Chapter 45 Self Quiz

. According to Nagel, when we set aside those things that make life better and those that make life worse, what is left over—experience itself—is

positive in value.

negative in value.

neutral in value.

a meaningless concept.

. Nagel’s discussion of an intelligent person who suffers a brain injury that reduces him to the mental condition of a contented infant is meant to illustrate which of the following?

An event is not a misfortune unless it is experienced as such by the one who undergoes it.

The subject of such a misfortune is not the injured person himself but his friends and relations.

Death is not the worst thing that can happen to someone.

It is wrongheaded to restrict the goods and evils that can befall a person to the experiential states ascribable to him at particular times.

. According to Nagel, the time before one’s birth and the time after one’s death

are mirror images of one another.

are impossible to contemplate.

are importantly different.

are equally disturbing.

. Nagel defines permanent death as

the end of our bodily existence.

the end of our bodily existence but our conscious survival.

the end of our bodily existence, unsupplemented by conscious survival.

none of the above.

. Goods and evils do not necessarily depend, for Nagel, on the subjective state of the person who experiences them.

True

False

. Nagel would agree with the view that what we don’t know can’t hurt us.

True

False

. According to Nagel, the badness of death is a product, not of its positive features, but of what it deprives us of.

True

False

Quiz Content