Life Gamble: Better and Worse Conditions

Prompt provided. This is a philosophy paper.

Fourth Paper Philosophy of Religion 

Requirements

● Your paper must be in response to the paper prompt below. Papers that do not meet this requirement will receive zeros.

● Your paper must be at most 700 words in length. Papers that are more than 700 words in length will consequently be docked one third of a letter grade. A paper will not be read beyond its 700th word, if it has one. There is no minimum permissible word count.

● Your paper is due Saturday, November 19, 8:00 a.m. EST. A paper that is late but less than 24 hours late will consequently be docked one third of a letter grade, a paper that is at least 24 hours late but less than 48 hours late will consequently be docked two thirds of a letter grade, and so on. Papers never submitted will receive zeros.

 Paper Prompt You wake up in the hospital with total amnesia. 1 A doctor appears before you and tells you that yesterday you took one of the following two gambles: (1) A fair coin was tossed. If it landed heads, then you were knocked unconscious and given total amnesia, after which you would wake up and live forever at level 1 wellbeing, which is a condition slightly better for you than unconsciousness. If the coin landed tails, then you were knocked unconscious and given total amnesia, after which you would wake up, be again knocked unconscious and given total amnesia, and remain in this state forever. (2) A fair (and huge) million-sided die, with faces displaying the natural numbers 1 through 1,000,000, was rolled. (One face has “1” on it, another has “2” on it, and so on.) If any number other than 1 came up, then you were knocked unconscious and given total amnesia, after which you would wake up and live forever at level 1,000 wellbeing, which is a condition vastly better for you than unconsciousness. If 1 came up, then you were knocked unconscious and given total amnesia, after which you would wake up and live forever at level -1 wellbeing, which is a condition slightly worse for you than unconsciousness. The doctor can’t remember which gamble you took, so she leaves the room to find your chart. While the doctor is away, which, if either, of these gambles ought you hope you took? Is one preferable to the other, or are they equally attractive, or…? Defend your answer. Space 1 This thought-experiment is inspired by Derek Parfit, Reasons and Persons (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1984), pp. 165–166. 1 permitting, you may say how (if at all) your reasoning bears on Pascal’s Wager, but doing so is not essential to completing the assignment.

NOTE: A presupposition of this assignment is that there are conditions that are better for you, and conditions that are worse for you, than unconsciousness. Perhaps you reject this presupposition—because you think waking life is always bad (as Silenus, Dionysus’ companion in Greek mythology, apparently believed), or because you think waking life is always better than nothing (as Miguel de Unamuno seems to have held), or for some other reason. If you hold any such view, set it aside for the sake of this assignment. In addition, for brevity’s sake, you should assume familiarity on your reader’s part with the details of the two gambles, and you should use the expressions “(1)” and “(2)” without explication.

Some Things to Keep in Mind

● In your paper, you must do everything required of you by the paper prompt.

● Purge your paper of anything that does not contribute, in some way or another, to your response to the paper prompt. Your paper should suggest obsession on your part with responding to the prompt.

● The content of your paper must go beyond anything that we covered during class. You may not just repeat things (even plausible and interesting things) that your classmates, you, or I said during class and call it a day.

● In this paper and in all other papers for this course, you should feel no pressure whatsoever to defend views that you actually accept (though it is of course often easier to defend views that you accept than to defend views that you don’t accept). Write the best paper you can, even if you disagree with every claim in it. (If you wish to add a footnote at the beginning of your paper saying that you don’t believe all of the claims in your paper, then feel free to do so. The footnote won’t contribute to your word count.)

● Your paper must be clearly written throughout. Try your hardest to prevent me from ever having to reread a sentence of yours.

● Your paper must have a conspicuous and easily interpretable thesis. Strive to make it possible for me to identify and understand your thesis within 10 seconds of skimming your paper.

● You won’t get (or lose) any points for defending views that I happen to share (or happen not to share). Don’t waste your time speculating about my beliefs about the topic at hand.

● Other things being equal, shorter papers are better than longer papers.

● Jim Pryor’s essay “Guidelines on Writing a Philosophy Paper,” which is easy to find on the Internet, is a very helpful resource. ● I encourage you to discuss your paper with me during office hours.