Professor Mitch Green and Morgan McBride, a graduate student studying philosophy and political science, hosted a Brown Bag seminar on immortality titled, “Immortality needn’t get boring,” yesterday in Manchester Hall.
First, there was a 20 to 25-minute presentation on the topic by McBride. She starts off by stating her thesis was based on a previous paper by Bernard Williams, who argues against the benefits of mortality, while McBride disagrees and believes there are some benefits. She also clarifies she is arguing if it is rational to be immortal, rather than if it is rational to fear death. In academia, there is a prevailing belief that immortality is not beneficial, and this may be largely because of Williams’ paper. While in popular culture at large, immortality is largely seen as beneficial, McBride argues against Williams’ conclusion in his paper and states there are circumstances where immortality can be beneficial.
Before diving into the rest of her presentation, she first defined the type of immortality she would be talking about. For example, a person — or several — can live forever in the same body as when they started immortality. They can still die due to accidents, but they cannot die through biological means, like cancer or old age.
Williams’ argument boils down to two main points: first, you will grow tired of immortality and become bored, having no value in life. Second, if you decide to pursue intellectual pursuits, you could experience a loss of identity, which Williams argues doesn’t make you immortal.
McBride brought up some objections to these points. First, she debated that if you vary the activities over the years and engage in them enough to avoid oversaturation, you can alleviate situational boredom. This is when you feel bored through the repetition of certain experiences, and what people would most likely suffer from in this situation. There are also experiences that never lose intrinsic value, regardless of how many times you do it, like walking on the beach.
A major benefit McBride points out about immortality is it gives you the choice to have so many more experiences that you like and that you are unfamiliar with. You could read all the books you ever wanted, eat all the different types of cuisines in the world and go to live concerts of every artist you want to see. The list is never-ending in what is possible as an immortal.
Second, McBride talks about William’s point that immortality could make one lose their identity. It’s a “fallacy of equivocation,” as she defines two ways to “lose yourself:” either by being so absorbed in an activity that you lose track of time, or you lose your own personal identity. McBride believes Williams has mixed up these definitions when making his earlier point. She also uses John Locke’s memory theory—that memory constitutes identity—to prove her point.
She concludes her presentation by affirming that it is rational to be immortal and to have regrets in death, whether it be not travelling enough or reading enough books, which could be remedied by being immortal.
Next, the audience was asked McBride any questions they had for her; one question was how immortality affects social relationships. As humans are quite social creatures, it would feel isolating to have everyone you know pass away, while you keep on living. This is only if you were the only person in your social group who was immortal, though. If other people were immortal along with you, like McBride said earlier, then the experience wouldn’t be too tragic.
Someone else asked what would happen if everyone in the world was immortal. Would society and infrastructure change to fit this? And how? Would it result in a desire for a whole new world? McBride said she never actually thought about this scenario but argued that, since “society and technology is always changing,” society could incorporate the needs of all the immortals in the world.
Another person in the audience asked if someone could get bored of immortality if they lived for millions of years, instead of 342 years, which was the age of the woman in Williams’ research about the harms of immortality. McBride says that because of the continual advancement of technology and society, as seen by the last 200 years of history, immortal beings may never get bored, as there are infinitely new activities arising from advancements in technology.
Finally, another audience member asked if being immortal and having a long life can lead to an immortal life being more valuable than a mortal life. McBride argues that a longer life does not mean life is more valuable, but she emphasizes that a long life gives the opportunity to do more with it.