Preview
- Final exam study guide is at tab above -- we will discuss a little Wednesday and review Monday.
- Office hours next week -- Monday 2-3 plus later in week (TBA)
Recap: Should We Choose to Live Forever?
Our current lifespan
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Lifespan with radical life extension
Fischer and Cave: two questions
- Would radical life extension be good for me? (this is Fischer's focus)
- Would radical life extension be good for us? What would be the social costs? (Cave, next time)
Two camps
- John Martin Fischer, Thomas Nagel. Optimists about RLE.
- Stephen Cave, Bernard Williams, others. Pessimists about RLE. Fischer calls them "immortality curmudgeons" and "apologists for the status quo."
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Fischer's optimism about RLE 
- Makes positive argument for RLE--all the goods of life will still be available (ch. 2 section 8, p. 105)
- Responds to the pessimists worries about RLE--thinks they're mistaken worries
- loss of identity
- loss of motivation
- loss of narrativity -- no coherent, human "story of my life"
- altered stages -- loss of old age, addition of other stages
- problem of boredom -- can't avoid boredom; or if I could, only by losing my identity (Williams)
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Altered stages worry
No old age
- negligible senescence (Andrew Steele's term) -- chances of death will be the same throughout the lifespan
- when you're 5900 years old you won't think "I'm running out of time" (Lost Horizon--no sunset!)
- you may think "I've been alive for a long time" .... maybe there will be special honors for "elders" in their 5000s...
- there won't be old age in our sense....no "senescent old age"
What should we think about the loss of senescent old age? Let's draw on past authors to think about this.
- Jeffrey Arnett -- talks about master narratives; the new stage of emerging adulthood
- Patrick Tomlin -- remember taking adulthood away from Erin -- how is loss of old age the same or different?
- Laura Carstensen--what's the impact of thinking "time is running out"? will immortals ever feel this way?
- Simone de Beauvoir -- what's the impact of "time is running out"? is it good or bad?
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What does Fischer say about the altered stages worry?
- "an envisaged immortal life does not have to be just like ours to be recognizable as a human life" (ch2 section 6.2, p. 86)
- people in 1900 would have been crazy to make the "altered stages" objection to extending life from 40 to 80 years (ch2 section 6.2, p. 87-88)
WORKBOOK
