Society has taken advantage of this in historical times by flaying, beheading, or hanging corpses. The idea is that despite the fact that these things have zero impact on a living individual who can feel them
That line of reasoning is incorrect, I believe. I can imagine seeing someone I love treated that way: that would be distinctly worse than knowing they died painlessly and were treated with respect.
The reason is that among my preferences is the wish that my family, friends etc. be treated at least respectfully by others. If this kind of fate is visited upon them, my preferences are being thwarted, which causes me to suffer.
I also wish to continue caring for my family, so from my perspective my own death isn’t “something you can’t care about because you are dead”, it’s a big disruption of my plans. That is unchanged by the fact that after my death I will be unable to feel anything about that disruption.
So, concern for what happens to my body in and after death is actually quite legitimate, and in fact is an extension of the legitimate wish to live.
We tend to place great store in people’s last words and final wishes.
Well, unless those final wishes are to be stored in LN2 in Detroit. That seems to contradict your thesis, appealing as it looks at first glance.
Well, unless those final wishes are to be stored in LN2 in Detroit. That seems to contradict your thesis, appealing as it looks at first glance.
The whole point of cryonics is to ensure it’s NOT your final wish.
A paradox!
It’s their final wish if and only if we do not comply with it. But we should comply with it if and only if it’s not their final wish. (The latter ‘only if’ requires some external reason, such as waste of money; of course we assume that the relatives who make this decision don’t believe in the promise of cryonics.) Therefore, whatever we do will be immoral, one way or another.
That line of reasoning is incorrect, I believe. I can imagine seeing someone I love treated that way: that would be distinctly worse than knowing they died painlessly and were treated with respect.
Amended to “direct impact” for clarity. I don’t mean to say no individual will feel the impact in any way, only that the person whose corpse it is has no capacity for pain or humiliation at that point.
Well, unless those final wishes are to be stored in LN2 in Detroit. That seems to contradict your thesis, appealing as it looks at first glance.
That’s an exception rather than a rule. Being stored in LN2 defaults to being emotionally hard to relate to, and the HDM effect is very emotionally based. Also it has much to do with signaling to the general society. Specific individuals seem to easily disregard it when there is enough money at stake, possibly because the prospect of money dampens the emotions they would otherwise feel.
I don’t mean to say no individual will feel the impact in any way, only that the person whose corpse it is has no capacity for pain or humiliation at that point.
That is correct but has no bearing on the matter: the wish that our corpses shouldn’t be mutilated is not, as you claim, a purely “symbolic” or “cultural” matter, it is a wish that arises out of our concerns for the feelings of others rather than out of concerns for our own feelings, and so our own “capacity for pain” after death is immaterial.
Others’ feelings about our corpses are not irrational or arbitrary. They stem from the psychological fact that the mental image you keep of someone is typically the most recent that has made an impression on you. Seeing the mutilated corpse of someone you loved would make remembering them a traumatic experience, adding to the normal experience of grief.
Suppose I know that my wife is skeptical about cryonics, and I further know that it would cause her distress to see my body undergo the preservation procedure. In that case there is a small but distinct harm to her in my getting preserved.
The only argument that presents a benefit outweighing that harm is the hypothesis that I am not actually dead.
You are correct that this implies society reconstructing its conception of “death”; what I take issue with is your labeling of the current attitude toward death as “symbolic” and entirely detached of any actual consequences. The term “meme” is ill-chosen to describe something like attitudes toward death; it alludes to properties (meme-as-replicator) which are unimportant to your argument.
Instead, this would be an ideal occasion to use a phrase such as “death is a social construction”, and a good illustration that “social constructions” aren’t whimsy—they are the way humans adapt to a given set of circumstances.
Actually I don’t agree that preventing grotesque displays of one’s corpse is primarily motivated by concern for the trauma a living person might receive by looking at it. It seems more to me to have to do with status. We identify with our social status, and the concept of being dishonored (and thus having our social status decline) after we die is something we find unappealing. This is indeed a self-interest based consideration, and indeed alterations in social status for the deceased could have consequences for their family.
However, the link between a given corpse’s cosmetic state and one’s social status after death seems to me a self-replicating cultural idea (i.e. a meme) with plenty of instinctive impetus but no inherent ethical merit.
That line of reasoning is incorrect, I believe. I can imagine seeing someone I love treated that way: that would be distinctly worse than knowing they died painlessly and were treated with respect.
The reason is that among my preferences is the wish that my family, friends etc. be treated at least respectfully by others. If this kind of fate is visited upon them, my preferences are being thwarted, which causes me to suffer.
I also wish to continue caring for my family, so from my perspective my own death isn’t “something you can’t care about because you are dead”, it’s a big disruption of my plans. That is unchanged by the fact that after my death I will be unable to feel anything about that disruption.
So, concern for what happens to my body in and after death is actually quite legitimate, and in fact is an extension of the legitimate wish to live.
Well, unless those final wishes are to be stored in LN2 in Detroit. That seems to contradict your thesis, appealing as it looks at first glance.
The whole point of cryonics is to ensure it’s NOT your final wish.
A paradox!
It’s their final wish if and only if we do not comply with it. But we should comply with it if and only if it’s not their final wish. (The latter ‘only if’ requires some external reason, such as waste of money; of course we assume that the relatives who make this decision don’t believe in the promise of cryonics.) Therefore, whatever we do will be immoral, one way or another.
Amended to “direct impact” for clarity. I don’t mean to say no individual will feel the impact in any way, only that the person whose corpse it is has no capacity for pain or humiliation at that point.
That’s an exception rather than a rule. Being stored in LN2 defaults to being emotionally hard to relate to, and the HDM effect is very emotionally based. Also it has much to do with signaling to the general society. Specific individuals seem to easily disregard it when there is enough money at stake, possibly because the prospect of money dampens the emotions they would otherwise feel.
That is correct but has no bearing on the matter: the wish that our corpses shouldn’t be mutilated is not, as you claim, a purely “symbolic” or “cultural” matter, it is a wish that arises out of our concerns for the feelings of others rather than out of concerns for our own feelings, and so our own “capacity for pain” after death is immaterial.
Others’ feelings about our corpses are not irrational or arbitrary. They stem from the psychological fact that the mental image you keep of someone is typically the most recent that has made an impression on you. Seeing the mutilated corpse of someone you loved would make remembering them a traumatic experience, adding to the normal experience of grief.
Suppose I know that my wife is skeptical about cryonics, and I further know that it would cause her distress to see my body undergo the preservation procedure. In that case there is a small but distinct harm to her in my getting preserved.
The only argument that presents a benefit outweighing that harm is the hypothesis that I am not actually dead.
You are correct that this implies society reconstructing its conception of “death”; what I take issue with is your labeling of the current attitude toward death as “symbolic” and entirely detached of any actual consequences. The term “meme” is ill-chosen to describe something like attitudes toward death; it alludes to properties (meme-as-replicator) which are unimportant to your argument.
Instead, this would be an ideal occasion to use a phrase such as “death is a social construction”, and a good illustration that “social constructions” aren’t whimsy—they are the way humans adapt to a given set of circumstances.
Actually I don’t agree that preventing grotesque displays of one’s corpse is primarily motivated by concern for the trauma a living person might receive by looking at it. It seems more to me to have to do with status. We identify with our social status, and the concept of being dishonored (and thus having our social status decline) after we die is something we find unappealing. This is indeed a self-interest based consideration, and indeed alterations in social status for the deceased could have consequences for their family.
However, the link between a given corpse’s cosmetic state and one’s social status after death seems to me a self-replicating cultural idea (i.e. a meme) with plenty of instinctive impetus but no inherent ethical merit.