Animals and the Harm of Death

Print or save as PDF See the volume

A 50-minute lesson

1. 5 min
   Opening. Ask the question and let the class answer without correcting them: If you knew you were going to die tomorrow, painlessly, would you lose anything? What?
2. 15 min
   Reading. What Does the Harm of Death Consist Of? (5 min read) and Discussing the Claim That Animals Are Not Harmed by Death (6 min read). For younger classes, read the “For kids” layer: Dying may not hurt, but it takes away all the good days still to come: playing, eating, resting in the sun. Losing those good things is a harm, even if the person or animal doesn't feel the loss.
3. 15 min
   Discussion.

   • If you knew you were going to die tomorrow, painlessly, would you lose anything? What? (What Does the Harm of Death Consist Of?)
   • What desires about the future does a one-year-old have? Does that make her death a small harm? (Discussing the Claim That Animals Are Not Harmed by Death)
   • Do you regret not having been born a hundred years earlier? Why would you regret dying a hundred years earlier than you could have? (Objections to the Account of the Harm of Death as the Prevention of What Is Positive)
   • Which of the most valuable experiences in your life were not intellectual? (Are Those Incapable of Intellectual Pleasures Only Slightly Harmed by Death?)
4. 10 min
   Activity. Project the Harm of Death Calculator tool for the class. Lifetime lost and quality of life: the reasoning behind QALYs. Ask each group to justify its choices.
5. 5 min
   Wrap-up. Each person writes one sentence about what changed in their thinking. Compare it with the volume summary: Is killing painlessly wrong? This volume investigates what the harm of death consists of, why it does not depend on understanding what dying is, and examines attempts to claim that death harms animals only a little: lack of intellectual pleasures, weak psychological connectedness, replaceability, short lifespans.

Exercise sheet

1. According to the Epicurean view...

   1. death is the worst of evils
   2. death is not a harm to the one who dies
   3. only animals are harmed by death

2. Even if the Epicurean view were correct, would it support saying that only humans are harmed by death?

   1. Yes
   2. No, according to it no one is harmed by death
   3. Only for wild animals

3. The example of the two kids and the playground shows that...

   1. only those who desire the future are harmed
   2. both are harmed, even the one who doesn't understand “tomorrow”
   3. neither is harmed

4. According to the chapter, when is a sentient being NOT harmed by death?

   1. When there's no minimally meaningful life ahead of them
   2. When they're of another species
   3. When they don't understand death

5. The “epistemological problem” says that...

   1. we can't be sure whether future life would be positive or negative
   2. animals have no memory
   3. death is always good

6. The temporal asymmetry objection asks...

   1. why we mourn death but not the time before birth
   2. why animals live shorter lives
   3. why time passes

7. What is the argument's “second and main” problem?

   1. Intellectual pleasures being more valuable doesn't imply that others are of little value
   2. Animals have intellectual pleasures
   3. Pleasures don't exist

8. For the chapter, being close to someone you love and playing chess can be...

   1. equally valuable, if they produce the same satisfaction for the same length of time
   2. always different
   3. both worthless

9. What are QALYs?

   1. Quality-adjusted life years
   2. Animals fit for consumption
   3. A species of bird

10. To measure the harm of death, the chapter considers...

    1. only future time
    2. future aspects and also reasons to take past ones into account
    3. only species

The lesson plan and exercises are a study layer written for this site. The texts read are by Luciano Carlos Cunha.