Identity, the badness of death, and a life-processes basis

Abstract

Jeff McMahan’s framework pairs an ontological thesis – the Embodied Mind Account (EMA), on which personal identity persists with the brain’s capacity to generate consciousness, with an evaluative thesis – the Time-Relative Interest Account (TRIA), on which the badness of death varies with psychological continuity to one’s future. This article argues that, despite their common presentation as complementary “two levels,” EMA and TRIA interact in ways that leave the ultimate ground of death’s badness theoretically unstable, especially given EMA’s original-brain restriction and its division between the death of the conscious subject and that of the human organism. I propose a life-processes biological basis: the irreversible cessation of organismic life-processes (circulation, respiration, metabolism, and integrative functioning) constitutes the deeper ground of death’s prudential harm, while psychological continuity serves as an indicator of its degree when that basis remains intact. This preserves a unified ontology across developmental/pathological conditions and clarifies the relation between identity, survival, and the badness of death.