Regular readers will know I was diagnosed out of the blue with metastatic kidney cancer last month. My wife and I (thanks, Pauline!) have spent the past few weeks running all over southern California, seeking opinions and options from Kaiser, City of Hope, UCLA, and UCSD. I've now started a targeted cancer drug and immunotherapy, and I've completed one course of radiation.
Discussing my diagnosis, one oncologist cheerily said, "The good news is that with the new treatments, life expectancy is measured in years, not months. We're now looking at median expectancies of three or four years, and you might well live even longer than that." I knew enough about my diagnosis not to be surprised. Still, it's a sobering thought for a 58-year-old who had previously anticipated decades of future life.
So I've been thinking: Why I should care so much whether this person I am, Eric Schwitzgebel, still exists in ten years? Of course I do care. But what are the grounds of my caring? What is the rationale? I dearly hope to be alive in a decade -- but what if anything justifies this intensity of feeling?
Future Selfish Pleasures?
I would like to hike Mt Baldy again. (I now use a wheelchair for all but the shortest walks.) I would like to keep discussing philosophy, and laughing with family and friends, and strolling around UCR's campus in the afternoon sun, and playing jazz piano, and reading for pleasure in my dim room at night.
But is that why I want to be alive in ten years? How much, really, should it matter to me that a future Eric Schwitzgebel is among the many people on Earth enjoying such things? "I hope that I in particular, rather than only a bunch of other people, enjoy a hike up Mt Baldy in 2036" -- the thought has weight. I aspire to it. But I'm at a bit of a loss as to why, rationally, I should care so much about that.
Looking back to 2016, should my self then have cared about his continued existence because, ten years later, someone connected to him by a string of psychological and bodily continuity would be enjoying himself in those ways? When I frame it like that, it doesn't seem to matter so much. The pull seems similar to the pull of wanting to complete a "bucket list" or to achieve some particular goal: real but optional -- not enough to rationally explain the intensity of the desire to stay alive.
Social Relationships?
Do I want to exist in ten years for the sake of my wife, my children, my mother, my colleagues, my friends? Yes, in part -- especially for my wife and children. And yet this, too, seems insufficient to fully explain the desire.
I grieved intensely for my own father who died at 80. I wouldn't want to put my family through similar grief. And yet most children eventually need to grieve their parents. My children are now adults, ages 27 and 19, living away from home. They will be okay without me. My wife's life will change more dramatically; yet she too will be okay.
Perhaps more tellingly, I doubt I would think very differently about my death if I were single or a widower. My desire to exist in ten years feels more selfish than that. I don't think the good of others the main root of my wish to continue to exist.
My Philosophical Work?
In thinking about my possibly imminent death, I've discovered what I anyway suspected: that philosophy matters enough to me that I would want to continue to do it in my dying days. But is this why I want to exist in ten years?
Suppose someone told me: You will never again do philosophy. You will lose that desire, you will lose your sharp intellectual edge. I would still want to live. I have sometimes found, traveling on vacation, that philosophy doesn't occupy me much and that when I try to philosophize my thinking is fuzzy. And yet those vacations are lovely, meaningful, an important part of my life. So, yes, I can imagine a meaningful life in which I'm no longer a philosopher.
Do I think the world needs my philosophy in particular? That's vanity. If I exit, others will take my place. I'd like to think I have a distinctive voice, a distinctive set of views and predilections, such that philosophy in the 2020s is slightly different with me than it would have been without me, but this is true of all good academic philosophers with a national profile. The discipline will be fine without me -- perhaps better, if my exit makes room for a good younger philosopher, with fresher ideas.
Causal Connections and Relations among Events?
Many philosophical theories of personal identity hold that what makes a person who exists at time X the same person as a person who exists at the later time X+N is a certain kind of causal connectedness: bodily continuity as cells are gradually replaced, psychological continuity in memories, values, plans, and beliefs. So maybe what I care about is that there be some future person in ten years who is connected to me in these ways?
But why exactly should I care so much about these causal connections?
Here's one possibility: Learning and planning are central to my life. Learning requires a causal connection between what I learn now and what I remember later. Successful planning requires a causal connection between my plans now and their fruition later. Learning loses much of its point if there is no possibility of future recall. Planning loses much of its point if there's no future in which the plans might be accomplished.
There are also emotional, personal, and narrative connections. This kiss, this joke, and this habit are causally connected echoes of all past kisses, jokes, and habits, and they lay the ground for future ones. Cut the causal connections, and even if someone very much like me in the future were to enjoy similar kisses, jokes, and habits, my current kisses, jokes, and habits contribute little to their significance. What gives this moment its rich meaning, perhaps, is that it participates in connections and relationships that endure over time.
Still, I can have plenty of meaning now with a shorter time horizon. Nothing needs to extend as far as 2036 to be meaningful in the present. If I knew that I would die in 2028 while the world continued on, I could build all my plans around that. My thoughts and actions now would not be derived of their point. Indeed, the brevity of my future might give them more meaning.
For example: I'm teaching a large lower-division class called "Evil". If I never teach it again, my current teaching experiences won't have the significance of influencing my future teaching. But they gain a different significance. This term's class becomes the culmination, the last of the series, rather than simply an instance in the middle.
A Basic Desire?
Nonhuman animals avoid death, presumably in most cases without thinking much about the philosophical significance of it. Maybe the desire to be alive in the future is just a basic, animal desire, without rational explanation -- a fundamental starting-point desire needing no further justification?
Maybe that's it. But if so, it's not clear that I should retain this desire if I can shed it. Suppose I had a basic, animal desire to collect blue beads, to no further purpose. I might be compelled by that desire, but if the desire isn't further justified, it might be better overall for me to want other things instead.
Maybe I can hold the desire more lightly. Maybe I can think it would be nice to continue to exist, since it would be good for my family, and a certain interesting philosopher would continue his work, and meaningful connections would link what I'm thinking and planning now with events ten years from now. Maybe I can acknowledge that a decade's worth of continued existence is just something I want for no particularly compelling reason, and sit with that, while also partly letting it go, just as we slowly let go of so many of our youthful hopes and wishes.