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Borde vi vara oroliga inför domedagen?: Om Travis Timmermans svar till Samuel Schefflers tankar om vikten hos det kollektiva efter-livet
Uppsala University, Disciplinary Domain of Humanities and Social Sciences, Faculty of Arts, Department of Philosophy, Practical Philosophy.
2023 (Swedish)Independent thesis Basic level (degree of Bachelor), 10 credits / 15 HE creditsStudent thesisAlternative title
Should we worry about doomsday? : On Travis Timmerman's response to Samuel Scheffler's thoughts on the importance of the collective afterlife (English)
Abstract [en]

This paper is about Travis Timmermans response to Samuel Schefflers ideas in his book Death and the afterlife. Samuel Scheffler wants us to ask our self what we would have done, if we knew that humans would be wiped out short after our death. We would never experience the coming doomsday, but we would live our life with the knowledge that the end is nigh. Samuel Scheffler believes that we humans in the light of this knowledge would react in such a way that all things we valued before would be perceived as meaningless. Even if this is how we would react, Timmerman wants to discuss how we ought to react to the knowledge that humans will be extinct. He argues that doomsday needn’t be that bad, because we can compensate for the meninglessness by adopting new kinds of projects whose goals are more aligned with what expected beliefs one can have in the light of the knowledge that humans will go extinct soon. My question is whether the argument Timmerman gives for this is convincing. In the end Timmermans argument does not seem to be too optimistic, even a tad pessimistic. Today it seems like most people are indifferent to the problems we face in regard to climate change. If we are indifferent when we can do something, why not be indifferent to an event where humans go extinct, and we know we can’t do anything about it. Timmerman also uses Frederik Kaufmans terms thick- and thin person in his argument. I argue for that this might harm Timmermans argument more than do it good. In the end I also conclude that we should also ask ourselves if we only value the continued existence of humanity or if our planet and its other life forms would be valued enough to comfort us before the doomsday.

Place, publisher, year, edition, pages
2023. , p. 24
National Category
Philosophy
Identifiers
URN: urn:nbn:se:uu:diva-503648OAI: oai:DiVA.org:uu-503648DiVA, id: diva2:1763485
Subject / course
Practical Philosophy
Educational program
The Uppsala Culture and Society Programme
Supervisors
Examiners
Available from: 2023-06-13 Created: 2023-06-07 Last updated: 2023-06-13Bibliographically approved

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The full text will be freely available from 2026-11-13 12:31
Available from 2026-11-13 12:31

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CiteExportLink to record
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