Why is immortality so appealing

You wake up in the morning, but as you approach the mirror, you do not see yourself there. You try to reach your face with your hand, but it is thin air. You try to scream, but no sound comes out. And so on.

Now, Descartes believes that it is indeed possible to imagine such a scenario. But, if one can imagine the existence of a person without the existence of the body, then persons are not constituted by their bodies, and hence, mind and body are two different substances.

If the mind were identical to the body, it would be impossible to imagine the existence of the mind without imagining at the same time the existence of the body. This argument has been subject to much scrutiny. Dualists certainly believe it is a valid one, but it is not without its critics. Descartes seems to assume that everything that is imaginable is possible. Indeed, many philosophers have long agreed that imagination is a good guide as to what is possible Hume, But, this criterion is disputed.

Imagination seems to be a psychological process, and thus not strictly a logical process. Therefore, perhaps we can imagine scenarios that are not really possible.

Consider the Barber Paradox. At first, it seems possible that, in a town, a man shaves only those persons that shave themselves. We may perhaps imagine such a situation, but logically there cannot be such a situation, as Bertrand Russell showed. The lesson to be learned is that imagination might not be a good guide to possibility. And, although Descartes appears to have no trouble imagining an incorporeal mind, such a scenario might not be possible. However, dualists may argue that there is no neat difference between a psychological and a logical process, as logic seems to be itself a psychological process.

Descartes presents another argument. As Leibniz would later formalize in the Principle of Identity of Indiscernibles, two entities can be considered identical, if and only if, they exhaustively share the same attributes.

Descartes exploits this principle, and attempts to find a property of the mind not shared by the body or vice versa , in order to argue that they are not identical, and hence, are separate substances. Descartes believed, then, that mind and body cannot be the same substance. Descartes put forth another similar argument: the body has extension in space, and as such, it can be attributed physical properties.

We may ask, for instance, what the weight of a hand is, or what the longitude of a leg is. But the mind has no extension, and therefore, it has no physical properties. It makes no sense to ask what the color of the desire to eat strawberries is, or what the weight of Communist ideology is.

If the body has extension, and the mind has no extension, then the mind can be considered a separate substance. Descartes famously contemplated the possibility that an evil demon might be deceiving him about the world. Perhaps the world is not real. For, again, they do not share exhaustively the same attributes. These arguments are not without critics. But, in some contexts, it seems possible that A and B may be identical, even if that does not imply that everything predicated of A can be predicated of B.

Consider, for example, a masked man that robs a bank. And, what people believe about substances are not properties. To be an object of doubt is not, strictly speaking, a property, but rather, an intentional relation. Some philosophers argue that the mind is private, whereas the body is not.

Any person may know the state of my body, but no person, including even possibly myself, can truly know the state of my mind. The mind has intentionality, whereas the body does not. Thoughts are about something, whereas body parts are not.

In as much as thoughts have intentionality, they may also have truth values. Not all thoughts, of course, are true or false, but at least those thoughts that pretend to represent the world, may be. Again, these arguments exploit the differences between mind and body. Opponents of dualism not only reject their arguments; they also highlight conceptual and empirical problems with this doctrine.

Most opponents of dualism are materialists: they believe that mental stuff is really identical to the brain, or at the most, an epiphenomenon of the brain. Materialism need not undermine all expectations of immortality see resurrection below , but it does undermine the immortality of the soul. If the mind is an immaterial substance, how can it interact with material substances? The desire to move my hand allegedly moves my hand, but how exactly does that occur?

Daniel Dennett has ridiculed this inconsistency by appealing to the comic-strip character Casper. This friendly ghost is immaterial because he is able to go through walls. But, all of a sudden, he is also able to catch a ball.

The same inconsistency appears with dualism: in its interaction with the body, sometimes the mind does not interact with the body, sometimes it does Dennett, Dualists have offered some solutions to this problem. Occasionalists hold that God directly causes material events.

Thus, mind and body never interact. Likewise, parallelists hold that mental and physical events are coordinated by God so that they appear to cause each other, but in fact, they do not.

These alternatives are in fact rejected by most contemporary philosophers. Some dualists, however, may reply that the fact that we cannot fully explain how body and soul interact, does not imply that interaction does not take place. We know many things happen in the universe, although we do not know how they happen. If we cannot explain how that occurs, we should not try to pretend that it does not occur. On the other hand, Dualism postulates the existence of an incorporeal mind, but it is not clear that this is a coherent concept.

In the opinion of most dualists, the incorporeal mind does perceive. But, it is not clear how the mind can perceive without sensory organs. Descartes seemed to have no problems in imagining an incorporeal existence, in his thought experiment. However, John Hospers, for instance, believes that such a scenario is simply not imaginable:. You see with eyes? No , you have no eyes, since you have no body.

But let that pass for a moment; you have experiences similar to what you would have if you had eyes to see with. But how can you look toward the foot of the bed or toward the mirror? How can you look in one direction or another if you have no head to turn? Hospers, Furthermore, even if an incorporeal existence were in fact possible, it could be terribly lonely. For, without a body, could it be possible to communicate with other minds.

Edwards, However, consider that, even in the absence of a body, great pleasures may be attained. We may live in a situation the material world is an illusion in fact, idealists inspired in Berkley lean towards such a position , and yet, enjoy existence. For, even without a body, we may enjoy sensual pleasures that, although not real, certainly feel real. However, the problems with dualism do not end there.

If souls are immaterial and have no spatial extension, how can they be separate from other souls? Separation implies extension. Yet, if the soul has no extension, it is not at all clear how one soul can be distinguished from another.

Perhaps souls can be distinguished based on their contents, but then again, how could we distinguish two souls with exactly the same contents? Some contemporary dualists have responded thus: in as much as souls interact with bodies, they have a spatial relationships to bodies, and in a sense, can be individuated.

Recent developments in neuroscience increasingly confirm that mental states depend upon brain states. Neurologists have been able to identify certain regions of the brain associated with specific mental dispositions.

And, in as much as there appears to be a strong correlation between mind and brain, it seems that the mind may be reducible to the brain, and would therefore not be a separate substance.

In the last recent decades, neuroscience has accumulated data that confirm that cerebral damage has a great influence on the mental constitution of persons. Ever since, Gage turned into an aggressive, irresponsible person, unrecognizable by his peers Damasio, And, if mental contents can be severely damaged by brain injuries, it does not seem right to postulate that the mind is an immaterial substance.

As it is widely known, this disease progressively eradicates the mental contents of patients, until patients lose memory almost completely. If most memories eventually disappear, what remains of the soul? When a patient afflicted with Alzheimer dies, what is it that survives, if precisely, most of his memories have already been lost? Of course, correlation is not identity, and the fact that the brain is empirically correlated with the mind does not imply that the mind is the brain.

Dualists may respond by claiming that the brain is solely an instrument of the soul. If the brain does not work properly, the soul will not work properly, but brain damage does not imply a degeneration of the soul. Consider, for example, a violinist.

If the violin does not play accurately, the violinist will not perform well. But, that does not imply that the violinist has lost their talent. In the same manner, a person may have a deficient brain, and yet, retain her soul intact. Dualists may also suggest that the mind is not identical to the soul. In fact, whereas many philosophers tend to consider the soul and mind identical, various religions consider that a person is actually made up of by three substances: body, mind and soul.

In such a view, even if the mind degenerates, the soul remains. However, it would be far from clear what the soul exactly could be, if it is not identical to the mind. Any philosophical discussion on immortality touches upon a fundamental issue concerning persons— personal identity. If we hope to survive death, we would want to be sure that the person that continues to exist after death is the same person that existed before death.

And, for religions that postulate a Final Judgment, this is a crucial matter: if God wants to apply justice, the person rewarded or punished in the afterlife must be the very same person whose deeds determine the outcome. The question of personal identity refers to the criterion upon which a person remains the same that is, numerical identity throughout time.

Traditionally, philosophers have discussed three main criteria: soul, body and psychological continuity. According to the soul criterion for personal identity, persons remains the same throughout time, if and only if, they retain their soul Swinburne, Philosophers who adhere to this criterion usually do not think the soul is identical to the mind.

The soul criterion is favored by very few philosophers, as it faces a huge difficulty: if the soul is an immaterial non-apprehensible substance precisely, in as much as it is not identical to the mind , how can we be sure that a person continues to be the same? Under this criterion, it appears that there is simply no way to make sure someone is always the same person. However, there is a considerable argument in favor of the soul criterion.

Now, which one is John? So, one of them must presumably be John, but which one? Unlike the body and the mind, the soul is neither divisible nor duplicable. Thus, although we do not know which would be John, we do know that only one of the two persons is John. Common sense informs that persons are their bodies in fact, that is how we recognize people but, although many philosophers would dispute this, ordinary people seem generally to adhere to such a view.

Thus, under this criterion, a person continues to be the same, if, and only if, they conserve the same body. Of course, the body alters, and eventually, all of its cells are replaced. Is it still the same ship? There has been much discussion on this, but most philosophers agree that, in the case of the human body, the total replacement of atoms and the slight alteration of form do not alter the numerical identity of the human body.

However, the body criterion soon runs into difficulties. Imagine two patients, Brown and Robinson, who undergo surgery simultaneously. Accidentally, their brains are swapped in placed in the wrong body.

Let us call this person Brownson. Now, who is Brownson? Most people would think the latter Shoemaker, After all, the brain is the seat of consciousness. Thus, it would appear that the body criterion must give way to the brain criterion: a person continues to be the same, if and only if, she conserves the same brain.

But, again, we run into difficulties. What if the brain undergoes fission, and each half is placed in a new body? Parfit, As a result, we would have two persons pretending to be the original person, but, because of the principle of transitivity, we know that both of them cannot be the original person. And, it seems arbitrary that one of them should be the original person, and not the other although, as we have seen, Swinburne bites the bullet, and considers that, indeed, only one would be the original person.

This difficulty invites the consideration of other criteria for personal identity. Now, if before that event, the prince committed a crime, who should be punished?

Should it be the man in the palace, who remembers being a cobbler; or should it be the man in the workshop, who remembers being a prince, including his memory of the crime? Locke, therefore, believed that a person continues to be the same, if and only if, she conserves psychological continuity.

Although it appears to be an improvement with regards to the previous two criteria, the psychological criterion also faces some problems. Suppose someone claims today to be Guy Fawkes, and conserves intact very vividly and accurately the memories of the seventeenth century conspirator Williams, By the psychological criterion, such a person would indeed be Guy Fawkes. But, what if, simultaneously, another person also claims to be Guy Fawkes, even with the same degree of accuracy?

Obviously, both persons cannot be Guy Fawkes. It seems more plausible that neither person is Guy Fawkes, and therefore, that psychological continuity is not a good criterion for personal identity. In virtue of the difficulties with the above criteria, some philosophers have argued that, in a sense, persons do not exist.

Or, to be more precise, the self does not endure changes. As a corollary, Derek Parfit argues that, when considering survival, personal identity is not what truly matters Parfit, The Last Crusade suggests not. After all, not only are the two people who throw their lives away villains, but the knight who guards the Grail explicitly warns that the cost of living forever is having to stay in that very same temple, forever. And what sort of life would that be?

Immortality — the film is suggesting — might be a curse, rather than a blessing. Such a conclusion will not come as a surprise to philosophers who have considered the issue. This was because after a certain amount of living, human life would become unspeakably boring.

We need new experiences in order to have reasons to keep on going. But after enough time has passed, we will have experienced everything that we, as individuals, find stimulating. The former is a contingent, the latter a categorical, desire. A life devoid of categorical desires, Williams claimed, would devolve into a mush of undifferentiated banality, containing no reason to keep on going.

Born in , Elina drinks an elixir that keeps her biologically speaking at age 42 forever. However, by the time she is over years old, Elina has experienced everything she wants, and as a result her life is cold, empty, boring and withdrawn. There is nothing left to live for. Accordingly, she decides to stop drinking the elixir, and releases herself from the tedium of immortality. Imagine that the natural biological lifespan of a human being was 1, years.

In that case, in her s, Elina would have died comparatively young. Scheffler points out that human life is intimately structured by the fact that it has a fixed even if usually unknown time limit.

We all start with a birth, then pass through many stages of life, before definitely ending in death. In turn, Scheffler argues, everything that we value — and thus can coherently desire in an essentially human life — must take as given the fact that we are temporally bounded beings.

Sure, we can imagine what it would be like to be immortal, if we find that an amusing way to pass the time. A desire for immortality is thus a paradox: it would frustrate itself were it ever to be achieved.

You might think you want to live forever, but reflection should convince you otherwise. But is it quite so clear? No one knows why, but it seems to point to a common mechanism of ageing that extends between species.

Some researchers think that with caloric restriction it might be possible to extend mean human lifespans to roughly years with the occasional Methuselah reaching There are candidates.

The drug rapamycin, which is used to suppress immune rejection in organ transplants and as an anti-cancer agent, also has effects on ageing. It stops cells dividing and suppresses the immune system — and increases the lifespan of fruit flies and small mammals such as mice. But it has nasty side effects, including urinary-tract infections, anaemia, nausea, even skin cancer. Other drugs are under trial. One developed by the anti-ageing company Sirtris in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and now undergoing clinical trials with GlaxoSmithKline which bought and then shut down Sirtris aims to switch on a class of proteins called sirtuins, which some researchers believe are involved in the cellular processes of ageing.

The red-wine compound resveratrol is thought to activate sirtuins, although exactly what they do in ageing is still unclear and controversial.

Other researchers think that the answer lies with genetics. The genomics pioneer Craig Venter, whose company Celera privately sequenced the human genome in the early s, recently launched Human Longevity, Inc together with the spaceflight entrepreneur Peter Diamand. It aims to compile a database of genomes to identify the genetic characteristics of long-lived individuals.

Old age among animals happens mostly in zoos and domestic pets. Whether Venter will find genes responsible for the exceptional longevity of some individuals, and whether they would be of any use for extending average lifespan, is another matter.

To read one script, we are on the cusp of a revolution in ageing research. But the Longevity Science Panel, composed of scientists rather than venture capitalists, had a much more sobering message. As for the immortalists, a few specialists are prepared to be blunt. Jonathan Swift would have approved of the satirical critique. The fantasies spun about scientific immortality, rather than being showered with scorn, should be met with some sensitivity to that fear, and an acceptance of the myths it will always engender.

But the immortalists, striving for eternal life with dietary supplements and techno-fables, will serve well enough as our own cautionary Struldbrugs. Williams presents immortality as necessarily leading to a state of perpetual boredom where the desire to go on living goes out of life. They rather propel one forwards into wanting to keep existing. According to Williams, it is categorical desires that give our life meaning. Without them, life would be empty and pointless.

Yet after years, EM as Williams refers to her is terminally bored. Her character, whilst remaining recognizably that of the same person a necessary condition of it being EM who survives , has achieved everything it wanted to.

Yet by staying the same person, there is no release, and nothing new can happen for one so experienced: there is no life left to live for somebody who has lost all categorical desire. As Scheffler glosses it, this eternal 42 year old eventually cannot live with herself , because she has become the source of the problem. EM decides to throw it in accordingly: she stops taking the elixir, and dies at Footnote 7 For what if the natural human lifespan was a thousand, or a million, or a billion, years?

In those cases humans would not be immortal, and indeed EM would have died comparatively young. As Belshaw argues, it is a significant and yet questionable assumption that categorical desire must go away from a human life. Footnote 8 Certainly, there are kinds of people for whom this will be true — and perhaps it would be true for all of us, eventually.

But when? The world is a very big place, with an awful lot to see and do. There are more books to read than could be achieved in 20 lifetimes and many that would bear multiple readings , and the variety of human culture and history is only just short of endless.

There is also the point that an immortal or even just an ultra-long-lived being would get to see history continuously unfolding, and to a certain bent of mind that would be a most exciting possibility. Imagine getting to live in the 18 th century and the 20 th. But the answer is then not to be the sort of person who could imagine that as a sensible way to live for a very long time, let alone without end or rather: hope that one would not be that sort of person, were one to live for a very long time.

Footnote 9 But again, this seems too fast. Although one could imagine EM staying biologically at age 42 forever, would that also mean staying the exact same character as we presently associate with a 42 year old Elina Makropulos? Assume that my body does not change, biologically, in any significant sense between the ages of 30 and In that period my wants and desires and perspectives all develop and change — but it would be too much to say that I cease to have the same character , even if it is true that my character has evolved in that period.

Footnote 10 Her character, because it evolves, may be able to avoid tedium, whilst EM still stays recognizably the same person. Williams seems to rule this out by fiat, insisting that a constant character would run out of categorical desires — but it is not clear how true that is, or whether a genuinely immortal EM would reach that point at the relatively young for an immortal age of Footnote As Scheffler points out, our basic understanding of life is of it being temporally bounded, with a birth and death marking each end, and successive stages of development in between.

These stages are in part biological, but we attribute enormous cultural, psychological, social, etc. An immortal life would lack any such shape, and in turn we could not apply to it the structures of understanding that fundamentally shape what it means to live a human life, and in turn appreciate what is of human value.

Similarly, illness, harm, physical danger, risk, etc. If we were exempt from those things, the character of our deliberations would take on a very different form, and it is not clear that immortal beings would value or strive after anything in the ways that we do.

Footnote 14 Living as an embodied person in the world rather as it is necessarily involves not doing so forever. If the response is to imagine beings that are not bound by the facts of biology as we know them, then as Scheffler points out, this is to move towards thinking about creatures that are not recognizably human at all. Hence the desire would seem to shift from one of immortality to something else; to wanting to be a magical?

Footnote 16 It would seem to follow, therefore, that a desire for immortality must be at the very least confused, if not outright incoherent, because if it was fulfilled it would immediately vitiate what we wanted it for.

But this leaves open the question of whether we might nonetheless reply: and so much the worse for human life. It is not incoherent to desire to live in a radically different way, would that one could, even if one cannot really imagine what that would consist of.

To sketch an argument by way of analogy: had I become a professional footballer at 16, instead of starting down the long road that would eventually turn me into a career academic, my life would be radically different, and I would doubtless value many different things, and go about valuing in many different ways.

But can I really imagine being, say, a sixteenth century samurai? Being immortal is a more extreme case, certainly, but it seems to sit at the end of a continuum of comprehensible fantasy, rather than being simply incomprehensible when properly unpacked.

Of course, this addresses only part of the point. The creatures he imagines sound rather like the Ancient Greek gods, who were of course immortal, but also petty, capricious, nasty, truculent and if their constant malicious meddling is anything to go by frequently bored.

Would one want to be a Greek god? It is not obvious that the answer is yes. Let us also make the further suggestion that, as a result, it appears that we cannot coherently desire to be immortal in the sense of never dying. What I want to claim below, however is that many further insights about the desire for immortality can be gleaned from works of literature and popular fiction, from authors who have subjected the notion to even light critical pressure.

When we examine these, however, we are able to draw interesting further insights into the complexity of what is at issue, and which indicate that a desire for immortality is likely to be about more than simply a desire never to die. Both Williams and Scheffler make use of wider artistic materials to advance their cases.

In neither case are these examples window dressing, or mere pumps for intuitions. On the contrary, both Williams and Scheffler appeal to literature and art as a way of getting at aspects of the human condition that risk eluding a purely formal philosophical analysis. As Williams put it:. But the aim is to sharpen perception, to make one more acutely and honestly aware of what one is saying, thinking and feeling. Treatments of immortality — understood simply as never dying, of going on forever — are relatively commonplace in works of literature.

Whilst island-hopping around what appears to be Indonesia, Gulliver stops off in a kingdom in which a small percentage of the population are born with a black mark on their foreheads, a sure sign that they will live forever. But he soon learns that to be Struldbrug is to be cursed.

For these beings never stop ageing, and after about 30 years sink first into insanity and then ever-worsening decrepitude, roaming the kingdom as disgusting brutes shunned by normal humans.