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The moral standing of the dead

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Authors:
Steven Luper
Steven Luper
Steven Luper
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Abstract

In choosing to do certain things, we appear to presuppose that we can act in the interests the dead, and that we have a duty to do so. For example, some of us go to great lengths to carry out their final wishes. Given that the dead no longer exist, however, it seems that nothing can be good or bad for them: they lack prudential interests. In that case, it is hard to see how we could owe them anything. They seem to lack moral standing altogether. In this essay, I will rebut this line of thought. I will claim that in some cases things that happen after people die are indeed good or bad for them. Their interests can still be advanced or hindered, so the dead have moral standing. This article is part of the theme issue ‘Evolutionary thanatology: impacts of the dead on the living in humans and other animals’.
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Research
Cite this article: Luper S. 2018 The moral
standing of the dead. Phil. Trans. R. Soc. B
373: 20170270.
http://dx.doi.org/10.1098/rstb.2017.0270
Accepted: 7 February 2018
One contribution of 18 to a theme issue
‘Evolutionary thanatology: impacts of the dead
on the living in humans and other animals’.
Subject Areas:
evolution
Keywords:
death, moral standing, posthumous harm,
well-being, achievementism, animal ethics
Author for correspondence:
Steven Luper
e-mail: sluper@trinity.edu
The moral standing of the dead
Steven Luper
Philosophy, Trinity University, San Antonio, TX 78212, USA
SL, 0000-0002-5992-9215
In choosing to do certain things, we appear to presuppose that we can act in
the interests the dead, and that we have a duty to do so. For example, some
of us go to great lengths to carry out their final wishes. Given that the dead
no longer exist, however, it seems that nothing can be good or bad for them:
they lack prudential interests. In that case, it is hard to see how we could
owe them anything. They seem to lack moral standing altogether. In this
essay, I will rebut this line of thought. I will claim that in some cases
things that happen after people die are indeed good or bad for them.
Their interests can still be advanced or hindered, so the dead have moral
standing.
This article is part of the theme issue ‘Evolutionary thanatology: impacts
of the dead on the living in humans and other animals’.
1. The moral standing of the dead
Must the living act on behalf of the dead? Many of us seem to think so, given
things we do after others die. For example, some of us believe that we must
carry out the final wishes of friends who have died, and go to great lengths
to do so. However, there is a strong case for concluding that the dead lack
moral standing altogether, which is to deny that the way we treat them matters
from the moral point of view. Roughly stated, the case is this. We would have
duties to the dead only if they had prudential interests. Yet they do not: nothing
can be good or bad for them. In that way the dead are like bags of sand, arm-
chairs and boulders. So we owe them nothing. In this essay, I will attempt to
rebut this argument. My main strategy will be to criticize the assumption
that the interests of people are never affected by anything that happens after
they die. Elaborating upon previous work [1], I will attempt to clarify why
this assumption seems plausible yet is false. If I am successful, it will be clear
why and in what sense the dead matter from the moral point of view: they
may have interests that are advanced or hindered by those who are still alive,
and what affects people’s interests is always relevant from the standpoint of
morality.
2. Die, dead, death and the dead
I begin with some remarks about the word ‘death’ and related terms that
feature prominently in the discussion.
The term ‘death’ is ambiguous as between dying and being dead. In what fol-
lows I will disambiguate ‘death’ when necessary by using the terms ‘dying’ or
‘being dead’. I stipulate that to die is to cease to be alive, and I assume that what
ceases to be alive ceases to exist. But what is it for you to be dead? Is it the state
you are placed into by virtue of dying? That suggests that you may be in some
state while not existing. Here is a better proposal: to say you are dead is an
abbreviated way of stating that you are dead at some given time, which, in
turn, is simply to say that you died before then. When we omit to mention
time of death, we refer implicitly to the present, so that ‘you are dead’ means
you died before now. In a similar fashion, we can use ‘the dead’ as shorthand
for ‘those who died before now’ [2].
Note, finally, that it is one thing to be harmed (or benefitted) by death and
another to be harmed (or benefitted) by something occurring after we have
&2018 The Author(s) Published by the Royal Society. All rights reserved.
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