The Badness of Death in Different Metaethical Theories

Epistemic: a section from my unpublished article about badness of death. I decided to publish it given recent discussion about metaethics in order to show my attempt to brut force metaethics by listing all known solutions.

Here we explore how different metaethical theories explain the nature and origin of values, and how each of these theories can be applied to prove the badness of death.

The Nature of Ethics and the Status of Ethical Laws

Meta-ethics studies the nature and status of ethical laws. For example, what is the nature of the statement “Death is absolutely bad”?

To simplify, there are two perspectives: ethical laws really exist and statements about them can be true or false (cognitivism) – and a second perspective that speaks of the non-existence of a world of ethical norms independent of humans, the extreme form of which is moral skepticism (non-cognitivism).

Here is a list of metaethical theories and a brief analysis for each case of how the badness of death can be justified:

1. Ethical norms exist independently of us.

Moral Realism

• Supreme source of values. There is a metaphysical source of values – God.

If God exists, then He is for immortality.

• Ethical non-naturalism. Ethical norms are derived from categories irreducible to anything else – neither to needs nor to God; for example, goodness. The discovery and establishment of moral categories is the task of moral epistemology.

The badness of death is an irreducible ethical norm introduced based on analysis of various factors.

• Moral facts. There are self-evident moral facts, for example, that one cannot eat children.

The unacceptability of death is a moral fact (thou shalt not kill).

• Ethical naturalism. Values are descriptions of naturally existing things, for example, that pain is unpleasant and therefore bad.

Examples of ethical naturalism are hedonism and utilitarianism, based on the idea that the quantity of pleasure is good and can be measured. The most popular view currently.
The pain of fear of death is real – and from it follows the unacceptability of death.

• Evolutionary psychology. Values were formed during biological evolution and historical process. A special case of naturalism, if we approve all instincts without question.

The instinct of self-preservation is the reason for the unacceptability of death.

• Ethical subjectivism. True ethical judgments exist, but their truth is determined by the aggregated attitude of people in one way or another.

Similar to universal perspectivism, but the difference is that it is a universal rule, not the opinion of a group. The prevalence of opinion only proves the universal rule.
Hume believed the foundation of morality was the opinion of a rational, disinterested subject (similar to a jury).
A rational subject must recognize that death is bad.
Death is bad for everyone, including animals, advanced AI, and extraterrestrial intelligence.

• Natural law. Rights inalienably belonging to humans.

The right to life is already enshrined in many constitutions and implied by the maxim “thou shalt not kill.”
The right to life means that death is bad.

• Ethical intuitionism. Moral truths are perceived directly through intuition.

The badness of one’s own death is perceived directly at the moment of threat.

• Kantian ethics: This is rather a meta-ethics in the spirit of super-rationality, which is mistakenly called deontological.

Categorical imperative: “act in such a way that the maxim of your will could become a universal law.”
Applied to death, this means that if I don’t want myself to die here and now, then I must also not want other people (and myself) to die ever. An important feature here is that the categorical imperative must be extended to one’s future, that is, to recognize the right to life of that old person whom I will someday become.

• Virtue ethics: An approach emphasizing the formation of moral character and virtues.

A person wishing death for themselves and others cannot be objectively recognized as virtuous.

Values can be proven logically:

• Workarounds – convergent goals by Omohundro and Friston’s free energy principle. They try to bypass Hume’s is-ought problem: one cannot move from describing reality to describing goals without committing a logical error.

Avoiding death is a necessary condition for realizing any other values and therefore becomes a convergent goal in any system.
Death is an event with maximum free energy according to Friston and therefore is at the center of any avoidance behavior.

• Playing with logical concepts (in the spirit of Gödel’s proof of God’s existence).

The very fact of the existence of values suggests that values must be stable, which means their destruction is bad, and therefore death is bad.

2. Ethical norms are set by people.

Moral skepticism, nihilism

• Moral skepticism – there are no true moral statements.

Statements that death is good and not scary are false. All justifications for the necessity of death are false. Therefore, we have the right to want not to die.

• Nihilism. Everything is permitted.

I have the right to want to live. Personal self-preservation becomes an imperative.

• Paradoxical nihilism. True values are impossible, but I act as if they existed, and therefore I am always confused by contradictions.

The desire not to die for a mortal person is as absurd and contradictory as everything else.

• Nietzschean superman and his will to power. After the deconstruction of values, pure will to power remains (Macht, is literally, might).

Will to power means not simply domination over people, but expansion of one’s indestructibility and control over space and time, which, of course, includes the unacceptability of death.
The unwillingness to die is will to power directed in time.

• Metaethical moral relativism. The truth of moral judgments is not absolute but relative to the traditions, beliefs, or practices of a group of people.

People’s values change. The unacceptability of death increases with the progress of medicine and human control over one’s fate.
Society in the past justified death, but when conditions change, it will condemn it.

• Pyrrhonism. Judgments about the truth of values are impossible.

However, we can recognize the need inherent in us not to die.

• Existentialism. People do not act based on values, but based on the fullness of their situation.

People strive to avoid death, even if they declare otherwise.

• Heidegger and being-toward-death.

A person realizes the directionality of their life toward death, but also constantly rebels against death (Camus), often symbolically.

• Memetic theory of values. Values are successfully evolving programs.

The idea of the badness of death is an emerging meme that we want to help.
When life extension technologies appear, then the values of life extension will become relevant.

• Marxism. Values reflect the existing base, that is, the means of production. Previously, life extension was impossible, and young, easily trainable people were needed for production, so death and generational change were necessary.

The growing significance of a person’s unique knowledge and their unique position in the graph of social connections, as well as the emergence of technical possibilities for life extension, will lead to a change in values.

• Cultural relativism: Moral norms depend on cultural context and differ from culture to culture.

The unacceptability of death varies in different cultures; we want to create a culture in which the unacceptability of death will be the main value.

Perspectivism

• Perspectivism. Ethical norms express personal desire.

This article reflects our, the authors’, desire not to die. But for it to be realized, we need to instill it in other people as well, since only collective efforts of people will work.

• Universal perspectivism. Ethical norms generalize people’s intentions.

Most people don’t want to die, but they are alone in this desire. Our task is to help them unite, to recognize personal need as a common goal.
Suitable for us to construct the badness of death based on the desire not to die now.

• Emotivism. Ethical norms express emotions.

“The unacceptability of death” is an expression of fear of death.
We can justify the unacceptability of death based on horror.

• Extrapolation, CEV (Coherent Extrapolated Volition) by Yudkowsky. Ethical norms express what I should want if I were smarter; moreover, this extrapolation should be coherent with the extrapolations of other intelligent beings.

There are no reasonable arguments in favor of death. A rational being will not want to die.
For the unacceptability of death, we precisely conduct this extrapolation in our central argument (Chapter 6), where the universal unacceptability of death for everyone is derived from the personal unwillingness to die now in the majority.

3. Ethical norms are what benefits society as a whole.

Cooperation.

• Ethical norms reduce transaction costs. Ethical norms are instrumental and help people cooperate (don’t lie, don’t betray).

Death destroys cooperation.

• Ethical norms are a theory of decision-making. Super-rationalism; Functional decision theory.

The dead cannot decide.
Super-rational win-win solutions cannot include death.
It is irrational to choose what is maximally unpredictable (Pascal’s argument – what if there’s hell with a small probability?)

• Ethical norms are rules of the game.

Contractism.

• Ethical norms arise as a result of a contract between people.

The unacceptability of death is a new contract that we propose.
Death destroys any contracts.
Care for relatives is a contract that includes protection of life.

• Pragmatism: Moral norms are evaluated by their practical consequences and usefulness.

The world will be better if there is no death, and various problems like overpopulation are solvable.

• Legalism. Values are the laws of society, often not yet codified.

Exploitation

• Values are established by higher classes to manipulate lower ones (or vice versa – in Nietzsche). Higher classes have their own values. Higher classes may be interested in the mortality of lower classes.

Values of society

• Society has its own global values, such as self-preservation, development, and expansion. Nationalism.

Victory over death is needed by modern society.

• Consequentialism: Ethical norms are evaluated by their consequences. For example, deontological consequentialism combines aspects of deontology and consequentialism. But to evaluate norms, some other values are needed.

The absence of death turns out to be one of such supreme values through which we can evaluate the “benefit” of other values.

• Values are simply signals of group membership, and they mask the real value – growth of social significance (R. Hanson’s theory).

Since fearing death is low-status behavior, people verbally deny the fear of death.

Conclusion

Values are a complex phenomenon whose nature is rooted in different coordinate systems. And the badness of death is so fundamental that it is reflected in the full range of different theories. Each theory is like a coordinate system, and in each coordinate system we see the terrifying role of death, nothingness. The nothingness that washes away all values.