We might think of this on three levels. First, is it permissible for a liberal state to outlaw necrophilia? The argument for an affirmative answer could appeal to various public health reasons as well as to the fact that this practice may give considerable offense to others even while the cost of abstention is relatively small and borne only by a few. This argument might run roughly parallel to that justifying the permissibility of outlawing nudity or defecation in public places. The case of gay relationships is substantially different for two reasons: the cost to gay people of not having the opportunity of a romantically fulfilling and socially recognized relationship is enormous and, with roughly three percent of all people being gay, the number of people who would be (and have been) bearing this cost is substantial.

Second, is there something ethically wrong with practicing necrophelia? Taking ethics in the broad sense, its concern is the good life for human beings. A good life centrally involves close personal ties, friendships, and romantic relationships with people who we regard as our equals and with whom we engage in a wide range of communicative interactions. Compared to such interactions, necrophilia is an inferior activity, a waste of time. But so are many video games and TV shows. And it's surely not a serious failing for people to take a little time out here and there for something dull or silly.

Third, is it more narrowly morally wrong to practice necrophelia, would doing so wrong other people? Setting aside the wrong one might do to others by endangering public health and/or by violating the laws of our common legal system, and assuming the free and informed prior consent of the person now deceased, it is hard to see who might be wronged if the act is performed in a private setting.

I agree then with what you are suggesting: the strength of our reaction to necrophelia cannot be explained by reference to our modern moral-ethical thinking. It is presumably related to religious commitments, aesthetic tastes, and even biological responses.

Your question makes me wonder how many people who commit suicide do so with the belief (1) that their consciousness will cease (their identity will end) and how many do so with the belief (2) that their consciousness (and identity) will continue but in a better existence (e.g., heaven). Though this seems like an impossible survey to do (no way to ask the dead!), we could ask people who survive attempted suicides what their goal was (or if they had a goal at all). Perhaps the research has been done. For some reason, I've always assumed that most people who commit suicide (other than terrorists) do so with belief 1 rather than belief 2. And some people may avoid suicide even in the face of despair because they have the belief (3) that their consciousness will continue in a worse existence (e.g., hell), as Hamlet reminds us: "the dread of something after death, The undiscovered country."

Of course, it would not be illogical to say "I would rather be dead" if one believed (2), that dying tranports them to a better world (and "I would rather not be dead" obviously makes sense for someone who believees 3). So, the question is whether it makes sense for someone who believes 1, that his or her consciousness will cease with the death of the body, to say it.

First of all, I don't think it is right to say it is impossible to conceive what it is like to be dead. On this view, there is nothing it is like to be dead. And it seems we can conceive of that--it's presumably the (lack of) mental state we undergo in dreamless sleep (or under anesthesia). We can conceive of it; we just can't experience it consciously.

Now, does this impossibility mean that it is illogical to say "I'd rather be dead"? It doesn't seem so to me. One might mean, "What I consciously experience is so miserable that it would be better for my consciousness to cease." (I hope anyone who feels that way would seek help from friends, family, professionals, and help-lines before he or she believed it to be true, especially since miserable experiences can often give way to much better experiences with time.) If I say that, I am not saying that I will be better off (that things will be better for me) when I lack consciousness, since I will no longer exist. Rather, I am saying that things will be better when I lack consciousness and no longer exist. (It's easy to see how there could be utilitarian arguments for suicide.)

Another way to see the point is to recognize that we have current preferences for states of affairs that we know will exist only after we are dead. For instance, I prefer there to be a viable environment for my great-grandchildren. And I am willing to give up satisfying some of my preferences for my current self to satisfy that preference (though we really are not built to do so and it's hard to get ourselves to do it!). I also put away some of the money I could spend on stuff for me to purchase life insurance, which I know would only be useful if I were dead. I prefer that my family have that money even though I believe that I won't experience them using it. Similarly, it seems one could prefer to have no experiences at all to having bad experiences, even though one believes that he or she would not experience having no experiences.

Sure, I think there's a parallel, particularly if you consider that a person is not an isolated, self-contained entity, but rather a being-in-relation. Your identity is defined partly by your relationships with particular others, and the more intimate the relationship, the more it contributes to your identity. Intimacy is a matter of sharing first-person perspectives (what the world looks like from your eyes is shared with your intimate, and what the world looks like from hers is shared with you) as well as plans, goals, projects, etc. In fact, in a truly intimate relationship, you'll adopt the plans, goals, projects, etc. of your intimate as your own.

When the relationship ends, especially if it is ended unilaterally, all of this that had been part of you is to some extent alienated, which would suggest that your identity is changed. The person you were, in intimate relation with that particular other, doesn't exist anymore. So it is, in an analogous sense, a death. But it's not as complete or final as death, because you can -- and likely will -- enter into other intimate relationships which will make their own unique contributions to your identity.

My hometown is Bethlehem, PA, and I spent plenty of time around Lafayette and downtown Easton growing up, so I had to respond to this. I hope things are well there with you.

I agree with my colleague Amy Kind that people can harmed (or benefited) even if they're unaware of it, and so in a sense even the dead can be harmed (or benefited). A colleague of mine used to speak of harm in terms not of experience but interests, and one of the the interests that some people have might be described as a narrative interest--that is, an interest in the story of their life. Most of us, I think, have an interest in our reputations. Some of us maintain an interest in producing a reputation that endures after we've died. Such an interest might, I think, be something not terribly admirable--a product of vanity and excessive pride or ambition. But an interest in an enduring reputation might be morally virtuous to the extent it, say, sustains a family name or enhances the reputation of a good institution (perhaps a college or a nation) to which one was connected. So, celebrating the Marquis's memory not only in a strange way benefits him. It also benefits France, the United States, his descendants, etc. (But, of course, harm and benefit aren't exactly the terms you used. As to whether or not the celebration is "valuable" to him, I'd have to say that strictly speaking it's not.)

Now, should we all try to be remembered by future generations? Generally, no. Having a famous ancestor is a good thing for many people and institutions, but hardly necessary. Institutions are for the most part fully well capable of flourishing whether or not any famous dead people are connected to them.

Having said that, it is nevertheless, important to recognize this: regardless of whether it benefits the Marquis to celebrate him, it's a good thing for us to remember past people who have made valuable contributions to our present condition. I might go so far, in fact, to say that the cultivation of an historical memory of this sort is a key ingredient of to civilization. There are lots of reasons for celebratory historical memory being a good thing for us. The dead often present useful role models, they serve as better reminders of important principles and values than abstract ideas, they can inspire and motivate us, and remember them contributes to a sense of self-worth and identity.

So, don't be concerned very much with being remembered and celebrated yourself, but do turn to the past and dig up someone to remember and to celebrate.

And Go Leopards!

You can find an interesting discussion of the definition of 'death' in Peter Singer's "Rethinking Life and Death." There is a helpful discussion in the first chapter about "The Ad Hoc Committee of the Harvard Medical School to Examine the Definition of Brain Death." This committee proposed in 1968 to "redefine" death so that a person who has suffered irreversible loss of all brain function counts as dead, even if the person is still breathing with the help of a respirator. While this proposal met with little resistance, people are much less inclined to say that someone in a persistent vegetative state is dead--even if there is an irreversible loss of consciousness.

One good book to look at on this topic is Fred Feldman's Confrontations with the Reaper. (What a great title, isn't it?) There Feldman engages in an extensive discussion of how hard it actually is to provide a good definition of death. What he calls "the standard analysis" says roughly that death is the cessation of life (or, perhaps, the irreversible cessation of life). But as Feldman argues, this view runs into all sorts of problems. In particular, consideration of cases of suspended animation, fission, and fusion, raises trouble for the standard analysis. When a living cell undergoes fission, is ceases to live, but does it die? When someone contracts to have themselves placed into suspended animation (See, e.g., Suspended Animation Inc.), they have ceased to live, but have they died? Ultimately, Feldman concludes: "though death looms large in our emotional lives, though we hate it, and fear it, and are dismayed by the thought that it will someday overtake us and those we love, we really don't know precisely what death is. The Reaper remains mysterious."

Like many terms, there is a variety of definitions, and which is most appropriate would depend on the function or context of its use. A classical definition of death is "separation of the soul from the body." But to someone who denies the existence of an immaterial soul, it would probably be something more like, "Cessation of bodily processes, including those on the cellular level." More fundamentally, death would be the absence of life where there once was life. But then, of course, you'd need a definition of life.

Philosophy has always been concerned with proposing, criticizing and defending definitions (as opposed to asserting them), so these should be taken as opening round suggestions.

There's clearly an enormous amount that could be said about this, but here are a few thoughts.

Suppose that some person is suffering, and to avoid certain complications, suppose that there's no "cure" for their pain. Now suppose that the person actually wants us to take his life. (Imagine that he isn't in a position to do it himself.) Then it's not just obvious that it is wrong, all things considered, to kill him. That's why there's a serious debate about euthanasia.

That said, there are important differences between typical human beings and most other animals: humans don't just have immediate desires and aversions; humans have self-concepts which include plans, desires and values that bear on their own futures. Most animals, or so we believe, don't have any such things. We normally think that people's views about their own futures count -- that it's wrong simply to ignore them. In particular, if someone is suffering but doesn't want to die, we think that carries tremendous weight. Most animals, or so we think, don't have the capacity for the relevant thoughts. They don't have a conception of themselves as being who have potential futures about which they have plans, wishes and desires.

That's at best a contingent fact, and it may not be true of all animals. If a creature has a conception of its own future and has desires about the course of that future, then that makes a moral difference -- or so we normally think. And so it may well be that even in the case of some non-human animals, killing a creature in order to end its suffering is wrong.

None of this is meant to address all the issues that your question raises. Other panelists may well have things to say on matters that I haven't even raised. But the normal human capacity to be able to think about one's future is surely relevant to sorting all this out.

I recommend taking a look at Fred Feldman's book Confrontations with the Reaper: A Philosophical Study of the Nature and Value of Death (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1992). It covers many of the issues mentioned by Mitch Green. But make sure you read the Preface, where Feldman explains the circumstances that motivated him to take up the issue.

Thank you for your question. I'm not sure there's one reason why philosophers care about this, and I'm not in a position to exhaust all the various reasons why the topic might be of concern to them. However, here are some of the reasons of which I'm aware:

1. A long tradition dating all the way back to Plato suggests that the self survives the destruction of the body. Socrates (Plato's teacher), for instance, didn't fear his death at all, and gave as a reason for this attitude the belief that he would exist after his body ceases to be alive. That thought has cast a very long shadow, and philosophers have for a long time tried to figure out what it would be to survive the destruction of one's body. These discussions can generally be separated from questions about the existence of God, and have in recent centuries coalesced into discussions of what is known as "personal identity". One core issue for this topic is what it means for one and the same person to survive over time, even when his/her body is radically changed or entirely destroyed. John Locke, for instance, held that I could survive the destruction of my body so long as there is some later "person-stage" that remembers experiences had by an earlier person-stage, such as the one sitting in a chair typing these words. Others have doubted Locke's view, and a good deal of this debate turns on the question what conditions would suffice for the death of a person.

2. One other way in which philosophers concern themselves with death is via the question whether a current person or generation has any obligation to a future one, even when that future one is only around when the current person or generation is long gone. Do we have an obligation, for instance, to care for the Earth so that it may be used by others after we die? Many people would say that we do have such an obligation, but articulating the source and range of that obligation (how many generations into the future should we look, for instance) is not at all easy.

3. Death is sometimes discussed as a way into the question what, if anything, gives life meaning or value. If one holds that life has meaning or value, then it might be fruitful to examine what it is about death that is held to be bad so that we may get clearer on life's meaning or value. The line of thought might go like this: After my death I won't be able to do or have x, y, or z, and that is why I fear, or at least dislike the prospect of my death. Accordingly, things such as x, y and z are part of what gives my life value or meaning. On the other side, some (such as Bernard Williams) have argued that death is a blessing, in light of the prospect of eternal life: that prospect might seem less appealing than popular conceptions thereof make it out to be on fuller examination. For some reasons why someone might give up eternal life, you might enjoy seeing Wim Wenders' movie, Wings of Desire.