#10 – Would heaven be worse than oblivion? Fischer on the afterlife.

In this episode, I focus on the second half of Fischer's response to Williams' pessimistic criticisms of immortality in which he concentrates on supernatural conceptions of the afterlife. I first consider whether the afterlife is even possible for beings like us. Notably, any who believe that there is an afterlife (whether that be good or bad) must also think that death is a transition of some sort, typically a separation of soul from body, and that the transmigration into heaven or hell preserves the personal identity of the one who dies. Neither assumption is obvious and both are subject to challenge.

Next, I consider various conceptions of the afterlife in which there may be certain goods that would be otherwise unavailable, such as conversing with God or with good people from the past. Fischer underestimates how good heaven could be by focusing too much on a traditionally Christian conception of it. There is no good exclusive to mortal existence for which there could be no coherent conception of an afterlife that would include it, so however good eternal existence in heaven would be, it would be no worse than an immortal continuation of our lives in our material plane. For this reason, all of the arguments Fischer gives as to why immortality wouldn't be so bad would likewise apply to the afterlife, and then some.

Lastly, I discuss the desirability of various immortality scenarios depending upon who gets to be immortal, disagreeing with Fischer about the socioeconomic inequalities an indefinite life extension therapy would create as well as the prospects of overpopulation. Despite painting himself as a moderate between immortality pessimists and optimists, Fischer's definitions requires these to be not only mutually exclusive but exhaustive characterizations of our attitudes about the subject, so there is no conceptual room for what he takes to be his middle-ground position. Fischer may regard himself a realist about the desirability of immortality, but he is far too pessimistic about the desirability of human life continuing through future climate change.

Transcript

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Welcome to Mortality Matters, a podcast about conceptual issues in the philosophy of death and the meaning of life. I am your host Matthew Sternberg. Would heaven really be a hell? Is oblivion better? What should we hope for when it comes to an immortal exist? In this episode, I'm covering the second half of chapter seven of John Martin Fisher's book, death, immortality and Meaning in Life. In this second half of the chapter, Fisher considers immortality from a religious standpoint before specifying where he stands on the issue. Before considering different conceptions of what the afterlife would be or what a heaven would be like, presuming there were such a thing. First we have to think about whether it's even possible. So under all these religious conceptions of an afterlife, they all hold the thought that death is a transition of some kind. It's right there in the name after life. This is to be contrasted with a secular approach, which would hold that death. Annihilates, the one who. When you die, you cease to exist. So under all of these religious notions, that is not true. Death is a transition to some other form of exist. An afterlife, if you will, which may not necessarily be good. There may be a hell as well, or perhaps in a reincarnation worldview, one's afterlife is just yet another life with all of its ordinary foibles and challenges. Interestingly, Fisher does not focus on reincarnation, and at least in this part of the book, he focuses it on other parts of the book. So we're going to be looking at instead different conceptions of the afterlife of heaven in which heaven is some other. Than the material world that we all inhabit right now, which is not to say that it must be ethereal or immaterial in some form or another, although that may be one option or one way of thinking about an afterlife. The important point is that it's not this world. It's some other world. So one problem that Fisher doesn't consider, Probably for the sake of brevity is whether upon death, the thing that comes into existence in the afterlife is you. That is to say, what is really going on in this so-called transition, right? So in ordinary transitions, if I transition from my house to my car, that transition occurs simply because I change my place. I move myself and I walk down the stairs and go into my garage and get in my car. Turn on the car and drive away and exit from the garage, and exit from the house. That's a ordinary kind of transition that we just think of as locomotion or just change of location, uh, self-moving change of location, and there may be other forms of transition if you can transition water into vapor by boiling it, for instance, as a state of matter. and there may be other kinds of transitions, but the kind of transition that would have to occur if death were a transition into some other mode of existence would have to be radically different than any of those other kinds of changes. And this is true, even if there were immaterial soul. So what am I right? Am I a brain or am I a animal as a human being? What are. Well, if what we are is these immaterial souls, which interact with our meat bodies, if you will, you could think of our bodies as like vehicles that the soul inhabits in some way. If that was one way of thinking about it, then what death would do would just decouple you from your fleshly existence into some other form of existence, right? It'd be like getting out of the car. So if the body is like a car, Death would be like exiting the car, perhaps involuntarily, perhaps voluntarily with suicide. Who knows? But the point is there's a decoupling, but then you might wonder, well, what happens? So if there was an immaterial soul, and that's what we are, you still have to answer the question as to whether there's a physical location. Of that soul. So Young Monk Kim has a great article on the pairing problem in which he identifies additional problems for substance dualism. So substance dualism is the soul theory of the mind. What is the mind if not the soul? And what the soul is, is an immaterial substance of some kind. It's different than material things like rocks or chairs or grass or even bodies, human bodies. And that is what the mind is made out of. The mind has a kind of stuff to it. It's not just an epiphenomenon or some other kind of property that would emerge from the operations of the brain or the activity of the brain. It's more than that. It's a thing, it's a substance and it exists, and it's paired with our meat bodies. So if that's how you think about the relationship, The mind with the body. Then you might conclude that heaven is just the transmigration of the soul into some other realm, some perhaps supernatural realm. But is that notion of a transmigration, a mirror metaphor? It wouldn't be if the soul had a location. Perhaps the soul is two inches behind the eyes. Who knows where it is? It's not perceptible cuz it's immaterial. The only things that can be perceived or the only objects of perception that are possible are material substances of some. So that's one way of thinking about it. That's not day card's way of thinking about it. I think the most plausible interpretation of day card's view is that he thinks that there is a soul, and that's what the mind is. And it's immaterial, but it doesn't have a location. It has extension in time, but it doesn't have extension in space. Cuz well, you have one in the same soul that persists over time. So it's extended in time, but it's not extended in space because, well, it's not like a rock or a chair. It doesn't have a dimensions like length or width. but it also lacks location under day card's view. So regardless of whether the soul is located or not, there's still this mystery of the transition that death would be, that there's something deeply mysterious about the decoupling of soul from body under the soul theory of our own personal identity and of the mind. And that's perhaps the easiest way of thinking about how there could be a migration such that death would be a transition to some sort of afterlife. Now, there are more materialist ways of thinking about an afterlife in which suppose Jesus returns to earth and everyone who is gone is resurrected. Those have their own problems, for instance. If the stuff that composes me was later used to compose other people, suppose I'm cremated upon death and that filters into the air and scatters about, and all of the substance that used to compose part of my body as now inhaled by a million people via pollution of some kind. And that becomes part of them then presumably, if God were to come back to Earth and reconstitute everyone, he would have to disentangle the parts that make up one person from the parts that make up another. You might also wonder about cannibalism and cannibals as well, but perhaps. They're evil people who don't deserve redemption or something. I'm not sure what the view would be, but the thought is there could be some entanglement issues because there's only so much matter to go around and it's distributed in different ways over time, and there could be a problem there. But a materialist view of the afterlife, however, is not exactly what we have in mind because the point of this discussion is to think about whether immortality would be desirable. And under different religious conceptions of what an afterlife would be like, you might get different answers as to whether those versions of heaven would be worth wanting and how might they respond to William's challenge that immortality would be inevitably boring. So if you have a immaterialist view of an afterlife where heaven is some other realm, One of the biggest challenges to that is to explain not only how death is a transition of some kind or another, a transition into what? A transition into heaven, but what's that like? Usually you find heaven being portrayed in movies, for instance, as the actor in some sort of cloudy realm or something. and you wonder, well, why is the person portrayed at that age instead of a different age? So your body's gone. What would you look like? How would there be light to look? Is this all arranged or is it merely metaphorical? As soon as one starts asking the most basic of questions and wonders, what is that even supposed to be like? Okay. So that's the first challenge, is to explain how death would be a transit. And there are certain substantive commitments to giving a full explanation for that, which I illustrated by giving one example of a sole theory of personal identity, coupled with the substance dualism view of the mind that you think of the mind as what we are as our minds, and what minds are our souls. We don't have a soul. We are a soul. That would be one possible answer to these questions. So that would hopefully try to solve the mystery of what death is, but at the same time, it doesn't really solve the mystery of death because there's quite a lot of unanswered questions about the location of the soul. How does it trans migrate? Where does it go? How does that even work? In fact, how is the soul even paired to this body to begin with as opposed to some other body, and presuming it was paired to the right body and not the wrong body. How does causal interaction work between the body and the mind? And that's a particularly thorny problem in the philosophy of mind, known as the mind body problem. So presuming for the moment that all those questions have answers and they could be solved, there's still yet further mysteries. For instance, there's a secondary problem. Personal identity. So whatever it is that ensures that you are the same person over time would seem to have some kind of gap in the transition that would need to occur between our mortal existence as material beings and our immortal existence in heaven or hell for that matter. Things typically don't survive gaps in existence, or at least whenever there is a gap in one's exist. There needs to be some sort of explanation as to why the one in the same being survives throughout the gap. Typically, we have a kind of continuity both in our body as well as in our minds, which grounds and ensures that we are the same persisting thing over time. In fact, John Martin Fisher endorses bodily and psychological continuity as sufficient for the preservation of personal identity over time in the first half of this chapter that I'm discussing. However, if death were a transition to some form of immaterial existence, that transition would, at least at first blush, discontinuous, it would seem to introduce a. Into our existence as one in the same being such that one could intelligibly ask whether the thing that appears in heaven is the same thing that died as opposed to some sort of duplicate being. So even if there were a heaven, what would guarantee that you would be the one going there? Or if there were a hell, even there is some being, being tortured after you die that resembles you. Perhaps it looks like you, screams like you. Is it? There was a discontinuity in your transition that death would bring. So let's make an analogy to Star Trek. Suppose Captain Kirk gets on the teleportation transporter booth and tells Scotty to beam him down. The machine dematerializes him by removing all of his parts and their arrangements. It stores that information and then reconstitutes. A similar being to Kirk on the planet below. Well, it seems to me that this kind of transporter device is actually a death trap. It's a death machine that kills people by dissembling their parts, and even though it retains all of the information necessary to create a duplicate of him, the duplicate is not him. It's not one in the same person. The transition that death would bring would be a similar kind of death trap. It would annihilate the one who die. Upon death, and then some sort of clone or some duplicate being materializes, except it's not material, it would be in immaterial form existing in heaven. Now, you might think that the soul theory has a way to escape this problem because the thought is, well, if there is a mind that's immaterial and is a soul, that soul doesn't have parts. It's not like a bicycle, which could be disassembled by taking off the seats and the handles and the wheels, and you could destroy a bicycle, make the bicycle cease to exist by dissembling all of its parts, and then reconstituting the bicycle at another time by reassembling all of its parts. And that would be a gap in that bicycle's existence and arguably, It may not be the same bicycle over time due to this gap, but that doesn't really matter. It's a bicycle. It does matter when it comes to people, so the soul doesn't have parts which can be disassembled, but then there still needs to be some sort of explanation about how the transmigration would work. The soul is attached to a body somehow that causes that body to move, and then the soul somehow appears in heaven. It seems to suggest that the soul has a location if the soul doesn't have a location. Is every soul already in heaven? Did the soul never leave heaven to begin with? And it's more or less operating at a distance by manipulating a meat body on earth. That could be one answer to the question. I'm not really sure what religions would have to say about this, or I'm not a religious scholar or a theologian, so I'm more or less speaking out of ignorance here. I'm sure there's probably some sort of explanation, but it seems to me if the soul's not supposed to have a location, at least in space, if not time, then that might be one way of doing. You might say, well, the soul never leaves heaven. It just is always there. I'm not sure how the soul would transmigrate from it. Heaven. Pre bodily state before you were born into, say you were evil during your life, and then now you're going to hell. How does the soul transition from heaven to hell? If that was the case, I'm not exactly sure how that's supposed to work. More mysteries. I think in general when trying to give explanations, it's a bad idea to give. More mysteries in favor of less mysteries. The idea is to hopefully make the underlying phenomenon less mysterious by giving better explanations, and if the explanations being given are worse, that's a reason to disbelieve it. That's not a reason to withhold judgment. So there's quite a thorny problem with the preservation and persistence of one's identity. Let's put that problem aside for the moment and just presume that yes, it is possible to continue to be one in the same person through the transition that death is, and at least some people go to heaven and continue there for eternity. I wish to. The word live in heaven for eternity cuz one isn't alive. Right? Life was what happened on earth in your material form of existence. This is an immaterial form of existence. So more or less, you are continuing to be one in the same person forever, but you're not alive. So would that be boring? I'm not exactly sure what Fisher's view is of religion or of heaven. He adopts a secular approach throughout the whole book, which leads me to believe, or at least suspect that he's probably agnostic or atheist. But there's a third category of being anti theist, right? So first off, you can either think there is a God or not. Just to answer the question, is there a God yes or no? It's a yes or no question. You're either a theist or an atheist. There's a third category. You could say, well, I'm not really sure we would describe such people as agnostic, but of course that answers a separate question. It assesses whether one suspends judgment about whether there is a God or not. Not whether there is one. So one can believe that there is a God, in which case one is a theist or disbelieve, that there's a God that is to say believe that there is no God, in which case one is an atheist or alternatively suspend judgment in which case one is an agnostic, but some atheists not only believe that there is no God, but wish there was none as well. That it would be a bad thing where there to be a God. So Christopher Hitchens would criticize the notion of heaven, for instance, by describing it as a celestial North Korea, where you live in a perpetual state of a lack of privacy, and he saw that as somewhat tyrannical. that God was a kind of tyrant and he's happy that there is no such being and he thinks there is no such being for other reasons. But in addition to that, he thinks, oh, it's also good that there is no such being. And in that sense he's an anti atheist. He's not just an atheist cuz some atheists may hope that there would be a God or may find it disappointing that there is no God and wish there.. But unfortunately there isn't for some reason or another probably having to do with the existence of evil. That the fact that bad things happen to good people in ways that they don't deserve beyond anyone's control gives this reason to believe that there is no God governing the world. And in any event, a good God wouldn't design the world this in this way. And because any flaw in the creation is a flaw in the creator, whatever created the world cannot be perfect. Where there a God, God would have to be perfect. This gives us reason to believe that there is no. So that's an argument for atheism. Now, there's various responses to that, various thess, which defend the existence of God from these kinds of doubts. But in addition to those doubts, you might also think that it's really good that there's no God, because you might take up Hitchen's view and thinks that it would be a celestial in North Korea. But putting that aside and supposing that the right conception of heaven is not so tyrannical, you might think that mortality would be preferable. And I think this was Williams view, Bernard Williams, that it's better that we're mortal. because if we were immortal, our lives would be less meaningful. That death is what partly gives meaning to our lives. That would be horrible, especially if there was no exit. If there was no possibility of annihilating oneself, if you were more or less cursed or condemned to being immortal and continuing to exist in a conscious state forever. Now, fishers already responded in the first half of chapter seven to various objections against secular conceptions of immortality. And it seems to me that all of those same reasons apply to religious conceptions of an afterlife. However, Fisher seems to have a more attenuated view of heaven. He thinks that it's a more restrictive context than what exists on Earth with fewer opportunities for certain kinds of projects or interesting activities. I'm not exactly sure which projects he has in mind that people in heaven would lack, perhaps the project of breaking the world record in serial killing or evil. But Fisher has already conceded the point that what makes any good thing, whether it's a pleasure or an experience or an activity repeatable, is that it's intrinsically valuable. So murdering a whole bunch of people and breaking the world record and murder. Is not intrinsically valuable. Furthermore, under the various conceptions of heaven that he considers, none of them seem to rule out any of the compelling or interesting inexhaustible projects that he considers in the earlier part of the chapter. Things like mathematics or science, physics. What would stop people in heaven from considering physical theories? They could do so with the benefit of an omniscient, omnipotent. They could have the complete theory of physics all figured out simply by testimony and asking God, and then they could come to learn exactly how the laws of nature works. With an infallible oracle, more or less, who can inform them and educate and instruct perfectly. So I'm not exactly sure which opportunities would be deprived of people in heaven. I mean, it seems to me the only opportunities that would be deprived for them would be the opportunities to commit evil, but I don't see why that would be a good thing. And in fact, the project to achieve the world record in serial killings, if you're gonna call it a project at all, as an evil. Is a self exhausting one. To use Fisher's own terminology. It's a bit like climbing the tallest mountain. It can only be done once. You can always climb the tallest mountain many times, of course. But to break the record, you break the record once. So it seems to me that. Any inexhaustible project or repeatable good. That is what makes an immortal life worth continuing in a secular context would also apply in a religious context, in a religious conception of the afterlife if it were real. That's the big qualifier. If it were real, if that's the way reality really. Then heaven would have all the benefits of secular immortality and then some, because there are certain benefits that presumptively you could have in heaven that you would not have an immortal life in a material life, for instance. If there were other people, you would be able to converse with all the people who are already dead, all of the saints who could have interesting thoughts and opinions, and you can have all sorts of interesting conversations with the saints of the past. That would be very interesting. I would love to have a lengthy conversation with Thomas Aquinas. So that's one benefit that would be exclusive to a religious conception of an afterlife. Probably the chief benefit and the most obvious one is communion with God. I'm not exactly sure what that is supposed to be. maybe it's another deep mystery that can only be solved by experiencing it. Doing that and being there. But Fisher cites various sources that try to explain what communion with God will be like in heaven as a kind of dialogue or a kind of conversation with the greatest possible conversationalist or the most perfect of all beings. It's a bit like trying to understand infinity, by the way, of making analogies to finite. The idea is the most that could ever be thought of. It's literally beyond. Our comprehension is individual, finite material beings. But to try to understand infinity, we must at least make analogies and just gesture and say, and so on. So think of like the natural numbers, like there's infinitely many numbers. They go from one to three, four or five and so on. There're the counting numbers. There's infinitely many of them. What is it like to think of them? Well, you just have to say and so on. You think about the finite cases and extrapolate to an infinite case by extension and hand wave. So it's incomprehensible, but just say and so on. It's hand wavy, but that's the most that can be said. Okay, but would a conversation with anyone be endlessly fascinating and engaging in a way that. Be sufficient to avoid the inevitable problem of boredom that Williams identifies. So this is one problem that Williams himself identifies in his article on the McCropolis case that in order for immortality to be desirable, It's necessary that there be some activity that's endlessly engaging that would be inexhaustible in its value. However, there is no such thing says Williams. So therefore, immortality would eventually get boring and be insufficient to bring meaning to our lives. and there would be no further reason to continue to be alive or to continue to exist as an immortal being. Now with heaven, you're not alive, but you would continue to exist and you might think of that as a kind of torture, at least as a kind of deprivation. It results in the absence of whatever makes continued existence worth wanting. However, there are some pretty good candidates of endlessly fascinating things, so Fisher. Cites Kagan as being somewhat skeptical about this quote. A friend suggested that I should think of God as being like an infinitely fascinating and understanding friend communing with God would be like having an incredibly satisfying conversation, one that you would literally want to continue forever. Well, I can say the words, but when I try to imagine that possibility and take it seriously, I find that I just can't see it. No friend that I've ever talked with is one that I would actually want to spend eternity talking. Quote, yes, of course, professor Kagan, but everyone you've ever met has been a finite and flawed individual human being. God is neither of those things. It's what makes him think that that's a good enough analogy to understand the divine. The counter-argument that I'm giving right now is that the source for the boredom or the lack of satisfaction in a conversation that has gone on too long results from our imper. Perfect. Results from our fude, from our flaws, and coming up with interesting things to say, or interesting ideas or interesting new ways of thinking about things. And those deficiencies would not be present with God. God is a perfect being. He has no such deficiency. So there would be endless novelty of thought in a conversation with an abni, an omnipotent being, especially if that being is also omni, benevolent and loves you further. Why must one only converse with God? Is there not other options? So whatever the version of heaven we're considering, if there were other options, then you wouldn't need any one activity to be endlessly fascinating. And a defender of the value of an immortal existence in heaven could avail himself of all the same secular defenses that Fisher gives in this article. By cycling one's repeatable goods, whether they be pleasures or relationships, or any kind of good thing, you cycle. So that no single thing becomes too exhausting on one's attention or time or self. And furthermore, if Heaven lacks nothing of intrinsic value, then any valuable project or repeatable good would be available. Heaven is supposed to be paradise, so that means any ultimately good thing, things that are good in themselves and not merely for instrumental reason. These should all be available. So the question is, well, what kind of intrinsic good would be unavailable in heaven and only available on Earth, if any, if there were a heaven? It doesn't seem like there would be any, seems like any possible good that you could experience in your mortal existence as a material being on earth would be finite and perhaps it would be inexhaustible in repetition., but just by our mortality alone, we only have so many years on earth to enjoy the good things of life, whatever those good things are. But if there were a heaven, there would be no end to the possibilities of good things. The opportunity costs would cease to exist. There would be no scarcity of opportunity. It would be an inexhaustible source of bounty, so to speak. We're all good things and any good things can be enjoyed to any. At least in the right ways. But one of the advantages of the gated community, so to speak, is that the only people, there are all good people, so nobody's around to spoil your funds, so to speak. So I don't see how the monotony objection lands at all against communion with God. And even if it did, one can cycle one's enjoyments of any good thing, just as one would do in a secular version of immortality. Now, there's a couple of different ways of thinking about how communion with God is supposed to. One way is to think of it as a endlessly fascinating conversation. Another way is to think of it instead as a kind of erotic union. I'm not exactly sure what this is supposed to mean. Whatever it is, it's not intellectual. So there is something about conversation in which one mind speaks to another mind, which is engaging at an intellectual level in which you exchange ideas through the medium of. Now in heaven. I'm not sure if the medium of language would exist. Perhaps there would be direct communication between minds in a non-linguistic fashion, but perhaps in a mental fashion. I'm not sure how that would work, or even if the mind is capable of that kind of thing. But of course, that's our own finite minds as fleshy meat creatures on earth. Perhaps the minds of immaterial beings in heaven work a little differe. But perhaps there could be a way not in which the mind speaks to another mind, but in which the heart speaks to another heart, so to speak. Or at least of course, we wouldn't have hearts as immaterial beings. Hearts are organs, they're pieces of meat. Instead, there would be a kind of non-intellectual, perhaps emotional, or some other form of union that would exist with God Fisher likens this to sexual. Of course. I'm not sure. That's a really good analogy. I think a better way of describing the thought here is that there's a kind of non-intellectual union of souls in a way in which emotions or things that are, feelings are related that may not have a linguistic or propositional structure. They may not be articulable or intelligible as a thought, which could be communicated with a possibility of language. Instead, they would be a, a non-linguistic feeling or an emotion or other forums of communion where information or feelings like that can be conveyed., and that's what it would be like to be in communion with God. Now, of course, that's a little bit different. Instead of thinking of a kind of conversation of the heart, you instead are talking about a kind of merging, which is a different notion of what Union with God would be like. So under this conception, One would merge with God in a kind of ecstatic union. Now, the ecstasy, presumably is describing the perfection of a certain feeling. Now, typically that's described as pleasure. Pleasure is a kind of perfection of our feelings, but that perhaps may be the wrong word to describe the perfection of feeling that union with God would consist in if it were taking the form of a kind of merging with God. Now, of course, there's an objection against this, which has to do with personal identity. So how could one retain one's individuality as a persisting, everlasting eternal being in heaven and yet merge with some other entity like God? Wouldn't you cease to exist in the merging? Wouldn't you just become like a part of a larger whole or some other inseparable form of existence that would cause you to cease to exist? And I think the thought here is that you would still retain your identity, but there would be a feeling of dissolution of the self where you would no longer have a sense of self in your own experiential content about the boundaries of what individuates you from some further being, but instead you would be a kind of ineffable. Where you couldn't quite experience in the content of your experience, your own individuality, and yet Metaly speaking, you would retain your individual identity. So there would still be a subject of experience, which would be yourself, and yet you would have no content of a sense of self in your ecstatic union with a divine. I think that's the thought here in this third conception of what union with God would be like, which is decisively different than denying that there is any such thing as a self, which is a common thought in the Buddhist tradition, but also among humans. There is still a self, but the sense of self is what is dissolved. The reason that matters is because, well, if you just cease to exist, you wouldn't be living forever. Now, would you? You would go into heaven, you would have union with God, and you would cease to. And that's not everlasting life, so to speak. That's no different than just being annihilated by death. Instead of being annihilated by death, you're being annihilated by union with. That reminds me a little bit of the ending of the end of Evangelian, but it's a different story because it's, everything's very materialistic in the sense that what happens to the characters at the end of that story is they have a material existence and they all dissolve and f form a kind of larger unity into this larger angelic like being, which then gets reversed and everyone gets rein Carn. I'm not sure they're the same people after that. I'm not sure how anyone could survive being dissolved into liquid, then becoming part of some gigantic creature. Let's go back to whether union with God be endlessly fascinating. Here's the thing, if the union was some kind of intellectual conversation, even in that form of heaven, if that's what Heaven is like in conversation, we learn things from other people, and I think Fisher would agree with me that knowledge has a kind of non-instrumental value. It's not only as good as it is useful knowledge has a kind of intrinsic value where it's good in and of itself, if that's.. And it's also true that there's a God who's Abni that we're conversing with. Well, there would be endless novel. Endless new information we could learn. It might be somewhat similar to an idealized form of the internet if there were an internet and we could just look up anything. Of course, I'm speaking on the internet right now, but the current internet we have is filled with misinformation. It's filled with nasty trolls and people who are mean for no reason. And you know, there's all. Flaws in our fallen world, so to speak. And even though we've developed this kind of network where we can converse with one another as these quasi intellectual beings, we do so for malicious reasons and and malicious intent, and we spread lies and gossip and misinformation. None of that would be the case. So it would be similar to like an idealized form of the internet where you could ask any question and get a good answer. That's true. And not only true, but true for the right reasons, and you'd be able to query anything you want, presumably. And at the very minimum in learning from God through some sort of immaterial conversation that would be endlessly novel. And we would come to learn whatever we would want to learn, presumably for the right reasons every time. And that could be an endless process. If there's infinitely many objects of knowledge, there's infinitely many facts or other kinds of things to learn, and that would be endlessly fascinating and interesting as a process and not depletable, we wouldn't be running out of new facts to learn. At the very minimum, Fisher already conceded that philosophy and mathematics are inexhaustible and unfinishable project. Both of which we could learn from. The greatest conceivable being who would be the best philosopher and the best mathematician. That would be God. That sounds pretty awesome to me. So unless Fisher has some special reason to think that there would be something tyrannical or especially horrible about heaven, so far in the argument, there doesn't seem to be anything particularly. Bad about it. And further, all of the benefits that we would be able to have in a secularized version of immortality would also be available and enjoyable to those in heaven. Provided heaven were even possible and were real. So if anything, a religious version of the afterlife is a much more preferable version of immortality than a secular one. And Fisher so far has given us no reason to. That a secular version of immortality is more preferable to a religious version of the afterlife. The only problem, perhaps, is that the religious version of an afterlife might be impossible for some of the reasons I mentioned earlier about the preservation of personal identity, how death would be a transition instead of just the termination of ourselves and so on. And of course if there was no God to secure that there would be an afterlife, well then there would be no reason to believe that there would be one, cuz God would be presiding over heaven. But if there were no God, what reason would there be to believe that there's even a heaven to go to? It would be at best wishful thinking, but nevertheless wishful. So in the last part of the chapter, Fisher tries to articulate his version of what he calls immortality realism. If you recall from his earlier definitions, he called people who thought that immortality was just impossible in any form, whatever. It's impossible for all forms of immortality or it's undesirable, even if it were possible. He called these people curmudgeon. I think that's a overly prejudicial way of describing many of these authors. I think of it instead as immortality pessimism in which one thinks that immortality is either impossible or undesirable. From page 89, Fisher says, quote, immortality, curmudgeons, contend that basic facts about human character or the nature of human life show that immortality is either impossible, or in any case would be undesirable and. Furthermore from the same page, immortality optimists deny that basic facts about human character or the nature of human life in themselves show that immortality is impossible or undesirable. And so what we have here are two incompatible positions, which are mutually exclusive and yet exhaustive of all possible views on the subject. So the immortality optimists deny what, what I call the pessimists affirm name. That human nature entails that immortality is either impossible or undesirable. The reason I make this point is because there is no third or middle position. And yet Fisher contends that he does adopt a middle position because he rejects the pessimistic view and yet also rejects what he takes to be the optimistic view. And yet he pulls a fast one on us. On page 1 35, he says, quote, optimists also think that it is plausible that we can achieve immortality in the not too distant future. Optimists are thus committed to the claim that the prerequisites for immortality, physical and social circumstances that can sustain immortality. Will or probably will continue to exist in some form or another and quote that is not true. He in no way builds that into his definition on page 89. Now, what he does do, to be fair to Fisher, is he does discuss Ray Kurtz while and Aubrey De Gray, who are both unrealistically optimistic about the prospects for a kind of medicalized immortality. That would exist in our lifetimes, not in which there would be some magic pill, which would just grant us eternal youth immediately. But rather that there would be a sufficient rate of development in the technology and therapies for life extension that would keep a pace with our aging, such that it would be able to extend our life expectancy by over one year per year. So only now that we're in chapter seven, and at the end of that chapter, does Fisher add on an additional condit. That optimist about immortality must also think that the prerequisites for immortality will continue to exist, which is something that Fisher later denies, or at least he's somewhat pessimistic about the prospects for our society to solve the problem of climate change. And of course if we ruin the planet, even if we could continue to exist ourselves, it would be undesirable to live in a polluted hellhole. So he says, quote on page 1 38, I thus reject immortality optimism. I do not think that it is likely that the environmental and social conditions required for continued desirable life will be achieved and quote. So he is pessimistic about that. But again, he doesn't build that into the definition on page 89. And so he plays a little fast and loose with the definitions. I would say that Fisher is an optimist about immortality. He does think it's desirable, and he also thinks it's possible, but what exactly we mean by possibility, is it possible at this state of the world as of 2023 or even at the time of the writing, which I believe is 2018 or 2019? Well, he has given us no reason to believe that it isn't. However, he does indicate some additional challenges that would exist due to the environmental conditions that would obtain, or what are the circumstances, what kind of immortality scenario are we talking about? So he describes three different possible scenarios. In one scenario, you yourself are the only immortal. This is the situation of Williams McCropolis case where Elena McCropolis is the only one who's. The second scenario is where you have some, but not everyone. Some, but not all people are immortal. Scenario two, and in scenario three, you have everyone being immortal, presumably everyone who's presently alive. Now we're not given more details about that, but presumptively, it would be a medicalized form of immortality in which there would be some sort of fountain of youth that would reverse aging and allow people to continue to live without aging, and yet they could still die from accidents or other kinds of cause. Just not from aging or age related disease. All of these three scenarios, I think are medicalized forms of immortality, which is not really true immortality. These are all cases of indefinite life extension in which aging is cured and reversed. So in the first scenario, the main problem is loneliness. If you're the only immortal being with kind of indefinite life extension, then it. As if many of the things that are good about life would be devalued through repetition. So for instance, you might have friends, family loving relationships, but they would pass away and die and deteriorate, but you would not, and that would have a kind of lasting impact of loneliness on you that would diminish the value of your life. Now, I don't think it would diminish it to the point where death is preferable, but it's not the ideal form of immortality. Ideally, your friends and loved ones would continue to exist. So this takes us to scenario two. Some, but not everyone has the advantage of immortality, and this is if aging were actually cured, if that were actually possible, and there was some sort of medicalized therapy which could cure or even reverse aging. This is actually the most plausible scenario where it would trickle down the economic ladder such that the wealthy and the most privileged people would be the first to gain access to this, which would probably be the the most expensive or super expensive medical treatment that it's ever exist. Certainly in the highest. So you might think there are some considerations of social and economic inequality, which would be severe, especially if it's trickling down into the rest of society. We're stunted, diminished, or obstructed in some fashion over a prolonged enough period of time. You might think this might create a two-tiered society. Where the super rich, immortal plutocrats would rule over the rest of humanity in some sort of dystopian future. Now, of course, I don't think having plutocrats ruling over others is justifiable, but I think that's unjustifiable for other reasons. It's not because they're immortal, it's because they're corrupting the political system. So the question you might ask yourself is, okay, well if indefinite life extension and this kind of rejuvenation therapy, were a realistic goal for the near term future. Should we cut funding or deny funding for research on this project? I don't think so. Even if it causes economic striation, the problems of economic inequality don't make death preferable. That would be a way of leveling down where you say, oh, because some people are privileged and are benefiting from much longer lives, it's necessary that we shorten their lives by denying them and depriving them of the ability that they would otherwise have to extend their lives, even though there's no force or fraud committed by mere life. This would be the ultimate form of jealousy where we're jealous of people for extending their lives merely for that fact. And so we deprive them of this even though they have caused no one else any harm, just the mere fact that they would be so privileged would be sufficient reason to deprive them of that. That's not a virtuous thing to do. That's quite a jealous thing to do, and I don't see it as justifi., and this is even more so if this technology really could trickle down and be available for everyone, like cell phones, it would be expensive, but it wouldn't be so expensive so as to be prohibitory for the least while off. And like many causes of social and economic inequality, the causal origins. Lie in some other area such as warfare or trade restrictions or other forms of tyranny, you solve those other problems of tyranny and there's no problem that's intrinsically. Sourced in life extension itself. Of course, you might think that life extension technology would be particularly problematic in a highly unideal society in which there's dictators for life, right? A dictator for life. All of a sudden, has his tenure significantly increased and might be harder to remove. But I don't think for that reason alone, the research should be denied. And if anything, I think there are other solutions to solving that problem. And furthermore, indefinite life extension doesn't. Immunize people from assassination or from overthrow or from other forms of ment or usurpation. It only immunizes people from age and age related diseases. But I hope in an ideal world, things could be resolved peacefully. So because of certain societal or economic problems with inequality, Fisher then transitions to the third scenario in which suppose that this technology or this therapy or mechanism for achieving indefinite life extension, were available to everyone. Suppose that it's. Like fluoride in the water or something, it seeded into the air and, and all of a sudden everyone on planet Earth is immune to aging and age related diseases. As a result of that, then there's a significant problem with that. If we continue to have children, you might think that the world would be completely overpopulated if no one would ever die from natural cause. If we're all immortal and we all have kids, then not only would the planet become intolerably overcrowded, its resources would also be disastrously depleted, says fisher. Now you might think, oh, okay, well, we'll just kind of colonize other planets or something, but that just seems too unrealistic. Perhaps in Star Trek they have all these planets that are within travel distance somehow, cuz they can somehow traverse faster than the speed of light and those planets are abundant and resources and more or less colonization would be possible. That doesn't seem plausible from what we know about the nearby solar systems here and now. However, that doesn't necessarily mean that overcrowding would be a. Now Fisher's solution to this, of course, like many simple answers, is just to ban it. Just no more kids. No one gets to have kids anymore, we're just gonna ban birth. And he thinks that this is the only solution because the alternative would be deeply unjust, that it would be deeply unjust to have significant overpopulation in which everyone would have meager lives, perhaps just above baseline. And yet, resources would be radically de. The possibilities for living a good life in that horrific dystopian future in which maybe there's trillions of people, he doesn't specify how many people, how many people would it take in order for the planet to be overpopulated? I'm not exactly sure. He doesn't say, but he's worried about it. Well, with technology levels circa 1200 more than a billion people. Far in excess of the caring capacity of the human species at that level of technological and cultural development. Fortunately, that's not true with even the 20th century level of technological and cultural development, although many, many people presently are starving. I'm not entirely convinced that it's the result of mere population alone and not other factors, nor should I be as pessimistic as fisher seems to be. The possibilities for future development to increase the caring capacity through technological and cultural means would also not be available. Furthermore, I think Fisher underestimates the current concerns about under population that exist across the globe, and as nations develop significantly, their birth rate precipitously drops off a cliff and that many people in the developed world are involuntarily childless and are unable to have even enough children. For replacement value for themselves and their spouse. If aging were cured, they wouldn't need to replace themselves, but banning children is an imposition on freedom. Which needs some explanation to justify this. The mistake that Fisher makes here is he's way too overconfident about the inevitability of overpopulation in an ageless society. For one, he didn't roll out the unnatural causes of death, not only through disaster like hurricanes or floods, but also through war and other. Forums of death. John Davis does a statistical analysis in his book on the pneumos, in which he argues that indefinite life extension technologies, even if they were instantly available across the globe, would not result in significant overpopulation that would result in the horrific kind of dystopia that Fisher seems to have in mind here. I'm not entirely convinced of Davis's model. Maybe the truth is somewhere in between, but I'm much more optimistic about humanity's ability to kind of solve these problems than as to warrant an immediate kind of ban on birth once the ageless medicine is delivered. I'm not exactly sure what the agent for delivery of this treatment would hypothetically be. If it's something that's just kind of disseminated into the air or the water one day, and then everyone is ageless, that could be, I think, a lot more disruptive than a gradual rollout, like a vaccine program or something that vaccinates you against aging, and perhaps it may have subsidies or be available for the least while off. I'm not entirely sure, but I think just an immediate band of birth would be way too heavy. Something I think more laissez fair might be appropriate, or at least something more hands off. Or if you're going to advocate for something like, okay, it comes with the price of a subsidy that you're going to agree to not have children. I'm not exactly sure how that could even be implemented legally. And even if we revise the laws, I think ethically, I mean, how can you. Ask people not to do that. But I think I'm optimistic that as people get richer, they just have less kids on their own because they have the pressing needs of career and their own projects. You know, having children is difficult and even if everyone. Were ageless and everyone had the bodies of like 21 year olds forever. They could have kids whenever they want. Perhaps there would be more accidental pregnancy, but many people in developed nations who are 21, are too busy with school or they're too busy with just life doing other things, enjoying themselves before having a family. A lot of teenage pregnancy results from social pathology that in a better world wouldn't even exist. So I think this fear of overpopulation is unmerited. And furthermore, I'm gonna add an additional objection to this. So Fisher seems to only count the interests of people who are actually alive right now, but Presum. He is worried about global climate change. He says as much in the text, and so he must think that we have some sort of duty to future generations not to destroy the planet. If that's true, those are merely possible people according to Fisher. Then, not just according to me, but according to Fisher, we have to take the interests of future people into account, people who don't exist. However, how is it fair to these people to be denied existence With a birth ban, we're gonna just ban birth. No one can have kids anymore. Perhaps in Fisher's idealized future, there would be a vaccine that would immunize you against age and would be like a fountain of youth. You would be ageless in a 21 year old's body would reverse whatever aging you currently had, but it would make you sterile. And Fisher thinks that's a worthy. What about the interests of the people who don't exist? Now, there are no such people, so maybe they shouldn't have their interests taken into account, but the merely possible people of the future are people whose interest fisher very much cares about in philosophy. This is sometimes called the non identity problem. And it's deeply problematic cuz it seems like in order to have duties or obligations to people, it seems like they have to exist in order for us to take their interest into account visas, VR duties and obligations. But if they don't exist, there can be no relations without rela. And so you can have no duties or obligations to that which does not exist. There's no relation of duty or relation of obligation without the relo that has to say. The object of the duty, the one to whom your duty would be owed to does not even exist. So that's deeply problematic, and yet Fisher seems to care deeply about the environment. So much so that he's also pessimistic about the prospects for humanity. To actually achieve it, but he thinks that a immortality drug of some kind, if we have an indefinite life extension therapy, this would strongly incentivize us to actually solve environmental problems. So it seems to me like Fisher thinks that a lot of the reasons why climate change is not taken seriously is because we're overly selfish. We're not gonna be around in 200 years, so it doesn't matter. Screw it. We're gonna live for the moment. Enjoy the now pollute. We're not gonna suffer. The consequences won't matter. But if we're immortal, then we will suffer the consequences. And so maybe we'll take climate change a lot more seriously if we were immortal. That may or may not be true, I'm not sure. But regardless, Fisher seems to care about the interests of future generations who don't yet exist. He takes their interest into account when considering the problem of climate change., but for some reason he doesn't take their interest into account. When considering banning birth and the problem of procreation so much like how we can have a duty to future generations who don't yet exist, can we also have a duty to procreate? A duty to that is owed to bringing into existence possible people. Now, you might think that's kind of absurd, right? How can we owe a duty to people to bring them into existence, to procreate? I mean, wouldn't that result in overpopulation of taken to the. But if that's absurd, why is it not also absurd to take the interest of future people into account who don't yet exist in the far future? So there's a big question. There could be a radical asymmetry between those two cases. Perhaps. We do have duties to future generations vis-a-vis climate change, but we don't have duties to future generations vis-a-vis procreation. But intuitively, they seem symmetrical to me. So I don't see what the difference is. I would have to be persuaded out of it that there would be some relevant asymmetry that would validate solving climate change. But would not validate procreation, and I think if we have uncertainty about this, we shouldn't be introducing bands with this kind of uncertainty. In fact, having children merely to continue your family in the knowledge that you're going to die is actually somewhat selfish, but there are plenty of other reasons to have children. Then merely the continuance of your own d n A. It would've been nice to. A larger discussion of these issues in the book. Alright, so in this episode I covered the second half of chapter seven of Fisher's book, death and Mortality and Meaning in Life. And I started out by thinking about various metaphysical issues with. The nature of an afterlife from the get-go. How could death be a transition? A transition to what? A transition to heaven, what implications does that have for the nature of our minds and what we are as individual things? How would our personal identity be preserved? That is to say, how could we survive a transition from a bodily form of existence into an immaterial form of existence in some afterlife, whether that's heaven or. It seems like that would be a gap in our existence that would result in our annihilation. So those questions have to do with the mere possibility of an afterlife or an afterlife in which we would go to. I later discussed some of Fisher's reasons for thinking about different conceptions of heaven and different possible goods which could be enjoyed exclusively to a heaven, such as conversing with God and what union with God would consistent. And there's three different conceptions of what that would be like. Contrary to Fisher, it seems to me that any reason to continue one's existence as an immortal in a secular context would also be available in a religious context in a heaven, but then heaven would have quite a lot more, which would make continued existence preferable. So if anything, boredom would be less of an issue in heaven than it would ever be in a secular mode of existence. Lastly, I discussed what. Calls himself as an immortality realist and identified that there's no middle position there. He's an optimist about immortality who is not so optimistic as Aubrey de Gray or Ray kw into thinking that immortality is right around the corner or is likely to be achieved in our lifetimes. And part of the reason for that is he thinks that. Eventually climate change is going to make this planet miserable enough to live in that it would not be desirable to continue to exist in an ageless, medically immortal life. So Fisher is kind of, I think, unduly pessimistic about environmentalism and about the possibilities of global climate change. Likewise, he's quite pessimistic about the problem of overpopulation, which I don't think is as problematic. Even if medical immortality were. So, although Fisher calls himself an immortality realist, he's really an optimist, but not so optimistic as to be.