What If We Don't Die?: The Morality of Immortality

ISBN-13: 9783319190921 / Angielski / Miękka / 2015 / 183 str.

Peter Hulsroj

Opis

This book deals with the very real possibility of earthly immortality and the human and societal implications of such immortality, including whether it is desirable.It looks at what makes immortality appear so attractive and at the possibility that we would be better served with longer lives and the freedom to terminate our lives at the time when life has given us all the joy, inspiration and personal development it possibly could.What If We Don't Die?- Presents major moral dilemmas associated with human immortality, something which seems imminent due to rapidly progressing biomedical research.- Touches on big questions: is it acceptable that the immortal generation will be the last? How much life do you want? What is the purpose of life if life never ends?- Will trigger your imagination by putting a new spin on free will, current concepts of time and eternity, the possibility of multiple universes and multiple yous. What If We Don't Die? draws extensively on philosophical and religious thought on the purpose of life and introduces novel perspectives on existence, personality and immortality based, for instance, on quantum mechanics and multiverse theory.

Spis treści

Foreword.- 1. Immortality again?.- 2. Is that really a question?.- 3. Choices, choices.- 4. What is eternity?.- 5. The timeless and the ageless.- 6. Time and existence.- 7. Pantheism and spirit as substance.- 8. Communitarian happiness.- 9. Ex hoc momento pendet aeternitas.- 10. Immortality through parallel universes.- 11. Death of compassion?.- 12. Identity and infinity.- 13. God, spacetime and the mathematical universe.- 14. Winston decides not to die!.- 15. God is and is not.- 16. Linear and non-linear logic.- 17. What is immortality?.- 18. Is anything forever existing?.- 19. The limits of you!.- 20. The mind/body problem resolved?.- 21. So why we were not created immortal?.- 22. Loss and value.- 23. Ego, Todestrieb and immortality.- 24. Why immortality is death.- 25. Why seize the day?.- 26. Are the gods immortal?.- 27. Immortality of the devil.- 28. The immortality of not being born.- 29. Oh, Jerusalem!.- 30. In the twilight zone between death and immortality.- 31. Movement and immortality.- 32. So, what is so horrible about death?.- 33. Lust for life, or fear of non-existence?.- 34. Immortality and intergenerational justice.- 35. A return to immediacy?.- 36. Personal relativity and time.- 37. A world of immortals.- 38. Natural selection and immortality.- 39. The tragedy of the longest life!.- 40. Choosing life!.- 41. Humans and humankind.- 42. Immortality for humanity, Darwin for everybody else?.- 43. Gaia and dystopia.- 44. Beyond the limits of rationality.- 45. Longer life or immortality?.- 46. Birth undone.- 47. The medicated good death.- 48. Death elective.- 49. Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed.- 50.  So …. .- 51. An afterthought – the fifth dimension.

Blurb

This book deals with the very real possibility of earthly immortality, and the human and societal implications of such immortality, including whether it is desirable.

The book looks at what makes immortality appear so attractive, and at the possibility that we would be better served with longer lives and the freedom to terminate our lives at the time when life has given us all the joy, inspiration and personal development it possibly could. 

What If We Don’t Die?

-   Presents major moral dilemmas associated with human immortality, something which seems imminent due to rapidly progressing biomedical research.

-  Touches on big questions: is it acceptable that the immortal generation will be the last? How much life do you want? What is the purpose of life if life never ends?

-  Will trigger your imagination by putting a new spin on free will, current concepts of time and eternity, the possibility of multiple universes and multiple yous. 

What If We Don’t Die?  draws extensively on philosophical and religious thought on the purpose of life and introduces novel perspectives on existence, personality and immortality based, for instance, on quantum mechanics and multiverse theory.