference in the section below. But
for now let us agree that Broome’s argument against the basic intuition
is strengthened if we understand it to involve a same person choice.
Whether we choose B or C the same person is involved.
Strengthened, but strong enough? I am not so sure. It seems to me we
can do two things. The first is to assess the amount of goodness that
there is in different situations. If we do this, we find there is more
goodness in C than in B, and more in B than in A. There is no
transitivity puzzle here. There is more goodness in B than in A, and
there is even more in C than in A. These non-puzzling differences in
goodness levels are in play whether we consider different people – Jim
and Jane – or same people – Billy blind and Billy sighted. The second
thing we can do is consider which situations we have reason to bring
about. Now friends of the basic intuition say we have no reason to add
either Jim, or Jane, or Billy to the world. So we have no more reason to
add Jane than Jim, and no more reason to add Billy than Jim, or Jim than
Billy, or what have you. Adding any of these people is permitted, as they
will each of them have worthwhile lives, but adding none of them is
required. But, we might agree, if we are going to add Billy to the world it is
better – better for him – if we add him sighted rather than blind.
We can, then, make claims first about goodness levels, and second
about reasons to do certain things. Unless we assume we have reasons
to bring about the highest goodness levels then transitivity issues
generate no puzzle. And so perhaps it is not clear that Broome’s
challenge to the basic intuition, and behind that to procreative
asymmetry, is altogether successful. This does not mean, of course, that
we should therefore accept procreative asymmetry. There may be
further challenges that can be made.
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3.4 Procreative beneficence

If having happy children is not required, then it is not required that we
have the happiest children. However, suppose you have decided you are
going to have a child. Should you then ensure that this child is as happy
as possible? The issue here concerns what has been described as
procreative beneficence. We can explore this by looking closely at
parts of a key work of the 1980s.
Parfit’s girl
Activity
Read the extract from Derek Parfit’s book Reasons and Persons (1986)
below. Parfit first presents us with a brief scenario, and then goes on to
discuss it.
Think about the way Parfit sets up this case, and then consider, in
particular, the last paragraph. Is it straightforwardly true that if this girl
has her child later, she will give him a better start in life, and make him
happier? Or is there some ambiguity here?
Consider
The 14-Year-Old Girl. This girl chooses to have a child. Because

she is so young, she gives her child a bad start in life. Though
this will have bad effects throughout this child’s life, his life will,
predictably, be worth living. If this girl had waited for several
years, she would have had a different child, to whom she would
have given a better start in life.
Suppose that we tried to persuade this girl that she ought to

wait. We claimed: ‘If you have a child now, you will soon regret
this. If you wait, this will be better for you.’ She replied, ‘This is
my affair. Even if I am doing what will be worse for me, I have
a right to do what I want.’
We replied: ‘This is not entirely your affair. You should think

not only of yourself, but also of your child. It will be worse for
108
him if you have him now. If you have him later, you will give
him a better start in life.’
(Parfit, 1986, pp. 358–9)
Discussion
In a continuation of the passage, Parfit makes clear that he thinks this
claim is at least misleading. Why? We need to bear in mind the same
people/different people distinction. If she waits several years, she will
have a different child, rather than having the same child later. (This
becomes clearer when you consider that it is quite likely that the child
who would be born later would have a different father.) So, for this
particular child, the one she might have at 14, there is not an option of
being born some years later and then to have a different life. It is now or
never.
In the extract you will read for the next activity, Parfit asks us to agree
that concerns about this girl’s decision do not stem from concerns
about what is better or worse for particular lives. We will need to
express these concerns, and frame any principle underlying such
concerns, differently.
Activity
Now read another extract from Parfit’s book Reasons and Persons, which
is reproduced below.
What Parfit calls the ‘Non-Identity Problem’ has been much discussed
since the time of his writing. As implied here, there are different versions
of this problem. Our concern is with one of the simpler versions, where
the numbers of people involved are the same – whatever the girl
decides, she will have just one child. The difference, then, is one of
quality. If she waits, the child who will then be born will have a higher
quality of life than the different child who will be born if she goes
ahead now.
So, should this girl wait and have the later child? Several qualifications
bearing on this question might be made. First, the focus is on bringing
people into existence for the sake of those people. So one answer – that
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it will be better for the girl to wait as this will be less of a burden on
society – even if true, is not relevant here. Second, there are some easy
cases. If Child A will have a very bad life, one not worth living, and Child
B a very good life, then it might seem obvious you should choose Child
B. You should not bring Child A into existence. So I want to focus, as
does Parfit, on the more difficult case where both children will have a life
worth living, both will be happy. Third, I want to emphasise that there is
some cost involved here. You might think, other things being equal, we
should choose the happier child. Why wouldn’t we do this? But if there
really is reason to choose for the happier child, this reason must
outweigh some reason to choose against. All reasons carry some weight.
Having noted these qualifications, try to decide, first, what Parfit thinks,
and, second, what you think about this question. Make some notes as
you go.
We cannot claim that this girl’s decision was worse for her
child. What is the objection to her decision? This question
arises because, in the different outcomes, different people
would be born. I shall therefore call this the Non-Identity
Problem.
We should state the principle in a way that shows the kind of

choice to which it applies. These are Same Number Choices,
which affect the identities of future people, but do not affect
their number. We might suggest
The Same Number Quality Claim, or Q: If in either of two

possible outcomes the same number of people would ever live,
it would be worse if those who live are worse off, or have a
lower quality of life, than those who would have lived.
This claim is plausible. And it implies what we believe about

the 14-Year-Old Girl. The child that she has now will probably
be overall worse off than a child she could have had later
would have been, since this other child would have had a
better start in life. If this is true, Q implies that this is the worse
of these two outcomes. Q implies that it would have been
better if this girl had waited, and had a child later.
We may shrink from claiming, of this girl’s actual child, that it

would have been better if he had never existed. But, if we
claimed earlier that it would be better if this girl waits, this is
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what we must claim. We cannot consistently make a claim and

deny this same claim later. If (1) in 1990 it would be better if
this girl waits and has a child later, then (2) in 2020 it would
have been better if she had waited and had a child later. And
(2) implies (3) that it would have been better if the child who
existed had not been her actual child. If we cannot accept (3),
we must reject (1).
I suggest that, on reflection, we can accept (3). I believe that,

if I was the actual child of this girl, I could accept (3). (3) does
not imply that my existence is bad, or intrinsically morally
undesirable. The claim is merely that since a child born later
would probably have had a better life than mine, it would have
been better if my mother had waited, and had a child later.
(Parfit, 1986, pp. 359–60)
Discussion
Parfit thinks the young girl should wait. He also thinks (and perhaps says
this as if it is more or less obvious) that we will all agree on this.
I do not know what you think, but I suggest that it is certainly not
unreasonable for you to have doubts about whether Parfit is right here.
I have doubts, and I note:
1 Both these children will have happy lives. One will have overall more
happiness than the other.
2 If the young girl waits, she does not make people happy. Her waiting
makes no difference to most people. But it makes a difference to her
– it makes her less happy.
3 This is a reason for not waiting. It should, surely, carry the day, unless
there is a weightier reason on the other side.
And I ask: Is the fact that if she waits she will have a very happy,
rather than an averagely happy, child a reason for waiting? That is the
critical question here. And I am not sure that the answer is
straightforwardly yes.
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Procreative beneficence: some concerns

The principle of procreative beneficence is described by the philosopher
who coined the phrase as ‘the principle of selecting the best child of the
possible children one could have’ (Savulescu, 2007, p. 284).5 He says
also that ‘couples (or single reproducers) should select the child, of the
possible children they could have, who is expected to have the best life’
(Savulescu, 2001, p. 413).
There are several reasons to doubt whether this is true.
First, some distinctions. I have already said that we are surely not
required to do everything possible to help children, or make them as
happy as possible. So I am going to say now that, similarly, we should
not do everything possible to ensure we have the best, or happiest, of
all possible children. But should we do some things? Even if, as most
of us believe, we should do some things, make some sacrifices, in order
to benefit existing children, perhaps especially if those children are ours,
the question may get a different answer when we are considering
bringing new children into existence. And even if we should do some
things, make some sacrifices, in order to ensure we start the least bad
of various bad lives, it is perhaps less clear that we should do some
things, make some sacrifices, to ensure we start the best of various
good lives.
Second, some implications. In the final two paragraphs of the extract,
Parfit acknowledges what his view seems to imply. Suppose the principle
of procreative beneficence is true. Many people who are living
worthwhile lives will have to accept that it would have been better if
they had not been born, and someone else had been born in their place.
How many people? Surely, almost all of us. For it is true of almost all
of us that, had our mothers conceived at a different time, or chosen a
different partner, they could have given birth to a child having a better
or happier life than ours. Almost none of us are the best child our
mothers could have had. To conclude from that that it would have been
better had we not been born seems odd, to say the least.
There is another implication to consider. If this young girl should wait
and have a child at, say, 20 rather than at 14, even though she wants a
child at 14, perhaps another young girl, say her sister, should have a
child at 20, even though she does not particularly want a child at all.
That is, if it is better that there is a very good child, rather than an
5
By ‘the best child’ Savulescu is not talking, again, of moral goodness but of things like
health, happiness and whatever else will contribute to the child’s having a good life.
112
Figure 3.3 These people all seem to be happy. Would it have been better if
none of them had been born and others, with even happier lives, had been
born instead? Photo: © Christopher Belshaw.
averagely good child, surely it is better still if there is a very good child
rather than no child at all.
What is going on here? It seems that supporters of procreative
beneficence might have boxed themselves into a corner. There is one
very secure claim that can be made. If Parfit’s girl waits there will be
more good, or value, in the universe than if she has a child now.
Similarly, if her sister has a child who has a good life, again there will
be more good, or value, in the universe than if she remains childless.
But is it good if there is more good in the universe? That is a further
question, and one to which the answer is not obvious. We are back with
Narveson’s distinction between making happy people and making
people happy. When you can, and plan to, bring one of two children
into existence, should you choose the better of the two? It is easy to say
yes. It is perhaps less easy to give a good explanation of this.
The deaf child

You will recall that in an earlier discussion I suggested that someone
might propose the fact that a child would probably be deaf as a reason
to avoid having that child. Is it wrong knowingly to have a child who
will be deaf ? Almost all of us think it is not. But is it wrong to choose
deliberately to create a deaf child, when a non-deaf child is an option?
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The first reaction of many will be to think it is. The following extract is
a report about a couple who made such a choice.
A lesbian couple in the USA have provoked strong criticism by

deliberately choosing to have a deaf baby.
Sharon Duchesneau and Candy McCullough, who have both been
deaf since birth, were turned down by a series of sperm banks
they approached looking for a donor suffering from congenital
deafness.
The couple, who have been together for eight years, then
approached a family friend who was totally deaf, and had five
generations of deafness in his family.
He donated sperm which was used to impregnate Sharon
Duchesneau.
Baby Gauvin McCullough is now four-months-old, and has a slight
amount of hearing in one ear.
The couple have said they will let him decide when he is older if
he wants to wear a hearing aid.
…
While she was pregnant, Ms Duchesneau said: ‘It would be nice to
have a deaf child who is the same as us.
‘I think that would be a wonderful experience.
‘You know, if we can have that chance, why not take it?
‘A hearing baby would be a blessing. A deaf baby would be a
special blessing.’
The women, from Bethesda, Maryland, are both mental health
therapists and deaf therapists.
They told the Washington Post they believed they would make
better parents to a deaf child, because they would be better able to
guide them.
They say their choice is no different from choosing what gender
the child would be.
(BBC, 2002)
114
How does this case fit in with the issues discussed so far? The couple
here have chosen to bring one child into existence rather than another –
one who is deaf, rather than one with hearing. Have they started a child
whose life is not worth living? Certainly not. A deaf child can easily be
a happy child, with a good life. But there are degrees of goodness. If
they had had instead a child with normal hearing, would that child,
other things being equal, have had a better life? There is room for
debate about this, and about the whole notion of a disability. But
suppose he or she would have had a better life. Should the couple then
have had this different child? Defenders of procreative beneficence will
say they should. Defenders of this couple might think differently.6 What
do you think?
6
As you can imagine, there has been a lot of discussion of this and similar cases. For some
examples, see Benatar and Archard (2010, pp. 11–14); Parker (2010, pp. 62–76);
Wilkinson (2010, pp. 1–7, 61–8); Glover (2006, pp. 5–7, 23–6).
115
3.5 Is it always wrong to have

children?
Earlier I mentioned, and promised to return to, the claim made by
Benatar that it is always wrong to bring someone into existence. Most
people think this is simply bizarre. How can it possibly be true? What
on earth is Benatar thinking? I want to consider the main elements of
his argument in some detail, both because his views deserve careful
attention, and because this sort of close analysis is central to
philosophical activity.
Benatar’s argument I
Activity
Read Excerpt 1 of Reading 3 ‘Benatar on why it is better never to come
into existence’ at the end of this book. This is an extract from Benatar’s
1997 paper in which he sets out his controversial view. Later he
expanded on this in a book (Benatar, 2006) but the key arguments can
be found in the earlier work. You will be looking at this extract more
closely in the next activity, so you just need to get a sense of Benatar’s
view now.
In these opening sections, Benatar tells us what he will be arguing for,

and offers some preliminary claims and observations. The main
argument itself comes later, in sections we will consider below. But we
can begin by clarifying a few things. First, there are claims here about
morality – what we should or should not do – and also about value –
what would be good, or better, if it happened, and what would be bad,
or worse, if it happened. Benatar’s key moral claim is that in so far as we
are thinking of the good of the child it is wrong to have children. (He thinks
that side-effects – you need a spare kidney for your existing child, we
all need future generations to run our nursing homes – might make it
right for us to have children.) And his key value claim is that it is bad
for us to come into existence.
Second, he does not think it is always bad for us to continue in
existence, once we already exist. But there is some ambivalence about
this. On the one hand, he thinks that we, or certainly some of us, can
116
3.5 Is it always wrong to have children?
have overall happy lives, lives that it would be a mistake to end. On the
other hand, he not infrequently seems to support Schopenhauer’s
pessimistic view that at least most of our lives are very bad. Much of
this support is of an empirical nature, and is highly dubious. I want to
set it aside. The interest in Benatar’s position rests on the more abstract
and purely philosophical arguments. Strike out the pessimism, however,
and his position might seem to be deeply puzzling. If it would be
wrong, for the sake of the one whose life it is, to end a life, why would
it also be wrong, for the sake of the one whose life it will be, to start
this life? At least a part of the answer comes from an empirical claim
that is not so dubious. Benatar believes that as a matter of fact all of us
will have some elements or periods of pain in our lives. This pain might
not be severe, but it will be noticeable. I think this is an uncontroversial
claim. But, as you will see, this cannot be the whole of the answer.
So much for scene-setting. Let us now look more closely at these
passages.
Activity
Read again Section I of Excerpt 1 in Reading 3 ‘Benatar on why it is
better never to come into existence’ at the end of this book. Benatar
identifies two assumptions and says that one of them ‘rests on’ the other.
What, in your own words, are the assumptions? And what does he mean
by saying one rests on the other?
Discussion
I ask you to use your own words as an encouragement to think carefully
about what Benatar is saying. It is sometimes easy to pick out some
argument or claim without really understanding it. Rephrasing in your
own words helps. Using my words – yours might be different – I would
put it thus.
First assumption: starting overall good lives is permitted.
Second assumption: starting overall good lives benefits those started.
In saying the first rests on the second, Benatar is saying the first
assumes, or depends on, or implies, the second.
Claims not dissimilar to these assumptions figure also in the opening of

Section II. Here Benatar presents an argument given by ‘the cheerful’
117
whose ‘conclusion does not follow’. So this, he thinks, is a bad

argument. But Benatar agrees with the argument’s premiss – both good
things and bad things happen to us. He thinks that things go wrong
later, in moving to the conclusion. Perhaps it is not wholly clear,
though, just what the conclusion is. It might be (again in my own
words):
1 if the goods outweigh the bads, life is worth living.
Or it might be:
2 if the goods outweigh the bads, starting a life benefits the one whose
life it is.
Which is it? Even if it is not wholly clear, I think that (2) is, for Benatar,
the suspect conclusion.
He goes on, in this section, at least to begin to explain why this
conclusion does not follow. It is because of another asymmetry, this
time between pleasures and pains. Again in my own words: not causing
pain is good, even if no one benefits from this, while not causing
pleasure is not bad, unless there is someone who is harmed by this.
It is possible to spend a lot of time worrying over the detail of
Benatar’s position on this asymmetry. I want to suggest, though, that it
is at least roughly right. It does seem to many that not causing pain, for
example by not starting a wretched life, is good, the right thing to do,
even if no one benefits. If you do not start this life, no one remains
outside the door of existence, thinking themselves better off there. And
it seems to many that not causing pleasure, for example by not starting
a happy life, is not bad, is not wrong, unless someone is harmed. If you
do not start this life, no one remains outside the door of existence,
disappointed not to be let in.
Yet now there is a puzzle. For consider the relation between Benatar’s
asymmetry concerning pleasure and pain and procreative asymmetry as
we have been discussing it above. That says that starting the wretched
life is forbidden, while starting the good life is permitted, but not
required. But Benatar wants to link his asymmetry with a different, and
more controversial, position: starting the wretched life is forbidden, and
starting the good life is also forbidden. How is he going to do that?
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Benatar’s argument II
Activity
Now read Excerpt 2 of Reading 3 ‘Benatar on why it is better never to
come into existence’ at the end of this book. This is a longer extract from
the same article as Excerpt 1. You now need to consider the core of
Benatar’s argument, which is contained in this extract.
The ‘common view’ with which this passage begins is the view about the
pleasure/pain asymmetry that we encountered above. So Benatar holds
that from a widespread and fairly uncontroversial view about pleasures
and pains we will reach his outlandish conclusion, that it is better never
to have been born. We need to see how this is done.
How, according to Benatar, do ‘the cheerful’ think we should decide on
the value of life? And where do they go wrong?
Discussion
The cheerful, he says in Section III, think we should weigh up, in a sort
of cost–benefit analysis, the pleasures of life against its evils. If
pleasures win, then life is worth living. This reiterates the earlier point,
considered above, that he makes in Section II.
But, Benatar insists, this is ‘the wrong comparison’. In order to discover
whether life is worth living we need to assess it against its alternative. So
we need to balance existence (with the pleasures and evils it involves)
against non-existence (with the pleasures and evils it involves). We need,
he says, to look not only at the left-hand side of his diagram, but at the
diagram as a whole.
Benatar certainly makes an important point here. And an analogy can

help drive it home. Suppose you are trying to decide whether to go on
holiday. It is not enough to work out that, if you do go, you will have a
good time. You need to establish that going on holiday will be better
than the alternative, staying at home. Otherwise you are wasting a lot of
money. Similarly, it is not enough to know that there will, in life, be
more good than bad. You have to know whether living this life will be
better for you than the alternative, never coming into existence at all.
Life can be, Benatar allows, overall good. So why should we think that
not existing might be better?
119
Activity
Look back at Benatar’s diagram and the ensuing discussion in Excerpt 2
of Reading 3. How, when we consider all the relevant factors, does he
suggest that non-existence is preferable to existence?
Discussion
Focus on the left-hand side of the diagram alone, and we might choose
existence whenever life promises more pleasure than pain, and so
whenever (2) outweighs (1). But consider the right-hand side also, weigh
existence against the alternative where you never exist, and the picture
may be different. There is, as we will agree, some good and some bad
involved in existence. But Benatar points out that non-existence involves
something that is good – the absence of pain, as in (3); and something
that is not bad – the absence of pleasure, as in (4). It is better to have
something good and something neither good nor bad, than something
good and something bad. So non-existence is preferable to existence.
It is possible to see now how from a position very similar to that of

procreative asymmetry Benatar reaches a much more controversial
conclusion. Procreative asymmetry permits us, but does not require us,
to start lives that are on balance good. Benatar insists that this is
permitted only if living such a life is better for you than the alternative
– never existing at all. And, he maintains, it is not better. We always
harm people, do what is overall bad for them, by bringing them into
existence.
Benatar’s argument: some concerns

We end up here with a seriously counterintuitive conclusion. It is hard
to believe that it is, other things being equal, wrong to bring into the
world someone who will have a happy, even a very happy, life. It is hard
to believe that we harm people by doing this, and that they would be
better off if they never existed at all. But even if it is reasonable,
because of this, to suspect something is amiss with Benatar’s argument,
it is not therefore reasonable to dismiss it. Intuitions are not an
infallible guide to truth. A hunch that something is wrong is not
enough; we need properly to identify some weaknesses. However, all I
want to do here is to point to three areas of concern.
120
1 Let us grant to Benatar that there is something good, and nothing

bad, about non-existence. Will it always be better than existence?
Contrast two holidays. In one you lie around on the beach all week,
reading, tanning, drinking, swimming. It is pleasant enough, and
there is absolutely nothing to grumble or complain about. In another
you have a week’s skiing. It is a hassle to get there, and you need to
lug heavy skis all over the place. There are some scary moments,
and not a few aches and pains. But there are lots of thrills, great
views and the après-ski is to die for. It is overall the better holiday.
The point here is that it is hard to see how something that is good
and not at all bad should always be preferable to something that is a
mix of good and bad. Surely it is going to depend on the amounts
of good and bad involved. Imagine someone lives an overall very
good life, though there is some bad stuff within it. Non-existence,
even if there is nothing bad about it, might have to be very good
indeed to be, on balance, the better option.
2 One concern, then, is that we have no reason to suppose that non
existence will be good enough always to outweigh the value of
existence, in the case where life is overall good. But a second
concern is whether non-existence can be good at all. Perhaps the
mistake of the cheerful is understandable. If they assume that non
existence is neither good nor bad, but of neutral value, and if they
show that life is overall good, they have done all that is needed to
show that existing is better than not existing. Similarly, if staying at
home is neither good nor bad, then if your holiday is overall good it
is going to be better than staying at home. But is non-existence of
neutral value? And if it is, why and how does Benatar argue that
it is not?
A suggestion of the previous chapter was that post-mortem non
existence, or being dead, is in itself of neutral value. And this is
because it contains no pleasures or pains but is in itself empty of
content and value. Yet even if it is not intrinsically good or bad,
death, or being dead, can nevertheless be a relatively good or bad
state – better or worse than life. But if this is right, then surely we
might say the same about ante-natal non-existence. It might be
better or worse than existence, without being in itself either good
or bad.
Why does Benatar think differently, insisting that non-existence, a
state containing neither pleasures nor pains, is of positive value?
Suppose we agree with supporters of procreative asymmetry –
starting a life is never required, but is sometimes forbidden.
121
And suppose, linked to this, we hold that starting a life is never

good for someone, never benefits them, but is sometimes bad for
them or harms them. It might then be tempting to think that this is
best explained by holding that their previous state – one of non
existence – is itself good. This is why they are never better off,
never benefited, by coming into existence, but sometimes worse off,
or harmed, by this transition. But shouldn’t this temptation be
resisted? Can’t we hold to both procreative asymmetry and the view
that our pre-existent state is neither good nor bad but neutral?
3 This leads in to the third concern. So far we have apparently allowed
that those who have not yet started to exist are nevertheless in some
sort of state. And if they come into existence they will be in a better
or worse state and so will be benefited or harmed by the change.
But is this right? Benatar, you will remember, wants to question the
assumption that starting an overall good life benefits a person. Is he
right to question this?
Activity
I deny that someone who is brought into existence can thereby be
benefited. What two things might I instead be claiming?
Discussion
I say that it is not good for people, does not benefit them, to be brought
into existence. I might be saying, with Benatar, that this is bad for people,
or that it harms them. But I might instead be saying that coming into
existence does not benefit or harm anyone. For there is no one outside
the door of existence who can be benefited or harmed by being let in.
Suppose that before we come into this world we occupy some shadowy
pre-existent realm. And suppose our state there is neither good nor bad,
but neutral. Then it might well seem that in coming into existence, in
moving from one state to the other, we are either benefited or harmed.
And if we can in this way benefit people then there is a good question
about why we are not required to do so. This picture, then, puts
procreative asymmetry under some strain.
Suppose instead that there is no pre-existent state. We might live good
or bad lives, but we are not benefited or harmed, made better off or
worse off, by coming into existence. This picture is kinder to
122
procreative asymmetry. We might (other things being equal) be required

to benefit people who exist, and also those who half exist, but we are
not, because we cannot be, required to benefit those who do not exist
at all. So we are not required to start good lives. Is it kind enough?
Procreative asymmetry forbids us to start bad lives. Can we believe both
that this is forbidden and that no one is harmed, made worse off, if we
do start such a life? Perhaps we can. And perhaps we can hold that it
would be terrible, and so forbidden, to start a wretched life, even
though no one is harmed, and also that it would not be terribly good,
not required, to start a happy life, because no one is benefited.
I must leave it to you to decide whether that really is a tenable position.
Let me summarise my concerns about Benatar’s argument. One way to
support the negative conclusion, that it is always wrong to start a life, is
by arguing that no life is worth living. But Benatar does not, or at least
does not consistently, hold to this pessimistic view. Another way is by
arguing that even if life is worth living, it is still less good than not
existing. This seems to be Benatar’s preferred route. But, I have
suggested, there is no reason to think (a) that non-existence is a very
good state, or (b) that it is other than a neutral state, or indeed (c) that
it is really a state, a home for those not yet conceived, at all.
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3.6 Anti-natalism
Benatar is against birth. He wants to say that no matter how well our
lives appear to go, the fact that they contain some pain is reason
enough to hold that it would be better for us had we never been born.
We are all of us harmed by coming into existence. But the argument
here, at least as we have been able to uncover it in his paper
(Benatar, 1997), is unpersuasive.
Perhaps, though, there are other arguments, drawing on certain aspects
of Benatar’s work, for an anti-natalist conclusion. Here is one.
Wholes and parts

Procreative asymmetry is the plausible, if puzzling, view that we are
forbidden to start bad lives but, though permitted, not required to start
good lives. Still, even if we have good lives they will, as a matter of fact,
contain some mix of pleasures and pains. But then the pleasures
provide no reason to start such a life, while the pains give a reason
against starting. So no matter how many pleasures there are, the pains
carry the day.
Activity
How good is this argument?
Discussion
There are various places the argument might be challenged. But some of
these – there are pain-free lives; procreative asymmetry needs to be
abandoned – are not the strongest. What may be a better challenge is
hinted at by the way I have titled this section. If we look at lives just in
terms of their parts, or atomistically, then it seems, given the
assumptions, that the argument is sound. But is that the right way to
think about our lives? If instead we think holistically about the entirety of
a life, then we might reach a different conclusion. Most lives, even
though they contain some pain, are, as we and others judge, overall
worth living. As Benatar agrees, it would be wrong to end these lives.
Given procreative asymmetry, there is still no reason to start these lives.
But though there is reason not to start a life that is not worth living, there
is no reason not to start these worthwhile lives.
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3.6 Anti-natalism
I leave it to you to decide whether that is a good response to the

objection. A related argument is narrower in scope.
Different lives
Perhaps it is easier to give a successful anti-natalist argument for lives
different from ours. Consider animals. If you accept the revised version
of the Deprivation View from the previous chapter then you will accept
that, while it is bad for us to die, it is not bad for animals to die. Their
future pleasures do not give them a reason to live on. Another way of
putting this is that their future pleasures do not compensate for present
pains. Now suppose you know that if an animal is born then no matter
how its future life might go, its present life will be one of pain. Perhaps
being born is painful. Then it would be wrong to bring this animal into
existence.
Suppose a baby will die after six months. Its birth will be painful, but
thereafter there will be more pleasures than pains in its short life.
Perhaps here, too, there is no reason for the baby to live on, and so
here too future pleasures cannot compensate for present pain. If birth
will be painful for the baby, then it is wrong to bring it into existence.
Again I leave it to you to consider and assess this argument. And here
is a further and final argument for anti-natalism.
Numbers/probabilities
Go back to lives like ours. So, again recalling distinctions made in the
previous chapter, consider persons rather than non-persons.
Activity
Suppose you have a choice. You can either bring into existence six lives,
all at the same time, or none at all. And you know that if you start six,
five will be happy, well worth living, while one will be wretched, worse
than nothing. Which should you choose? Suppose you choose against
the six lives. Now imagine you are deciding whether to start one life, but
there is a one in six chance that this life will be wretched. What should
you do?
Discussion
I would say that it is wrong to start the six lives. Why? It is not because I
think it is always wrong to justify bads in terms of goods. Five starving
125
people are suffering a great deal. There is reason to help those people.
You can help them by stealing food from a glutton. She will be annoyed
but she will not starve if you steal her food. There is reason to steal her
food. But in the present case there is no one in need of help, and no
reason to start the good lives. And the sixth person will not simply be
annoyed, if we bring him into existence. He will lead a wholly wretched
life and wish, with good reason, that he had never been born.
Suppose you agree with this. Is there then reason to view probabilities
for a single life in the same way? It seems to me that there is. For
suppose you are able to start just one life. It is highly likely that this life,
if started, will be worth living. Yet there is a one in six chance it will be
wretched. It seems to me it would be wrong to start this life.
This is not yet an argument that shows it is always wrong to have

children. First, the chances of a child’s having a wretched life are, at
least today and in many countries, much much lower than this. Second,
and more important, as we discussed at the beginning of this chapter,
there are many reasons, apart from the good of the child, for bringing a
child into existence. So, once more, I leave it to you to decide how
strong the argument is.
126
Summary
Summary
Questions about when and whether to have children are among the
most important of those we face. And, especially in recent years, a
number of philosophers have given such questions a good deal of their
attention. In this chapter we have considered several of their arguments
and views. It seems to many that, in weighing the reasons for and
against having children, we need to give a key place to the quality of life
any new child is likely to experience. And it seems to many that it
would be wrong to bring into existence a child whose life is not worth
living. But what of those whose lives are worth living? Against
Schopenhauer it can be argued that there are such lives. Against Benatar
it may well seem there cannot be a general presumption against starting
such lives.
Even so, there are questions about whether it is required to start such
lives. Procreative asymmetry says it is not. There are questions, too,
about whether any lives we do start should be as good as possible.
Procreative beneficence says they should. Both of these views, however,
are somewhat controversial. We have considered these questions, and
these controversies, here.
Activity
127
References
BBC (2002) ‘Couple “choose” to have deaf baby’, BBC News, 8 April [Online].
Available at http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/1916462.stm (Accessed 10
March 2014).
Benatar, D. (1997) ‘Why it is better never to come into existence’, American
Philosophical Quarterly, vol. 34, no. 3, pp 345–55.
Benatar, D. (2006) Better Never To Have Been: The Harm of Coming into Existence,
Oxford, Oxford University Press.
Benatar, D. and Archard, D. (2010) ‘Introduction’ in Archard, D. and Benatar,
D. (eds) Procreation and Parenthood: The Ethics of Bearing and Rearing Children,
Broome, J. (1999) Ethics out of Economics, Cambridge, Cambridge University
Press.
Gallagher, J. (2013) ‘Obituary: Robert Edwards, test-tube baby pioneer’, BBC
News, 10 April [Online]. Available at http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health
22095512 (Accessed 7 April 2014).
Glover, J. (2006) Choosing Children: The Ethical Dilemmas of Genetic Intervention,
Heyd, D. (1992) Genethics, Berkeley, University of California Press.
Narveson, J. (1967) ‘Utilitarianism and new generations’, Mind, vol. 76,
pp. 62–72.
Parfit, D. (1986) Reasons and Persons, Oxford, Oxford University Press. Also
available online at DOI: 10.1093/019824908X.001.0001.
Parker, M. (2010) ‘An ordinary chance of a desirable existence’ in Archard, D.
and Benatar, D. (eds) Procreation and Parenthood: The Ethics of Bearing and Rearing
Children, Oxford, Oxford University Press.
Savulescu, J. (2001) ‘Procreative beneficence: why we should select the best
children’, Bioethics, vol. 15, no. 5–6, pp. 413–26.
Savulescu, J. (2007) ‘In defence of Procreative Beneficence’, Journal of Medical
Ethics, vol. 33, pp. 284–8. Also available online at DOI: 10.1136/
jme.2006.01818.
Wilkinson, S. (2010) Choosing Tomorrow’s Children: The Ethics of Selective
Reproduction, Oxford, Oxford University Press.
128
Chapter 4
Does life have meaning?
Contents
Aims 133
4.1 Preliminaries 135
Doubt 135
Terms 135
All or nothing 136
Inside/outside 137
4.2 Local meaning 140
Factors 140
Dissent 142
Judgement 144
Meaning and happiness; pleasure and success 146
Progress? 147
4.3 Global meaning 149
Modality 149
Space and time 151
Wholes and parts 154
Death 156
4.4 A middle ground 159
Time and place 159
Religion 160
4.5 Does meaning matter? 166
Summary 168
References 169
Aims
Aims
. be familiar with different questions about the meaning of life, and
how these questions might relate to questions about happiness,
pleasure and success in life
. understand how both subjective and objective considerations might
bear on judgements about life’s meaning
. have examined some different reasons for denying that life has
meaning
. have considered John Cottingham’s account of the role of religion in
conferring meaning on a life.
133
Chapter 4 Does life have meaning?

You will need to listen to the following recordings (available on the
A333 website):
. The meaning of life (Part 1)
. The meaning of life (Part 2).
You will need the following readings, which can be found at the end of
the book.
. Reading 4: Wolf on meaning in life and why it matters
. Reading 5: Cottingham on religion and the meaning of life.
134
4.1 Preliminaries
4.1 Preliminaries
People often wonder about the meaning of life. They might ask whether
it has any meaning, or probe into what meaning it has. Some people
claim to know something of the answer to such questions, and will say
that life does have meaning, or that it lacks meaning, or that it once had
meaning but has now lost it. The meaning of life is discussed in pubs,
in families, among friends. It features in novels, films, operas and
ballets. I imagine you have thought about this question before starting
on this module; indeed before doing any formal philosophy.
But when people ask about, talk about, worry about the meaning of life,
what are they asking, talking, worrying about? As in earlier chapters, it
will be useful to sort out the shape and perimeters of our discussion
before delving in. So we can begin by trying to clarify the sorts of
questions we are hoping to ask, and to get answered.
Doubt
I want first to get a sceptical response out of the way. Some people say
that it is just silly or confused to talk about the meaning of life, and
that if we are clear-headed we will see this. They say that words, or
sentences, or road signs are the sorts of things that have meaning. So
there is a meaning to the word ‘life’ but there is no meaning to life.
Once we see this, once we understand that life is not even the sort of
thing that can have a meaning, we will stop talking, asking, worrying
about it, and get on with something worthwhile.
I suggest we do not accept such a response. It represents an
unconvincing attempt to take words altogether literally, and rein in how
they can appropriately be used. For no good reason it takes one
meaning of the word ‘meaning’ to be the only one. We can do better.
Terms
Does life have meaning? What are we asking about? First, we are asking
about life – a point that may strike you as obvious but that is worth
stating. And not only life, but lives. We are mostly concerned with
human lives here. People, and not animals or plants, live the sorts of
lives that can have meaning. These are the sorts of lives also that can
fail to have meaning, that can lose their meaning, become meaningless.
And these are the lives for which a concern about meaning can seem
135
appropriate. Our talk about the meaning, or not, in our lives has, often,
an urgency and importance about it.
Second, we are asking about meaning. This is harder to pin down, but
not impossible. And when we are concerned about whether life has
meaning, we are concerned, I suggest, about whether there is any point
or purpose to life, whether it has any significance, perhaps whether it
has any value. We might be wondering whether there is any reason, to
do with point, purpose, significance or value, for us to carry on. These
other terms are suggested as synonyms or near-synonyms of ‘meaning’
to help firm up the questions. But how helpful are they? A problem is
that these words might be considered just as vague, or as elusive, as the
term ‘meaning’ itself. Again, a sceptic might exploit this, insisting that
these words will stand or fall together. And again, this is too rigid. If
you more or less get the meaning question, then introducing these
further terms might help a little. And there are still further terms, less
obviously synonymous, that might give even more help. Sometimes it
can seem that life is absurd, our existence ridiculous, carrying on a sort
of madness. So there is a nest or network of terms here that to a non
negligible degree can throw light on each other. Use one or two as a
way in and you will probably soon have some grasp of our question
about meaning.
All or nothing
Someone asks, what is the meaning of life? It looks as if they are asking
a straightforward question that is going to have a simple, unitary
answer. However, this may be hard to provide. It soon begins to seem
implausible that there is, or can be, any one thing that is life’s meaning.
But rather than despair, we should perhaps wonder if the question was
well put. Better to ask, what sorts of lives have meaning? Or, what sorts
of things can give life meaning? Put thus, it is clearer that we are open
to a more complex, messier response. Perhaps there are different sorts
of lives, and a variety of things, in which meaning can be found.
Moreover, once we are open to a plurality of suggestions, it will become
apparent that meaning in life might be something that comes in degrees
– one life might be more meaningful than another, and significantly so,
even though both might hover around midpoint on a scale. So, to the
question ‘Does life have meaning?’ or ‘Does this life have meaning?’
there will be no simple yes/no answer.
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4.1 Preliminaries
Inside/outside
Was I too quick, in the comment above, about animals? Suppose I ask
you whether the life of a turkey has any meaning. You do not fully
understand my question. I explain that I am wondering whether there is
any point, or purpose, in bringing turkeys into the world. You say,
certainly there is – Christmas. That is the point of turkeys, what they
are for, why they exist. Who can doubt it?
Figure 4.1 A meaningful life? Biscuit, a rare Bourbon Red turkey. Photo:
Sean Dempsey/PA Archive/Press Association Images.
And, now in the swing of things, and not long back from church, you
insist that our lives have meaning in a similar way. We are here as part
of God’s scheme, to do his bidding and sing his praises. Hence our
lives have meaning.
It is true that there is Christmas, and turkeys. It is less clearly true that
there is a God, with a scheme or plan for us. But this is not what is
dissatisfying about this response, why it seems to have missed the point
of the question. When we wonder about the meaning of life, when we
hope it has a meaning, we are not wanting simply to be cogs in a
machine, contributors to someone else’s grand design. It is not going to
be enough, to use again some terminology from Chapter 1, merely to
discover that we are in some way of instrumental value. We want,
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rather, to find meaning for ourselves, and for it to have personal value.
Meaning in life, in the sense in which we are after it, in the sense in
which it matters, is something we discover for ourselves, identify with,
willingly pursue. It is not something imposed from outside. Still, it is
important not to exaggerate the contrast here. Your life might have
meaning, of the right kind, as part of some bigger scheme, so long as
you know about and understand that scheme.
Meaninglessness
Is the life of a tree meaningful or meaningless? It does not, and
cannot, have meaning of the type we are concerned with here. But
it is perhaps misleading to think of it as therefore meaningless.
Even if this is in one sense literally true, in practice we tend to talk
of meaninglessness in circumstances where it seems that meaning
might be found. Sometimes there are terms available to help make
this distinction. Think about happiness. We could, I suppose, say
that a stone is not happy, but surely not that it is unhappy, or even
that it fails to be happy. Or think of one of those terms I
suggested might be in the vicinity of meaninglessness. The life of a
mouse might in one sense lack meaning, but it will not therefore
be absurd.
Suppose you want to pin things down here, and insist that there
must be a simple, clear and unambiguous answer to the question
of whether a tree’s life is or is not meaningless. Then, again, you
are wanting more precision than is available from our ordinary and
everyday language.
Activity
Listen to the audio recording ‘The meaning of life (Part 1)’. In this
recording I am again talking with students at the University of Cumbria.
This first part of the discussion is very short (just over 3 minutes long). I
will ask you to listen to the rest of our discussion later. Again it is going
to be useful to hear how other people, in a not dissimilar position to your
own, approach questions about the meaning of life. What is the first
reaction to my question about meaning? And what is the gist of the
points being made about objective and subjective meaning?
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4.1 Preliminaries
Discussion
Tim is very confident that life lacks meaning. But he does not think this is
a bad thing, or something to worry about. Indeed, he feels that it is
liberating and empowering to recognise this. Why? Because he
distinguishes between objective and subjective meaning. Life has no
objective meaning, he thinks, and so there are no external constraints,
nothing imposed on us from without. This means we are free, as
subjects, to create our own meaning. And that, he insists, is a good
thing. Some of the other students seem to agree.
I am simply reporting a position here, not endorsing it. As I have

already suggested, this internal/external distinction might not be quite
as straightforward as Tim believes. And the terms ‘objective’ and
‘subjective’ always need to be handled with care. As we go on we will
become clearer about these distinctions. Right now we should try to
discover whether lives can have meaning, and, if so, where it is to be
found.
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4.2 Local meaning

Imagine a young woman, Fran. She says life is meaningless, pointless,
has no purpose. We ask, are you talking here just about your own life,
or about life, or human life, in general? She says, just her own life. It is
all messed up. Of other lives, some are meaningful, some not, about
most she does not know, and about none does she care. She is down.
Fran’s position is, surely, one we all recognise, even if we have not been
there ourselves. Things go wrong in life, take an unexpected turn, and
what seemed a happy and fulfilled existence can appear suddenly to
collapse. Other people carry on regardless, still happy and fulfilled.
Some take comfort in seeing this; for others it only increases their
awareness of, and distress at, their own position.
Factors
Fran, I am supposing, is missing certain things in her life that earlier
she had, and that others still have. It is because of this, these absences,
this loss, that her life now has no meaning. But what sorts of things?
Activity
Try to think of meaning in this way – as something that features in some
lives to a considerable degree, in other lives hardly at all. What sorts of
things might contribute to such localised significance, make it more likely
that a life has some meaning? Suppose you agree with Tim, and think
that there is nothing in particular that can be mentioned here. Each of us
is free to make our own meaning in whatever way we choose. Fran might
need therapy or drugs to reorientate her approach, but there is no
blueprint or recipe available. Still, what sorts of things will others suggest
here, as helping provide meaning? Make a list.
Discussion
This activity, and in particular the very last word I use above, might
remind you of a discussion in the previous book. I am assuming here
that we might construct some sort of objective list – a series of items of
which it will be claimed that it is a fact, objectively true, that they are
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4.2 Local meaning
relevant to the question of whether a particular life has meaning. And

here is such a list:
Health; friends, family, children; money; a job; religion; interests, hobbies,
some long-term project or goal; living in a reasonably stable society;
morality; happiness.
No surprises there. And no surprises if I suggest that the absence of

these things is likely to detract from a life’s having meaning. Your list
might not have corresponded exactly with this, but I would be surprised
if it were altogether dissimilar. These sorts of things, most of us will
think, fairly obviously connect with the meaning, or lack of it, in our
lives. Still, a number of clarificatory points might be made.
First, the claims being made here are modest. My suggestion is not that
any of these items is necessary for meaning, nor that any collection of
them, even all of them together, is sufficient. The point is only that they
are of relevance – if someone ticks all of the boxes and yet insists their
life is meaningless, then there would be at least a puzzle as to what they
were thinking. Similarly if someone ticks none of the boxes but
maintains that their life still has meaning.
Second, several of these items can be usefully expanded on. Health,
money and stability are important for meaning, but they are most
obviously of instrumental value – the point is that it might be hard
(though by no means impossible) to have other items on the list if you
have no money, or are seriously ill, or if lives all around you are in
chaos. Religion is something to be discussed further below, but it is
worth noting now that we can distinguish between the truth of religion
and belief in religion. Either, or both, might be thought relevant to
meaning.
Other things mentioned here – jobs, interests, hobbies, projects – all
come in different kinds. You might think that certain kinds do more for
meaning than others. So it helps to have a job, but a job which you
believe in, where you think you are making some important difference
to the world, will help more than one that bogs you down in endless
paperwork and pointless meetings, where nothing really happens.
A project that is worthwhile and achievable is going to count for more
than one which is neither of these, even if both will get you out of bed
in the mornings. The last two items might be thought the most
puzzling. I am not suggesting that the only meaningful life is the
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morally good life, but, again, just that there is some correlation. And it
may be clearer here that the morally bad life is unlikely to be – in the
sense we are after – meaningful. I include happiness in part to make the
point that this and meaning are not the same, but that being happy
might help you find meaning in life, being unhappy might stand in the
way. But I will return to this below.
Third, just a little more on no surprises. Meaning in the sense being
discussed here, the sense in which it can come and go, and can vary
between lives, is something that really can exist, and is of real concern
to millions of people. And it does depend, I want to say, on some of
these fairly mundane factors being in place. To repeat, tick none of the
boxes and the claim that your life is nevertheless meaningful will stand
in need of explanation. Tick several, and your life might, in this
ordinary way, be meaningful. We should not think that grander versions
of the meaning question are the only ones that deserve to be explored.
And, more generally, we should not think that interest and progress in
philosophy stands apart from the everyday.
Dissent
This suggestion, that meaning in life relates to an objective list of
relevant factors, is in tension with the idea that meaning is somehow
subjective, and up to us. Some of the students suggested this, but the
idea is hardly theirs alone. We should consider this further. In the
following activity I ask you to read a passage by the American
philosopher Susan Wolf. You will find that at the beginning of the
extract Wolf is commenting on life’s meaning in ways similar to mine
above. Later on, however, she addresses explicitly the issue of objective
versus subjective meaning, and seems to occupy a middle ground.
Activity
You should now read Reading 4 ‘Wolf on meaning in life and why it
matters’ at the end of this book. This extract is taken from the Tanner
Lectures on Human Values delivered at Princeton University in 2007.
How, in the example of love, are ‘subjective and objective elements
inextricably linked’? Can we, on Wolf’s account, find meaning in life
without both elements being present? What sorts of objections might
someone raise to her account?
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4.2 Local meaning
Figure 4.2 Professor Susan Wolf. Photo: Courtesy of Susan Wolf/The

Philosophy Department at UNC Chapel Hill.
Discussion
When you love something then you, the subject, have a positive attitude
or feelings towards that thing. But for love to be appropriate, the thing
itself must have certain characteristics or properties that make it,
objectively, worthy of your love. It is possible for you to love
inappropriately, but that is not, Wolf believes, going to help you find
meaning in life. And she thinks that in all cases meaning requires
subjective attraction and objective attractiveness.
Someone might think her account is too narrow, and that there are more
ways to meaning than here envisaged. One objection might be that love
is not necessary. We might be interested in things, engaged with them,
gripped or excited by them, without actually loving them. And these forms
of involvement might be enough. Another objection is that the meeting of
subjective attraction and objective attractiveness is not always necessary.
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We need to consider this second objection in more detail. Perhaps we

can agree that when there is this meeting – your life has within it many
items on the list, and you have towards them a strongly positive attitude
– then you may well think, and be right to think, that your life has
meaning. Conversely, when there is nothing on the list, and you are
aware of and depressed or deflated by this, then we might agree that life
lacks meaning. But two further cases are more problematic.
Begin with one where there is in your life much that is on the list,
much that is objectively attractive, but where you, the subject, are
simply not attracted. Should we say here that you falsely believe your
life lacks meaning? No. Wolf ’s point, I take it, is that meaning has not
arisen, because you do not, for some reason or other, have the
appropriate attitude. Thus your belief that your life lacks meaning is
true. But a closely related belief – there is nothing in your life that
could give it meaning – might well be false.
What about cases where there is little or nothing on the list, but you are
nevertheless attracted to what there is in your life, and believe it
meaningful? Is this a false belief ? Wolf will maintain that it is. Consider
cases where someone believes they have identified and are pursuing
some worthwhile project or goal, but we, looking at matters from
outside, judge this not to be so. And distinguish two sorts of case. In
the first case, we judge (correctly) that the project is not worthwhile. Let
us suppose someone aims to count, by hand, the blades of grass in
New York’s Central Park. They succeed in doing this, but it is a singular
waste of time. In the second, we judge that though the project is
worthwhile the person is making no headway. They want to breed some
new and disease-resistant roses, believe they are doing this, but have in
fact been put inside an experience machine, and so in reality are doing
nothing at all. In both cases, but for different reasons, the external
judgement – that the life lacks meaning – seems to be correct.
Judgement
There may, however, be a difficulty with making judgements like this.
Activity
Listen now to the audio recording ‘The meaning of life (Part 2)’, which
continues my discussion with students at the University of Cumbria. What
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4.2 Local meaning
do the students think about passing judgement on the meaningfulness of

others’ lives?
Discussion
Linked with the students’ scepticism about objective meaning, noted in
the earlier activity, is their reluctance to pass judgement on others, at
least where they are causing no harm.1
You will perhaps have noticed my surprise at encountering such a

response. I hope, in emphasising Wolf ’s point, to have offered some
conciliatory comment on the objectivity question. No one is denying
that the individual’s subjective attitude is relevant to meaning. And I
hope now to be similarly conciliatory on this issue of judgement.
First, it is one thing to make a judgement, come to a belief, about what
other people are doing; it is quite another to interfere and attempt to
change their way of life. The former does not have to lead to the latter.
Often, even if we are convinced that someone is making the wrong
decisions, we should simply stand aside, and leave them to mess up.
Often, but not always. Certainly, and especially with younger people, we
use a sticks and carrots approach to encourage the valuing and pursuing
of health, education, the company of others. Is this just for economic
reasons, to build a prosperous nation? Surely it is at least in part
because we think such things are good for people, and will help them
lead worthwhile and meaningful lives.
Second, notice that a further claim Tim makes, in support of his
subjectivist stance, is that it is difficult to give a thoroughly watertight
argument in favour of the objective view. If we cannot prove that one
life is meaningful, and another is not, then we should take the laissez
faire position, and agree that it is up to the individual to determine for
themselves where meaning lies.
Yet, as Shona points out, we do somehow make, and with confidence,
these judgements about the lives of others. Similarly, Dave’s point is
that we know that some lives are wasted, whatever their owners might
say about them.
1
This issue about passing judgement emerges in the audio in striking form in the
discussion of Ian Brady. He, along with Myra Hindley, was guilty of the so-called Moors
Murders outside Manchester in the 1960s. Search for Ian Brady on the internet if you feel
the need for more information.
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You might be tempted to join in this debate, perhaps arguing that we

can after all reveal the firm foundations of morality, value and meaning.
But perhaps a more modest, more secure, response is to deny that we
need such foundations, such proof, in order to maintain what after all
seem to most of us to be common-sense positions. To give an analogy,
the fact that you cannot prove you are not now asleep and dreaming all
this does not give you grounds for real doubt. You surely should not,
for example, be continually pinching yourself.
Meaning and happiness; pleasure and success

I said above that, in thinking about life’s meaning, we might get some
help in considering related, and near synonymous, terms such as point,
purpose, significance or value. And there are further terms that might
similarly be thought to shed light on the issue of meaning, and in
particular on the objectivity question. Here, though, illumination comes
through contrast. It will be useful to consider these terms now.
Activity
Think about the terms ‘pleasure’, ‘happiness’ and ‘success’. Then listen
to the audio recording ‘The meaning of life (Part 2)’ again. I try there, not
altogether successfully, to get the students to distinguish between
happiness and meaning. As I have said above, these terms are related
but not the same. Towards the end of that discussion there are some
comments made about a pleasant life. How does pleasure fit in and
connect with the other terms? We have not talked in this chapter about
success. But consider that too. And for each of these terms, ask yourself
how they relate to the objective/subjective distinction that the students
wanted to make. Remember, though, that we are still considering
meaning just on the local scale, where it can come and go, and vary
between lives.
Discussion
Let me start with the second pair of terms titling this section. There is,
most of us believe, a big and important difference between them. We
might say that whether or not you are leading a pleasant life is just a
matter of how things feel on the inside. So if you sincerely believe you
are getting pleasure from sex and/or chocolate then indeed you are. You
are undoubtedly the best judge in such matters. We might say, then, that
it is a subjective matter as to whether something or other gives you
pleasure. But it is very different with success. You want to be a
successful painter, or politician, or parent. It is not true that if you
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4.2 Local meaning
sincerely believe you are good at such things then indeed you are. And
how things go on the outside – whether the critics approve, or you win
votes, or your children are happy – is going to bear heavily on how
successful you are. We might say, then, that there are objective criteria
as to whether you are successful in this or that endeavour.
So pleasure and success contrast markedly. We might think of them as
at opposite ends of a spectrum. But both happiness and meaning, I want
to suggest, fall more or less midway between the two – less clearly
linked to objectivity than is success, less obviously dependent on
subjective responses alone than is pleasure. This is not to equate the
terms, or to hold that all and only happy lives will be meaningful lives, but
it is to locate them on similar ground.
The view I have just given here is in one respect somewhat

controversial. Many people think happiness is just a state of mind, and
that if you sincerely believe you are happy then you are. For such
people, the claim one sometimes hears: ‘I thought I was happy, but I
realise now that I wasn’t’, turns out not really to make any sense. And
such people will link happiness with pleasure, distancing it further from
success. I think this is wrong but I will say no more about it here, and
leave you to make up your own mind.2
Progress?
I suggest that in this talk of local meaning we have made some real, if
modest, progress. We can understand what it is about some lives that
gives them meaning or significance, makes them worth living. We can
see why others might lack meaning. And we can understand, too, why
having this sort of view, this sort of commitment to the objective list,
does not in itself make for suspect judgements, or unwarranted
intrusions into how people live. Importantly, it does not obliterate a
subjective element to meaning.
But there will be questions remaining. Suppose that in your life there is
little or nothing on the list. Is it better for you to realise this – to know
your life is sad – or is it better to be deluded, maybe inside an
experience machine, and believe your life is meaningful? It is very hard
to come down on one side or the other on this one. Grasping the truth
2
Another thing I am not going to discuss is the relation between the terms considered
here, on the one hand, and well-being or welfare on the other. You will recall that Alex
Barber investigates these terms in Book 3, and I have earlier talked about well-being in
relation to life’s value. But both are absent from this chapter.
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Figure 4.3 Pleasure and success. (top) Eating ice cream may give us
(merely) pleasure. Photo: © Peter Titmuss/Alamy. (bottom) The sort of life
that generates a biography like this will be thought of as successful.
Isaacson, W., Steve Jobs, biography, on display in a New York
bookshop, 2011. Photo: Scott Eells/Bloomberg/Getty Images.
might be instrumentally valuable, prompt you to make changes. Some

people think that grasping the truth is intrinsically valuable. Even
supposing this is right, it is hard to see how that value can outweigh the
disvalue of being miserable and sad.
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4.3 Global meaning
4.3 Global meaning

Step outside the life of the individual, seen in its local and familiar
surroundings, and think of the bigger picture – life, the universe and
everything. Benny has just seen The Third Man and was particularly
taken with the scene where, from the top of the Ferris wheel, Orson
Welles asks, of the people below him, whether it would matter at all if
they stopped moving. Benny says, ‘I know that there is a lot in my life,
that I tick all the items on the list, that others might be envious, and
irritated by my going on, and think it merely self-indulgent, but still, it
seems to me that my life is meaningless.’
We ask, can he say more? He explains, he is happy enough, enjoys life
on a day to day basis, gets satisfaction when engaged with it, thinks at
those times that what he does has purpose and point, but then he steps
back, sees the bigger picture, and the doubts set in. And, in contrast to
Fran, Benny is considering here not just his own lot, but that of us all.
None of us, no matter how well our lives are going, can escape the
meaninglessness, the absurdity, of existence. Such thinking – a more
abstract engagement with the meaning question, one that leaves
everyday life and everyday appraisals more or less untouched – is not at
all uncommon. But fully understanding such thinking, whether or not
we agree with it, is not easy.
Modality
Before going on to consider what sorts of reasons someone might have
for believing that life is in this way meaningless I want to focus on an
important detail. Go back to Fran. It seems that she is thinking of
meaning in life as something that it is at least possible to have. It is, she
thinks, a contingent truth that her life is meaningless now. Things
could have been otherwise for her, and maybe were, and maybe will be
again. And they are, she joylessly believes, different even now for
others. This way of understanding talk about the meaning of life is both
familiar and legitimate. We often think of meaning as something that
comes in degrees, and varies between lives.
Contrast Benny. He thinks that all our lives are meaningless, and
meaningless whatever plans or projects, or friends or family, or health
or happiness, we might have. This contrast with Fran – the universal
versus the particular – is evident. Is there a further contrast? Is Benny
thinking also that it is a necessary truth that life is meaningless,
149
something we will have to live with, no matter what? It can seem that
way. But we should consider this further.
Suppose you think that life is meaningless because nothing lasts forever.
In time the universe itself will disappear. If this is right then life is
meaningless, and inescapably meaningless, for all of us. But is it then
necessarily meaningless? I think we should say no. For even if it is
certain that nothing lasts forever, it is at least conceivable, or
imaginable, that something should go on endlessly. If it did, then,
perhaps meaning would be restored.
Another example. Suppose you think that life is meaningless because we
do not last forever. We all die. But does this mean that life is necessarily
meaningless? Again, even if it is certain that we die, it is at least
imaginable that we should be immortal. So if it is the fact of death that
makes life meaningless then, again, it might be certainly meaningless,
and meaningless for all of us, but it will not be necessarily meaningless.
My third example here is a little different. Some think that life is
meaningless because there is no God, no one who created us and who
is looking after us. Would this mean that life is necessarily meaningless?
You might think, even if there is not a God there might have been. But
many people believe that God is not, as this suggests, a contingent
being, someone who might or might not exist. Even if we are not
certain whether God exists, they say, if he exists then necessarily he
exists, could not possibly fail to exist, and if he does not exist then
necessarily he does not exist, could not possibly begin to exist. And if
this is right, then if life is meaningless because there is no God, it will
be necessarily meaningless.
Two distinctions
The first distinction is between necessary and contingent truths. We
can think of this as a distinction in metaphysics, concerning
different ways of being. It is a contingent truth that any of us
exist. First, there are times when we will not exist but – more
important – even at the times we do exist, we easily might not
have done. I might have been hit by a bus yesterday, or my
parents might never have met. But consider Oliver Twist. A lot of
people will want to say that this fictional character couldn’t have had
a flesh and blood existence, even if someone very like him might
well have existed. Oliver Twist necessarily does not exist.
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4.3 Global meaning
A different, and perhaps simpler, example. My kitchen is red. It is

contingently red. It could have been green. It would be green, right
now, if I had had a failure of nerve in the paint shop. But could it
have been both red (all over) and green (all over) at one and the
same time? No. It is a necessary truth that nothing (including my
kitchen) is red and green all over at one and the same time. This
isn’t even a possible way of being.
The second distinction is between certainty and doubt. This is a
distinction in epistemology, concerning our knowledge. I know my
kitchen is red. I am certain of this. And I am certain of it even
though it is only contingently red, and might have been some
other colour. Equally I am certain that nothing can be red and
green all over, at the same time – I am certain about this necessary
truth. But about other things I have doubts. I doubt whether my
cat will exist in five years time – it is already thirteen years old,
and I doubt whether God exists. But my cat could live another
five years – whenever it dies it will be a contingent fact that it dies
at that time. In contrast it seems to me that if God does not exist
then necessarily he does not exist. Our very understanding of God
– whether we believe in him or not – is of someone whose
existence just could not vary from time to time, and does not at all
depend (as my existence and my cat’s existence does depend) on
how things are elsewhere.
Two distinctions, then, and it is important not to confuse them, or
to think they overlap.
This point about modality, about the difference between contingent and
necessary truths, bears on several discussions of global meaning, as well
as being, of course, of wide-ranging philosophical importance. It needs
to be kept in mind. And now we can move on to consider suggestions
as to why, even though there might be local meaning, thinking about
the bigger picture will reveal that life is ultimately meaningless.
Space and time

Concerns over life’s meaning can occupy us on the grand scale, as the
extract in the following activity suggests.
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Activity
Read the extract below, which is taken from an influential piece by
Thomas Nagel, and then consider the questions that follow it.
It is often remarked that nothing we do now will matter in a

million years. But if that is true, then by the same token,
nothing that will be the case in a million years matters now. In
particular, it does not matter now that in a million years nothing
we do now will matter. Moreover, even if what we did now
were going to matter in a million years, how could that keep
our present concerns from being absurd? If their mattering
now is not enough to accomplish that, how would it help if they
mattered a million years from now?
Whether what we do now will matter in a million years could

make a crucial difference only if its mattering in a million years
depended on its mattering, period. But then to deny that
whatever happens now will matter in a million years is to beg
the question against its mattering, period; for in that sense one
cannot know that it will not matter in a million years whether
(for example) someone now is happy or miserable, without
knowing that it does not matter, period.
What we say to convey the absurdity of our lives often has to

do with space or time: we are tiny specks in the infinite
vastness of the universe; our lives are mere instants even on
a geological time scale, let alone a cosmic one; we will all be
dead any minute. But of course none of these evident facts
can be what makes life absurd, if it is absurd. For suppose we
lived for ever; would not a life that is absurd if it lasts seventy
years be infinitely absurd if it lasted through eternity? And if
our lives are absurd given our present size, why would they be
any less absurd if we filled the universe (either because we
were larger or because the universe was smaller)? Reflection
on our minuteness and brevity appears to be intimately
connected with the sense that life is meaningless, but it is not
clear what the connection is.
(Nagel, 1979, pp. 11–12)
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4.3 Global meaning
In the final paragraph, Nagel suggests, first, that we often make similar
points about space and time but, second, that points about neither can
really show our lives to be absurd or meaningless. But is he right to think
space and time are in these ways analogous? Or are there important
differences? Think about what differences there might be before reading
the discussion below.
Discussion
I think there are differences. It seems that it does make sense to regret
that life is short, and it seems to make sense also to wish it were much
longer, even to wish it lasted forever. But surely it does not make similar
sense to regret that we are as small as we are, to wish that we were
much bigger. And I am not sure it makes any sense at all to wish that
spatially we went on forever, and were as large as possible, as big as
the universe itself. So it may be that in relating meaning to boundaries,
we are better focusing more on time, and rather less on space. And it is
noticeable that Nagel’s preceding paragraphs are altogether about time,
and not about space.
This is quite a difficult passage, but it seems that at least one of Nagel’s
concerns is to make a point about modality as discussed above. We
think issues about meaning relate to particular and contingent facts
about times ahead of us. But even if these facts were different, our
situation regarding meaning remains the same. Should we agree?
Nothing we do now will matter in a million years. That is probably true.
Long before a million years is up it is likely that some disaster will hit
this planet from outside, cancelling all we have done. Is this a reason to
think that life is meaningless? I would say, with Nagel, that it is not.
Not much of what we do aims to have such long-lasting effects. But
should we conclude from this, more generally, that there is no reason at
all to suppose that if what we do will not matter in the future, then it
cannot matter now? Well, perhaps it depends on how long a future we
have. Imagine the disaster is due next year. Nothing we do now will
matter in a year’s time. Does it follow that what happens in a year’s
time does not matter now? Surely not. If the disaster is so close then
we should all seriously revise our life plans. Not to do this is to be
ostrich-like, refusing to face facts. Perhaps, if we have only a year ahead
then all our lives are meaningless.
153
Figure 4.4 The universe. Does its size make a difference to meaning in our
lives? Hubble Space Telescope Ultra Deep Field, 2004, the deepest view
ever taken of the universe; each dot of light is a separate galaxy. Photo:
Nasa/Esa/Stsci/S.Beckwith, Hudf Team/Science Photo Library.
Wholes and parts

Benny thinks life is meaningless. He has in mind human life here. Still,
we might wonder if he is thinking just that human life as a whole is
meaningless, or whether he is thinking also, or instead, that every
individual life, every part of the whole, is meaningless. I want to make
two suggestions. First, Benny might be right, but unimportantly right,
about wholes. Second, it is unclear what follows from this about parts.
Benny says there is no meaning, or point, to the universe as a whole.
Even if the universe has been caused to exist still there is no reason
why it exists – it is not for anything, is not aiming at anything. And I
am going to suppose we can say the same, as he might say the same,
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4.3 Global meaning
about this planet in particular and about the human species as a whole.
Certainly if we excise God from the picture it looks as if this will be
right. It is just a brute fact, we might think, that the universe, the
planet, the species exists. And even if we insert God, it still might be
hard to see a meaning or purpose to the whole.
Let us suppose Benny is right about this. It does not obviously follow
that any particular human life, whatever it contains, is meaningless,
pointless, purposeless. To think differently looks like the fallacy of
division, or the mistake of thinking that what is true of the whole of
something is true of its parts.
Division and composition

There are two fallacies here, which are in obvious ways related.
Here is an example of the fallacy of division, derived from the
Greek philosopher Anaxagoras:
. Water is wet, so the parts of water – its atoms – are wet.
And here is an example of its opposite, the fallacy of
composition, from a more famous Greek philosopher, Aristotle:
. The parts of a man – eyes, hands, lungs, kidneys – each have a
function, so man as a whole has a function.
Activity
Suppose you agree that there is no meaning or purpose to the universe
as a whole. Does it follow that our individual lives similarly lack purpose
or meaning? Suppose you think that individual lives do lack meaning.
Does it follow that parts of our lives, our different activities, lack
meaning?
Discussion
I would say that in neither case can we move from the whole to the
parts. There may be no point to the universe as a whole, but still a point
to, meaning in, individual lives. There may be no point to my life as a
whole, but still a point to some of the things I do. But there is a further
fallacy we should note. It is a mistake to think that because an argument
does not show some claim to be true, the claim is therefore false.
155
So even if it does not follow that our lives, or our activities, lack purpose
or meaning, they might lack purpose or meaning nevertheless.
Nagel, following on from the passage above, similarly suggests that the
fallacy of division might trap some of us here: even if there is no point
to the universe as a whole, he says, there is certainly a point, if you have
a headache, to your taking an aspirin. So not only shouldn’t we make
inferences from the global to the local, but on the local scale, he says,
meaning is sometimes incontrovertible. Perhaps, though this is not
altogether convincing. Taking aspirin might well be a means to an end,
of instrumental value, but our question about meaning concerns
whether our lives, or activities within our lives, can rightly be seen as of
personal value – things we ought to care about for their own sake. And
that is not so easy to answer.
Death
What bearing does death have on the meaning of life? In thinking about
this we will revisit the puzzles of time and necessity already raised
above. But that is a bonus – the main reason for raising the question is
that it is undeniably important in its own right.
We will all die. Some of us will die prematurely, very few of us will live
for more than a hundred years. For all of us, then, life might seem
short. A premature death can affect meaning in various ways: my life
seems meaningless now she is gone; his life, now he knows that death is
coming, has lost its meaning; her life, cut short by the terrorists on the
point of a brilliant career, is robbed of its meaning. So the relation
between an early death and meaning on the local scale is fairly plain.
But don’t we all in some sense die early? How does this impact on the
global question about the meaning of human life?
Some people find the thought of death almost unbearable. I gave the
example of Philip Larkin in an earlier chapter, but he is hardly alone.
How can there be point, purpose or meaning in anything we do, some
people ask, given that inevitably it will come, and before very long, to
an abrupt end. Death, the view is, takes from all of us all hope of
meaning.
Yet even if it is certain that we will all die it is not, strictly, necessary.
An immortal life is at least imaginable, and – who knows – might in
156
4.3 Global meaning
Figure 4.5 Santa lives forever. But is immortality necessary for meaning?
Down the Chimney Pot. Private Collection. Photo: The Bridgeman Art Library.
time, in some way, become possible. How would this bear on the
question of meaning?
Activity
Imagine you can take a drug that will give you immortal life. And imagine
whatever is, for you, the best scenario here. So you take the drug alone,
or you also give it to your family and friends as you choose. You live
forever as if a teenager, or a 30-year-old, or as someone in their sixties,
again as you choose. One point of inflexibility, however: if you take the
drug you will live forever. There is no possibility of changing your mind,
no option of suicide.
157
One question is, would you take the drug? Another is, would taking the
drug make a difference to meaning?
Discussion
I do not know, of course, whether you would take the drug. But I do know
you should think long and hard about making such a momentous and
irrevocable decision. Not surprisingly, a number of philosophers have
thought about this, and some of them are deeply hostile to the idea of
immortality. Bernard Williams insists that endlessly repeating the same
activities would, sooner or later, grind us down with boredom. Others find
him too pessimistic here, but if he is right, then an immortal life would
not, after all, turn out to be a pleasant or happy life.
What about meaning? Some have argued that the immortal life would, if
anything, be less meaningful than our current lot. For, they say, it is
precisely limited time, and limited opportunities, that give our decisions
now what importance they have. It is because, for example, you probably
only get one shot at a career that it matters so much you get it right.
Similarly, a decision – or not – to emigrate might well shape the rest of
your life. Have, sooner or later, every option available and most of what
we do loses its urgency and weight.
There has been time only for a sketch of these issues about meaning,
death and the immortal life. I hope you will be prompted to think more
about them, and to pursue some of the further reading suggested on
the module website. One final point to note is that we are considering a
rather bleak picture. Death, at least for us alive now, is certain, even if it
is not necessary. Immortality is at least an imaginable alternative. But
there are arguments for both the mortal and the immortal lives being
meaningless. It is, though, one or the other – there is no third option.
Perhaps, then, life is necessarily meaningless.
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4.4 A middle ground
4.4 A middle ground

We have considered first the question of meaning within individual lives.
My suggestion here is that lives can in some recognisable sense be
meaningful, and are so, or are so to a degree, when we can check off
and engage with items on the objective list. We have considered also the
seemingly bigger question of whether a human life can ever be properly
meaningful at all. But both the sense of, and responses to, this second
question are harder to grasp.
I now want to look between these two questions, and ask whether there
might be factors that bear on meaning in play at a societal level –
whether there might be something about different ages, or different
countries, that generate interest in and doubts about the meaning of life.
Time and place

Questions and concerns about the meaning of life have arisen in certain
contexts, particularly in times and places of religious upheaval and also
(and of course these are often connected) in relation to certain sorts of
wars and disasters. There are more people worrying about life, death
and meaning in Shakespeare than in Jane Austen, and more recently
there was in Western Europe greater concern over such questions in the
1960s – the period of Sartre, Camus, Beckett and Pinter and the ever
present threat of nuclear annihilation – than in the more settled and
indulgent 1980s. That questions about meaning should vary in this way
with circumstances is surely to be expected.
Perhaps, similarly, there are features of present-day life which give
meaning questions some urgency. There are some fairly obvious
downsides to our current circumstances – worries about environmental
disasters and climate change; the seeming intractability of war and
political instability, especially in Africa and the Middle East; and, at least
in the USA and Western Europe, concerns about ageing, medicine and
healthcare. Alleged benefits of modern life can also raise doubts. As it
becomes easier to jet around the globe, so travel can seem less exciting,
and to have less point. The wealth of information and entertainment
available online can lead us to value less, and to know less, the things
we have. Probably all of us to some extent feel, and more so than in
the past, like small fish in a big sea, unable to make much of a
difference.
159
The suggestion is that, in making sweeping claims about life’s meaning,

we might be elevating to an important feature of ‘the human condition’
something that is simply a temporary and local difficulty. I want to now
look at one source of such difficulty in more detail.
Religion
One simple but familiar religious story – we are here to do God’s will,
whatever it is, because we know, somehow, that whatever it is, his will is
good – does not add to meaning in the way we want. This is a quasi
turkey existence, of the kind sketched above.
But there are different, and more sophisticated, religious stories. In the
next activity I ask you to read some of the closing section of a book on
life’s meaning by the respected English philosopher John Cottingham.
First, though, some background. Cottingham has, in the previous
chapters of his book, been constructing and considering a view similar
to the one proposed here, where in some way meaning links to our
having some of the goods from an objective list. But he thinks there are
serious shortcomings to such an approach, as the chances of
disappointment – not getting these goods – is considerable. Religion will
help here, offering ‘buoyancy’ to the good and the chances of a life
‘irradiated by hope’. But what picture of religion does Cottingham have
in mind? Certainly he seems to foreground Christianity with, at its
centre, something like the traditional Christian picture of God. But
certainly, too, he downplays its supernatural side, and puts an emphasis
on our adopting a spiritual attitude to life which, he suggests, religion
best embodies. This will counter, far better than a ‘go it alone’ attitude,
or one that centres on the philosopher’s weighting of reason and
autonomy, the vulnerabilities and frailties that surround and threaten us,
and restore to us the opportunity for a meaningful life.
So far so good, but a problem for many will be in thinking that the
claims of religion are false, and so promise at best only the illusion of
meaning. Cottingham wants to argue here that too much emphasis is
put on religious belief, not enough on practice.
Activity
Read the first section of Reading 5 ‘Cottingham on religion and the
meaning of life’ at the end of this book as far as the heading ‘Coda:
intimations of meaning’. The overall argument here is that the importance
of doctrine in religion – its particular claims about the nature of reality –
160
4.4 A middle ground
is typically overestimated, and we should focus instead on practice –

doing the sorts of things religion would have us do. And then if we do
these things – live the religious or spiritual life – things are likely to go
better for us, and our lives more likely to be meaningful. But there are
several points of detail that ought to be looked at more closely. So I ask:
1 Is Cottingham persuasive in his claims that belief is not the most
important thing in religion?
2 Is the spiritual life, as he describes it, genuinely a religious life?
3 Are there stronger and weaker points in his tripartite summing up of
his core argument?
Figure 4.6 Living the religious life – will things go better for these people?
Pilgrims bathing in Sangam waters on Mahashivratri Snan, in a Kumbh Mela
area, 10 March 2013, Allahabad, India. Photo: Sheeraz Rizvi/Hindustan
Times/Getty Images.
Discussion
These are possible ways to respond to the above questions. But your
responses might differ.
1 Cottingham wants to claim that ‘belief … is not in fact central to what
it is to be religious’. He goes on, ‘it is, on reflection, quite
inconceivable that a good and loving God should make the bestowal
of his saving love conditional on whether a given human being was
ready to affirm a particular proposition’. This seems pretty clear, but
we might note two things in particular. First, belief might not be
161
central but could nevertheless be essential. It might not be the most

important thing, but still be something you cannot do without. And in
his claim about what is ‘quite inconceivable’, Cottingham himself
seems to believe rather a long list of things – that there is a God who
loves us and who can in some way save us, and who does not
demand, in order to do this, that we believe certain things. Perhaps
all this is true, but the question was not whether you need beliefs in
order to be saved, but whether you need beliefs in order to be
religious.
2 The first of the four elements – seeing life as a gift from some source
‘generative of truth, beauty and goodness’ looks to be a pretty
straightforward religious claim. Indeed, we encountered it in
Chapter 1. But the remaining three, even if a little hazy around their
edges, are things an atheist might easily agree with. An atheist, that
is, might believe in the importance of morality, that there is something
to be said for a life marked by some sorts of rituals and patterns
(watch atheists at football matches, or uncover atheists who regret
the passing of the old-fashioned Sunday), and that the current
emphasis put on material things (money) and non-material things of
questionable value (fame) is to be deplored.
3 The first of the core claims – there are benefits attached to the
spiritual life – is, to me, fairly persuasive. There is a question, of
course, about the meaning of ‘spiritual’, but whether we give this a
religious or a non-religious reading, I would agree there are benefits
nevertheless.
The other core claims are perhaps less clear. But, using the example
of a Christian God to make my point, I think Cottingham is claiming
something like this. We cannot know for certain or prove that God
exists, but if we live a quasi-Christian life, we will come to believe in
God anyway. Perhaps these claims, put thus, are true.
Some of this may remind you of certain of the points made toward the
end of Chapter 1. When discussing Regan’s claim that we have reasons
to ‘postulate’ inherent value, I made a comparison with reasons for
believing in God. Whether or not you knew anything of the French
writer beforehand, you will see now that the distinction I made there
between theoretical and practical reason is very much in play in
Cottingham’s discussion of Pascal, and what is often referred to as his
wager, here.
There is, however, a complication to note. Cottingham is claiming, as
indeed Pascal himself was claiming, that if, for practical reasons, you
162
4.4 A middle ground
Figure 4.7 Unknown artist, after François Quesnel the Younger, Blaise
Pascal, c.1691, oil on canvas, 70 × 56 cm. Château de Versailles, France.
Photo © Giraudon /The Bridgeman Art Library.
adopt the religious way of life, you will in time come to have, or
perhaps seem to have, theoretical reasons for believing in God. Or, at
least, you will believe in God, and believe yourself not irrational in so
believing.
There are important questions here. Are there really practical reasons to
adopt the religious way of life? Do religious believers – whether or not
their beliefs are true – really have a better chance of finding happiness
or meaning in their lives than the non-believers? (Remember, I accept
163
this point if it is made for the spiritual life, where that is given a non
religious interpretation. My question here is about this life given a
distinctively religious interpretation.) Suppose there are benefits. If you
do not, and cannot, now believe in God, is it intellectually respectable
to act in such a way that you come, in time, to acquire this belief ?
Suppose this is intellectually respectable, but that your earlier belief,
there is no God, is in fact true. How should we feel about meaning that
is based on a false belief ?
Activity
Read now the remainder of Reading 5 ‘Cottingham on religion and the
meaning of life’ at the end of this book. Cottingham is evidently winding
things up here, rather than introducing further new material. But what he
has to say is interesting, and sometimes interestingly ambiguous,
nevertheless. What do you make of his final sentence? And how
convincing is the contrast he draws between two ways of viewing the
world: the ‘modernistic vision’ that he seems to think of as false, and the
allegedly truer picture from an earlier time?
Discussion
Again, the material here is slippery, and there is room for different
interpretations. Cottingham’s closing sentence is, as I see it, cleverly
elusive. Should we read ‘thank God’ as a non-religious person might
read it – something like ‘what a relief’? Or is the idea that there is a God,
and he gives life meaning? I think Cottingham has this second account in
mind.
That there are, in different times and circumstances, different prevailing
visions of the world, is of course the point I wanted to make at the outset
of this section. But Cottingham adds to this that one view (the more
beautiful, the one he connects to Canaletto and Vermeer) is the truer,
while our bleaker vision (‘scum on the barren rocks’ and a lack of
meaning) is an illusion, and the product, and projection, of our own greed
and selfishness. Now you may suspect that Cottingham is very much
exaggerating the contrast here – many today think of the world as
beautiful, and life as meaningful, while many in the past had only the
most abject of lives. The further question, and one I can only leave you
to think about, is whether, assuming there is at least something to this
contrast, we should think one vision truer than the other.
164
4.4 A middle ground
One question is whether there are, in different times and circumstances,

broad differences in our beliefs about life’s meaning. Both Cottingham
and I have suggested there are. I have suggested also that what is here
relatively local can seem global, and that we might wrongly assume that
conditions which can detract from meaning today have always been in
place. And I have wanted to use the example of religious belief as
relevant here: religious truth does not – presumably – change over time,
but belief and the extent of belief, certainly does. Many today have
doubts about religion: fewer in the past had such doubts. Are the
believers, the faithful, better off ? I am inclined to agree with
Cottingham that in some ways they are. Perhaps they will be more
cheerful and optimistic in the face of adversity, perhaps happier,
perhaps more inclined to think of their lives as having meaning. Will
their lives then have this meaning? We can raise again the question
about the experience machine. You are, when in the machine, subject to
a whole series of false beliefs about what you are doing, and what the
world is like. You will believe yourself happy and your life meaningful.
Are these beliefs, because based on false beliefs, themselves false? Or
are they true nevertheless? And we can ask the same questions about
the religious if, similarly, their beliefs about meaning and happiness are
based on false beliefs.
What, though, if the claims of religion are true?
165
4.5 Does meaning matter?

Freud said ‘The moment a man questions the meaning and value of life
he is sick’.3 Perhaps this is in part right. Someone who worries about
meaning might not have enough going for them in their lives, might be
ticking too few boxes on the objective list. But someone who in an
academic manner discusses meaning might just be taking part in some
currently fashionable discourse
Is meaning important? Most people through world history have not
worried or talked much about this. Is this because their lives are clearly
and robustly meaningful? Or are they instead clearly and irredeemably
meaningless? Neither suggestion seems plausible. So is it instead that
there is a certain sort of good and worthwhile life, perhaps even a
happy life, for which (as with the life of the tree or the life of a mouse)
questions of meaning just do not arise? After a whole series of
whirlwind, worldwide and altogether wearying adventures, in which
questions of meaning and purpose have often been uppermost, the
characters in Voltaire’s Candide retire to a modest house in the
countryside. Of course, the house does not stand alone:
‘I also know,’ said Candide, ‘that we must go and work in the

garden.’
‘You are quite right,’ said Pangloss. ‘When man was placed in the
Garden of Eden, he was put there “to dress it and to keep it”, to
work, in fact; which proves that man was not born to an easy life.’
‘We must work without arguing,’ said Martin; ‘that is the only way
to make life bearable.’
The entire household agreed to this admirable plan, and each
began to exercise his talents. Small as the estate was, it bore heavy
crops. There was no denying that Cunégonde was decidedly ugly,
but she soon made excellent pastry. Pacquette was excellent at
embroidery, and the old woman took care of the linen. No one
refused to work, not even Brother Giroflée, who was a good
carpenter, and thus became an honest man. From time to time
Pangloss would say to Candide:
‘There is a chain of events in this best of all possible worlds; for if
you had not been turned out of a beautiful mansion at the point
3
In a letter to Marie Bonaparte (Freud, 1960 [1937], p. 436).
166
4.5 Does meaning matter?
of a jackboot for the love of Lady Cunégonde, and if you had not
been involved in the Inquisition, and had not wandered over
America on foot, and had not struck the Baron with your sword,
and lost all those sheep you brought from Eldorado, you would
not be here eating candied fruit and pistachio nuts.’
‘That’s true enough,’ said Candide; ‘but we must go and work in
the garden.’
(Voltaire, 1947 [1759], pp. 143–4)
167
Summary
Questions both about meaning in individual lives and about the
meaning of life as a whole get asked. It seems both can be answered,
though making progress with the former is considerably easier than
with the latter. Three factors bearing on meaning that we have
considered here at some length relate, in reverse order, to the earlier
chapters of this book. So families might bear on meaning at the
individual level, with questions of death and of God (and also of time)
having relevance on the grander scale. I ended, though, with the
suggestion that all this fuss about meaning might be more trouble than
it is worth.
Activity
. a short audio recording on Pascal, which you might like to listen to for
background information
168
References
References
edition 1992).
Freud, S. (1960 [1937]) ‘Letter to Marie Bonaparte, 13 August 1937’, in Letters
of Sigmund Freud (ed. E.L. Freud, trans. T. Stern and J. Stern), New York, Basic
Books.
Voltaire (1947 [1759]) Candide (trans. J. Butt), Harmondsworth, Penguin.
169
Readings
Contents
Reading 1 Regan on the value of life 175
Reading 2 Kagan on death as deprivation 178
Reading 3 Benatar on why it is better never to
come into existence 180
Reading 4 Wolf on meaning in life and why it
matters 183
Reading 5 Cottingham on religion and the meaning
of life 185
Reading 1 Regan on the value of life

Source: Regan, T. (2004) The Case for Animal Rights, Berkeley,
CA, University of California Press, pp. 235–7.
Individuals as equal in value

The interpretation of formal justice favored here, which will be referred
to as equality of individuals, involves viewing certain individuals as having
value in themselves. I shall refer to this kind of value as inherent value
and begin the discussion of it by first concentrating on the inherent
value attributed to moral agents.
The inherent value of individual moral agents is to be understood as
being conceptually distinct from the intrinsic value that attaches to the
experiences they have (e.g. their pleasures or preference satisfactions), as
not being reducible to values of this latter kind, and as being
incommensurate with these values. To say that inherent value is not
reducible to the intrinsic values of an individual’s experiences means
that we cannot determine the inherent value of individual moral agents
by totaling the intrinsic values of their experiences. Those who have a
more pleasant or happier life do not therefore have greater inherent
value than those whose lives are less pleasant or happy. Nor do those
who have more ‘cultivated’ preferences (say, for arts and letters)
therefore have greater inherent value. To say that the inherent value of
individual moral agents is incommensurate with the intrinsic value of
their (or anyone else’s) experiences means that the two kinds of value
are not comparable and cannot be exchanged one for the other. Like
proverbial apples and oranges, the two kinds of value do not fall within
the same scale of comparison. One cannot ask, How much intrinsic
value is the inherent value of this individual worth – how much is it
equal to? The inherent value of any given moral agent isn’t equal to any
sum of intrinsic values, neither the intrinsic value of that individual’s
experiences nor the total of the intrinsic value of the experiences of all
other moral agents. To view moral agents as having inherent value is
thus to view them as something different from, and something more
than, mere receptacles of what has intrinsic value. They have value in
their own right, a value that is distinct from, not reducible to, and
incommensurate with the values of those experiences which, as
receptacles, they have or undergo.
175
Readings
The difference between the utilitarian-receptacle view of value regarding

moral agents and the postulate of inherent value might be made clearer
by recalling the cup analogy … On the receptacle view of value, it is
what goes into the cup (the pleasures of preference-satisfactions, for
example) that has value; what does not have value is the cup itself
(i.e. the individual himself or herself). The postulate of inherent value
offers an alternative. The cup (that is, the individual) has value and a
kind that is not reducible to, and is incommensurate with, what goes
into the cup (e.g. pleasure). The cup (the individual) does ‘contain’
(experience) things that are valuable (e.g. pleasures), but the value of the
cup (individual) is not the same as any one or any sum of the valuable
things the cup contains. Individual moral agents themselves have a distinctive
kind of value, according to the postulate of inherent value, but not
according to the receptacle view to which utilitarians are committed. It’s
the cup, not just what goes into it, that is valuable.
Two options present themselves concerning the possession by moral
agents of inherent value. First, moral agents might be viewed as having
this value to varying degrees, so that some may have more of it than
others. Second, moral agents might be viewed as having this value
equally. The latter view is rationally preferable. If moral agents are
viewed as having inherent value to varying degrees, then there would
have to be some basis for determining how much inherent value any
given moral agent has. Theoretically, the basis could be claimed to be
anything – such as wealth or belonging to the ‘right’ race or sex. More
likely, the basis might be claimed to be possession of certain virtues or
excellences, such as those favored by Aristotle. On this latter
(perfectionist) account of inherent value, those who have abundant
intellectual or artistic skills would have more inherent value than those
who have some, and these latter individuals would have more than
those who lack these virtues completely. To accept this view of the
inherent value of moral agents is to pave the way for a perfectionist
theory of justice: those with less inherent value could justly be required
to serve the needs and interests of those with more, even if it is not in
the interests of those who serve to do so. And the subjugated could
have no grounds to complain of the injustice of the treatment they
receive. Because they have less inherent value, they would get what they
deserve. Such an interpretation of justice is unacceptable. Equally
unacceptable, therefore, is any view of the inherent value of moral
agents that could serve as the basis of such a theory. We must reject the
view that moral agents have inherent value in varying degrees. All moral
agents are equal in inherent value, if moral agents have inherent value.
176
Three corollaries of the conclusion just reached are worth noting. First,
the inherent value of moral agents cannot be viewed as something they
can earn by dint of their efforts or as something they can lose by what
they do or fail to do. A criminal is no less inherently valuable than a
saint, if both are moral agents and if moral agents have inherent value.
Second, the inherent value of moral agents cannot wax or wane
depending upon the degree to which they have utility with respect to
the interests of others. The most beneficent philanthropist is neither
more nor less inherently valuable than, say, an unscrupulous used-car
salesman. Third, the inherent value of moral agents is independent of
their being the object of anyone else’s interests. When it comes to
inherent value, it matters not whether one is liked, admired, respected,
or in other ways valued by others. The lonely, forsaken, unwanted, and
unloved are no more nor less inherently valuable than those who enjoy
a more hospitable relationship with others. To view all moral agents as
equal in inherent value is thus decidedly egalitarian and nonperfectionist.
177
Readings
Reading 2 Kagan on death as

deprivation
Source: Kagan, S. (2012) Death, New Haven, CN, Yale University
Press, pp. 210–12.
So it’s not, as I say, altogether straightforward to see how an appeal to
nonexistence genuinely explains the badness of death, as opposed to simply
refocusing our attention on the problem. If I say that death is bad for me
because when I’m dead I don’t exist, we should still find ourselves puzzled
as to how it could possibly be that nonexistence can be bad for me.
The answer to this objection, I think, is to be found in drawing a
distinction between three different ways in which something can be bad
for me. First of all, something can be bad for me in an absolute,
robust, intrinsic sense. Take a headache, again, or some other kind of
pain – stubbing your toe or getting stabbed or being tortured. Pain is
intrinsically bad. It’s bad in its own right. It’s something we want to avoid
for its own sake. Frequently enough, things that are bad for you are bad
intrinsically; they’re bad by virtue of their very nature.
Second, many things are instrumentally bad: something may not be bad in
itself, but bad by virtue of what it causes or leads to. In particular, it
might lead to something that is, in itself, intrinsically bad. Losing your
job, for example, is not intrinsically bad – it’s not bad in and of itself –
but it is instrumentally bad, because it can lead to poverty and debt,
which in turn can lead to pain, suffering, and other intrinsic bads.
But there’s another way of something being bad for you, a third way that
it’s easy to overlook. Something can be bad comparatively. Something could
be bad because of what you’re not getting while you get this bad thing. It
could be bad by virtue of what economists call the ‘opportunity costs’. It’s
not that it’s intrinsically bad, nor even that it’s instrumentally bad; it’s bad
because while you’re doing this, you’re not getting something better.
How could that be? …
Suppose I hold out two envelopes and I say, ‘Pick one.’ You pick the
first one and you open it up and you say, ‘Hey look, ten bucks! Isn’t
that good for me?’ Well, of course, ten bucks is good. Admittedly, it’s
not intrinsically good (not worth having for its own sake), but it is
certainly instrumentally good (it can help you buy ice cream, for
example, which can give you pleasure). Suppose, however, that
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Reading 2 Kagan on death as deprivation
unbeknownst to you, the other envelope had $1,000 in it! Then we can
say, ‘Look, it’s bad for you that you picked the first envelope.’ Bad in
what sense? Bad in the comparative sense. You would have been better
off had you picked the second envelope. You would have been having
more good, or a greater amount of good.
Now I hope it is obvious that nonexistence can’t be bad for me in our
first sense. It can’t be that nonexistence is intrinsically bad, worth
avoiding for its own sake. That would make sense only if nonexistence
was somehow, for example, painful. But when you don’t exist, you have
no painful experiences. There’s nothing about nonexistence in and of
itself that makes us want to avoid it. And similarly, nonexistence isn’t
bad for me in our second sense. It doesn’t cause me to have pains later,
for example, nor does it lead to other intrinsic bads. So nonexistence
isn’t instrumentally bad either. But still, for all that, nonexistence can be
bad for me in the comparative sense, because of the lack that it involves.
When I don’t exist, I’m lacking stuff.
What am I lacking? What I’m lacking, of course, is life and, more
particularly still, the good things that life can give me. Nonexistence is bad
by virtue of the opportunity costs that are involved. Famously,
W.C. Fields wanted his tombstone to say ‘I’d rather be in Philadelphia.’
What’s bad about being dead is that you don’t get to experience and
enjoy any longer the various good things that life would offer us.
So nonexistence does provide the key to understanding the central
badness of death. Why is death bad? Because when I’m dead I don’t
exist. And if we ask, how can it be the case that nonexistence is bad? –
the answer is, because of the lack of the good things in life. When I
don’t exist, I am not getting the things that I could have otherwise
gotten, if only I were still alive. Death is bad because it deprives me of
the good things in life.
This is nowadays known as the deprivation account of the evil or badness
of death, since it holds that what is centrally bad about death is that it
deprives you of the goods of life you might otherwise be getting. And it
seems to me that the deprivation account basically has it right. To be
sure, I think that there are additional aspects of death that may also
contribute to its badness, aspects above and beyond the one that gets
emphasized by the deprivation account. … But still, it seems to me the
deprivation account points us correctly to the central thing that’s bad
about death. When I’m dead, I won’t be getting the good things in life;
I’ll be deprived of them. That’s the main reason death is bad.
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Reading 3 Benatar on why it is better

never to come into existence
Source: Benatar, D. (1997) ‘Why it is better never to come into
existence’, American Philosophical Quarterly, vol. 34, no. 3,
pp. 345–55. Footnotes omitted.
[Excerpt 1]
I
There is a common assumption in the literature about future possible
people that, all things being equal, one does no wrong by bringing into
existence people whose lives will be good on balance. This assumption
rests on another, namely that being brought into existence (with decent
life prospects) is a benefit (even though not being born is not a harm).
All this is assumed without argument. …
II
As a matter of empirical fact, bad things happen to all of us. No life is
without hardship. …
Of course I have not told the whole story. Not only bad things but also
good things happen only to those who exist. Pleasures, joys, and
satisfaction can be had only by existers. Thus, the cheerful will say, we
must weigh up the pleasures of life against the evils. As long as the
former outweigh the latter, the life is worth living. Coming into being
with such a life is, on this view, a benefit.
However, this conclusion does not follow. This is because there is a
crucial difference between harms and benefits which makes the
advantages of existence over non-existence hollow but the disadvantages
real. Consider pains and pleasures as exemplars of harms and benefits.
It is uncontroversial to say that:
1 the presence of pain is bad
and that
2 the presence of pleasure is good.
However, such a symmetrical evaluation does not apply to the absence of
pain and pleasure, for:
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Reading 3 Benatar on why it is better never to come into existence
3 the absence of pain is good, even if that good is not enjoyed by

anyone,
whereas
4 the absence of pleasure is not bad unless there is somebody for
whom this absence is a deprivation
My view about the asymmetry between (3) and (4) is widely shared.
[Excerpt 2]
My argument will proceed by showing how, given this common view, it
follows that it is better never to come into existence.
To show this, it is necessary to compare two scenarios, one (A) in
which X exists and one (B) in which X never exists. This, along with
the views already mentioned, can be represented diagrammatically:
Scenario A Scenario B
(X exists) (X never exists)
1) 3)
Presence of Pain Absence of Pain

(Bad) (Good)
2) 4)
Presence Absence
of Pleasure of Pleasure
(Good) (Not Bad)
It is uncontroversially the case that (1) is bad and (2) is good. However,
in accordance with the intuitions mentioned above, (3) is good even
though there is nobody to enjoy the good, but (4) is not bad because
there is nobody who is deprived of the absent pleasures.
…
To determine the relative advantages and disadvantages of coming into
existence and never coming to be, we need to compare (1) with (3), and
(2) with (4). In the first comparison we see that non-existence is
preferable to existence. The advantage is a real one. In the second
comparison, however, the pleasures of the existent, although good, are
not a real advantage over non-existence, because the absence of
pleasures is not bad. For the good to be a real advantage over non
existence, it would have to be the case that its absence were bad. …
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We can ascertain the relative advantages and disadvantages of existence

and non-existence in another way … by comparing (2) with (3) and (4)
with (1). There are benefits both to existing and non-existing. It is good
that existers enjoy their pleasures. It is also good that pains are avoided
through non-existence. However, that is only part of the picture.
Because there is nothing bad about never coming into existence, but
there is something bad about coming into existence, all things
considered non-existence is preferable.
III
One of the realizations which emerges from some of the reflections so
far is that the cost–benefit analysis of the cheerful – whereby one
weighs up (1) the pleasures of life against (2) the evils – is unconvincing
as a comparison between the desirability of existence and never existing.
The analysis of the cheerful is mistaken because it involves making the
wrong comparison. If we want to determine whether non-existence is
preferable to existence, or vice versa, then we must compare the left
and the right-hand sides of the diagram, which represent the alternative
scenarios in which X exists and in which X does not exist. Comparing
the upper and lower quadrants on the left, tells us something quite
different; namely, how good or bad a life X’s is.
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Reading 4 Wolf on meaning in life and why it matters
Reading 4 Wolf on meaning in life and

why it matters
Source: Wolf, S. (2007) ‘Meaning in life and why it matters’,
Tanner Lectures on Human Values, Princeton University
[Online]. Available at http://www.philosophy.northwestern.edu/
conferences/moralpolitical/08/papers/Wolf.pdf (Accessed 11
March 2013).
Academic philosophers do not talk much about meaningfulness in life.
The term is more likely to be used by theologians and therapists, and by
people who are in some way dissatisfied with their lives but are unable
to pin down why. People sometimes complain that their lives lack
meaning; they yearn for meaning; they seek meaning. People sometimes
judge others to be leading exceptionally meaningful lives, looking upon
them with envy or admiration. Meaning is commonly associated with a
kind of depth, and the felt need for meaning is often connected to the
worry that one’s life is empty or shallow. An interest in meaning is also
frequently associated with thoughts one might have on one’s deathbed.
When the word ‘meaningful’ is used in characterizing a life (or in
characterizing what is missing from a life), it calls something to mind, but
it is not clear what, nor is it clear that it calls or is meant to call the
same thing to mind in every context.
In offering a conception of meaningfulness, I do not wish to insist that
the term is always used in the same way, or that what I have to offer as
an analysis of meaningfulness can be substituted for that term in every
context. On the other hand, I do believe that much talk of meaning is
aimed at capturing the same abstract idea, and that my proposal of what
that idea is fits well with many of the uses to which the word is put.
According to the conception of meaningfulness I wish to propose,
meaning arises from loving objects worthy of love and engaging with
them in a positive way. What is perhaps most distinctive about this
conception of meaning, or about the category of value I have in mind,
is that it involves subjective and objective elements, inextricably linked.
‘Love’ is at least partly subjective, involving attitudes and feelings. In
insisting that the requisite object must be ‘worthy of love’, however, this
conception of meaning invokes an objective standard: Not any object
will do, nor is it guaranteed that the subject’s own assessment of
worthiness is privileged. One might paraphrase this by saying that,
according to my conception, meaning arises when subjective attraction
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meets objective attractiveness, and one is able to do something good or

positive about it.
Essentially, the idea is that a person’s life can be meaningful only if she
cares fairly deeply about some things, only if she is gripped, excited,
interested, engaged, or as I earlier put it, if she loves something – as
opposed to being bored by or alienated from most or all that she does.
Even a person who is so engaged, however, will not live a meaningful
life if the objects or activities with which she is occupied are worthless.
A person who loves smoking pot all day long, or doing endless
crossword puzzles, and has the luxury of being able to indulge in this
without limit does not thereby make her life meaningful. Finally, this
conception of meaning specifies that the relationship between the
subject and the object of her attraction must be an active one. Mere
passive recognition and a positive attitude toward an object’s or activity’s
value is not sufficient for a meaningful life. One must be able to be in
some sort of relationship with the valuable object of one’s attention –
to create it, protect it, promote it, honor it, or more generally, to
actively affirm it in some way or other.
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Reading 5 Cottingham on religion and the meaning of life
Reading 5 Cottingham on religion and

the meaning of life
Source: Cottingham, J. (2003) On the Meaning of Life, London and
New York, Routledge, pp. 86–104. Footnotes omitted.
Talking with people about the fundamental problems of life and its
meaning often uncovers a vague nostalgia for religious solutions now
felt to be no longer an option. This nostalgia can become acute when
life (as it tends to) throws up crises of greater or lesser intensity, or
significant landmarks of change – marriage, the birth of children,
separation, illness, bereavement. There are also, of course, large
numbers of people who want nothing to do with religion – and that is
no surprise, since the practitioners of ‘religion’ are a motley crew which
includes in its ranks charlatans, money-grubbing fraudsters and
disturbed or manipulative characters hungry for power and influence
over others, as well as people of genuine humility and kindness and
moral insight. To ask if one is in favour of religion is rather like asking
if one is in favour of music – the question is meaningless when the
label covers everything from muzak to Mozart. And in the case of
religion, whether or not we are drawn to it, and if so in what form,
tends to be strongly influenced by our personal experiences, particularly
in early life. But among the wide variety of responses, from devotion to
repugnance, which the term ‘religion’ inspires, the attitude of one we
may call ‘Tim’, an educated liberal Westerner, seems to be widespread,
perhaps even stereotypical. Tim will admit to those in his confidence
that he sometimes wishes he could be religious, and in a sense envies
those who have faith. He supposes it must be a comfort in times of
trouble; and is sporadically attracted by the dignified and resonant way
of dealing with life’s rites of passage which is offered by some
traditional religious services. Tim is clear, none the less, that it would be
intellectually dishonest for him to participate (except as a polite
onlooker). The crucial point is that he cannot accept the idea of a God
or gods – he rejects the whole concept of supernatural forces that
might intervene in human affairs. And the kinds of doctrine one is
meant to swallow if one joins a particular faith – for example doctrines
about supposed miraculous events like the Incarnation or Resurrection
– are ones he could never subscribe to.
On this kind of view, whatever may be the benefits of adopting a
spiritual framework for living, that option is closed because of the
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indigestibility of the doctrines one would be required to accept. But do

the doctrines have to loom quite so large? […] In the development of the
traditional disciplines of spirituality, both Western and Eastern – the
disciplines designed to produce [an] internal change […] – what is
stressed above all for the aspiring devotee is the importance not of
doctrines but of practices: techniques of meditation and prayer,
techniques for self-examination and greater self-awareness, and so on.
Rather like the physical routines embraced by the devotee of the gym
and the workout, such exercises are aimed at producing significant
change in the subject without necessarily requiring one to absorb an
elaborate body of theory.
But do not the practices presuppose belief ? Surely that is the most
central part of a religious outlook? Without in any way disparaging the
importance in many people’s lives of the credal statements they affirm, I
want to suggest that belief, in the sense of subscribing to a set of
theological propositions, is not in fact central to what it is to be
religious. The Pauline writings, to be sure, are full of insistence on
believing certain things about Jesus, in order to be saved; and many
modern preachers take a similar line. But it is, on reflection, quite
inconceivable that a good and loving God should make the bestowal of
his saving conditional on whether a given human being was ready to
affirm a particular proposition, for example about the inviolability of
the Mosaic law, or the precise status of Jesus of Nazareth, or the
primacy of the prophet Mohammed. Or that he would exclude from the
club of the saved those who conscientiously reject the dogmas specific
to any of the three faiths referred to.
Though the proponents of most religions have over the centuries
manifested a worrying tendency to dogmatism and intolerance, the
insistence on the centrality of actually standing up and making credal
statements has historically been a particular feature of Christianity. […]
[…]
The practices of spirituality which stem from this tradition are able to
give meaning to the lives of those who adopt them, not in virtue of
allegiance to complex theological dogmas but in virtue of a passionate
commitment to a certain way of life. What is it to live one’s life within
this framework? It would be a grotesque arrogance to try and sum this
up in any way that claimed to be even remotely definitive, but the
following elements at least seem to be discernible parts of the picture.
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First, it is to view life as a precious gift, not merely ‘accidental’, but

bestowed, stemming from a source that is generative of truth, beauty
and goodness. And it is, as a result, to view the world around us (the
natural world, and the world of human society) as, despite all its flaws,
transfigured by that beauty and goodness and truth.
Second, it is to see one’s life as, at certain fundamental turning points,
hinging on the choice between good and evil. It is to see individual
responsibility as the central fact about who we are. It may be quite
compatible with this to feel the pull of the other secular moral
frameworks (involving goals such as the maximisation of happiness or
the development of human excellences); but the fundamental meaning
of our status as moral agents will be seen in terms of a momentous
confrontation with our own freedom, our ability to chart the moral
course of our lives.
Third, it is to adopt a pattern of life which is structured by traditions of
worship – traditions followed not merely in periodic rites of passage
(naming, maturity, marriage, death), but also in individual habits of
response that mark the daily and weekly rhythms of living: in eating,
retiring to sleep, rising in the morning, as well as in collective patterns
of song and prayer or meditation, conducted regularly, week by week,
and at special seasons and festivals. Such disciplines, or acts of
‘submission’ (to use an Islamic concept) are adopted not out of a
superstitious idea that they will ward off evils or bring good luck, but as
a regular focus for moral and spiritual awareness, which itself becomes
an engine of interior change (for as Aristotle once put it, in an entirely
secular context, by doing certain things one becomes a certain kind of
person).
Fourth, it is always to be mindful of the truth affirmed in many central
religious texts, that life is made meaningful not by success or material
wealth, but by love – and love not of the possessive or appetitive kind,
but of the self-giving kind; it is to have the sense, however dim and
inadequate, that only in the truly outgoing impulse can a created being
transcend itself, and begin to reflect the self-giving radiance of its
creator.
From praxis to faith

Despite the emphasis so far placed on practical commitments and
forms of life, it nevertheless seems very hard to ignore a propositional
or cognitive element in the religious outlook. Even a prayer which is
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doctrinally minimalist, for example, the ‘Our Father’ or ‘Lord’s Prayer’ –

a prayer which contains nothing that a devout Jew or Muslim could not
perfectly well recite – at the very least implies the proposition that there
is a God who stands in a relation to his creatures that is analogous of
that of father to children. So whatever the importance of praxis, there
seems no getting away from the fact that the practices of spirituality
presuppose the truth of certain claims about ultimate reality – about a
divine or supernatural source of truth and goodness. This now poses a
major problem for those potentially attracted to the spiritual framework
as a way of giving meaning to their lives – namely that the truth claims
presupposed may seem ones which cannot responsibly be affirmed. […]
Must we not agree with the resounding declaration of the nineteenth
century agnostic W.K. Clifford that ‘it is wrong always, everywhere, and
for anyone, to believe anything on insufficient evidence’?
One philosopher who insisted that statements about God were beyond
the reach of human knowledge was Immanuel Kant: but he also
famously declared that he ‘went beyond knowledge in order to make
room for faith’; and faith has clearly often been a key element for those
adopting the path of spirituality. This fairly obviously applies to the
Christian way, but it appears to apply even to non-theistic modes of
spirituality such as Buddhism; for as one of its contemporary advocates
concedes, with disarming frankness, the Buddhist path is one its
adherents are initially drawn to not because its metaphysical claims
command their intellectual assent, but rather because they react to them
in a more passionate way, first with astonishment, and then with
attention and imagination: a Buddhist practitioner does not have to be
someone who ‘believes in the possibility of bodhi [awakening]’; rather,
‘the idea of bodhi can work upon the imagination, can entirely absorb
and reorient us, without our believing that there genuinely is such a
goal.’
That a religious idea can work on us without its cognitive credentials
being first secured is of course an ancient idea. Praestet fides supplementum,
says the famous hymn of Thomas Aquinas: faith, or trust, supplements
the deficiencies of the other faculties. What is particularly relevant to
our purposes is the link between the operation of faith and the key
strand of spirituality which we have already identified – the primacy
which it accords to prescribed practices and techniques such as those of
meditation, prayer and self-purification. Blaise Pascal, surely one of
those in the philosophical canon who is most aptly described as a
‘spiritual’ writer, was adamant that this practical dimension must take
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precedence over the intellectual and the theoretical. Partly anticipating

Kant, he declared in a celebrated passage that, ‘if there is a God, he is
infinitely beyond our comprehension, since having neither parts nor
limits he bears no relation to us. We are thus incapable of knowing
what he is or if he is’. Reason, then, cannot decide the matter. He then went
on to argue that the benefits of a religious life were so great that it was
rational to undertake practical exercises which would eventually
guarantee our sincere adoption of a religious outlook. What was
required for this purpose was not further rational argumentation, but
rather the training of the emotions:
Your desired destination is faith, but you do not know the road.
You want to cure yourself of unbelief, and you ask for remedies:
learn from those who were hampered like you and who now wager
all they possess. These are people who know the road you would
like to follow; they are cured of the malady for which you seek a
cure; so follow them and begin as they did – by acting as if they
believed [by attending church, and so on]. In the natural course of
events this in itself will make you believe, this will train you.
‘This will train you’: Pascal’s original verb is abêtir, literally to ‘make like
the beasts’, and this has made it seem to some critics as if Pascal is
offering us a degrading prescription for the crushing of critical
rationality. The underlying idea is in fact much more subtle: the ancient
notion (going back to Aristotle) of the training or habituation of the
emotions as part of the path towards a desired goal. We become
virtuous adults, says Aristotle, by being trained as children to be
virtuous, so that, for example, it eventually becomes natural and
automatic for us to feel the right emotions (e.g. courageous or generous
emotions) in the appropriate circumstances. You guide young children
on the path to the desired destination not, initially, by reasoning with
them, since they are not in a position to make the relevant rational
evaluations, but by training them, moulding their emotions and conduct
until the requisite behaviour becomes second nature.
The fact that emotions are trained, perhaps rather as a singer might
train his voice, or a tennis player her modes of responding to a serve,
does not, however, mean an abandonment of critical rationality, since it
remains true that the goal of the training is rationally defensible – and
indeed beneficial for all concerned. Pascal’s position is that there is a
rational (indeed almost utilitarian) argument for religious belief, hinging
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on the benefits of the religious life. The benefits Pascal actually

concentrates on are next-worldly; he develops the famous wager or bet,
namely that the sacrifices involved in living a religious life are well
worth the chance, however remote, of an infinite reward in the next life.
What looks like a crudely self-interested calculation has seemed to many
readers harshly out of tune with the very idea of spiritual salvation; but
fortunately we do not have to go into the ethics of the wager here,
since the benefits of the spiritual life that we have been focusing on
[…] are not motivating carrots added on as a later reward, but are
instead manifest goods intrinsically linked to the value of the spiritual
life as actually lived by its adherents: the care of the soul, tranquillity of
mind, release from the false pursuits of egoism and material gain, a
closer awareness of the mystery of life, an affirmation of its profundity
and its blessings.
The second vital element of the Pascalian strategy, alongside the stress
on the benefits of the spiritual path, is the insistence on the passions (or
emotions), rather than the intellect, as the key to the religious stance.
One is reminded here once again of Wittgenstein’s concept of religion,
in many respects the heir to Pascal’s approach: religious faith is neither
rational nor irrational but pre-rational, involving not so much intellectual
assent to doctrines as a ‘passionate commitment’ or attitude towards
life.
This, then, is the core of the argument I am adapting from Pascal. First,
there are clear benefits attached to the spiritual life. Second, the
metaphysical doctrines underpinning it relate to matters which are not
within the domain of rational knowledge. Third, that is something we
need not worry about too much, however, since the adoption of the
relevant practices will generate a passionate commitment that bypasses
the need for prior rational conviction.
For many philosophers, this seemingly cavalier attitude to the cognitive
component of the religious life will be anathema; and what is more, the
insistence on the primacy of practice may appear to invert the proper
relationship between theory and praxis. Thus one of Wittgenstein’s
critics has observed that ‘it is problematic to say that it is the religious
practice, for example in a rite, which gives content to religious
doctrines, because the doctrines themselves are supposed to underpin
the practice’. I agree that we cannot plausibly suppose that religious
practice gives content to doctrine; but the idea of the primacy of praxis
defended here can be put in different terms. The essential point is that
spiritual practices express an existential and a moral response to the
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human predicament that can plausibly be recognised as beneficial for

those who undertake them; and given that such responses can be
properly developed only within the context of passionate commitment to
the relevant form of life, it makes sense to go the Pascalian route, take
the risk, and gradually initiate oneself into the relevant practices, rather
than remaining outside in an unsatisfied state of dispassionate cognitive
aloofness.
[…]
The Pascalian proposal, that we should embark on the path of spiritual
practice, thus offers the hope of finding a dimension of meaning in life
which is simply not available within the world-view of analytic
rationalism. But despite the stress on praxis and emotional response, as
opposed to intellect, there is no ultimate stand-off or conflict here: it is
not a matter of wilful dumbing down, or of rejecting the deliverances of
rationality. If spiritual practice requires a degree of faith, a willingness to
accept something that transcends our cognitive capacities, then such
faith can appropriately be described as arising, in Kant’s phrase, from a
‘need of reason’. According to Kant, I cannot prove (or disprove) God:
yet because it would be humanly impossible to devote my life to the
good if I thought I was striving after ‘a conception which at bottom
was empty and had no object’, it is appropriate for ‘the righteous man
to say “I will that there be a God … I firmly abide by this and will not
let this faith be taken from me”.’
The plea is for an acknowledgement that human beings, in their
vulnerability and finitude, need, in order to survive, modes of
responding to the world which go beyond what is disclosed in a rational
scientific analysis of the relevant phenomena. Such modes of response,
moreover, are characteristically expressed through practices whose value
and resonance cannot be exhausted by a cognitive analysis of
propositional contents. Wittgenstein was fond of quoting Goethe’s Im
Anfang war die Tat – ‘In the beginning was the Deed’. He also warned,
in the closing sentence of his early masterpiece the Tractatus, that ‘what
we cannot speak of we must pass over in silence’. Altering that final
phrase, we might say instead that the domain that ‘cannot be spoken of ’
must be handled through praxis – the practice of spirituality.
Coda: intimations of meaning

The Corn was Orient and Immortal Wheat, which never should be
reaped nor was ever sown. I thought it had stood from everlasting
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to everlasting. The Dust and Stones of the Street were as Precious

as GOLD … And yong Men Glittering and Sparkling Angels, and
Maids strange Seraphic Pieces of Light and Beauty! … Eternity
was Manifest in the Light of the Day and som thing infinit Behind
evry thing appeared: which talked with my Expectation and moved
my Desire.
Thomas Traherne
Instruction may make men learned, said Bernard of Clairvaux, but

feeling makes them wise. Learned academics, whose livelihood is linked
to displays of their erudition and cleverness, may act as if all the
questions of religion and the meaning of life could be answered from
the study or the seminar room. But the illuminations that come from
the practice of spirituality cannot be accessed by means of rational
argument alone, since the relevant experiences are not available to us
during those times when we are adopting the stance of detached
rationality.
To access, however, is not the same as to assess. Even if we cannot gain
access to spiritual illumination via rational analysis, this is not to say
philosophy, or critical rationality, can have nothing to say about the
quest for meaning via the path of spirituality. For philosophy has an
obligation to take into account all experience that is part of the human
condition. And although claims about the divine may lie beyond the
horizon of scientific knowledge, it is not as if embarking on the spiritual
quest is a total ‘leap in the dark’. For our human awareness, even of the
everyday variety, indisputably includes experiences in which spiritual
values are made manifest – experiences in which, arguably, we have
intimations of a transcendent world of meaning that breaks through into
the ordinary world of our five senses. Our apprehension of beauty, the
beauty of the natural world, is one example. As simple an experience as
that of seeing the colours of the leaves in autumn discloses the world
around us as resonating with an astonishing harmony and richness; it
reveals objects as qualitatively irradiated in modalities which even the
most sober of analytic philosophers have agreed are not fully capturable
in the language of physics. When William Blake urged us ‘To see a
World in a Grain of Sand and Heaven in a Wild Flower’, he was not
advocating some strange incoherent mindset of the kind philosophers
sometimes disparage by using the label ‘mystical’. Rather, he was
pointing to something that few humans can honestly deny: our ability, in
those lucid moments that Wordsworth called ‘spots of time’, to see the
192
world transfigured with beauty and meaning. There is a clear and

unbroken continuum from our immediate everyday experience of the
natural world, through the more reflective poetic musings of Blake and
Wordsworth, through to the ecstatic vision of Thomas Traherne quoted
above, a vision in which the wonder and preciousness of the world, and
its human inhabitants, is so vividly manifest.
The pervasive modern vision of the cosmos as bleak and meaningless,
with life no more than an accidental scum on the barren rocks, is a
vision that is seen through the lens of our own fouled-up lives – the
empty concrete wastes of littered parking lots, the dirty, graffiti-defaced
walls of decaying warehouses and overcrowded office buildings. But
take away the grime our own greed has created, take away the perpetual
fog of exhaust fumes, and the endless drone of jetliners ripping up the
ozone layer, the constant flickering of screens and blaring of speakers.
Think back instead only two or three centuries ago, to the limpid scenes
captured by Canaletto, or the translucent interiors of Vermeer, the pure
air shimmering and sparkling, the colours of everyday objects bright and
vivid and new. Think instead of Moses emerging from his tent to gaze
up at the brilliant canopy of blazing stars in the clear night of the Sinai
desert; the clean pure silence, the astonishing radiance of beauty. That is
our world: the beauty is not ‘projected’ onto it by the observer, but is
inescapably real, calling forth an irresistible response in our hearts. We
respond to beauty, as we respond to truth and goodness: as objective
realities beyond ourselves, that have the power to inspire us and draw
us forward into the light. Of course it is possible, as many philosophers
since Hume have argued, that such objectivity is an illusion, resulting
from the mind’s tendency to ‘spread itself ’ or project its own feelings
outwards onto the world. But it is at least worth considering that talk of
‘projection’ may apply most aptly not to our natural joy and wonder at
the immeasurable beauty of the natural world but rather to the bleak
modernistic vision of the universe as void of meaning and value. It may
stem from our own confusions and bitterness as we wilfully turn away
from the light, as we steadily advance with our bulldozers until we
cover the whole planet in concrete and then complain that the cosmos
we live in is no more than meaningless rubble.
Our aesthetic experience gives us intimations of a world of value
outside our own urgent self-oriented concerns. But to call the wonder
expressed in a vision like Traherne’s ‘aesthetic’ is in a certain sense to
trivialise it, to make it seem like the precious exclamations of an effete
art critic showing off his refinement in a picture gallery. In reality,
193
Readings
aesthetic wonder is also suffused with a moral significance: it was no

accident that Immanuel Kant linked the brilliancy of the starry heavens
above with the moral law within, as the two most awe-inspiring objects
in creation. What is manifest in the beauty of the people who walk
through Traherne’s cornfields, the young men who are ‘angels’ and the
young women who are ‘seraphic pieces of light and beauty’, is their
human worth: the preciousness of individuals who are vulnerable,
mortal, and yet somehow of eternal value, since their human lot of
fragility and suffering has the capacity to deepen their understanding
and sympathy – ‘that one poor word that involves all our best insight
and our best love’ – and ultimately, mysteriously, to provide the grace
for redemption and rebirth.
To see the world as Traherne saw it is not something that is dictated by
a scientific analysis of the given facts, yet neither is it incompatible with
those facts. The moral categories of our experience, so closely bound
up with the question of life’s meaning, are not arcane or mystical
categories, but are inseparable from our human way of being in the
world. Inseparable, but not automatically achieved. When things go
wrong,
Life’s but a fleeting shadow, a poor player
that struts and frets his hour upon the stage
and then is heard no more. It is a tale
told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
signifying … nothing.
Macbeth’s hell, his deep depression about his life and future, is bound
up with a vivid sense of the collapse of any meaning in life. That in
turn is triggered by his interior moral collapse, his capitulation to greed
and ambition, which lets him take the first step towards betrayal and
murder: that capitulation, which was supposed to give him the crown
and solve all his problems, turned out to be the first step to ethical
disintegration, the first step on the ‘primrose path to the everlasting
bonfire’. Human beings cannot live wholly and healthily except in
responsiveness to objective values of truth and beauty and goodness. If
they deny those values, or try to subordinate them to their own selfish
ends, they find that meaning slips away.
Perhaps there are some who can achieve a systematic responsiveness to
these values without the kind of focus provided by the disciplines of
spirituality; but the argument of this book has been that such a ‘go it
194
alone’ strategy is fraught with problems. We cannot create our own

values, and we cannot achieve meaning just by inventing goals of our
own; the fulfilment of our nature depends on the systematic cultivation
of our human capacities for wonder and delight in the beauty of the
world, and the development of our moral sensibilities for compassion,
sympathy and rational dialogue with others. Yet, because of the fragility
of our human condition, we need more than a rational determination to
orient ourselves towards the good. We need to be sustained by a faith
in the ultimate resilience of the good; we need to live in the light of
hope. Such faith and hope, like the love that inspires both, is not
established within the domain of scientifically determinate knowledge,
but there is good reason to believe it is available to us through
cultivating the disciplines of spirituality. Nothing in life is guaranteed,
but if the path we follow is integrally linked, as good spiritual paths are,
to right action and self-discovery and respect for others, then we have
little to lose; and if the claims of religion are true, then we have
everything to gain. For in acting as if life has meaning, we will find,
thank God, that it does.
195
The Value of Life
Glossary
atomism
The view that all things, except atoms, are composed of many individual
and indivisible parts, themselves atoms.
categorical desire
Wanting something unconditionally, in all circumstances.
conditional desire
Wanting something only given certain conditions or assumptions.
contingent truth
A proposition whose truth value can vary from time to time, or
circumstance to circumstance. So even when it is true it is possible for
it to be false.
Deprivation View (of death)
Pain and the prevention of pleasure are both bad. As death deprives us
of pleasure, so it is bad for us.
Epicurean View (of death)
Only pain is bad. As death causes us no pain, so it is not bad for us.
fallacy of composition
The mistake of thinking that what is true of the parts of a thing is true
also of the whole.
fallacy of division
The mistake of thinking that what is true of the whole of something is
true of its parts.
harm
To harm something or someone is either to reduce its well-being, or
to prevent (or in part prevent) an increase in its well-being. (As well
being is restricted to living things, so too is harm.)
hedonism
Hedonism’s slogan is ‘Nothing counts but pleasure.’ That slogan
can be applied in all sorts of areas to give all sorts of hedonist views.
196
Glossary
In particular, the slogan generates a descriptive view (a view about what

actually happens) and a normative view (a view about what happens if
people behave rationally). These two hedonist views form an important
contrast: descriptive hedonism, the view that the only thing that people
are ever actually motivated by is the prospect of gaining pleasure or
avoiding pain; and normative hedonism, the view that the only thing
that people are ever rationally motivated by is the prospect of gaining
pleasure or avoiding pain.
incommensurability
Two things are incommensurable when they cannot be compared or
measured against a common scale. So their values are incommensurable
when these cannot be compared or measured against a common scale.
instrumental value
The value that something has because it is the instrument for, or the
means to, some further end.
intrinsic value
The value a thing has when it is valuable just in itself, independently of
its being valued by someone.
necessary truth
A proposition whose truth value cannot vary from time to time, or
circumstance to circumstance. So it is impossible for it to be false.
(There are also necessary falsehoods. It is impossible for these to be
true.)
person
In its ordinary sense this is synonymous with ‘human being’, and its
plural is ‘people’. In a philosophical sense it refers to a thinking being
with an awareness of itself and of time, and its plural is ‘persons’.
personal value
The value a thing has when it is valued by someone for itself, or for its
own sake, and not as an instrument or tool. Similar to or the same as
subjective value.
197
The Value of Life
posthumous harm
A harm that occurs after death. Either (a) someone or something is
harmed after they die, or (b) a harming event occurs after death, and
someone is harmed before they die. Both notions are problematic.
procreative asymmetry
The view that there is an asymmetry regarding starting good lives and
starting bad lives. Starting bad lives is forbidden, while starting good
lives is permitted, but not required.
procreative beneficence
The view that there is an obligation, when starting a life, to make or
choose the best life possible. (So whether we are considering the same
or a different life is of no relevance.)
respect
To respect a thing is to treat or engage with it appropriately. There is
often the suggestion that this involves approval or admiration.
subjective value
The value a thing has when it is valued by someone for itself, or for its
own sake, and not as an instrument or tool. Similar to or the same as
personal value.
well-being
How well a life is going for the person (or other being) whose life it is.
It is restricted to living things. (See also: harm.)
198
Acknowledgements
Acknowledgements
Grateful acknowledgement is made to the following sources:
Cover
Mechanical hen, by Yoneya Toys Co. Ltd, Japan, 1975−79, lithographed
tinplate. Victoria and Albert Museum, London. Photo: © Victoria and
Albert Museum, London.
Chapter 1
Excerpt from Life’s Dominion: An Argument about Abortion, Euthanasia, and
Individual Freedom by Ronald Dworkin. Copyright © 1993 by Ronald
Dworkin. Used by permission of Alfred A. Knopf, an imprint of the
Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group, a division of Random House LLC.
All rights reserved.
Chapter 2
Larkin, P. (1988) ‘Aubade’, in Collected Poems, pp. 208−9, The Marvell
Press and Faber and Faber Limited. Reproduced with permission by
Faber and Faber Limited UK, and Farrar, Straus & Giroux, NY USA.
Chapter 4
The Project Gutenberg eBook of Candide, by Voltaire, commentator
Philip Littell. Released 27/11/06, eBook no 19942. Reproduced under
the terms of http://www.gutenberg.org/wiki/Gutenberg:
The_Project_Gutenberg_License#The_Full_Project_Gutenberg_Licen
se_in_Legalese_.28normative.29
Reading 1
The Case for Animal Rights, by Tom Regan, © 2004 by The Regents of
the University of California. Published by the University of California
Press, USA, and with the permission of the author.
Reading 2
Kagan, S. (2012) ‘The badness of death’, in Death, The Open Yale
Courses Series. Copyright © 2012 by Yale University Press: New Haven
& London, US/UK. All rights reserved.
199
The Value of Life
Reading 3
Benatar, D. (1997) ‘Why it is better never to come into existence’,
American Philosophical Quarterly, vol. 34, no. 3, pp. 345−55. Published by
University of Illinois Press on behalf of North American Philosophical
Publications, Illinois, USA.
Reading 4
Wolf, Susan; ‘Meaning in life and why it matters’. © 2010 by Princeton
University Press. Reprinted by permission of Princeton University Press.
Reading 5
‘Meaning, vulnerability and hope’, from On the Meaning of Life, John
Cottingham, © 2003 Routledge, Taylor and Francis Group. Reproduced
by permission of Taylor & Francis Books UK.
Every effort has been made to contact copyright holders. If any have
been inadvertently overlooked the publishers will be pleased to make
the necessary arrangements at the first opportunity.
200
Index
Index
Page numbers in bold refer to figures.
Camus, Albert 159
abortion 7, 8, 17, 21, 22, 23, 38, 42, 77–80

Canaletto 164, 193
to save mother’s life 33

capital punishment 10
see also fetuses

Carruthers, Peter 75–6, 77n
aesthetic experience see artwork; beauty; happiness;

categorical desire 70, 197
pleasure
Catholic Church 8, 100
afterlife 54, 55
see also Christianity
see also death; immortality; religion

children 11
agnosticism see non-religious views and sanctity of

see also procreation
life; religion
Christianity 10, 54, 58, 160, 162, 186, 188
Alzheimer’s disease see loss of self-consciousness

see also Catholic Church
Anaxagoras 155
Clifford, W.C. 188
animals v, 7, 10, 15, 18, 19, 29, 30, 31–2, 37–9, 38

coma see loss of self-consciousness
desires of 72, 73, 75–7, 78

conditional desire 70, 197
meaning of life for 135, 137, 137, 138

contingent truth 149–51, 197
personhood of 66–8, 67, 125

contraception 78, 79, 80
see also plants

Cottingham, John 160–5, 185–95
anti-natalism 124–6
Benatar and 116–23, 124, 180–2 dead bodies 57, 57, 67
see also non-existence; procreation see also death
Anscombe, G.E.M. 33n

deafness 96, 97, 113–15
Aquinas, Thomas 188

death v, vi, 53, 87
Aristotle 155, 176, 186, 189

badness of 57–8, 60, 82–3, 84, 85–6, 87
artwork vi, 20, 24, 24, 26, 27, 28

as deprivation 54, 63–4, 65, 75, 79–80, 87, 178–9,
atheism see non-religious views and sanctity of life;

197
religion
desires and 69–71, 75–7, 78, 80–1
atomism 54, 56–7, 57, 197

persons and 66–8, 71, 72–4, 125
Austen, Jane 159

Epicurean View 54, 56–60, 57, 63
rejected 60–2
babies 11, 32
meaning of life and 150, 156–8, 168
see also fetuses; procreation

see also dead bodies; euthanasia; immortality; non
beauty 162, 187, 192–4

existence; posthumous harm
Beckett, Samuel 159
Deprivation View of death 54, 63–4, 65, 75, 79–80,
belief 160–5, 186, 188–9
87, 178–9, 197
see also doubt; religion

desires and 69–71, 75–7, 78, 80–1
Benatar, David 99–100, 116–23, 124, 127, 180–2

persons and 66–8, 71, 72–4, 125
Bentham, Jeremy 12
see also Epicurean View (of death)
Bernard of Clairvaux 192

Descartes, René 72
birth see procreation

desires vi, 197
Blake, William 192–3

of animals 72, 73, 75–7, 78
Brady, Ian 145

death and 69–71, 75–7, 78, 80–1
brain damage see loss of self-consciousness

disability 96, 97, 113–15
Broome, John 105–7

see also loss of self-consciousness
Buddhism 188
201
Index
doubt 151, 165 see also beauty; hedonism; pain; pleasure; well
see also belief; religion being
Druids 10 harm 103, 104, 118, 145, 197
Dworkin, Ronald vi, 20–2, 23, 25, 27 death as v, vi, 63
see also value of life posthumous 58, 59–60, 199
dying see death procreation as 120–3, 124, 180–3
unknown 57, 59, 62
Edwards, Robert 95 see also pain; posthumous harms; torture
embryos 32, 38, 79–80 hedonism vi, 54, 57–8, 59, 60, 62,
see also babies; fetuses 64, 197–8
environmentalism 15 see also happiness; pleasure
Epicurean View (of death) 54, 56–60, 82, 197 Hindus 10, 161
deprivation and 54, 63, 75 Hume, David 164, 193
rejected 60–2
see also Deprivation View of death; Epicurus immortality 150, 152, 156–8, 157
Epicurus 55 incommensurability 40, 85–6, 198
see also Epicurean View (of death) individuals, equality of 175–7
epistemology 151 see also value
euthanasia 7, 9, 13, 17, 33–4, 38, 40, 41, 42, 103 inherent value see intrinsic value
of animals 10 instrumental value 20, 21, 23, 25, 27, 33, 198
see also killing; prolongation of life; suicide procreation and 101, 102
experience machine 58–9, 144, 147, 165 meaning of life and 137, 141, 148, 156
intrinsic/inherent value 20–1, 25–7, 28,
fallacy of composition 154–5, 197 33, 35, 198
fallacy of division 154–5, 156, 197 equality of individuals and 175–7
fear of death 54, 61 procreation and 101
see also Epicurean View (of death) Islam 10

Feldman, Fred 85
fetuses 11, 21, 27, 32, 33, 72–3, 77–80, 78 Jains 10
see also abortion Judaism 10
Fields, W.C. 179 justice, theories of 176
final value 25n
Freud, Sigmund 166 Kagan, Shelly 64–5, 178–9
Kant, Immanuel 188, 189, 191, 194
global meaning 149–56, 165 killing 33
death and 150, 156–8 as wrong 16–17, 43, 44, 77
see also meaning of life see also abortion; euthanasia; respect for life;
God see religion sanctity of life; war
Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von 191
goodness of life 9, 13 Larkin, Philip 61, 61, 156
local meaning 140–8, 148
happiness: Locke, John 66
meaning of life and 141, 142, 146–7 loss of self-consciousness:
procreation and 96–102, 103, 104 badness of death and 57–8, 60, 83, 85
betterness of life and 105–7 personhood and 67, 68, 72, 73, 77
procreative beneficence 108–14, 113 sanctity of life and 32, 38
wrongness of procreation 117–3 see also persons
202
Index
see also harm; pleasure

Macbeth (Shakespeare character) 194 Parfit, Derek 108–11, 112–13
Marquis, Don 77–80 Pascal, Blaise 162–3, 163, 188–90, 191
meaning of life v, vii, 135–9, 159–60, 165, 166–8, passing judgement 144–5
183–4
persistent vegetative state see loss of self
global meaning 149–56, 165
consciousness
death and 150, 156–8
personal value 21, 23–5, 24, 26, 27, 33, 34, 35, 40, 198, 199
local meaning 140–8, 165
procreation and 101
religion and 160–5, 161, 168, 185–95
meaning of life and 137
see also meaninglessness of life
personhood see persons
meaninglessness of life: persons 66–8, 67, 71, 72–4, 81, 198
as a distorted view 193, 194 see also animals; loss of self-consciousness; non
as a necessary truth 149–50, 154–6, 158 persons; plants
types of lives and 135, 138, 140, 141 Pinter, Harold 159
see also meaning of life plants v, 10, 15, 16, 18, 29, 30
methodology 13–14 death and 63, 64
microbes 10 meaning of life of 138
modality 151, 153 see also animals
Moore, G.E. 26, 27 pleasure vi, 82

moral agents 35, 36, 37–8, 175–7 desire and 76
morality 141, 146, 162 existence and 118, 119, 120, 121, 124
meaning and 146–7, 148
Nagel, Thomas 35, 36, 37, 39, 40, 58, 60, 152–3, 156 pain and 54, 56, 60, 62, 64, 72, 85–6, 197–8
Narveson, Jan 100, 113 procreation and 72, 96, 118–19, 125–6, 180–1
necessary truth 149–51, 198 see also Deprivation View of death; happiness;
non-existence 56, 104, 119–21, 150–1, 178–9 hedonism; pain
as preferable 182 posthumous harm 58, 59–60, 199
see also anti-natalism; death; procreation see also harm
Non-Identity Problem see same people/different pre-existence 122–3
people distinction see also non-existence
non-living things 15 preferentialism vi
non-persons 71, 72–3, 77 procreation v, 95–102, 127
see also persons anti-natalism 124–6
non-religious views and sanctity of life 10, 18, 42, 43 Benatar and 116–23, 124, 180–2
betterness and 105–7
objective-list theories vi procreative beneficence 108–14, 127
meaning of life and 140, 142, 147, 159, 160, 166 see also non-existence; procreative asymmetry;
see also objectivity and meaning procreative beneficence
objectivity and meaning 138–9, 140–1, 142–5, 147, procreative asymmetry 101, 102, 103–4, 105, 123,
159, 160, 183–4 124, 127, 199
see also procreation
pain: procreative beneficence 108–11, 112–14, 127, 199
animals and 30, 72 prolongation of life 9, 10, 16–17, 82
desire and 70, 76 see also euthanasia
as harm 58–9
pleasure and 54, 56, 60, 62, 64, 72, 85–6, 197–8 rationality, and religion 189–90, 191, 192, 195
procreation and 72, 96, 118–19, 125–6, 180–1 Reagan, Ronald 8
quality of life and 21, 33–4, 73, 83, 84, 85 reason 162
203
Index
see also rationality, and religion see also personal value; subjectivism, and meaning;
Regan, Tom 35–6, 37–8, 39–40, 66, 162, 175–7 value
religion: subjectivism, and meaning 138–9, 140–1, 142–5, 146,
Christianity 10, 54, 58, 160, 162, 186, 188 183–4
Catholic Church 8, 100 see also subjective value; value
meaning of life and 137–8, 141, 159, 160–5, 161, success 146–7, 148
168, 185–95 suffering 30
meaningless without 150, 155 suicide 12, 42, 69, 80–1
rationality and 189–90, 191, 192, 195 see also death; euthanasia; killing
sanctity of life and v, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 18, 39,
42–3, 43, 45 Taurek, John M. 33n
see also abortion; afterlife; belief; doubt; euthanasia Third Man (film) 149
respect 199 time 104–5, 151–3
for life 14–16, 44 see also space
see also sanctity of life; value torture 83, 84
reverence for life 14–16 see also harm; pain
see also sanctity of life; value Traherne, Thomas 192, 193, 194
rights: truth 149–51, 197, 198
right to die 12
right to life 9, 12, 31 value 20, 22
rights-based ethics vi humans as having special 17–20, 29–38
see also euthanasia; sucide incommensurability and 40–1
Russell, Bertrand 26, 27 instrumental value 20–1, 23, 25, 26, 27, 33, 198
procreation and 101, 102
Safran Foer, Jonathan 14 meaning of life and 137, 141, 148, 156
same people/different people distinction 106–7, 109, intrinsic/inherent value 20–1, 25–7, 28, 33, 35,
110 198
sanctity of life v, vi–vii, 45, 17–20, 29–38 equality of individuals and 175–7
meaning of 8–13, 11 procreation and 101–2
methodology and 13–14 personal value 21, 23–5, 24, 26, 27, 33,
non-religious views 10, 18, 42, 43 34, 35, 40
religion and v, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 18, 39, procreation and 101–2, 138
42–3, 43, 45 postulate of 39–40
respect for life and 14–16, 44 subjective value 21–2
wrongness of killing 16–17, 43, 44, 77 see also sanctity of life; subjectivism, and meaning
see also abortion; euthanasia; killing; suicide; value Vermeer, Johannes 193
Sartre, Jean-Paul 159 virtue see morality
Savulescu, Julian 112 Voltaire 166–7
Schopenhauer, Arthur 99–100, 99, 117, 127
Schweitzer, Albert 14–15, 16, 29 Walzer, Michael vi
self-consciousness 30, 32 war 7, 10, 17
see also animals; loss of self-consciousness; persons see also killing
Shakespeare, William 159 well-being vi, 107, 147n, 187, 197, 199
Singer, Peter 18–19, 31, 37, 38, 42 Williams, Bernard 33n, 69–70, 158
space 104–5, 105, 151, 152, 153 Wittgenstein, Ludwig 26, 190, 191
spirituality 14, 160–1, 162, 164, 185–6, 188–9, 192 Wolf, Susan 142–4, 143, 145, 183–4
subjective value 20, 21, 198, 199 Wordsworth, William 192–3
204

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A333 Key questions in philosophy

The Value of Life

The Open University, Walton Hall, Milton Keynes MK7 6AA

ISBN 978 1 7800 7817 5

4 Does life have meaning? 129

Materials you will need 6

Respect for life 14

1.4 Sanctity and value 29

1.5 Further views 35

1.6 Sanctity and religion 42

Materials you will need

the A333 website):

. The sanctity of life (Part 1)

. The sanctity of life (Part 2).

. Interview with Singer.

As a nation today, we have not rejected the sanctity of human

Human life is the basis of all goods, and is the necessary

Having made a start, we need to go further, and consider some of the

Figure 1.1 A sacred place. Aisinai´pi, in Alberta, Canada, is a sacred site of

The sanctity view is often restricted to innocent human life, with

Sanctity and rights

The preceding claim, about the wrongness of killing, is more clearly

It is often very tempting, when asked a question, to assume you

Respect for life

A man is really ethical only when he obeys the constraint laid

Figure 1.2 Albert Schweitzer in the hospital he founded in Lambaréné,

Suppose we should, in this way, revere or respect things, life included.

perhaps most, have a different, stronger, more demanding interpretation

in mind. Let us consider this now.

In discussing the doctrine of the sanctity of human life, I shall

3 Is Singer right to claim that on a widespread version of the sanctity

Read the extract from Life’s Dominion by the American philosopher

Ronald Dworkin below, in which he distinguishes different sorts of value.

Then answer the questions that follow it.

Something is instrumentally important if its value depends on

Something is intrinsically valuable, on the contrary, if its value

Is human life subjectively or instrumentally or intrinsically

If we think, however, that the life of any human organism,

1 How many different sorts of value does Dworkin distinguish?

as something altogether distinctive. So, three kinds then (but I return

Figure 1.3 Anti-abortion protesters attending the March for Life,

football and whisky, that some people, or millions of people, just

Figure 1.4 Children's artwork. Photo: © Eleanor Anderson.

for your convenience, or to make your life go better, and then to be

same. The Cambridge philosopher G.E. Moore, friend of Wittgenstein

The method which must be employed in order to decide the

He goes on to claim that this method helps guard against various

consists in supposing that what seems absolutely necessary here

1.4 Sanctity and value

If we focus in on animal life (including human life), things begin to

1.5 Further views

There are elements which, if added to one’s experience, make

life better; there are other elements which, if added to one’s

set aside is not merely neutral: it is emphatically positive.

Therefore life is worth living even when the bad elements of

experience are plentiful, and the good ones too meagre to

outweigh the bad ones on their own. The additional positive

weight is supplied by experience itself, rather than by any of

The inherent value of individual moral agents is to be

understood as being conceptually distinct from the intrinsic

value that attaches to the experiences they have (e.g. their

pleasures or preference satisfactions), as not being reducible

to values of this latter kind, and as being incommensurate with