Analytic Philosophers on the Fear of Death

I've been teaching some of the dialectic stemming from Nagel's article on the rationality of the fear of death again. This time through, a worry that had been inchoate became clearer to me. There are two kinds of interesting argument that our attitudes about death are irrational. The first set of arguments all conclude that being dead cannot be bad for you and so, if you fear it, you are being irrational. You are being irrational in the same way you would be if you believed something to be purple when it is not. The second kind of argument is a challenge to the consistency of our attitudes. It concludes that the horror with which we conceive our own demise is inconsistent with the mildness with which we conceive our prenatal non-existence.

The worry is this: the analytic response to these arguments consists in pointing out how these arguments turn on premises that are grossly inconsistent with our common sense attitudes. But, in a context in which the rationality of our fear of death is in dispute, it is not at all clear to me that one ought to treat the deliverances of common sense as authoritative. Taking the question -- should I be afraid of death -- seriously already requires rejecting the authority of common sense. After all, the thesis that death is not bad for you is itself grossly inconsistent with common sense.

To get a flavor of how this dialectic works consider the following line of thought: Nagel notes that if an argument for the conclusion that we ought not fear death rests on the supposition that the badness of a condition must be intrinsic to the time during which it exists, then we might reject it on the grounds that the badness of things like failure is not wholly constituted by the time during which one has failed. He points out, plausibly enough, that the special badness of failure is a relational matter. The special badness of failure consists in a relation between the condition you're in during which you have failed and the condition you could have been in had you not failed. Great. So common sense is committed to rejecting any argument premised on the claim that badness must be non-relational.

So should we be afraid of death or not? At best we have learned from Nagel that it is not a requirement of common sense that we not fear death. This is because common sense would recommend rejecting a premise that would oblige us to think that the fear of death is irrational. But this is not a surprise. After all, we already know that common sense would require that we fear death. If we are required by common sense to fear death, then it is no surprise that common sense does not also command that we be unafraid of death.

How is the philosopher to settle his mind on a question, which, if it is taken seriously, must undermine the authority of the evidence on which he would rely to settle his mind?

Stone Hill Norton: Weedy Goat (and not in a good way)

So I opened the Stone Hill Norton last night and sipped it while I watched the movie Black Book (which I loved, but that would be another post). Despite being about twice the cost of the Illinois Cellars' Norton, it was a worse wine. It wasn't particularly sweet or goaty, but it was thin and astringent. Perhaps it will have opened up since last night - thereby becoming a little less astringent - but this will probably not improve its body.

Part of the problem, presumably, was its aging in oak barrels. A little oak can improve a wine, but all too often vintners appear to use oak to cover up imperfection and so drinking a wine can turn out to be like sucking on a wood chip. This wasn't that bad, but it certainly was more like sucking on a wood chip than one would prefer. At any rate, the thin-ness was the real problem.

It had a little of that wet mammalian hint, which I would normally have welcomed. However, the wine was also unpleasantly weedy. Sometimes a wine is described as herbaceous or tasting subtly of grass... and this is supposed to be a good thing. In the case of the Stone Hill Norton, it tasted a little like bad hay... thus: "weedy". Interestingly, the weediness and the wet mammal melded in a way that removed any potential for pleasure from the taste of wet mammal. (I realize that the previous sentence contains what might seem like a paradoxical presupposition; but, trust me, a little wet mammal can be nice.)

Summing up: Thus far, the Illinois Cellars' Norton is still by far the best I've tried and at less cost than its rivals. I ended my last post - the one on the Catawba - with a list of whites I'd like to try. Perhaps I should branch out and try some different North American reds - in particular, the Baco Noir or Chambourcin.

The Pink Catawba

So I tried the Pink Catawba last night. The first impression was one of overwhelming sweetness. Luckily it was well-chilled, so that helped a little. Additionally, it had a very grape-y flavor, perhaps a little tropical fruit to it. The grapiness was not quite the same as the Welch's grape jelly flavor of the concord grape, it was more like the grapiness of the scuppernong muscadine grape. After the initial Koolade shock, a kind of pleasantly mysterious grassiness was manifest. Mostly, this was an aftertaste, though, once detected, it was manifest in subsequent sips. Also, it had a ton of body. This was surely due to the tooth-achingly huge amount of sugar in it.

Overall: I liked the muscadine grapiness, though it would be better toned down. I liked the grassy/herbaceous notes quite a bit. This would be a much better wine with more acid and much less sweetness. Is the sweetness of a wine mostly a function of its production, or does it depend more on the grape itself? That is, would it be possible to make a drier Catawba? I'd be interested in trying that.

Hmm... maybe I should try some other varietal: Chardonel, Vidal Blanc, Verdelet, or Vignoles. All of these are hybrids reputed to be drier than Catawba, but possessing interesting fruitiness

PS: If you haven't tried a scuppernong grape, you must get some. They are mostly grown in Georgia, but are shipped around the country (at least to fancy markets in the Midwest) around this time of year. They are fantastic and quite different from the run-of-the-mill grocery store grape.

why it would be cool to be a photographer, #3

Rythm, by 35 MM Studio