The purpose of the text is to get closer to what death means to the one who dies, concerning non-human animals that we kill for food. The leading theory of the meaning of death is the so-called deprivation account, which says that an individual's death is bad (or good) for the individual insofar as it deprives him/her of the good life (or bad life) they would otherwise have had. However, the deprivation account implies that it is worse to die as a fetus than as a 20-year-old, which the author thinks is unintuitive and not in line with most people’s view. Christopher Belshaw's theory "Desire to live" and Jeff McMahan's theory "Time-relative interest account" (TRIA) states that the death of the 20-year old is worse, and presentation and discussion of these theories is the main focus of the essay. "Desire to live," states that in addition to deprivation of well-being, an individual needs to have categorical desires, desires that give reasons for continuing to live, for death to be bad for the dying person. TRIA says that in addition to deprivation of well-being, an individual needs to be psychologically connected to oneself at those times when the good he/she is deprived would have happened if he/she had not died. The author argues that both theories provide good evidence as to why the respective requirements for the badness of death are reasonable, but that TRIA is the better one since it is easier to apply to empirical research. Furthermore, TRIA is reasonable in itself, and gives the answer that the death of non-human animals can be bad in a way that matter to themselves. However, this is often not the case in practice because of their situation where they are deprived of more poor life than good life.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:UPSALLA1/oai:DiVA.org:umu-173972 |
| Date | January 2020 |
| Creators | Fridh, Simon |
| Publisher | Umeå universitet, Institutionen för idé- och samhällsstudier |
| Source Sets | DiVA Archive at Upsalla University |
| Language | Swedish |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Student thesis, info:eu-repo/semantics/bachelorThesis, text |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Rights | info:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess |
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