Is there anything worse than death?

I imagine that having your eyes poked out, your eardrums burst, your tongue cut off, and your hands and feet cut off, then left to live...would be worse than death.

I agree, it doesn't matter who cooked up these ideas. I was responding directly to your two assertions:

One, that we should always rate an outcome of death as worse than any other outcome for a person.

Two, that a person's death is worse than any other outcome for that person, including severe lifelong torture.

I think he was saying that... we should always rate an outcome of death as worse than any other outcome for a person.

So from an impersonal standpoint, a person's death is worse than any other outcome for that person, including severe lifelong torture.

Why should we always rate an outcome of death worse than any other outcome for a person? Why is a person's death worse than any other outcome for that person, including severe lifelong torture?

If I understood your last paragraph correctly, you are saying that because we do not have objective accounts about the badness of death as opposed to say the badness of life long torture, we have to assume that death is the worse of the two?

Objective better/worse relations can never exist, since labelling something as either better or worse requires a subjective judgment call.

Besides the opinion about the 'worseness'of death is quite meaningless, if it is not given by the person about to die. How can I judge how to rate another person's death?

All we can say in general is probably that, generally speaking, people see death as an undesireable event which should be avoided for as long as possible. This, however, by no means indicates that 'death' is the worst state an individual can be in. That is for each individual to decide.
Else, no suicide would make sense.

And any doctor commiting euthanasia, even with consent of the victim, would automatically be a murderer, and guilty of one of the worst crimes possible.

While I understand the value of thought experiments, I think it is quite meaningless regarding such an intensely personal experience as death.

The only thing I can think of worse than death is to watch my child die.

najmelliw wrote:

Objective better/worse relations can never exist, since labelling something as either better or worse requires a subjective judgment call.

Do you have an argument to support that assertion? Why should I accept it?

What kind of subjective judgement calls do you have in mind? Do you mean preferences? Is "I prefer A to B" really the only sense in which A could be better than B?

Couldn't A be better than B because it is more conducive to the 'greater good', or something like that?

When we say "oranges are better for you than chocolate bars", are we not making a claim about objective reality?
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It's not an assertion, at least not in my opinion. The moment you use a better/worse clause, you are, in effect, using a judgment call. You decide, based upon your own opinion or the opinion of someone else, what to deem the better option of two choices. And (let's not even delve in the complication of objective decisions), since you use a person's opinion (or many different person's opinions), it is a subjective call.
Preferences are subjective as well.

The 'Greater good' is such a vague term it might as well be meaningless.
As for your oranges, chocolate bar example... 1) This is not an objective claim, in so far that this is based upon the research and the opinions of a (group of) scientist(s). Further on, The example is poorly chosen. In situations where lots of easily digested energy rich foodstuffs are needed, chocolate might be preferred indeed.

I have no problem with bett/worse claims in themselves, don't get me wrong. I just feel that it's wrong to label them as objective, because their very nature is subjective.

agrote wrote:

Quote:

Besides the opinion about the 'worseness'of death is quite meaningless, if it is not given by the person about to die. How can I judge how to rate another person's death?

Obviously you don't have access to this person's point of view. But surely the subvjective experience of death isn't the only aspect of it. And surely, if a person's death is bad at all, it can be bad from someone else's poitn of view, or from an intersubjective or even impersonal point of view?

For who, I ask you, is the impending death of person X more relevant. For you, an impartial bystander? For the family members? Or for person X self? I daresay for the latter. By a substantial amount too. No, I don't mean to belittle the grief of family and friends, but the moment of death, and the experience of it, seems a very personal moment to me.
Of course a person's death can be found bad by other persons, even by impartial ones. But that is not at all the same as stating it is the worst thing that can happen to a person. What the worst thing is that can happen to any given person, is, frankly enough, for that person alone to decide. I doubt we will see eye to eye on this though. At least agree with me that no one should be able to make that decision for them!

agrote wrote:

Quote:

All we can say in general is probably that, generally speaking, people see death as an undesireable event which should be avoided for as long as possible. This, however, by no means indicates that 'death' is the worst state an individual can be in. That is for each individual to decide.
Else, no suicide would make sense.

Why do suicides need to make sense? Can't you irrationally kill yourself, mistakenly believing that it is the best thing for you?
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Sure you can. But that does not mean all suicides are irrational. Some are spur of the moment. Some may be well thought out. Some may be for the wrong reasons. Some not. Some may be to avoid a worse fate (Hitler in his bunker comes to mind).

agrote wrote:

Quote:

And any doctor commiting euthanasia, even with consent of the victim, would automatically be a murderer, and guilty of one of the worst crimes possible.

Well, some people (not me) do actually believe that.

It would be the unavoidable result if your friend has the right of it with 'a person's death is the worst thing that can happen to him/her'. This is another discussion though, and we should try to remain on topic.

agrote wrote:

Quote:

While I understand the value of thought experiments, I think it is quite meaningless regarding such an intensely personal experience as death.

The death of a person isn't just something that happens to her, though. Her husband loses a wife, her kids lose a mother, the world loses a person. Is it really meaningless to look at death from different points of view?

I perceive a tendency to subtly misread statements made and then make reasonable objections. I was talking about thought experiments. You then compare this to real life loss, and the way family/friends perceive it. Of course its not meaningless for them! It's not meaningless at all to look at death from a different point of view.

Please recall that the original 'thought experiment' was : Would death be the worst scenario for a person? The way it is phrased, this death is inexorably tied to a single person, and does not take into account hypothetical family/friends/followers/fans/enemies or anybody else.
It is meaningless to try and place a value on the death of a person from that persons perspective. This statement is a re-iteration of what I mentioned previously.
If you want to change the parameters of your little experiment (which you are free to do), then by all means, create another one.

Dorothy Parker wrote:

The only thing I can think of worse than death is to watch my child die.

Suppose everybody you loved was held hostage, and you were forced at gunpoint to make one of two choices.
As long as you make one of the two choices, you and your family will be set free.
But if you refuse to make a choice, you will all be killed.

The first choice is: press button 1 and Mrs X will die.

The second choice is: press button 2 and Mrs X will see her child die.

Let's assume that the child will die whichever button you press,
for some independent reason, so that the child's death will not be the fault of you or your kidnappers.

Let's also assume that you know nothing more about the situation.
You don't know anything more about Mrs X or her child, or how they might die.

Which button would you press?

I do not currently agree with the two 'assertions' that you have quoted. If it seems as though I am defending them, that is because I am playing devil's advocate.

Good questions. I can't answer them, not even as the devil's advocate, because I can't think of any impersonal way of ordering personal events from better to worse that would make death universally worse than any other personal outcome. I have no idea what my classmate had in mind.

I think that there are objective accounts about the badness of death as opposed to, say, the badness of life long torture.

I have been speculating about whether there could be an objective account of the relative badness of death, like the utilitarian one, which would always rank death as worse than any other outcome for a person. I'm inclined to think that it would be very difficult to find any such account, and that even if we did, it probably wouldn't be a true account.

I'm afraid that we do not disagree nearly as much as you thought (if at all).

Do you often answer rhetorical questions?

Deepak Chopra, Wayne Dwyer, and that ilk are professional bullshitters.
In their psuedo-mystical cottage industries these "gurus" pack their books and lectures with seductive half-truths,

making them sound like they are giving out wisdom
and the way to "freedom."