The Immortal's Dilemma, by George Hart

[streamline]

RE:

The Immortal's Dilemma: Deconstructing Eternal Life
by George Hart


...I just feel compelled to state what a great read I found this piece to be -- bloody awesome. Great job, George!! I shall be sending it out as a hyperlink to family and friends...

[pdiddy]

Yes, a person's consciousness (soul) is the only eternal component to our bodies... it is the software that runs our hardware... it can even be photographed.

You speak alot about an soul being bound by time in eternity. TIME is only ONE of the 10 known dimensions that exist in our present universe. There are 4 dimensions, (length, width, depth, and time) that we experience noticeably as humans, and there are 6 other dimensions that help govern the world of quantum mechanics / particle physics, and are only observeable and inferrable by indirect means. As an immortal, time is a dimension that one chooses to be subject to or not. We have a hard time talking about eternity because we have not yet experienced an existence unbound by time... There is simply no language to describe it, it is best done mathmatically.

Einstein's Theory of Relativity states that time is subject to an object's current relative mass, accelleration and gravity. What does a human soul weigh? What's it's accelleration? - Gravity? I imagine a soul weighs about the same as the ones and zero's that make a computer language function... it weighs nothing but governs everything!

There is a limerick that comes close to what eternal existence might be like unbound by time: There once was a lady named Bright, who travelled faster than light. She went away one day in a 'relative' way, and came back the previous night. - It might sound a bit childish, but it is sound science.

We don't know all the implications of an existence unbound by time, but time is only ONE of the dimensions that we will be able to manipulate ourselves within an eternal consciousness... The implications of experiencing the other 6, no doubt, will be staggering! Something tells me that YOU WILL NOT WANT TO TERMINATE YOUR EXISTENCE after realizing how unlimited your living will become.
There ARE rules that govern this finite universe, imagine your surprise if, after death, you discover that you are wrong... are you willing to hang your hat on your present belief that you know all there is to assume about an eternal existence? We all have had alot of misperceptions throughout our lives, we (myself included) should NEVER stop digging for the truth... And the ONLY barrier to truth is the belief that we already have it.

Eternity is not having 'alot of time', it is having control over your own relative 'clock' (and the other dimensions - known and unknown!)

After discovering that our misconceptions about eternity are the only dilemma... the next step is finding out WHERE you soul will be spending it's eternal existence... The most important journey of one's life... I suggest digging deeper into your possible misconceptions about Jesus.

[Edited only to remove offsite URL.]

[-DM-]

Thank you (both) for providing feedback regarding The Immortal's Dilemma: Deconstructing Eternal Life (http://www.secweb.org/asset.asp?AssetID=333) by George Hart (http://www.secweb.org/bookstore/author.asp?AuthorID=654). E-mail notification has been sent to the author. Although there are no guarantees, you might want to check back from time to time for a further response following this post. In the meantime, a few comments for "pdiddy."

--

pdiddy:

Note: Generally speaking, we do not permit the posting of offsite URLs. Exceptions are made for URLs to an article which is a specific rebuttal to an article published here on the Secular Web.

Originally posted by pdiddy
Yes, a person's consciousness (soul) is the only eternal component to our bodies... it is the software that runs our hardware... it can even be photographed. ... As an immortal, time is a dimension that one chooses to be subject to or not. ... I imagine a soul weighs about the same as the ones and zero's that make a computer language function... it weighs nothing but governs everything! ... We don't know all the implications of an existence unbound by time, but ... The implications of experiencing the other 6, no doubt, will be staggering! We don't know all the implications of an existence unbound by time, but ... The implications of experiencing the other 6, no doubt, will be staggering! Something tells me time is only ONE of the dimensions that we will be able to manipulate ourselves within an eternal consciousness that YOU WILL NOT WANT TO TERMINATE YOUR EXISTENCE after realizing how unlimited your living will become. ... Eternity is not having 'alot of time', it is having control over your own relative 'clock' (and the other dimensions - known and unknown!) ... After discovering that our misconceptions about eternity are the only dilemma... the next step is finding out WHERE you soul will be spending it's eternal existence... The most important journey of one's life...As it stands, these are merely unsupported assertions which I and many others are going to find unconvincing. Your assertions would carry much more weight were you to include convincing evidence and/or argument.

Originally posted by pdiddy
There ARE rules that govern this finite universe, imagine your surprise if, after death, you discover that you are wrong...Imagine your surprise after death if you discover you are wrong, that you should have given more heed to Islam or atheism because "God" hates those who believed, for example, in Jesus.

Originally posted by pdiddy
Are you willing to hang your hat on your present belief that you know all there is to assume about an eternal existence? We all have had alot of misperceptions throughout our lives, we (myself included) should NEVER stop digging for the truth... And the ONLY barrier to truth is the belief that we already have it.If we all have a lot of misperceptions about our lives, if we should NEVER stop digging for the truth, then it would seem that even you recognize the likelihood that your many unsupported assertions quite likely involve error.

Originally posted by pdiddy
I suggest digging deeper into your possible misconceptions about Jesus.1) George Hart did not mention Jesus in his article.

2) I suggest that you should dig deeper into your possible misconceptions about Jesus, and Allah, and agnosticism, and atheism, etc., etc.

-DM-

[Razor]

To fear is human. Yet the fact remains that many of the fears we form have their roots either in the limits of our imagination or the misapplication of that imagination.

The following is a response to the article “The Immortal’s Dilemma” by George Hart. I will present the case here that the fears (or objections) presented in that article are a case of “the answer being a disease of the question”. In saying this, I intend no disrespect to its author. Indeed, if we were to assume it true that immortality exists and has the hue suggested by George, I would be entirely in agreement with him. I am not in agreement, however, and I can express why. Before I go any further, though, I must clear up one thing at the outset: it is not my purpose or intent here to present an argument for the existence in actual fact of the statements made in certain mystical traditions. I may hold to the view that certain of those statements are true, but that is not the issue under discussion, neither is it necessary for you to hold a similar view in order to follow my argument. Rather, I am going to assume that certain statements from those conditions are true…ie take mystical tradition seriously (for without doing so, no discussion of such can be serious)…and illustrate why I think that the picture painted in George’s article does not match up with the concept of immortality as communicated in some of those traditions, at least the more interesting ones from my point of view. Nevertheless, please bear in mind that I am not out to establish the truth of such traditions here.

With that in place then, my critical comments are going to focus on three areas, which can be paraphrased as follows:-

1) The concept of the timeless misunderstood as ‘eternal life’

2) With respect to ‘identity’, the question of whether we have (or ever really had) any actually autonomous identity to either lose or sustain

3) The difference, w.r.t. mystical tradition, between the concepts ‘Life’ and ‘Being’

Let us take number one then.

George Hart:
Many recognize intuitively the potential horror of immortality that has no exit. Thinking it through confirms this intuition.
If by immortality one means eternal existence through time, then this is equivalent to saying one will exist through an infinite period of time. Now, is it possible that in this infinite period of time life will be so unbearable that you will sincerely and unequivocally wish to die? It is logically possible, and given our nature as human beings, it is also empirically possible.

Razor:
The first sentence in the above encapsulates, for me, the essence of the difficulty.

The problem of potentially "other" states of consciousness is a hard one. To some extent we believe that we can imagine what such states must be like, but in such imagining there are great hazards. The possibility that a hypothetical person without any color vision might correctly imagine what seeing colors is like always exists, but in general terms I hope we can agree that realism would suggest this as unlikely. Now, it is natural then, in addressing the possibility of “other states of consciousness” that we have a tendency to envision them in terms of supernormally stimulated or extrapolated versions of our own form of consciousness. And likewise, unconsciously (ie whether we recognise the fact or not) when we imagine life from the perspective of an animal such as a pet, we are placing a blurred or diminished human consciousness inside that feline or canine head.

Our language reinforces this problem. We have life “after” death, “life everlasting”, and “eternal life”. The issue with all of these phrases is that they do not map to the concept and / or reports of timeless, as found in mystical tradition. Rather, they take the experience of human temporality and extrapolate its line to infinity.. Thus, instead of immortality, or the concept of immortality, properly understood, we create for ourselves instead what is in effect an image of our own condition enlarged to infinite magnitude, that is to say an “infinite mortality”. Many of the arguments George uses, and the circumstances he rebels against in the remainder of his article, are swords against this “infinite mortality”. But this is what I mean by the answer being a disease of the question. Since the argument has created its own demon, it must then go forth to despise it. And here I am in full agreement with George. If things WERE like that, or were at risk of being like that, it would be one of the worst hells imaginable.

Now you may believe that a “timeless” form of consciousness is not possible, and I may believe it is possible, and that’s ok. All that is necessary here is to understand that a concept of being free from the constraints of time, and a concept of time marching onwards forever are not the same concept. Most important of all, timeless (in the sense used here) does not mean arrested in time, for that itself is a concept structured in time. Tinelessness is not a condition where time has stopped. Timelessness “is” (again, with our opening caveats) a state of knowing that there is no time to stop. The difference between these two understandings is crucial. To apply the concept of the measure of temporality to timelessness is like saying that justice has no mass. But that’s true isn’t it? Justice doesn’t have any mass! Well, not really. It is more accurate to say that justice is completely irrelevant to the concept of mass. Or, if you prefer, that mass is irrelevant to the concept of justice.

Many of George’s worries about immortality reduce to this. He envisions himself living “on and on” in human temporal terms. But that is exactly what I am saying that timelessness is not. Of course, I cannot tell you what it is (not least because it is my view that one can only know by experience, and even if we assume that I have had such experience, which I choose to leave to your speculation, I could not communicate it without a means of communicating entire experiences beyond the grasp of language (all human language being structured around human normalised experience, and hence time).

The experience of time gives rise to certain phenomena: boredom for instance, frustration for instance. Yet these too are psychological realities grounded in time. Boredom: “what am I going to do with my time?”. Frustration: “oh no, I’m not in this situation still?”. Imagine a situation where these cannot apply because time does not apply. You will again object that how can you imagine such a thing, and you are right, and you will object further that if we cannot imagine it, how can we know that it exists, and (limited to those terms at least) you are probably right again. Nevertheless, I ask you to conceptualise the difference that would be made by a state in which time does not apply. To do so is to take the mystical tradition seriously. Furthermore, the fact that we are unable to imagine, by main force, other states of consciousness, is a very precarious basis on which to hang the claim that there cannot as a result be such other states. As I said above, the fact is that we cannot “imagine” ANY state of consciousness other than our own with which we are experientially familiar. And yet, all reasonable empirics suggest that there are numerous “other states of consciousness” entirely surrounding us, right here in our own world, in the form of other creatures.

2) Let me now move on to the second point. If we “survive” “after” death (note again in passing the almost unconscious temporal terminology), then some core cohesive center that structures our “self” here in life, and that we call our identity, must likewise survive into eternity.

This statement is interesting. And yes, mystical tradition speaks with multiple voices here. However, the strands of such tradition I am interested in on this occasion have always made a different claim in this area, namely that when you believe yourself to have a unique and totally autonomous self, you are mistaken. And this, like the time issue above, once more begins to change everything.

In this vision, whatever appearances may be in the phenomenal world, all shapes and instances of life are ultimately One. The sensation or experience of autonomous or truly separated existence is created by incomplete knowing or remembering with respect to what we really are. Again, I should emphasise that it doesn’t really matter that I might sympathise with this and you don’t. What matters is the way in which it must change the argument.

So for clarity here, instead of separate leaves blowing in the wind, this concept holds that the leaves are all attached to a tree, whether or not the leaves themselves are aware of this fact. At the risk of trying your patience (though also hopefully stimulating your possibility centers), I can press this analogy further. The leaves have a purpose, which, on simplistic terms, we will say is to “gather sunlight”. Their reality consists of being aware of factors which bear on that “purpose”, these being the direction of the light, and to some extent wind, and to some extent “competition” with other leaves for the light. They may or may not be vaguely aware of certain forces acting at the back of them…stress and torsion forces along branches and thicker boughs for instance. Still less, may they have direct experience of such things as a “trunk”, “roots”, or such processes or facts as essential to their existence as the roots drinking from the soil etc. Indeed, if e assume that a leaf’s existence is on a “need to know” basis, then it is unlikely that it (they) will have such knowledge at all, since it is not directly relevant to its exertions aimed at gathering sunlight, and to some extent may even be counter productive to them. All of this, despite the fact that from the leaf’s point of view it genuinely believes the “competition” with other leaves to be real, and so on.

Now whether or not you like this image, the point is that if we are leaves on a tree, and if as such leaves we believe ourselves to have unique autonomous identities, we are mistaken. And here is the crux of it. If all life (being, consciousness) is truly one in this sense, or in any sense even remotely relevant to the statements of those mystical traditions which hold to that assertion, then there is in truth only ONE identity actually existing, unconditionally, anywhere, and that is the tree itself, whether you want to call it God, the interconnectedness, the circle of life, or whatever. The idea that we are identities separate from this then becomes a kind of illusion fostered by the tone and supporting factors of our particular form of consciousness.

Thus to say that we “lose” this identity after death would be erroneous, as (in this psychological sense, and with the notable exception of illusion) you cannot lose what you never had in the first place. As to how the “tree” makes use of and / or experiences the “sunlight” it has gathered, that is another question entirely. And there, wisdom dictates that we must fall silent. If there is a way that the tree, if it exists, experiences itself, then that is likely to be so distant from our workaday form of consciousness, that the mere act of imagining will never conceive it. Experience only could deliver it, and nought else. It is not that some identity we have in life would be “extinguished”. Rather, like the dreamself waking up when the dream ends, it would be a case of “oh yeah, I am really that!”

On this understanding, the sense of identity we have could only be sponsored, ultimately, by the one source of true identity, namely the tree itself. However, this becomes attached to the wrong source or identifier, an ego tag which has no unconditional or final existence. It is then not the sense of identity itself which is false, but the place or thing to which it is mapped.

3)Finally (and briefly) there is an important distinction to be made between “life” and “being”, again taking mystical tradition seriously. Life, in such terms, is a process of organic embodiment, a temporal cast placed over the underlying fact of being, but not the underlying fact itself. Thus, the term “life after death” is meaningless in a second way, as “life” is strictly what happens between birth and death, that is to say within time, whereas being is itself the unconditional, which may express as life or not. It is (once more) not necessary to believe this, but it is necessary to understand it if discussing it.

I end in hearty disagreement with the author’s closing statement:-

George Hart:
Life is meaningful when it is lived; that is enough. To ask for more is almost greedy.

Razor:
One cannot have more life than exists between the measure of birth and death. But, since it is really ‘being’ that George has in mind, rather than ‘life’, this, like justice and mass, has no relation to a quantitative concept like greed.

I am certainly open to (at least some) debate about the above, time and other matters allowing. However, if points are raised against what I have written here (other than administrative points, which I have done my best to avoid having raised), then I shall expect to be allowed to reply to them. I don’t intend to do this in a “free for all” forum context, so in that instance please flag for my attention how you would like to receive my reply to any issues raised.

Regards
RAZOR.

[-DM-]

RAZOR:

Thank you for taking the time to provide such thought-provoking feedback regarding The Immortal's Dilemma: Deconstructing Eternal Life (http://www.secweb.org/asset.asp?AssetID=333) by George Hart (http://www.secweb.org/bookstore/author.asp?AuthorID=654). E-mail notification has been sent to the author. Although there are no guarantees, you might want to check back from time to time for a further response following this post.

Note: Any ongoing discussion can take place right here in the Feedback forum. Generally speaking, it is only when the discussion has begun to run its course, or when there is no response from the author, that I would move the topic to what you call a "'free for all' forum context."

-DM-

["George Hart"]

First, for the "bloody awesome" comment: Well, of course, thanks. It is nice to know that someone got my point and it hit home.

Second, for pdiddy and RAZOR. I appreciate their comments. They are thought-out, sincere, and from the heart.

I am sorry I missed the mark for them in my article. Unfortunately, I think it was missed because they may have moved the target. My target was the premise that personal immortality is a necessary condition for life being meaningful. Specifically, my target was the premise that life can only be meaningful if we keep on living as we are, with our individual identities and personalities lasting forever. If it's not forever, the assumption is, then, our lives never had any meaning to begin with. This, I believe, is a common notion in many traditions in religions, including versions of Christianity, Islam, and some others still vibrant or extinct.

Now my point was not that personal immortality so defined did not exist. Instead, I was trying to show that personal immortality simply might not deliver the goods on making life as we know it meaningful. I took the premise of such personal immortality to its logical conclusion to make that point and tried to show that it resulted in dilemmas, contradictions, and disappointments. Neither pdiddy or RAZOR really seems to disagree or at least contend with the point.

The other point was that our ordinary lives as human beings have meaning in a context of birth, life, death. In contrast, if life, in our ordinary sense of living, keeps on going, forever, it loses context and thereby loses meaning. It is not too odd a concept--a poem to be good, must start, have a middle, and end. A painting usually has a frame around it. A song that goes on forever is simply an annoyance. I take the frame of our lives created by our mortality, not as a limitation to making our ordinary life meaningful, but as a necessity for making it meaningful.

Getting to the specifics of pdiddy's comments, I do speak about "being bound in time in eternity." I speak of that because that is what the traditional concept of personal immortality in effect speaks of. What I am suggesting is that such traditional beliefs in personal immortality don't, once thought through, deliver, even if personal immortality were a reality.

True, I may have missed something. Unfortunately, pdiddy's comments on quantum physics, photographing the soul, and multidimensions, only convince me that vague, speculative and maybe even incomprehensible notions of an "afterlife" really don't get us anywhere. Such ideas are hardly the foundation for providing meaning to our lives, whether mortal or immortal.

Nor do I think anything more is necessary to provide meaning to our lives, as implied by pdiddy's reference to Jesus, who I never mentioned. But since pdiddy has brought the subject up, too many traditional religions suggest that life is like a bad meal that only can be redeemed by dessert that lasts forever. I would suggest that the meal and the desert are good enough without either one being extended forever. Certainly speculating that the meal might last someplace in a tenth dimension adds little spice.

RAZOR's comments are not so much a disagreement with my article as a change of subject. Again my subject was personal immortality by which I meant the survival of an individual personality and identity for all eternity. RAZOR says that in mystic traditions there is no such thing--this "self" is an illusion.

RAZOR might be surprised to know that I do not necessarily disagree. I think it is entirely possible that traditional psychological concepts of "self" and "time" may be limiting and that freeing ourselves from these concepts may enrich our lives. (The analytic philosopher Derek Parfit makes this point--meeting up with Buddha although by a different path.) Many of the "mystic" traditions RAZOR refers to speak of focusing on the present and avoiding "craving" for more and more. My article was about rejecting the idea of craving to live as an individual personality forever. I was trying to emphasize that if something is of value in our present lives it is of value whether or not it lasts forever in the future. I also tried to suggest that the idea of an individual personality (a "self") living in a timeless zone simply was incoherent.

"George Hart"

[Secular Elation]

For more comments on the article, see this thread (http://www.iidb.org/vbb/showthread.php?s=&threadid=67608)

[Kevin Q. Brown]

George Hart said:
> "In other words, the dilemma is that, to the extent it
> remains possible for you to evolve to encompass an
> infinite variety of new experiences, you will evolve into
> someone so different it can no longer be said to be you."

What is wrong with a child growing into an adult?
Continually reshaping oneself to be more knowledgeable,
capable, and wise should never be confused with the
annihilation of physical death. The author sees this
growth process as a problem because his goals are much
too small.

For example, imagine becoming as mentally capable as a
large corporation - not just the head of it but instead
all aspects of it, simultaneously. Or possessing a
multi-faceted personality with the richness of an entire
modern human culture. And those are just warm-up exercises.
What we today consider adult must eventually be viewed as
just another stage of childhood. Immortals are not made
for small stuff.

Indeed, the universe we are creating is ever-increasing in
complexity and scope. Life is no zero-sum game confined
to a tiny box doomed to eternal repetition. Unfortunately,
the author's vision of human life has not escaped the box
of Olaf Stapledon's "Cult of Evanescence". He sees value
only in tiny, fragile, evanescent lives, while ignoring
the greater, life-affirming value of the _process_ of an
individual's continual growth. He thinks that for something
to have meaning, it must have a beginning, middle, and end.
But must everything in the universe, including the universe
itself, have an end in order to have meaning? He does not
acknowledge that biological and even human cultural evolution
are terribly wasteful, disposing of entire lifetimes of
experience with abandon.

The next stage in Nature's experiment with intelligent life
improves on the traditional biological and cultural
evolutionary processes by eliminating that destructive and
unnecessary carnage, thereby opening the opportunity for
continual _individual_ growth. That is the type of eternal
life to which immortalists aspire.

Kevin Q. Brown

[Allan Randall]

George Hart's defence of mortalism seems rather empty to me... he tries to reduce the field to a small number of possibilities where there are actually a vast number, and then tries to convince us that there is some dilemma in only being able to choose from this small number of possibilities that he has picked out for us. It is a rigged game. A few specific comments:

(1) There is no reason to discount the possibility of living forever and never wanting to die. The result would not need to be anything like "eternal bliss"... it could even contain moments of extreme sadness. But there is no inconsistency in imagining an infinite life with no moments of suicidal thoughts. Suicide simply might not be in such a person's nature. I'm not saying that this would be the case for me, but thus far in life I've never had a suicidal thought, and I see no reason to *assume* given an infinite life that I would have any such thoughts, let alone some unacceptable number of them. The infinite sequence "01001000100001000001..." contains no two consecutive 1's. If we imagine "living" this sequence, perhaps we would have to admit the "possibility" of two consecutive ones (since we never have proof that the sequence won't suddenly produce two of them), but that does not mean that this "possibility" implies that the two 1's will *certainly* show up. "Possible" in actual use does not always mean "actually physically possible"... it more often means "possible given my current state of ignorance". If Hart thinks it means "actually physically possible" (as in "will definitely happen given enough time"), then this is not a warranted assumption with respect to suicide or suicidal thoughts, nor one for which eternal bliss is the only alternative.

(2) Hart says that "the option of termination, to be an option, must mean that it is both logically and empirically possible to exercise the option". In the "actually physically possible" sense that he means this, I think this is a bit of a stretch. An option can still be an option with respect to human choice and freedom, even if it is not in that person's nature to exercise the option. I can be free to do that which is not in my nature to do, and which I will therefore never actually do. I am still *free* to do it. At least, this is what people ordinarily mean by "being free to choose". If Hart means something else by having the "option", then his point becomes rather mundane and, well, pointless. The upshot of all this is that there is no inconsistency or dilemma involved in the idea of living forever, while being free to opt out, but never actually choosing to do so.

(3) Hart seems to assume that a total infinite amount of time spent wishing death is unacceptable. He neglects the fact that if such time is tiny compared to the amount of time spent loving life, then it could be perfectly acceptable. Life for an immortal will *never be* a completed infinity. We will never have experienced an infinite amount of suicidal thinking. The infinite sequence "00001000010000100001..." contains only about 1/5th the number of 1's as 0's after any large but finite time period. True, "after an infinite time" it will contain the same number of 1's and 0's... but "after an infinite time" is not really a meaningful notion. If I am "living" this sequence, I will never experience infinite time. I will always have lived a finite amount of time... forever. So I will always, forever, be experiencing an overall average of 1/5th of the time spent in "1". By analogy, if 1/1000000th of my time in eternity is spent being unhappy, even contemplating suicide, this seems quite acceptable to me. Life is not perfectly happy. Why should I require eternal absolute bliss to make eternal life worth living? I do not require 100% satisfaction with life to make it worth living now, when it is finite, so why should it be any different when it is infinite?

(4) Harts says that even if we experience an infinite number of blissful moments through eternity, then "eventually the experiences must become repetitive. And in eternity the repetition must be infinite." By his own admission, this assumes that there is a finite limit to mental or neurological capacity. But this is not a valid assumption. Note that to allow the possibilty of no limit to mental capacity does *not* mean we must allow the possibility of infinite mental capacity. If I live forever, with my mental capacity growing without limit, and the variety of my potential experience growing with it exponentially, I will still only ever have a finite neurological capacity at any given time. My brain will never become infinite.

(5) Hart argues that if one's mental capacity increases to allow one to remember enough of one's life to make immortality meaningful, then one will necessarily become so different as to not be oneself anymore. Hence, one will eventually become essentially a different person, anyway, given enough time, if one does not actually die or just fade away. But he provides no real argument for this... it is just a bald assertion. Right now I am very different from when I was 5, but I still feel a strong sense of ego-coherence with that 5 year old. To some extent, self-identity is an "illusion" anyway, but then so are all our mental constructs to some extent. If I feel after a trillion trillion years (or whatever) that I am the same person, and I self-identify with this past self, having legitimate memories of being that self, then who is Hart to say I have become a "different" person due solely to the extent of my change? Personal growth and change is already part of the human equation, and we don't think it makes us "mortal", just because we have changed alot from when we were 5! Keep in mind, that if our minds are expanding as time goes on, our ability to maintain ego-coherence in the face of passing time might also expand. This is very speculative, of course, but no more so than Hart's claim that the ego will necessarily decohere. We need a better theory of consciousness and self-identity to really answer such questions, I think.

(6) Hart says that "over time, each experience becomes less significant, literally to an infinitesimal degree". But even if we accept his mathematical model of "experience significance", the state of "infinitesimal significance" will never actually be reached. Each of an ever-expanding list of experiences could each still maintain some degree of significance. But quite aside from this, his model is arbitrary. If our capacity expands, our ability to place significance on individual events in the face of an increasing number of memories might well expand as well. Again, this increasing mental capacity in no way implies any point in time at which we have infinite capacity, or an infinite number of experiences to deal with.

(7) The oft-repeated statement that it is mortality that "frames" life and gives it meaning is, of course, a value statement, based on personal aesthetics, and not really open to rational debate, at least not at this time. One might argue, of course, that the immortalist is just kidding himself, and if actually presented with immortality, would find his life losing much of its meaning just as the mortalist had claimed. But, until some sort of immortality becomes a reality, this is pure speculation. Likewise, the immortalist might claim that, once presented with the real possibility of immortality, the mortalist would actually grab it with gusto, and it would end up enhancing the meaning in his life, and that his mortalism will turn out to have been simply sour grapes all along. Again, however, this is equally speculative. My own opinion is that such mortalists are playing the sour grapes game... but that is just a hunch and one I cannot back up. Certainly, Hart's feeling that the thought of a trillion or trillion trillion years of life is "mind-numbing and nauseating" is a personal aesthetic I don't share. I love life, do not want it to end, and think a trillion years of it would likely be not only meaningful and intensely fulfilling, but quite a lot of fun! A "trillion trillion" years I have a harder time conceiving of in my imagination, as it is such a vast span of time, but I see no reason to presume that it could not also be fulfilling and happy, perhaps in ways I cannot currently conceive of.

(8) Hart does not outright state, but comes close to assuming in places, that a belief or hope in immortality implies a belief that mortal life is meaningless. Just to be clear: not everyone who believes in or hopes for immortality believes that a mortal life is meaningless. I hope for immortality, but would still consider a mortal life of 75 years to be shot through with meaning, and potentially very fulfilling. It is because I find mortal life so meaningful and fulfilling that I would like to extend it as much as possible, and make it that much more meaningful and fulfilling. Death would be a tragic end to a meaningful life, and thus something to be avoided, but not something that robs life of any meaning at all. Hart says "Yet it appears when it is all said and done, there is no version of personal immortality that can supply a meaningful life that a mortal existence could not also supply." I think he has failed to show why immortality might not provide a *more* meaningful and fulfilling life. But I'd agree with him if all he means is that life can be meaningful even in the face of death (although his piece seems generally much more pro-death than just that).

(9) "It is our mortality that makes life precious and intentional killing especially wrong." Hart stays away from ethics for the most part, but this brief reference to it I find the most bizarre part of the essay. Why would the ability to live forever make life less precious or less worth preserving or murder any less heinous (presuming it were still possible)? He does not elaborate or defend the remark to any significant extent, so I can only puzzle over why he would believe such a thing.

(10) A note on terminology: many people consider that immortality with the option of opting out is still "immortality", even if the person does eventually opt out. The word "immortal" does not have the absolute connotations that "eternal life" has, of necessarily meaning absolutely infinite life. It often allows for more limited notions like "at least as long as the universe itself exists", or "as long as the person chooses" or even just "with no definite time limit". Hart, for much of his essay, seems to be addressing an extremely absolutist idea of immortality, so it might be clearer to say that he is talking about the concept of "eternal life" rather than "immortality". On the other hand, his closing comments do seem to me to place value on a known and definable time limit to life.

Hart does provide an interesting and articulate initial set of positions for the immortalist to argue against. But I do not think he succeeds as yet in actually arguing very far for most of them.

--
Allan Randall
"Whatever can be thought of or spoken of necessarily IS, since it is possible for it to be, but it is not possible for NOTHING to be." -- Parmenides of Elea, c. 475 B.C.

[George Hart]

This is in response to Kevin Brown and Allan Randall's comments on my article.

First, I appreciate that both have given cogent, rational, and thought provoking comments. Nevertheless, as will be discussed, both unintentionally make arguments that prove the central thesis of the article.

What appears to be lost sight of is what the article is about. It addresses the contention that many hold that our current lives can only have meaning if there is personal immortality. This was defined as individual consciousness with its personality and personal identity lasting forever. This definition is in keeping with the traditional concepts of immortality in major religions, such as Christianity and Islam. What this article tries to show is that such personal immortality creates dilemmas and problems that fail to provide any more meaning than our mortal existence already does.

Randall's comments (his points 1 to 3) attempt to challenge the basic dilemma that was raised in the first part of the article. The dilemma was whether it would be preferable to have such immortality with the possibility of an exit. (This exit would not necessarily have to be suicide but could include the option of becoming mortal again.) I suspect many would want this exit option because the possibility of being forced to live forever while miserable for vast periods of time is itself an extremely ugly prospect. But if the exit strategy remains possible, no matter how small the chances are that at any given time the exit option will be exercised, because given a period of unlimited time eventually this option will be exercised.

To say that it always remains possible that something can happen and assert at the same that it could not happen given an unlimited amount of time is a contradiction. That is just another way of saying that the event is not possible. Randall suggests that it simply may not be in a person's nature to exercise the option even though the option is "available." But to borrow Randall's terminology, the game has been "rigged." If it's not in that person's nature, and that nature won't change, that is simply another way of saying it's not possible. In any case, to flatly say that such a state of nature would last forever for any human being strikes me as implausible. (Can it really be said that there is any human being who by his/her nature could never exercise such an option if it meant living in hell?) It also contradicts Randall's version of immortality talked about later in his comment of an ever- changing and expanding consciousness that keeps on "growing." It is hard to comprehend how such a consciousness could be said to have a fixed nature.

That takes us to the other horn of the exit v. no exit strategy dilemma. If one opts for personal immortality with the no-exit strategy, then no matter how it is sugarcoated, this is not a very attractive option. It means that there could be vast periods of time with no certain ending date when one will want to exercise the option but can't. How locking yourself into a no-exit strategy to protect yourself from your desires no matter how long held can enhance meaning in your life is a mystery. Randall's suggestion that one can organize forever enough happy moments in the right sequence to always outbalance the bad ones is implausible. We are talking about forever, after all.

Randall's points 4-6 address the dilemma that personal immortality will be either endlessly repetitive or that "you," if "you" keep on changing endlessly, eventually will no longer be "you." Brown and Randall's comments make the same critique. But it appears that neither one disagrees with the first prong of the dilemma--namely that if our capacity for experience remains fixed then personal immortality will eventually become endlessly repetitive.

What both Brown and Randall suggest as an alternative is that your mental capacity can keep on expanding forever and "you" can still be "you." Brown suggests "imagine becoming as mentally capable as a large corporation" or "possessing a multi-faceted personality with the richness of an entire modern human culture." This comment only proves the point--being like a "corporation" or "multi-faceted personality" is not to be you, i.e. an individual consciousness with an individual identity with your same individual personality. It means becoming something radically different, even incomprehensible.

Randall's remark that after constant change "If I feel after a trillion trillion years that I am the same person" and retain "legitimate memory" is enough to retain self- identity, when coupled with his other remark that "self-identity is an illusion anyway," do not mix. In any case, I would suggest that after constant change for a trillion trillion years the idea that the same entity is involved throughout itself would be an illusion. Nor are continuity and accurate memory enough to define personal identity . If it were, "you " could evolve in your consciousness from you (say Randall), to Michael Jackson, to Adolph Hitler, to Paris Hilton, and if "you" could remember it all, have it gradual enough not to seem discontinuous, and feel that "you"are the same person, "you" therefore are the same person. This stretches the concept of personal identity to meaninglessness.

On points 7-9 of Randall's comment, I will address his last point because I think it will answer in part his other points. Randall finds my comment that it is our mortality that makes "life precious and intentional killing especially wrong." He finds this comment bizarre. Let me explain by way of example because he has absolutely misconstrued what I said. Terrorist suicide bombers who think it permissible to kill themselves and others to secure an eternal spot in paradise do not appreciate how especially wrong killing is and how precious life on this planet is. For those who are indifferent to famine and injustice in the world because there will always be another chance in the next life to make up for it do not appreciate how precious life is now and how wrong injustice is. In contrast, if you realize that life is not, as the cliche goes, a dress rehearsal, then our present life and the lives of others become immeasurably precious.

What also must be remembered is that meaning requires context. This is not an aesthetic judgment, it is a simple matter of what meaning is. A story that never ends is no story; a joke with no punch line is no joke (except a bad one). And a consciousness that goes on forever eventually will become repetitive or eventually it will evolve totally out of the context of anything we know anything about or can now comprehend. Brown's vision of being like a corporation or Randall's speculation on what consciousness could evolve to are so out of context of who we are, it is hard to say how these visions are themselves intelligible or could provide the foundation for meaning in life, terminable or interminable.

This, of course, is not to say more is not good. Because life is valuable (it is actually a precondition for value, good or bad), more of it can be valuable. If technology made it possible to live for hundreds of years that could be an adventure .

At the same time, more is not always better. How life is lived may be more important than how long it is. Ulysses turning down Circe's offer of personal immortality of hedonistic bliss was a choice that most of us can understand made his life more meaningful, not less.

Contrast Unamuno to Ulysses. This Spanish philosopher once wrote: " I want to live forever and ever. I want this 'I' to live--this poor 'I' that I am that I feel myself to be here and now, and therefore the problem of the duration of my soul, of my own soul, tortures me."

Such a clinging, such a worrying watch of the glass as the drink goes down, does not add meaning to life, it short changes it. Instead, the ultimate meaning in life is to be found in the context of our lives as ordinary, mortal human beings, not in a fantasy that cannot be spoken without entering into contradictions, dilemmas, incoherence, or a desperate demand for it all to never end.


George Hart