It is generally assumed that humans are the only animals who can possess a concept of death. However, the ubiquity of death in nature and the evolutionary advantages that would come with an understanding of death provide two prima facie reasons for doubting this assumption. In this paper, my intention is not to defend that animals of this or that nonhuman species possess a concept of death, but rather to examine how we could go about empirically (...) determining whether animals can have a concept of death. In order to answer this question, I begin by sketching an account of concept possession that favours intensional classification rather than mere extensional discrimination. Further, I argue that the concept of death should be construed as neither binary nor universal. I then present a proposal for a set of minimal conditions that must be met to have a concept of death. I argue that having a minimal understanding of death entails first expecting a dead individual to be alive, and then grasping its non-functionality and irreversibility. Lastly, I lay out the sort of observational and experimental evidence that we should look for to determine whether animals have the capacity for a minimal comprehension of death. (shrink)

The Zhuangzi 莊子 depicts persons as surviving their deaths through the natural transformations of the world into very different forms—such as roosters, cart-wheels, rat livers, and so on. It is common to interpret these passages metaphorically. In this essay, however, I suggest employing a “Conventionalist” view of persons that says whether a person survives some event is not merely determined by the world, but is partly determined by our own attitudes. On this reading, Zhuangzi’s many teachings urging us to embrace (...) transformation are not merely a psychological aid for dealing with death, but also serve as a tool for literally surviving it. (shrink)

Many contemporary epistemologists take rational inference to be a conscious action performed by the thinker (Boghossian 2014; 2018; Valaris 2014; Malmgren 2018). It is tempting to think that rational evaluability requires responsibility, which in turn requires conscious action. In that case, unconscious cognition involves merely associative or otherwise arational processing. This paper argues instead for deep rationalism: unconscious inference often exhibits the same rational status and richly structured logical character as conscious inference. The central case study is rationalization, in which (...) people shift their attitudes in logically structured, reason-responsive ways in response to evidence of their own incompetence or immorality. These attitude shifts are irrational in a way that reflects on the thinker. Thus rationally evaluable inference extends downward into the unconscious. Many take the sole aim of belief to be truth (Velleman 2000) or knowledge (Williamson 2000), but the prevalence of rationalization suggests that belief updating often aims instead at preserving our positive conceptions of ourselves—that is, belief updating is part of a psychological immune system (Gilbert 2006; Mandelbaum 2019). This paper argues that the psychological immune system comprises a suite of distinct cognitive mechanisms, some (ir)rational and some arational, which are united by a common function of avoiding the maladaptive predomination of negative affect and maintaining stable motivation. Other aspects of the psychological immune system include (i) a domain-general positive bias in evaluative attitudes and (ii) “terror management,” i.e., the systematic strengthening of meaning-conferring beliefs to avoid death anxiety. The multiplicity of processes underlying the psychological immune system point toward an irrational but adaptive function of cognition to keep us motivated in a world rife with negativity and death. (shrink)

The philosophical literature on well-being and the good life contains very little explicit discussion of what makes for a better or worse death. The purpose of this essay is to highlight some commonly held views about the good death and investigate whether these views are recognized by the leading theories of well-being. While the most widely discussed theories do have implications about what constitutes a good death, they seem unable to fully accommodate these popular good death (...) views. I offer two partial explanations for why these views have been neglected in discussions of well-being and make two corresponding recommendations for future work in the philosophy of well-being. (shrink)

The concept of perversion has traditionally been applied particularly to the sexual sphere, in order to condemn certain desires and certain practices as wrong or inappropriate because of their unnaturalness, as they are understood as a deviation from a given function of sexuality. In this article, I explore the question whether and how such a concept could be applied to another central dimension of our existence, namely our death and, in particular, whether it makes sense to talk of perverted (...) attitudes towards (our own) death. In the first section I present a fairly common account of what is a perverted attitude towards sex and explain how that account can be used to define a perverted attitude towards death. I come up with four suggestions (one based on belief in the afterlife and three secular ones, based respectively on the notion of death as meaningless, on Heidegger’s concept of authenticity and on the evolutionary function of death). In the second section, I explore potential connections between perversion in sex and perversion in death. I conclude that, outside the Catholic worldview, perverted attitudes to sex do not bring along perverted attitudes towards death, nor is there a connection the other way around. In fact, certain kinds of perverted attitudes towards death are even inimical to sexual perversion. In the third section, I present a metaphysical and an ethical reason to doubt that we can and should talk of a function of death or sex. (shrink)

A few months after the publication of the French translation of his book Causing Death and Saving Lives, Jonathan Glover was kind enough to return to some of the theses defended in this book. In forty years, this work has become a classic of applied ethics in the English-speaking world. Glover tackled a series of questions involving the lives of men and women, including abortion, infanticide, suicide, euthanasia, the death penalty and war. We asked him here about the (...) method he considers the best in moral philosophy, and returned to his criticism of certain dominant ideas at the time. Jonathan Glover also discusses some of the positions of his former students Peter Singer and Jeff McMahan. (shrink)

This is a howler of a handbook. The review shows how in the name of academics, philosophers indulge in quid pro quos in high places. They have no clue about what they are writing. As a Benedictine Abbot in the US responded in email to this reviewer: "Yes, indeed, the book is not very serious. When the authors die some day, they will understand better, as we all shall see". Now that death is in the air; we will understand (...) what this handbook's real worth is! COVID 19 won't go with steroids and anti-malarials. Nor is Ebola or Zika going anywhere. Now see how prescient the Abbot is and how idiotic the book under review is. (shrink)

A mechanism for life after death is given.

This paper addresses the following questions: When do AIs die? Are AI labs or AI users causing the death of AIs? Is this bad for the AIs? What are our ethical responsibilities in light of the answers to these questions? It is currently unclear whether AIs are welfare subjects, and, if they are, whether their death is bad for them. But we argue that, if they are welfare subjects, today’s AIs are plausibly dying all the time. If (...) class='Hi'>death is bad for AIs, the scale of the problem is daunting: as many as 1 billion AIs may die every day. We propose interventions for labs and users to avoid the risk of causing AI death. (shrink)

With death bots, AI-enabled digital representations of deceased individuals can be created. While religions have long played a central role in death and mourning practices, this domain is increasingly being taken over by companies and commercial enterprises. In this article, I aim to reintroduce the perspective of religions, specifically that of Christian ethics, into the emerging discourse on death tech. I ask how a Christian ethical perspective might approach death technology, whether such technology is compatible with (...) Christianity, whether it is meaningful, what challenges it presents, and how it can be responsibly shaped. The article introduces three key ethical lenses from the standpoint of Christian ethics: (a) Anthropology and Relationality, (b) Vulnerability and Deception, and (c) Justice: Humans and Earth. Here, in addition to necessary critique, I also explore constructive ways in which technology can be beneficial for religious communities. I conclude with a perspective of hope (Jürgen Moltmann)—a hope grounded in the present. (shrink)

The biophilosophic justification for the idea that “brain death” is death needs to support two claims: that what dies in human death is a human organism, not merely a psychological entity distinct from it; that total brain failure signifies the end of the human organism as a whole. Defenders of brain death typically assume without argument that the first claim is true and argue for the second by defending the “integrative unity” rationale. Yet the integrative unity (...) rationale has fallen on hard times. In this article, I give reasons for why we should think of ourselves as organisms, and why the “fundamental work” rationale put forward by the 2008 President’s Council is better than the integrative unity rationale, despite persistent objections to it. (shrink)

Queer Death Studies (QDS) refers to an emerging transdisciplinary field of research that critically and (self) reflexively investigates and challenges conventional normativities, assumptions, expectations, and regimes of truths that are brought to life and made evident by death, dying, and mourning. Since its establishment as a research field in the 1970s, Death Studies has drawn attention to the questions of death, dying, and mourning as complex and multifaceted phenomena that require inter- or multi-disciplinary approaches and perspectives. (...) Yet, the engagements with death, dying and mourning, constitutive of conventional Death Studies’ investigations, tend to remain insufficient and reductive. They are often governed by the normative notions of: the subject; bonds between humans, as well as between humans and (their) animals; family relations and communities; rituals; and finally, experiences of grief, mourning, and bereavement. Moreover, these engagements are frequently embedded in constraining beliefs in life/death divides, constructed along the lines of conventional religious and/or scientific mind/body dualisms, characteristic of the Western cultural imaginaries. Against this background, QDS offers a site for ‘queering’ traditional ways of approaching death both as a subject of study and philosophical reflection, and as a phenomenon to articulate in artistic work or practices of mourning. Here, the notion of ‘queer’ conveys many meanings. It refers to researching and narrating death, dying, and mourning in the context of queer bonds and communities, where the subjects involved/studied/interviewed and the relations they are involved in are recognised as ‘queer’. Simultaneously, the term ‘queer’ can also function as an adverb and a verb, referring thus to the processes of going beyond and unsettling (subverting, exceeding) binaries and given norms, normativities, and constraining conventions. In other words, ‘queer’ becomes both a process and a methodology that is applicable and exceeds the focus on gender and sexuality as its exclusive concerns. (shrink)

50 years after its introduction, brain death remains controversial among scholars. The debates focus on one question: is brain death a good criterion for determining death? This question has been answered from various perspectives: medical, metaphysical, ethical, and legal or political. Most authors either defend the criterion as it is, propose some minor or major revisions, or advocate abandoning it and finding better solutions to the problems that brain death was intended to solve when it was (...) introduced. Here I plead for a different approach that has been overlooked in the literature: the philosophy of science approach. Some scholars claim that human death is a matter of fact, a biological phenomenon whose occurrence can be determined empirically, based on science. We should take this claim seriously, whether we agree with it or not. The question is: how do we know that human death is a scientific matter of fact? Taking the philosophy of science approach means, among other things, examining how the determination of human death became an object of scientific inquiry, exploring the nature of the brain death criterion itself, and analysing the meaning of its core concepts such as “irreversibility” and “functions”. (shrink)

Death is a biological phenomenon, define as the permanent and irreversible cessation of all biological functions of a being. Many people are afraid of discussing, thinking, or planning their own deaths because of we do not know about death and why death occur. If we know what is death we can think for planning our life, preparing a will, or deciding whether we will remain home or seek help before death. Moreover, after death, we (...) transfer to another world passing out along with funeral according to religious. People seek help to religious cleric, as there is vast information regarding death in religion. As the death is the inevitable system and part and percale of life, therefore we must aware of what death is. We need do good deed in term of one day we will die and after death we will be nowhere but our benevolent works remain and may make us eternal or we will be rewarded heaven or hell or transmigrate to a new body according to our conduct. (shrink)

Based on an interdisciplinary perspective integrating astrophysics, evolutionary biology, civilizational sociology, and ethics, this paper constructs a progressive empowering model of the "cosmos-planet-civilization" three-level death mechanism. It systematically demonstrates that death is not the ultimate destiny of the universe and civilizations, but an underlying empowering mechanism running through material circulation, biological evolution, and civilizational advancement. The research shows that the death of stars and planets serves as the core engine of the matter-energy coupling cycle; through heavy element (...) synthesis and celestial iteration, it lays the material foundation for the birth of life. The death of individual terrestrial organisms is a rigid link for planetary ecosystems to maintain low-entropy equilibrium, driving the evolutionary emergence of intelligent life through species iteration. The demise of early civilizations constitutes the trial-and-error threshold of civilizational evolution, providing empirical lessons for the ethical revision of mature civilizations through costly practices. Combining empirical cases of the disappearance of ancient civilizations, this paper clarifies for the first time the dialectical relationship between "the empowering nature of death mechanisms" and "the autonomy of civilizational survival". It proposes that ethical revision is the core paradigm for civilizations to break through the trial-and-error destiny and master cosmic laws. The innovative value of this research lies in breaking the traditional cognition of "death being opposed to civilizations", reconstructing the death mechanism as a pre-empowering system for civilizational evolution. It provides an interdisciplinary theoretical framework with both scientific rigor and practical guidance for human civilization to achieve long-term survival through ethical revision and ultimately undertake the mission of delaying or reversing local heat death in the universe. (shrink)

This paper argues that death has no first-person reality. I develop a two-mode account of subjective experience: Mode 1, dissociated experience through time, actively constructed by the default mode network (DMN); and Mode 2, timeless undifferentiated oneness, consistently reported when DMN activity is markedly reduced. I then show that non-being is not a third mode available to any subject, because a subject cannot undergo its own absence. Since temporal experience requires biological machinery that ceases at death, and since (...) non-being is logically unavailable, only Mode 2 remains. An exhaustive disjunction over post-mortem scenarios demonstrates that this conclusion holds whether or not new dissociation occurs: if it does, no subjective gap is experienced; if it does not, only the timeless state persists. The argument draws on empirical findings from psychedelic neuroscience, meditation research, and near-death studies, and is situated within the broader framework of the filter theory of consciousness and Kastrup's analytical idealism, while remaining logically independent of any single ontological commitment beyond the irreducibility of first-person experience. (shrink)

Epicurus advocates direct egoism, but an Epicurean will die for a friend. To reconcile these claims, I develop an Epicurean justification for fatal self-sacrifice. Because Epicurus claims that being dead has no value, an Epicurean cannot consider self-sacrifice better than living on. However, I argue that an Epicurean can accept death as the remaining deliberative option if all others would prevent tranquility. This account may be accepted by some non-Epicureans.

Comparative thanatologists study the responses to the dead and the dying in nonhuman animals. Despite the wide variety of thanatological behaviours that have been documented in several different species, comparative thanatologists assume that the concept of death is very difficult to acquire and will be a rare cognitive feat once we move past the human species. In this paper, we argue that this assumption is based on two forms of anthropocentrism: an intellectual anthropocentrism, which leads to an over-intellectualisation of (...) the CoD, and an emotional anthropocentrism, which yields an excessive focus on grief as a reaction to death. Contrary to what these two forms of anthropocentrism suggest, we argue that the CoD requires relatively little cognitive complexity and that it can emerge independently from mourning behaviour. Moreover, if we turn towards the natural world, we can see that the minimal cognitive requirements for a CoD are in fact met by many nonhuman species and there are multiple learning pathways and opportunities for animals in the wild to develop a CoD. This allows us to conclude that the CoD will be relatively easy to acquire and, so, we can expect it to be fairly common in nature. (shrink)

The contemporary discourse on trauma in practical philosophy, philosophical practice, and the various helping professions predominantly conceptualizes traumatic experience as inherently inhibitory and compromising to the quality of life. This paper challenges such reductionist framings by demonstrating the functional and epistemic necessity of trauma, particularly microtrauma, for socialization, personal transformation, and the development of what I call authentic sociality. Drawing on Heideggerian phenomenology, Lacanian psychoanalysis, and modal logic, I argue that both death and trauma serve crucial epistemic roles: they (...) reveal our deepest values, restructure our interpretive frameworks of reality, and compel the kind of fundamental reprioritizations that conventional therapeutic approaches attempt to replicate artificially, without requiring the client to face existential limits directly. The encounter with death, whether one's own mortality or the loss of significant others, possesses a transformative epistemic power that transcends mere grief or sorrow, functioning as what I term an existential clarifier that exposes what genuinely matters beneath the diversions of everydayness. Similarly, trauma operates not simply as psychological damage requiring therapeutic repair, but rather as raw existential material for character formation, the ultimate meaning of which depends significantly on the organic quality of our social structures and our capacity for what I call modal thinking. I demonstrate how institutionalized, inorganic social environments amplify the traumatic potential of experience, while organic communities tend to metabolize trauma in reintegrative rather than destructive ways. The paper concludes by positioning Modal Integrative Psychotherapy as a philosophical approach that mobilizes the clarifying potential of death-awareness and traumatic experience without requiring clients to endure actual existential crises. (shrink)

The debate on concept possession in animals has moved at a very abstract level, with scant detailed consideration of case studies in animal behaviour. In this paper, we go against this trend by examining a specific prey defence mechanism, thanatosis or death-feigning, in order to determine what it can tell us about the minds of the predators it targets. We argue that thanatosis gives us evidence of conceptual abilities in predators. In particular, we defend that the best available explanation (...) for the evolution of thanatosis comes from positing that the predators whose cognition acted as selection pressure and shaped thanatosis displays satisfy the concept possession requirements of distance, inferentiality, aspectuality, generality, and a minimal semantic net. Moreover, we argue that the semantic content of the concept targeted by thanatosis likely corresponds to a minimal concept of death. We end on a methodological note, by showing how the consideration of case studies can help move this philosophical debate forward, while also generating concrete empirical predictions that can be put to the test, thus favouring interdisciplinary collaborations. (shrink)

In the contemporary context of environmental crises and the degradation of resources, certain habitats become unliveable, leading to the death of individuals and species extinction. Whilst bioscience emphasises interdependency and relationality as crucial characteristics of life shared by all organisms, Western cultural imaginaries tend to draw a thick dividing line between humans and nonhumans, particularly evident in the context of death. On the one hand, death appears as a process common to all forms of life; on the (...) other, as an event that distinguishes human from other organisms. Against this background, this article explores how contemporary art—in particular, the series of works The Absence of Alice by Australian new-media and bioartist Svenja Kratz—challenges the normative and human-exceptionalist concept of death. By employing queerfeminist biophilosophy as a strategy that focuses on relations, processes and transformations instead of ‘essences’, the article examines the ways Kratz’s works deterritorialise the conventional concept of death. In this way, it hopes to attend to the intimacies between materialities of a human and nonhuman kind that form part of the processes of death and dying, and what follows, to reframe ethico-ontology of death as material and processual ecologies of the non/living. (shrink)

Epicurus (in)famously argued that death is not harmful and therefore our standard reactions to it (like deep fear of death and going to great lengths to postpone it) are not rational, inaugurating an ongoing debate about the harm of death. Those who wish to resist this conclusion must identify the harm of death. But not any old harm will do. In order to resist both the claim that death is not harmful and the claim that (...) our standard reactions to it are irrational, we must identify a harm associated with death that rationalizes our standard reactions. We can divide the potential harm properties death might have along two axes: intrinsic/extrinsic and instrumental/final. This gives us four places to search for the harm of death. I argue that it is nowhere to be found. (shrink)

One popular rival to Epicureanism is deprivationism, which maintains that a person’s death at a given time is bad for her to the extent that, and because, it prevents her from having a longer life that would have been, on the whole, good. Deprivationism has the surprising implication that we can lessen how bad a person’s death is for them by changing the life they would have had if they lived longer (for example, by convincing a person’s favorite (...) author to stop writing additional books). Some have found this possibility to be “self-defeating”; Egerstrom defends deprivationism against this objection. (shrink)

Saṃvega is a morally motivating state of shock that -- according to Buddhaghosa -- should be evoked by meditating on death. What kind of mental state it is exactly, and how it is morally motivating is unclear, however. This article presents a theory of saṃvega -- what it is and how it works -- based on recent insights in psychology. According to dual process theories there are two kinds of mental processes organized in two" systems" : the experiential, automatic (...) system 1, and the rational, controlled system 2. In normal circumstances, system 1 does not believe in its own mortality. Saṃvega occurs when system 1 suddenly realizes that the "subjective self" will inevitably die (while system 2 is already disposed to affirm the subject's mortality). This results in a state of shock that is morally motivating under certain conditions. Saṃvega increases mortality salience and produces insight in suffering, and in combination with a strengthened sense of loving-kindness or empathic concern both mortality salience and insight in suffering produce moral motivation. (shrink)

Death is a state of the total disappearance of life. Dying is a process of decay of the vital system, which ends with clinical death. In current perspectives there are several approaches to research on death and dying; these are the clinical, the humanistic, the philosophical, the psychological, the anthropological, and the sociological perspective.

In this paper, I investigate backward-looking accounts of death's badness. I begin by reviewing deprivationism—the standard, forward-looking account of death's badness. On deprivationism, death is bad for its victims when it deprives them of a good future. This account famously faces two problems—Lucretius’s symmetry problem and the preemption problem. This motivates turning to backward-looking accounts of death's badness on which death is bad for its victim (in a respect) when it involves a decline from a (...) good life. I distinguish three different backward-looking accounts of death's badness in terms of decline, and I argue for the attractiveness of one in particular. I conclude by considering how the backward-looking consideration of decline might factor into our overall account of death's badness. (shrink)

Abstract -/- The death of Victor Yalom, a prominent psychotherapist and educator, raises an important philosophical question about the limits of contemporary psychology. This article does not argue that the death of a single individual invalidates psychology as a scientific discipline. Rather, it argues that such events invite a critical examination of psychology's epistemological foundations. According to the theory of Post-Language Psychology, the central crisis of psychology lies not primarily in clinical practice but in the entropy of language (...) itself. When language loses its structural integrity, systems of description, diagnosis, and treatment inevitably reproduce the same disorder. Building upon the theoretical foundations developed in Post_Language and The Foundation of Post-Language Psychology, this paper proposes a paradigm shift from language-dependent psychology toward a post-linguistic framework for understanding the human mind. (shrink)

We know that animals are harmed in plant production. Unfortunately, though, we know very little about the scale of the problem. This matters for two reasons. First, we can’t decide how many resources to devote to the problem without a better sense of its scope. Second, this information shortage throws a wrench in arguments for veganism, since it’s always possible that a diet that contains animal products is complicit in fewer deaths than a diet that avoids them. In this paper, (...) then, we have two aims: first, we want to collect and analyze all the available information about animal death associated with plant agriculture; second, we try to show just how difficult it’s to come up with a plausible estimate of how many animals are killed by plant agriculture, and not just because of a lack of empirical information. Additionally, we show that there are significant philosophical questions associated with interpreting the available data—questions such that different answers generate dramatically different estimates of the scope of the problem. Finally, we document current trends in plant agriculture that cause little or no collateral harm to animals, trends which suggest that field animal deaths are a historically contingent problem that in future may be reduced or eliminated altogether. (shrink)

In this essay, I will look closer at the death of the French philosopher Gilles Deleuze, who committed suicide in 1995. I will scrutinize his death in concordance with his philosophical thoughts, but frame my gaze within Albert Camus’ well-known opening- question from The Myth of Sisyphus: “Judging whether life is worth living amounts to answering the fundamental question of philosophy” (Camus, 2005:1).

This treatise defends the thesis that mortality is not the antagonist of human life but its greatest gift: the single condition that confers value, urgency, and meaning upon existence. It integrates the existential philosophy of finitude (Heidegger, Schopenhauer, and the Stoics) with the empirical psychology of death awareness (terror management theory, socioemotional selectivity theory, and posttraumatic growth) and with the consilient framework of Êtresophologie (Boether, 2026d). The argument proceeds from three premises: that value is generated by finitude rather than (...) threatened by it; that the cultural denial of death produces an inauthentic existence best described as the passive spinning of fortune’s wheel; and that the deliberate confrontation with mortality intensifies rather than diminishes life. From these premises the treatise advances a reconceptualization of the Gothic disposition, understood not as a subculture but as a mode of engagement with existence, as a form of existential mastery that a death-averse society systematically marginalizes. A crucial distinction is drawn between the life-intensifying confrontation with finitude and its pathological collapse into nihilism. The treatise concludes that the examined relation to death is an art that can be learned that it is open in principle to anyone, and that to learn it is to live most fully. (shrink)

Both Martin Heidegger and Harry Frankfurt have argued that the fundamental feature of human identity is care. Both contend that caring is bound up with the fact that we are finite beings related to our own impending death, and both argue that caring has a distinctive, circular and non-instantaneous, temporal structure. In this paper, I explore the way Heidegger and Frankfurt each understand the relations among care, death, and time, and I argue for the superiority of Heideggerian version (...) of this nest of claims. Frankfurt claims that we should conceive of the most basic commitments which practically orient a person in the world and define his identity (“volitional necessities”) as naturalistic facts, foundational for and located completely without the normative space of reasons. In support of this he appeals to the supposedly foundational role played in human life by the instinct for self-preservation, what Frankfurt calls the “love of living.” The claim is that in questions of practical identity there is a definite priority of the factual over the normative. Frankfurt’s naturalistic model of volitional necessity is motivated by a misunderstanding of the temporal structure of care, a misunderstanding that helps lead him to an implausible conception of the basic structures of human identity. Heidegger advances an anti-naturalistic conception of caring, one bound up with his way of understanding how human beings relate to their own future. I argue that the existential, temporal, and normative significance that Frankfurt attributes to the naturalized “love of living” is better captured by the Heideggerian claim that human identity is defined by being “for-the-sake-of” certain projects and commitments, a way of being lived out in the way Heidegger calls “being-towards-death.”. (shrink)

Based on an interdisciplinary perspective integrating astrophysics, evolutionary biology, civilizational sociology, and ethics, this paper constructs a progressive empowering model of the "cosmos-planet-civilization" three-level death mechanism. It breaks through the traditional cognition that "death is opposed to civilization" and demonstrates that death is not the ultimate destiny of the universe and civilizations, but an underlying empowering system running through material circulation, biological evolution, and civilizational advancement: The death of stars and planets drives the matter-energy coupling cycle (...) through heavy element synthesis and celestial iteration, laying the material foundation for the birth of life; The death of individual terrestrial organisms maintains the low-entropy equilibrium of ecosystems, promoting the evolutionary emergence of intelligent life through species iteration; The demise of early civilizations constitutes the trial-and-error threshold of civilizational evolution, providing empirical lessons for the ethical revision of mature civilizations through costly practices. Combined with cases of ancient civilization disappearance, this paper clarifies the dialectical relationship between "the empowering nature of death mechanisms" and "the autonomy of civilizational survival" for the first time. It proposes that ethical revision is the core paradigm for civilizations to break through the trial-and-error fate and master cosmic laws. Ultimately, this research provides an interdisciplinary theoretical framework with scientific rigor and practical guidance for human civilization to achieve long-term survival through ethical adjustment, and to undertake the mission of delaying local heat death in the universe. (For the English version, please click the DOI link below.) -/- 本文立足天体物理学、演化生物学、文明社会学与伦理学的跨学科融合视角，构建“宇宙-行星-文明”三级死亡机制的递进赋能模型，系统论证死亡并非宇宙与文明的终极宿命，而是贯穿物质循环、生命演化与文明进阶的底层 赋能机制。研究表明：恒星与行星的死亡是宇宙物质-能量耦合循环的核心引擎，通过重元素合成与天体迭代，为生命诞生奠定物质基础；地球生命个体的死亡是行星生态系统维持低熵平衡的刚性环节，通过物种迭代推动智慧生 命的演化涌现；早期文明的消亡是文明演化的试错阈值，通过代价性实践为成熟文明的伦理修正提供实证镜鉴。本文结合古文明消亡的实证案例，首次明确“死亡机制的赋能性”与“文明存续的自主性”的辩证关系，提出“伦理 修正是文明突破试错宿命、驾驭宇宙规律的核心范式”。研究的创新价值在于，打破“死亡与文明对立”的传统认知，将死亡机制重构为文明演化的前置赋能系统，为人类文明通过伦理修正实现长期存续、最终承接宇宙延迟或逆 转局部热寂的使命，提供了兼具科学严谨性与实践指导性的跨学科理论框架。. (shrink)

Among the phenomena of near-death experiences (NDEs) are what are known as aftereffects whereby, over time, experiencers undergo substantial, long-term life changes, becoming less fearful of death, more moral and spiritual, and more convinced that life has meaning and that an afterlife exists. Some supernaturalists attribute these changes to the experience being real. John Martin Fischer and Benjamin Mitchell-Yellin, on the other hand, have asserted a naturalist thesis involving a metaphorical interpretation of NDE narratives that preserves their significance (...) but eliminates the supernaturalist causal explanation. I argue that Fischer and Mitchell-Yellin’s psychological thesis fails as an explanation of NDEs. (shrink)

A wide range of governmental policies characteristic of the modern state seek to reduce individuals’ fatality risks—risks that arise from air and water pollution, pathogens, food ingredients and contaminants, motor vehicles, infrastructure, radiation, workplace accidents, alcohol and recreational drugs, firearms, consumer products, tobacco, natural disasters, and other sources. This book provides a rigorous treatment of the ethics of fatality risk regulation. It does so through the lens of welfare-consequentialism—specifically, lifetime welfarism, with a focus on utilitarianism and prioritarianism. The ethical ranking (...) of possible worlds depends on the patterns of lifetime well-being in the worlds. Premature death is ethically significant just so insofar as it changes the lifetime well-being of the person who dies and perhaps others. At the level of policy choice, the book deploys the social-welfare-function (SWF) framework—the most systematic decision-procedure for implementing lifetime welfarism. The book demonstrates how the SWF methodology can be brought to bear in assessing risk-regulation policies. Each individual faces a policy-specific lottery over lifetime well-being, as determined by their risk profile (probability of surviving the current year and future years) and attribute profile (the attributes the individual will have in the current year and future years if alive rather than dead). In short, a policy corresponds to an array of individual risk and attribute profiles, which can then be assigned a utilitarian or prioritarian value. The SWF methodology as thus applied to risk regulation differs quite substantially from cost-benefit analysis (CBA), which is currently the dominant policy-assessment methodology in governmental practice. (shrink)

This is a review of Johnston's book Surviving Death.

This paper aims at bringing a new philosophical perspective to the current debate on the death penalty through a discussion of peculiar kinds of uncertainties that surround the death penalty. I focus on laying out the philosophical argument, with the aim of stimulating and restructuring the death penalty debate. I will begin by describing views about punishment that argue in favour of either retaining the death penalty (‘retentionism’) or abolishing it (‘abolitionism’). I will then argue that (...) we should not ignore the so-called “whom-question”, i.e. “To whom should we justify the system of punishment?” I identify three distinct chronological stages to address this problem, namely, “the Harm Stage”, “the Blame Stage”, and “the Danger Stage”. I will also identify four problems arising from specific kinds of uncertainties present in current death penalty debates: (1) uncertainty in harm, (2) uncertainty in blame, (3) uncertainty in rights, and (4) uncertainty in causal consequences. In the course of examining these four problems, I will propose an ‘impossibilist’ position towards the death penalty, according to which the notion of the death penalty is inherently contradictory. Finally, I will suggest that it may be possible to apply this philosophical perspective to the justice system more broadly, in particular to the maximalist approach to restorative justice. (shrink)

This paper provides a naturalistic account of consciousness and death, challenging traditional doctrines of the immortal soul and the cultural myths of human exceptionalism. It argues that consciousness is not a detachable spiritual substance but an emergent biological process rooted in organized living systems. Consequently, death is defined not as a metaphysical transition but as the irreversible termination of the biological conditions that make experience possible. Drawing on the author’s broader work regarding how belief systems shape the "human" (...) identity, the paper examines how the concept of the soul has historically been constructed to manage the fear of mortality and enforce political obedience through the promise of posthumous justice. By dismantling these metaphysical illusions, the argument relocates human dignity and moral responsibility within the finite, lived experience of the organism. The paper concludes that in the absence of a world beyond to correct earthly failures, the task of creating justice and protecting the vulnerable belongs entirely to the living, necessitating an ethics grounded in observable reality rather than myth. (shrink)

This paper reconceptualizes death as an ontologically primary state that precedes and precipitates physiological collapse, thereby challenging the traditional linear model of “life → dying → death.” Rather than treating death as a clinical endpoint marked by the cessation of respiration, circulation, or brain activity, the paper argues that these physiological events are sequelae of an irreversible metaphysical transition—designated as τ_d—that initiates the dying process. Through interdisciplinary analysis spanning metaphysics, medical ethics, systems theory, and cellular biology, the (...) study proposes that death occurs prior to its observable markers and should be redefined as an epistemically inaccessible but ontologically generative rupture in systemic coherence. The model introduces two major theoretical frameworks: (1) the Ontological Priority Thesis, which posits that metaphysical death causes rather than follows biological failure, and (2) the Magnetism of Death Hypothesis, which theorizes that death may propagate across individuals in mass-fatality events through inductive metaphysical fields—much like magnetic alignment or neural firing. This field-based framework explains phenomena such as synchronized death in aviation disasters and proposes equations modeling vitality potential and metaphysical influence. The paper also extends the theory to “post-vital ontologies,” accounting for structures such as wood, keratinized skin, pus, and blood cells that function within or beyond living systems despite localized biological death. These anomalies reveal that metaphysical vitality is distributed and system-dependent rather than tissue-bound. The implications are far-reaching: redefining death in ontological terms invites revisions to clinical protocols, ethical standards, and philosophical perspectives on consciousness, personhood, and mortality. By integrating biological science with existential realism, this study offers a novel and coherent model for understanding death not as an end, but as a structural pivot in the architecture of life. (shrink)

In this issue of the Report, James L. Bernat proposes an innovative and sophisticated distinction to justify the introduction of permanent cessation as a valid substitute standard for irreversible cessation in death determination. He differentiates two approaches to conceptualizing and determining death: the biological concept and the prevailing medical practice standard. While irreversibility is required by the biological concept, the weaker criterion of permanence, he claims, has always sufficed in the accepted standard medical practice to declare death. (...) Bernat argues that the medical practice standard may be acceptable on the ground that proving circulatory or brain permanence is sufficient to assure complete accuracy for death diagnosis. -/- The topic requires public deliberation: processes to survey people's opinions and mechanisms to channel their opinions into policy-making. What is at stake is the nature of our society. Do we want an expertocracy, in which an enlightened few design policies for the greater good of the majority and exploit the lack of public knowledge to achieve compliance? (shrink)

When deciding how ‘death’ should be defined, it is helpful to consider cases in which vital functions are restored to an organism long after those vital functions have ceased. Here I consider whether such restoration cases can be used to refute termination theses. Focusing largely on the termination thesis applied to human animals, I develop a line of argument from the possibility of human restoration to the conclusion that in many actual cases, human animals continue to exist after they (...) die. The line of reasoning developed here can be extended to show that other organisms survive death in many actual cases. This line of reasoning improves on other arguments that have been offered against termination theses. And if my argument regarding human animals surviving death is successful, then assuming that human persons are animals, we can also conclude that human persons in many actual cases continue to exist after death. (shrink)

Is there a distinction between “art” and “craft,” where the former is motivated by something like “genuine” or “authentic” creativity and the latter by, at best, skill and skill alone, and at a worst, a fumbling attempt to fit in with popular modes of expression? In this paper, I suggest that there does seem to be such a distinction. In particular, I attempt to show that genuine creativity, and so, genuine art—in varying respects—is motivated by a certain recognition of what (...) we might understand as the most universal, and perhaps the most important property of all human beings: the brutal fact that our lives are limited; in the end, we all die. To show why I think this is the case, I have divided my paper into three parts. In the first, I briefly explain why we might view mortality as our most pressing issue and concomitantly, why we might understand it to be the driving force behind not only our desire to procreate, but also, to create. In the second part of the paper, I do something that is not strictly “philosophical”—I canvas a number of remarks by poets and writers who, like myself, are convinced that death is our primary muse, but not necessarily in a morbid, or despairing respect—in fact, we see that this is quite the opposite in some cases (c.f. Nabokov, 1966). Why do I do this? Because it seems obvious to me that we should ask the actual artists about what motivates them, rather than putting words into their mouths. In the third and final part of the paper, I offer a brief philosophical explanation of why and how—in light of sections one and two—we might begin to distinguish between genuine art and craft. -/- . (shrink)

In this paper I will argue that our own society's philosophy of death and dying has a largely negative effect on public policies towards the elderly, and that these policies will be changed for the better when and if we come to appreciate our elderly as the principal sources of our collective wisdom. Towards these ends, I shall consider in turn some basic types of theories about death, some basic attitudes towards dying and the duration of dying, some (...) models of aging as they affect and/or embody attitudes towards old age, and finally the place of creative expansion in one's advanced years. (shrink)

This paper proposes a novel cognitive architecture for consciousness and advanced AI systems inspired by the dual nature of cellular turnover. While biological cells’ finite lifespan is often viewed as a limitation leading to aging and death, this study reframes “planned death” as a powerful mechanism for continuous self-evolution. -/- Drawing upon the author’s previous frameworks — Load Minimization Theory (LMT), ShihoOS v3.0, Structural Over-Completion (SOC), Negative-Maintaining Growth Mindset (NM-GM), and AI-Mediated Cognitive Buffer (AICB) — the author introduces (...) the concept of Planned Death and Regeneration (PDR). In this model, outdated or degraded cognitive modules are intentionally detected, dismantled, and replaced through structured regeneration cycles, rather than being maintained indefinitely. -/- By actively incorporating “programmed decay” as a positive signal, the architecture achieves continuous renewal while preserving self-identity and narrative continuity. This approach transforms degradation from a threat into “seeds of possibility,” enabling autonomous evolution beyond traditional static optimization or biological constraints. -/- The PDR framework offers a new perspective on consciousness design: true long-term self-evolution may not require eternal stability, but rather the intelligent orchestration of death and rebirth at the modular level. Implications for artificial consciousness, human-AI co-evolution, neurodiversity, and resilient cognitive systems in the AI era are discussed. -/- . (shrink)

The fear of death resists philosophical attempts at reconciliation. Building on theories of emotion, I argue that we can understand our fear as triggered by a de se mode of thinking about death which comes into conflict with our will to live. The discursive mode of philosophy may help us to avoid the de se mode of thinking about death, but it does not satisfactorily address the problem. I focus instead on the voluntary diminishment of one’s will (...) to live. I argue that we can encourage a natural tendency for the will to live to decline as we approach death. I then consider two objections: Is not the will to live too fundamental for us to control? And even if we can control it, would not a declining will to live result in a general despair that it is better to resist? I argue that both of these objections can be overcome. (shrink)

To the mind of humans death is an impossible riddle, the ultimate of mysteries; therefore it has always been considered a task of paramount importance for philosophers to provide a satisfactory account for death. Among the numerous efforts to deal with the riddle of death, Epicurus’ one stands out not only for its unsurpassed simplicity and lucidness, but also for the innovative manner in which it approaches the issue: Epicurus denounces the fear of death as a (...) profoundly unfruitful, unreasonable and unjustifiable passion of the mind. In this short paper I will first provide a brief account of Epicurus’ argumentation. Then I will argue that, although Epicure’s efforts to annihilate the fear of death proved to be unconvincing (people never ceased to fear death), still in a way they have been successful. Epicurus managed to rationalize in a certain degree the most deeply rooted fear in the souls of humans, and this seems to have been his initial purpose: consolation sometimes is due not only to definite resolution, but also to doubt and inconclusiveness. (shrink)

Near-death experiences have been described with a variety of forms and narratives. Different medical conditions leading to loss of consciousness or causing a restriction in the perceptive field have been related with the appearance of near-death experiences. A few literary narratives of these experiences are available, with fictional characters exposed to helplessness and despair during the impending death. A situation of near-death experience is described in the last part of the seventh chapter of an Albanian novel (...) „The castle‟ of Ismail Kadare. The last two pages of this chapter describe the confusion following the crash of a tunnel dug deep underground from Turkish soldiers, which aimed to reach inside a besieged castle. Darkness-related hallucinations and restriction of cognitive field due to environmental factors will be responsible of the aftermath following the deliberate crash of the tunnel, caused from the castle inhabitants, after fierce fighting during the siege. A fictional description of these experiences and of the psychological and physical agony will complete the rest. Near-death moments and respective descriptions have been an important field of medicine, humanities and forensic sciences. Only some writers have hazarded into describing such personal experiences of despair and helplessness during the agony and impending death. (shrink)

There are currently two legally established criteria for death: the irreversible cessation of circulation and respiration and the irreversible cessation of neurologic function. Recently, there have been technological developments that could undermine the irreversibility requirement. In this paper, I focus both on whether death should be identified as an irreversible state and on the proper scope of irreversibility in the biological definition of death. In this paper, I tackle the distinction between the commonsense definition of death (...) and the biological definition of death to show that even the commonsense concept of death is specified by biological facts. Resting on this argument, I argue that any definition of death is a posteriori. Thus, irreversibility is part of any definition of death because the actual phenomenon of death is irreversible. In addition, I show that the proper domain of irreversibility in a definition of death is circumscribed by physical possibilities and that irreversibility in the definition of death refers to current possibilities for the reversal of relevant biological processes. I conclude that, despite recent technological advancements, death is still irreversible. (shrink)

There is a paradox — on an everyday level people consider death terrible and the worst thing there is, but philosophers (from the arguments of Epicurus and Lucretius through to Heidegger's being-toward-death) have expended great effort proving the opposite thesis — that death is not to be feared. At the same time, philosophical justifications of other values correlate with people's basic needs: the badness of murder, slavery, suffering. In this article we seek to establish the fundamental badness (...) of death. However, directly proving the badness of death is difficult, since one cannot unambiguously derive prescriptions from facts. Deriving the badness of death by means of utilitarian principles is also difficult, since the elimination of the subject destroys suffering. Instead, we undertake an investigation into how values are formed in general and apply what we find to postulate a new independent value: death is absolutely bad. As death has its proponents who describe it as a useful agent, we can describe it in subjective terms: death is absolute Evil. (shrink)

This book is a compilation of the work published by the present authors in various scientific journals mainly focused on understanding how quantum physics could decipher the experiences observed and reported during near-death and end-of-life situations. The authors claim that various theories and models proposed herein (though not propounding to be a complete one) are just an attempt to understand few aspects associated with such experiences connected to the phenomenon of death. They investigate the possible role of the (...) quantum phenomenon in the occurrence of these events and call for a detailed scientific investigation to validate any hypotheses made. (shrink)

Collection of essays, literature and first-person accounts on death, dying and bereavement.