 A paradigm example of such problematic cases are promises to the dead or dying, since those promisees can’t be disappointed or harmed. That is, unless one subscribes to the view that the dead can be harmed, and whether or not this is even possible is a question that thinkers have also spent some time on (see Boonin 2019, for a survey of the philosophical literature here). Like promises to the self, promises to the dead are a commonplace in both prose and poetry take Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice, or J Stafford’s The Cremation of Sam McGee