Philosophy Compass 15 (2) (2020)
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Abstract |
While most people believe the best possible life they could lead would be an immortal one, so‐called “immortality curmudgeons” disagree. Following Bernard Williams, they argue that, at best, we have no prudential reason to live an immortal life, and at worst, an immortal life would necessarily be bad for creatures like us. In this article, we examine Bernard Williams' seminal argument against the desirability of immortality and the subsequent literature it spawned. We first reconstruct and motivate Williams' somewhat cryptic argument in three parts. After that, we elucidate and motivate the three best (and most influential) counterarguments to Williams' seminal argument. Finally, we review, and critically examine, two further distinct arguments in favor of the anti‐immortality position.
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Keywords | Makropulos Williams death desirability immortality rational preference |
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DOI | 10.1111/phc3.12652 |
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References found in this work BETA
Our Stories: Essays on Life, Death, and Free Will.John Martin Fischer - 2009 - Oxford University Press.
Why Immortality is Not so Bad.John Martin Fischer - 1994 - International Journal of Philosophical Studies 2 (2):257 – 270.
Immortality and Boredom.John Martin Fischer & Benjamin Mitchell-Yellin - 2014 - The Journal of Ethics 18 (4):353-372.
Immortality, Boredom, and Standing for Something.David Beglin - forthcoming - In Travis Timmerman & Michael Cholbi (eds.), Exploring the Philosophy of Death and Dying: Classic and Contemporary Perspectives.
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2020-01-10
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695 ( #7,445 of 2,403,546 )
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301 ( #1,328 of 2,403,546 )
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