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In this week’s newsletter

✅ Introduction to episode 25 with Prof. Travis Timmerman. ✅ Detailed show notes.  ✅ Why philosophy of death matters for the longevity movement. ✅ The Deprivation account. ✅ The Epicurean challenge. ✅ The Mirror argument.

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Why philosophy of death matters for the longevity movement

When we talk about solving aging and extending healthy human lifespan, we often focus on the science - the latest breakthroughs in cellular reprogramming, AI drug discovery, or biomarkers of aging. But there's a deeper question that underlies all this work: Is death actually bad for us? And if so, why?

This might seem obvious to those of us in the longevity field, but it's certainly not universally accepted. In fact, for over two millennia, philosophers have argued that death cannot harm us. The ancient Epicureans claimed that “where death is, we are not; where we are, death is not” - so how can something that we never experience be bad for us? This view persists today, offering comfort to many who see death as natural and inevitable.

But if we accept these arguments, we undermine the very foundation of longevity science. Why invest billions in aging research if death isn't actually bad? Why should society prioritize lifespan extension if our current lifespans are “good enough”? These philosophical questions have real-world implications for funding, policy, and public support for longevity research.

That's why we periodically step back from the science to examine these fundamental questions.

This episode of LEVITY is part of what has turned out to be an ongoing series examining the philosophical foundations of longevity science. Previous episodes in this series have featured my-cost Patrick Linden and his book The Case Against Death, and philosophers John Martin Fischer and John K. Davis.

Here, Travis Timmerman, Associate Professor and Chair of the Philosophy Department at Seton Hall University, provides a rigorous philosophical defense of what many of us intuitively believe: that death is bad because it deprives us of future good experiences. His work helps establish the ethical foundation for why solving aging matters.

Key themes in this episode:

• The Deprivation account: Why death is bad not in itself, but because of what it takes away from us.

• The Epicurean challenge: Ancient arguments that death cannot harm us - and why they fail.

• Self-regarding reasons: How our reasons to avoid death connect to well-being and rational choice.

• The Mirror argument: Whether pre-birth non-existence is symmetrical to post-death non-existence.

• Overdetermination problems: When multiple causes of death complicate our moral intuitions.

• Immortality and well-being: Whether an infinitely long life could be good for us.

• Population ethics: The moral complexities of bringing new lives into existence.

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A detailed overview of the episode

Opening introduction and discussion

Travis Timmerman is Associate Professor and Chair of the Philosophy Department at Seton Hall University. His research focuses on ethics, the philosophy of death, and the relationship between free action and moral obligation. He is currently completing a monograph on death that provides crucial philosophical foundations for understanding why extending healthy human lifespan matters.

• Reference to Travis appearing on another podcast discussing the TV show Severance.

• Bernard Williams mentioned as an “immortality curmudgeon”.

• The Makropulos Case (Czech opera by Karel Čapek) discussed as fiction defending why immortality would be bad. [Note: Čapek is probably more known for introducing the word robot.]

The Basic deprivation account

• Timmerman defends the “deprivation account” - the view that death is bad because it deprives us of future good experiences we would have had if we'd continued living.

• Ben Bradley (philosopher) mentioned - his concert ticket example illustrating deprivation.

• Patrick's example: A man having a wonderful nap but missing his own wedding.

The Epicurean challenge

• Epicurus (300 BCE) - founder of Epicureanism.

• Two main Epicurean arguments explained:

  1. The timing argument: When is death bad for you if you don't exist?

  2. The asymmetry argument: Why fear future non-existence but not past non-existence?

• Quote: "They're either going to have to say the same thing that the deprivationist, like myself, is saying, but using different terms, or they're going to have to commit to a paradigmatically irrational view about what's prudent to do."

The Convenience store thought experiment

• Reference to the hitman from No Country for Old Men.

  The dilemma: You're in a convenience store when a hitman approaches and gives you a choice:

  Option 1: Take a sack containing millions of dollars and use it to live a long, fulfilling life (by whatever standard of well-being you prefer - accomplishments, satisfied desires, meaningful relationships, making the world better).

  Option 2: Be killed quickly and painlessly right now.

  The intuition: Any reasonable person would choose the money and longer life.

  The problem for Epicureans: If death isn't bad for you (as they claim), then both options should be equally rational - you'd have no self-regarding reason to prefer one over the other.

  This reveals the absurdity of claiming death isn't bad - it would mean having no prudential reason to choose a longer, happier life over immediate death.

  David Hershenov mentioned as a contemporary Epicurean who tries to avoid this problem by saying “death isn't bad for you, but it can result in less good”.

Historical context & Lucretius

• Lucretius's shocking example: He discusses a husband who is longing to see his wife and children, to hug and kiss them. Lucretius argues that if this man died now, it would be “just as good” because death would eliminate his desires along with his existence. No desires, no deprivation. Patrick finds this baffling - Lucretius is literally saying you don't have much reason to prefer seeing your loved ones over dying, since death eliminates the desire itself.

• Quote from Lucretius: “You should wish to remain in life so long as the caresses of pleasure hold you there”.

• Discussion of how Lucretius might be interpreted differently than Epicurus himself.

• James Stacey Taylor mentioned as contemporary philosopher who makes distinction between “harm to you” vs “harm for you”.

  Taylor initially seemed to accept that death results in less good while denying it's “bad for you” (which would make his view similar to deprivationism).

  But in a recent debate with Travis at University of Delaware, Taylor revealed he actually bites the bullet: he thinks dying painlessly now vs. living a longer life with more well-being are “prudentially on a par” - equally rational choices

  This is the radical position Travis argues is absurd.

The Overdetermination problem

• Jeff McMahan mentioned as originating “The Young Pedestrian” example.

  The Young Pedestrian case: A young person is hit by a bus and killed. During the autopsy, doctors discover the person had an aneurysm that would have burst very soon (within a week). This creates a puzzle for the deprivation account - was being hit by the bus bad for them if they would have died anyway?

  The soldier example: In combat, a soldier is killed by one enemy combatant, but if that hadn't happened, another enemy would have killed them 20 minutes later. The deprivation view seems to imply this death wasn't very bad since it only deprived them of 20 minutes of life.

  The counterintuitive implication: This could mean a 19-year-old soldier's death is less bad for them than a 96-year-old's death (if the elderly person would have lived two more weeks).

  Travis's solution: Be more precise about which events we're evaluating:

  Being killed by the first soldier? Not very bad (only lost 20 minutes).

  Going to war in the first place? That was terrible for them.

  This approach identifies the true locus of harm by tracing back the causal chain to find the event that really deprived them of a long life.

Comparing lives and possible worlds

• Discussion of people with Duchenne's muscular dystrophy: A genetic disease affecting men who typically die in their 20s. This raises questions about what counts as “normal” lifespan:

  • Someone with this condition who lives to their late 30s has lived “old” relative to others with the condition.

  • But they've died “young” relative to human men generally.

  • What's the relevant comparison group? All humans? People in their socioeconomic class? People with their condition?

• Thomas Nagel referenced - his influential 1970 paper Death argues that normalcy shouldn't determine whether death is bad. Even if everyone had to live with chronic pain due to genetics, that pain would still be bad for them.

• Frederik Kaufman mentioned regarding the puzzle of earlier birth: If you were born 10 years earlier, you'd have different friends, different spouse, different children - your whole life narrative would change. Most people are attached to their actual lives and wouldn't want that trade-off, even for slightly more well-being.

The Mirror argument deep dive

• Lucretius's mirror argument quote (read by Patrick): “Look back at eternity before we were born, when we felt nothing. This is a mirror of death. Nature holds before us a sight of time that was, a time past and gone, no different from what is to come. If this past troubles us not, if we lie in peace with it, why do we fear the time that would follow our death?”

• The argument: We don't regret not existing before birth, so we shouldn't fear not existing after death

• Two responses to this challenge:

  1. Standard response: It's metaphysically impossible to have been born significantly earlier - that would be a different person, not you.

  2. Travis's radical response: Actually, it IS bad that we weren't born earlier (if that would have given us more good life).

• Travis's quote: “We could lament not having more good life as a result of not having been born earlier... Really, we just want more good life. It's sort of natural to think about it or focus on extending it via the end of our life rather than the beginning, but in principle, I wouldn't want to rule that out.”

• Real-world example: IVF with frozen embryos shows some people literally could have been born earlier if the embryo had been implanted sooner.

• Travis imagines “far away possible worlds” where everything moves up earlier in time - even suggests the Big Bang happening earlier to preserve causal chains.

Population ethics and anti-natalism

• David Benatar - South African philosopher and antinatalist, author of Better Never to Have Been.

  • His argument: By having children, you bring them into a world where they will experience pain. By not creating them, you're not depriving anyone because there's no one there to be deprived.

  • Benatar's asymmetry: It's good to prevent suffering (even of potential people), but not bad to prevent happiness (of potential people).

  • Example: An empty planet with no suffering = good. An empty planet with no joy = not bad (since there's no one missing out).

• Ben Bradley's paper Benatar and the Logic of Betterness in Journal of Ethics and Social Philosophy.

  • Bradley (Travis's dissertation advisor) argues Benatar's asymmetry is logically incoherent.

  • Goodness and badness are defined in terms of each other - you can't have the asymmetry Benatar wants.

• The consciousness debate:

  • Patrick finds a consciousness-less universe horrific - “we bring meaning to the universe”.

  • Travis's view: “A consciousness-less universe seems to me to be neutral. A universe where the total well-being of all of the creatures that are capable of well-being is in the negative seems to me bad.”

  • Schopenhauer mentioned by Patrick as wishing the world was lifeless like the moon (no suffering).

• Travis's challenge to Patrick: If you value consciousness so much, would you create a being with net negative well-being rather than have no consciousness at all?

Philosophical methodology

• Discussion of Travis's analytic approach - “slowing things down”, examining meanings, identifying verbal disputes.

• Peter Singer mentioned - argues our judgments about abstract principles are generally more reliable than judgments about specific cases (which can be affected by status quo bias).

• Patrick notes this style follows early 20th century philosophy tradition

• Wittgenstein referenced - contrast between ancient philosophy as “therapy of the soul” vs. modern analytic philosophy seeking truth.

• Cicero quoted: “To philosophize is to learn how to die” - but Travis's work shows the opposite: death is bad and we should feel bad about it.

Book and film recommendations:

1. Well-Being and Death by Ben Bradley - The book that inspired Timmerman to pursue graduate studies.

2. The Methods of Ethics by Henry Sidgwick - Masterwork of moral philosophy.

3. It's Such a Beautiful Day by Don Hertzfeldt - Animated film exploring death and immortality.