Terminator and Philosophy: I'll Be Back, Therefore I Am (31 page)
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Authors: Richard Brown,William Irwin,Kevin S. Decker
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Lucretius adds an interesting twist to the Epicurean argument by comparing the eternal nothingness that follows death to the eternal nothingness that precedes birth:
Look back at the eternity that passed before we were born, and mark how utterly it counts to us as nothing. This is a mirror that Nature holds up to us, in which we may see the time that shall be after we are dead. Is there anything terrifying in the sight—anything depressing—anything that is not more restful than the soundest sleep?
10
Lucretius echoes the father of Western philosophy, Socrates (c. 469-399 BCE), who, after the “guilty” verdict in the trial for his life, was facing the likelihood of his own impending death:
Let us reflect in this way, too, that there is good hope that death is a blessing, for it is one of two things: either the dead are nothing and have no perception of anything, or it is, as we are told, a change and relocating for the soul from here to another place. If it is complete lack of perception, like a dreamless sleep, then death would be a great advantage . . . for all eternity would then seem to be no more than a single night.
11
There is one flaw in Lucretius’s and Socrates’ comparison of death to a night of dreamless sleep: one
wakes up
from sleep! A person values the restfulness of a peaceful night of sleep only because she feels great the next morning. It’s not the experience of sleep itself that she values, for she doesn’t experience it at all. The total lack of experience, though, takes us right back to Epicurus and his claim that a person can’t
suffer
from being dead since she doesn’t
exist
anymore. It’s not as if a dead person can say to herself, “Shit! This total lack of sensation sucks!”
wakes up
from sleep! A person values the restfulness of a peaceful night of sleep only because she feels great the next morning. It’s not the experience of sleep itself that she values, for she doesn’t experience it at all. The total lack of experience, though, takes us right back to Epicurus and his claim that a person can’t
suffer
from being dead since she doesn’t
exist
anymore. It’s not as if a dead person can say to herself, “Shit! This total lack of sensation sucks!”
What about Lucretius’s parallel between the eternity a person doesn’t experience after death and the eternity he doesn’t experience before his birth? Against Lucretius’s point, does this mean that if death is so bad for the person who dies, then it must be equally bad for him never to have been born in the first place? That would help make sense out of John’s statement above, recounting what happened in the first film. If the Terminator had killed Sarah before John was born or even conceived, or killed Reese before he and Sarah “hooked up,” would it have been just as bad for John as being killed by the Terminator at the age of ten or twenty-five?
Philosopher Fred Feldman argues, as a utilitarian, that the negative value of a person’s death or nonexistence should be judged on how much worse off he is—or the world as a whole is—after his death or without his ever having existed. Simply speaking, it seems that it would be
worse
to prevent John’s conception than to kill him at age ten or twenty-five; for at least in the latter case, John is able to enjoy ten or twenty-five years of life that he wouldn’t have otherwise had. So Feldman adds that the benefits one is deprived of in death must be
justly due to him
; but having something justly due to a person requires that he exists in the first place. If John never existed, then there are no benefits that are justly due to him: “If a couple fails to conceive a child who would have been happy, no individual is thereby doomed to get less of the goods than she deserves. Since the deprived child simply does not exist in the relevant outcome, there is no victim.”
12
If, on the other hand, the child is killed at age ten or twenty-five, he’d be deprived of the benefits of future life that are owed to him. Feldman writes:
worse
to prevent John’s conception than to kill him at age ten or twenty-five; for at least in the latter case, John is able to enjoy ten or twenty-five years of life that he wouldn’t have otherwise had. So Feldman adds that the benefits one is deprived of in death must be
justly due to him
; but having something justly due to a person requires that he exists in the first place. If John never existed, then there are no benefits that are justly due to him: “If a couple fails to conceive a child who would have been happy, no individual is thereby doomed to get less of the goods than she deserves. Since the deprived child simply does not exist in the relevant outcome, there is no victim.”
12
If, on the other hand, the child is killed at age ten or twenty-five, he’d be deprived of the benefits of future life that are owed to him. Feldman writes:
Death differs from never existing in one crucial respect. Never existing is not something that ever happens to actual people.
A fortiori
, there are no actual people for whom never existing can be bad. But death always happens to actual people. It can deprive actual people of what would otherwise be good for them.
13
But there is still this question:
who
is harmed by death, or wronged by being killed? Is it the ante-mortem person who hasn’t yet been deprived of further life or the post-mortem person who no longer exists? Both options seem problematic unless we think that a person can be harmed either
before
the harm actually occurs, or
after
he’s no longer around. If we disagree with Epicurus and Lucretius on the harmfulness of death, then we should opt for the first: “only ante-mortem persons can be wronged after their death. . . . [Post-mortem persons] are, if anything, just so much dust; and dust cannot be wronged.”
14
A person can be harmed by death while still alive, or so Feldman thinks, not because of some kind of paradoxical “backward causation” in which an effect temporally precedes its cause—of course, this might make perfect sense to time-traveling Terminators.
15
The real reason is that harms don’t have to be
fixed
at one particular moment or period of time.
16
Some kinds of harms may be
atemporal
, meaning that they can affect the entire course of a life, thereby making an overall life worse off:
who
is harmed by death, or wronged by being killed? Is it the ante-mortem person who hasn’t yet been deprived of further life or the post-mortem person who no longer exists? Both options seem problematic unless we think that a person can be harmed either
before
the harm actually occurs, or
after
he’s no longer around. If we disagree with Epicurus and Lucretius on the harmfulness of death, then we should opt for the first: “only ante-mortem persons can be wronged after their death. . . . [Post-mortem persons] are, if anything, just so much dust; and dust cannot be wronged.”
14
A person can be harmed by death while still alive, or so Feldman thinks, not because of some kind of paradoxical “backward causation” in which an effect temporally precedes its cause—of course, this might make perfect sense to time-traveling Terminators.
15
The real reason is that harms don’t have to be
fixed
at one particular moment or period of time.
16
Some kinds of harms may be
atemporal
, meaning that they can affect the entire course of a life, thereby making an overall life worse off:
The sense in which an ante-mortem person is harmed by an unfortunate event after his death is this: the occurrence of the event makes it true that during the time before the person’s death, he was harmed—harmed in that the unfortunate event was going to happen. If the event should not occur, the ante-mortem person would not have been so harmed. So the occurrence of the post-mortem event is responsible for the ante-mortem harm.
17
Someone faced with the impending doom of Judgment Day may be harmed even before it occurs due to the fact that it will occur and cut short her life or otherwise render it miserable if she survives. To be precise, the particular harm the person experiences prior to Judgment Day isn’t Judgment Day itself and her subsequent death or crappy existence. Rather, the harm is that Judgment Day
is going to happen
.
is going to happen
.
Given this fact in the
Terminator-
verse, is it necessarily a
harm
for the victims who perish? Consider what Jeff McMahan says concerning what makes death bad for the person who dies:
Terminator-
verse, is it necessarily a
harm
for the victims who perish? Consider what Jeff McMahan says concerning what makes death bad for the person who dies:
Death is bad for a person . . . at any point in his life, provided that the life that is thereby lost would on balance have been worth living. Other things being equal, the badness of death is proportional to the quality and quantity of the goods of which the victim is deprived.
18
According to this view, if the Terminator shot an innocent person dead on August 28, 1997—just before the original Judgment Day at the beginning of
T2
—her sudden, unforeseen death by gunshot may not be all that bad. For it deprives her of only one more day of a life that will end with a horribly painful death—graphically depicted in
T2
in a way that still disturbs me—or her having to suffer a pretty lousy existence afterward that she might gladly trade for nonexistence: “Life is the condition of all goods, but alas it is also the condition of all evils. When continued life promises only great evils unmixed with any compensating goods, our best bet may be death.”
19
T2
—her sudden, unforeseen death by gunshot may not be all that bad. For it deprives her of only one more day of a life that will end with a horribly painful death—graphically depicted in
T2
in a way that still disturbs me—or her having to suffer a pretty lousy existence afterward that she might gladly trade for nonexistence: “Life is the condition of all goods, but alas it is also the condition of all evils. When continued life promises only great evils unmixed with any compensating goods, our best bet may be death.”
19
Thomas Nagel thinks differently, contending—like Aquinas earlier—that being alive is fundamentally good for a person, even if it’s full of more painful than pleasant experiences:
There are elements that, if added to one’s experience, make life better; there are other elements that, if added to one’s experience, make life worse. But what remains when these are set aside is not merely
neutral
: it is emphatically positive. Therefore life is worth living even when the bad elements of experience are plentiful and the good ones too meager to outweigh the bad ones on their own. The additional positive weight is supplied by experience itself, rather than by any of its contents.
20
The fundamental goods that “experience itself” brings, according to Nagel, include “perception, desire, activity, and thought.” This may explain why, despite the horrible conditions in which they live, people who survive the initial nuclear holocaust persist in fighting Skynet. Even after Skynet is defeated, life will still be hard in the desolate remains of civilization. Nevertheless, the survivors will be
alive
, and that alone may be enough to continue the fight. Reese, and the Terminator in
T2
, both say to Sarah, “Come with me if you want to
live
”—not, “Come with me if you want to live well and be happy with puppy dogs and rainbows.”
alive
, and that alone may be enough to continue the fight. Reese, and the Terminator in
T2
, both say to Sarah, “Come with me if you want to
live
”—not, “Come with me if you want to live well and be happy with puppy dogs and rainbows.”
But what if the victim on August 28, 1997, won’t survive Judgment Day? What if all the Terminator is depriving her of is a more protracted and painful death than an instantaneous, unexpected gunshot to the head would provide? On this question, Kai Draper points out the distinction between “deprivation” and “misfortune.”
21
While it’s true that the victim is deprived of one more day of life, which may be quite pleasurable for her until Skynet wakes up and decides to kick some human ass, it’s not necessarily a
misfortune
for her, since she’s doomed to a fiery death anyway—sort of like
not
winning the lottery deprives one of millions of dollars, but isn’t a misfortune since the odds were stacked against him.
21
While it’s true that the victim is deprived of one more day of life, which may be quite pleasurable for her until Skynet wakes up and decides to kick some human ass, it’s not necessarily a
misfortune
for her, since she’s doomed to a fiery death anyway—sort of like
not
winning the lottery deprives one of millions of dollars, but isn’t a misfortune since the odds were stacked against him.
This difference between deprivation and misfortune echoes Robert Young’s definition of the wrongness of killing:
What makes killing another human being wrong on occasions is its character as an irrevocable, maximally unjust prevention of the realization either of the victim’s life-purposes or of such life-purposes as the victim may reasonably have been expected to resume or to come to have.
22
One can’t reasonably expect to win the lottery—although
someone
has to win it. Conversely, an outsider who witnesses the Terminator’s killing of an innocent person on August 28, 1997, would probably judge it to be wrong, because he reasonably expects the victim to have enjoyed a long life if she hadn’t been killed on that day. Nevertheless, this judgment may be simply wrong, due to the fact that the victim is in fact doomed the next day no matter what.
23
John’s death prior to Judgment Day, though, would have a different moral evaluation, since we know that he has a significant life-purpose in the future. But, of course, we have the benefit of knowing these facts from a “God’s eye” perspective as viewers outside of the
Terminator
-verse. If someone within that reality—other than a Terminator—indiscriminately kills another person on August 28, 1997, his act would justifiably be considered wrong, since it could be “reasonably expected” that the victim would’ve had a long life ahead to fulfill her life-purposes.
someone
has to win it. Conversely, an outsider who witnesses the Terminator’s killing of an innocent person on August 28, 1997, would probably judge it to be wrong, because he reasonably expects the victim to have enjoyed a long life if she hadn’t been killed on that day. Nevertheless, this judgment may be simply wrong, due to the fact that the victim is in fact doomed the next day no matter what.
23
John’s death prior to Judgment Day, though, would have a different moral evaluation, since we know that he has a significant life-purpose in the future. But, of course, we have the benefit of knowing these facts from a “God’s eye” perspective as viewers outside of the
Terminator
-verse. If someone within that reality—other than a Terminator—indiscriminately kills another person on August 28, 1997, his act would justifiably be considered wrong, since it could be “reasonably expected” that the victim would’ve had a long life ahead to fulfill her life-purposes.
Is there any point, then, to this oath John forces upon the Terminator in
T2
? What is it about death that’s so
bad
, which in turn makes indiscriminate killing
wrong
? Given death’s inevitability, particularly with Judgment Day ever on the horizon, wouldn’t a stoic acceptance of eternal dreamless sleep be the most appropriate emotional response? Certainly, the Terminator has no emotional reaction to his killing—as Reese warns Sarah, “It can’t be bargained with, it can’t be reasoned with. It doesn’t feel pity, or remorse, or fear, and it absolutely will not stop. Ever. Until you are dead!” On the other hand, John tries to enlighten the Terminator in
T2
about how humans feel: “Look, maybe you don’t care if you live or die, but everybody’s not like that. We have feelings. We hurt. We’re afraid. You gotta learn this stuff. I’m not kidding. It’s important.” Draper seems to support John’s take on human nature:
T2
? What is it about death that’s so
bad
, which in turn makes indiscriminate killing
wrong
? Given death’s inevitability, particularly with Judgment Day ever on the horizon, wouldn’t a stoic acceptance of eternal dreamless sleep be the most appropriate emotional response? Certainly, the Terminator has no emotional reaction to his killing—as Reese warns Sarah, “It can’t be bargained with, it can’t be reasoned with. It doesn’t feel pity, or remorse, or fear, and it absolutely will not stop. Ever. Until you are dead!” On the other hand, John tries to enlighten the Terminator in
T2
about how humans feel: “Look, maybe you don’t care if you live or die, but everybody’s not like that. We have feelings. We hurt. We’re afraid. You gotta learn this stuff. I’m not kidding. It’s important.” Draper seems to support John’s take on human nature:
Death is a genuine evil. For death takes from us the objects of our emotional attachments, and sadness is a fitting response to the prospect of losing the object of an emotional attachment regardless of how unavoidable that loss might be.
24
The Terminator finally realizes this when John gets upset at the T-101’s impending death: “I know now why you cry.” Although the Terminator can’t share John’s sadness at this moment, he can intellectually recognize it as an appropriate response to the loss John is about to experience. If the Terminator could experience emotional attachment himself, then he might perceive the “evil” of his own death—however necessary it may be to prevent Skynet from being built—and feel sad about it, too. While the Terminator may have originally taken an oath not to kill anyone simply because he’s programmed to obey John’s orders, by the end of
T2
, he has evidently come to understand the wrongness of killing in terms of the pain it causes to victims who are deprived of the goods—particularly relationships with those they love—that make life worthwhile. Sarah is thus justifiably optimistic about the future: “If a machine, a Terminator, can learn the value of human life, maybe we can, too.”
25
T2
, he has evidently come to understand the wrongness of killing in terms of the pain it causes to victims who are deprived of the goods—particularly relationships with those they love—that make life worthwhile. Sarah is thus justifiably optimistic about the future: “If a machine, a Terminator, can learn the value of human life, maybe we can, too.”
25
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