“If I ask myself whether I would rather be alive than dead tomorrow morning, and put aside the fact that some people would be unhappy if I were dead, I find, after reflection, in any normal, nondepressed period of life, that I have no preference either way. The fact that I’m trying to finish a book, or about to go on holiday, or happy, or in love, or looking forward to something, makes no difference. When I put this question to myself and suppose that my death is going to be a matter of instant, painless annihilation, completely unexperienced, completely unforeseen, it seems plain to me that I lose nothing. I, the human being that I am, lose nothing. My future life and experience (the life and experience I will have if I don’t die now) don’t belong to me in such a way that they’re something that can be taken away from me. I am, ploddingly, simply not a thing of such a kind that the life and experience it will have if it doesn’t now die can be rightly thought of as a possession of which it can be deprived. One might as well think that life could be deprived of life, or that something is taken away from an existing piece of string by the fact that it isn’t longer than it is. It’s simply a mistake, like thinking that Paris is the capital of Uzbekistan.”
strawson