Mar 20 2023 53 mins
Would immortality be a curse of eternal boredom, were it even possible? If so, then you might think that we're better off as mortals and that death is a blessing of a kind that prevents us from being depleted of whatever makes life worth living, as it will eventually run out. Fischer rejects this line of thinking, arguing instead that not only is death unnecessary for life to be meaningful but that immortality would be no worse or much different from mortality. Specifically, he argues against Williams' pessimistic views about immortality and instead opts for what he describes as a more realistic median between pessimism and optimism about immortality.
In this episode, I focus on the first half of the chapter Fischer takes up Williams' pessimism (chapter 7) and enhance some of the reasons for pessimism that I think Fischer underestimates. In particular, Fischer underestimates Parfit's concern that immortality isn't even coherent as in any possible world in which beings like us live sufficiently prolonged lives, our personal identity over time would fail to persist through significant and prolonged psychological transformation. Even putting this worry aside, Fischer talks past the heart of Williams' point that immortality must be boring by interpreting boredom too subjectively. Boredom isn't merely a psychological side-effect that could be medicated away or alleviated with forgetfulness. Williams' point generalizes to the exhaustibility of whatever makes life good, that eventually it will be depleted. I agree that this point doesn't generalize, however, as there are some projects that are unfinishable, but Fischer overestimates how many these are with his examples. Far fewer projects would remain unfinished to true immortals given indefinite amounts of time.
A more promising criticism of Williams is found in Bradley & McDaniel, who argue that no kind of desire can account for all of the roles Williams requires for his argument for immortality pessimism to work. While Williams' argument itself may require much of a certain kind of desires to give meaning to our lives and propel them into the future, dropping some of Williams' auxiliary assumptions allows a reconstruction of his argument that is less objectionable. Fischer hints at this point in his discussion of repeatable pleasures, that whatever is intrinsically valuable cannot have its value exhausted by repetition over an endless life. Intrinsic value may be true strong however as I think this phenomenon generalizes to what I describe as "ampliative goods," though I agree with Fischer that the intrinsic goods are among them. In this regard, at least, an immortal life would still be worth living, though its richness would be deprived of many goods we mortals enjoy.