Topic:	Would you want to Live Forever?
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Guest:	Professor John Fischer, University of California, Riverside
What is it?	Pick your favorite age. You are healthy, career thriving, family intact (at least pretend!). Would you like to live forever at that age, in that health, with those friends and family members also living forever with you? Immortality, on earth? How about an extra fifty or one hundred years or two hundred beyond your present life expectancy? Yes! Think of all I could get done! No. I would be bored! Yes, I could sit on the beach, and be in no hurry to do anything. No, life gets its meaning from having a shape, and things without boundaries have no shape. Would an immortal human life be incredibly boring or is a good human life so good it's worth living to eternity?

About the Guest

John Fischer's main areas of research are in metaphysics, moral philosophy, the philosophy of mind (with an emphasis on free will), and the philosophy of religion.  Some of his publications include:

• Responsibility and Control: A Theory of Moral Responsibility (with M. Ravizza), Cambridge University Press, 1998

• The Metaphysics of Free Will: An Essay on Control , Blackwell, 1994

• The Metaphysics of Death (ed.), Stanford University Press, 1993

• Perspectives on Moral Responsibility (coed., with M. Ravizza), Cornell University Press, 1993

• Ethics: Problems and Principles (coed., with M. Ravizza), Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1991

• God, Foreknowledge and Freedom (ed.), Stanford University Press, 1989

• Moral Responsibility (ed.), Cornell University Press, 1986

Due for publication later in 2005 is his new book My Way: Essays on Moral Responsibility .

He has also published the following articles on death and the meaning of life:

• "Introduction: Death, Metaphysics, and Morality," in John Martin Fischer  (ed.),The Metaphysics of Death (Stanford University Press, 1993): 3-30.

• John Martin Fischer and A. Brueckner, "Why is Death Bad?" Philosophical Studies, Vol. 50, No. 2 (September 1986): 213-221.

• "Death," in Lawrence C. Becker (ed.), The Encyclopedia of Ethics (Garland Publishing, 1992): 239-241.

• "Recent Work on Death and the Meaning of Life," Philosophical Books, Vol. 34, No. 2 (1993): 65-75.

• John Martin Fischer and Anthony Brueckner,  "The Asymmetry of Early Death and Late Birth," Philosophical Studies, Vol. 71 (1993): 327-331.

• John Martin Fischer and Anthony Brueckner, "Death's Badness,"  Pacific Philosophical Quarterly, Vol. 74, No. 1 (March 1993): 37-45.

• "Why Immortality is Not So Bad," International Journal of Philosophical Studies, Vol. 2, No. 2 (September 1994): 257-270.

• John Martin Fischer and R. Curl, "Philosophical Models of Immortality in Science Fiction," in Immortal Engines: Life Extension and Immortality in Science Fiction and Fantasy (University of Georgia Press, 1996): 3-12.

• John Martin Fischer, "Death, Badness, and the Impossibility of Experience," Journal of Ethics, (1997): 341-353.

• Anthony Brueckner and John Martin Fischer, "Being Born Earlier," Australasian Journal of Philosophy, Vol. 76, No. 1 (March 1998): 110-114.

• John Martin Fischer, "Contribution on Martha Nussbaum's The Therapy of Desire," in Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, (Part of a Book Symposium) Vol. LXI, No. 3 (September 1999): 787-792.

• John Martin Fischer and Daniel Speak,  "Death and the Psychological Conception of Personal Identity,"  Midwest Studies in Philosophy, Vol. 24 (2000): 84-93.

Listening Notes

Why do we want to avoid death? Life is a good thing, and more of a good thing is good, so we should want to live forever. Should life have a shape or is it enough to be pleasurable? John introduces John Fischer, professor at the University of California at Riverside. Fischer thinks that immortality would not result in unending boredom or pain. Does the finiteness of life make it more enjoyable? Fischer thinks that death is not the only thing that can give a shape to life. Would immortality entail lots of bad things happening to you?

Would a life devoid of suffering be good? Is the point of life to prepare us for death? Is your life less meaningful if you've lived a shorter time? Fischer points out that we use the phrase “meaning of life” in many different ways. Can we conceive of circumstances in which it would be desirable to be immortal? Is life intrinsically good? Fischer distinguishes between good for the individual and good for the community.

Is there anything that would be worth doing forever? Many people try to think of one particular activity, but Fischer thinks that certain mixtures of activities would be worth doing forever. Is the Groundhog Day model of immortality desirable?

• Amy Standen the Roving Philosophical Reporter (Seek to 05:04): Amy Standen interviews Dr. Phillip Miller and Bill Hurlbut about issues of aging and longevity.

• Ian Shoales the Sixty Second Philosopher (Seek to 36:00): Ian Shoales give a rapid biography of the Danish philosopher Soren Kierkegaard.

• Conundrum (Seek to 47:15): Lisa from the Bay Area asks whether she should lie to allow her children to go to a good daycare. Is it prudent? Is it moral?

Additional Resources

• Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy

   

  • entry on death

   

  • entry on Kierkegaard

   

  • entry on Heaven and Hell

• Biological advances in extending life

• Article on living forever from the BBC

• The case against immortality

• Immortality in the physical sense

• The Wikipedia entry on immortality

   

• Red Nova article on Ray Kurzweil, inventor and computer scientist who is researching immortality

• Popular Science article on Aubrey de Grey, another immortality researcher

• The Immortality Institute

• Milan Kundera's novel about life and death, Immortality

• Ben Bova's book Immortality: How Science Is Extending Your Life Span and Changing the World

• Michael West's book The Immortal Cell

• S. Jay Olshansky's book The Quest for Immortality

• Lucretius's On the Nature of the Universe (alternately titled On the Nature of Things) which contains his arguments against fearing death

• Thomas Nagel's Mortal Questions

• The Essential Kierkegaard

• Groundhog Day on DVD