Concurrent Session 4-C

Location

Bryant Hall, Room 207

Start Date

15-3-2025 3:00 PM

End Date

15-3-2025 4:15 PM

Description

  • Piously Remembering the Dead
    Lucas Dunst, Master's student, Department of Philosophy, Georgia State University
    Contemporary arguments in favor of an ethical duty to remember the dead, have focused their attention on the surviving preferences of the dead. These arguments begin from the observation that most people prefer to be remembered after they die, and then argue that these preferences survive death and impose a duty of fulfillment on the living. This version of the duty is directed toward the antemortem person; the duty to remember the dead is a duty owed to the person who was once alive on account of the preferences that they held while they were alive. For this reason, the duty is often classified as a duty of justice since it has to do with the fair treatment of other living, or at least formerly living, members of one’s community. I argue that this approach to defending an ethical duty to remember the dead is misguided. When the duty is grounded in the preferences of the antemortem person, the existence of dead people who lacked any preferences about being remembered after death brings it into conflict with everyday practice directed toward the dead. We act as if the duty to remember the dead is unaffected by whether or not the dead preferred to be remembered in a variety of cases, and a philosophical theory of the duty to remember the dead should be able to accurately capture the contours of this everyday practice. In order to accomplish this goal, I propose an alternative theory which grounds this duty not in the surviving preferences of the antemortem person, but in the sacredness of the postmortem person. This account of the duty to remember the dead constructs that duty as a duty of piety, directed toward a proper recognition of the sacredness of that which remains after a person’s death.
  • Doing What Another Would Want (VIRTUAL)
    Russell McIntosh, PhD student, Department of Philosophy, University of California, Berkeley
    Doing what another would want you to do is a familiar and valuable motivation. We often relate in this way to the dead, as when we continue their traditions or memorialize their accomplishments. But it resists explanation, for three reasons. First, to understand doing what another would want, we must identify the relevant counterfactual. Second, doing what another would want is distinct from the more thoroughly explored phenomena of doing what is good for another, respecting another’s preferences, and acting for another. Third, the value of doing what another would want is opaque, especially if it is distinct from the above phenomena. I defend a conception of doing what others would want as acting from empathetic concern. I argue doing what another would want is valuable because, first, another’s wants are a guide to their good; second, when one’s target has appropriate concerns, doing what they would want enables the flourishing of objects whose flourishing is good simpliciter; third, and least obviously, by trying to see the world from another’s point of view, we affirm the value of our relationship with them. When we do what the dead would want by continuing their traditions and memorializing their accomplishments, we affirm the value of our relationship with them. Affirming the value of a relationship is in part a response to existing value and in part a decision to confer value on the relationship. Doing what another would want thus exhibits distinctively relational value.
  • Chair: Vikas Beniwal, MA Candidate, Philosophy, University of Mississippi

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Mar 15th, 3:00 PM Mar 15th, 4:15 PM

Concurrent Session 4-C

Bryant Hall, Room 207

  • Piously Remembering the Dead
    Lucas Dunst, Master's student, Department of Philosophy, Georgia State University
    Contemporary arguments in favor of an ethical duty to remember the dead, have focused their attention on the surviving preferences of the dead. These arguments begin from the observation that most people prefer to be remembered after they die, and then argue that these preferences survive death and impose a duty of fulfillment on the living. This version of the duty is directed toward the antemortem person; the duty to remember the dead is a duty owed to the person who was once alive on account of the preferences that they held while they were alive. For this reason, the duty is often classified as a duty of justice since it has to do with the fair treatment of other living, or at least formerly living, members of one’s community. I argue that this approach to defending an ethical duty to remember the dead is misguided. When the duty is grounded in the preferences of the antemortem person, the existence of dead people who lacked any preferences about being remembered after death brings it into conflict with everyday practice directed toward the dead. We act as if the duty to remember the dead is unaffected by whether or not the dead preferred to be remembered in a variety of cases, and a philosophical theory of the duty to remember the dead should be able to accurately capture the contours of this everyday practice. In order to accomplish this goal, I propose an alternative theory which grounds this duty not in the surviving preferences of the antemortem person, but in the sacredness of the postmortem person. This account of the duty to remember the dead constructs that duty as a duty of piety, directed toward a proper recognition of the sacredness of that which remains after a person’s death.
  • Doing What Another Would Want (VIRTUAL)
    Russell McIntosh, PhD student, Department of Philosophy, University of California, Berkeley
    Doing what another would want you to do is a familiar and valuable motivation. We often relate in this way to the dead, as when we continue their traditions or memorialize their accomplishments. But it resists explanation, for three reasons. First, to understand doing what another would want, we must identify the relevant counterfactual. Second, doing what another would want is distinct from the more thoroughly explored phenomena of doing what is good for another, respecting another’s preferences, and acting for another. Third, the value of doing what another would want is opaque, especially if it is distinct from the above phenomena. I defend a conception of doing what others would want as acting from empathetic concern. I argue doing what another would want is valuable because, first, another’s wants are a guide to their good; second, when one’s target has appropriate concerns, doing what they would want enables the flourishing of objects whose flourishing is good simpliciter; third, and least obviously, by trying to see the world from another’s point of view, we affirm the value of our relationship with them. When we do what the dead would want by continuing their traditions and memorializing their accomplishments, we affirm the value of our relationship with them. Affirming the value of a relationship is in part a response to existing value and in part a decision to confer value on the relationship. Doing what another would want thus exhibits distinctively relational value.
  • Chair: Vikas Beniwal, MA Candidate, Philosophy, University of Mississippi