Immortality: Encyclopedia II - Immortality - Concepts of immortality

Immortality - Concepts of immortality

Considerations of immortality usually bring to mind the idea of unending existence, a freedom from the concerns of annihilation and death. Often, talk of the immortality of the soul arises in conjunction with talk of immortality. The ideas of science and religion find common goals in the perpetuity of man's existence.

Immortality - Unending existence

As a thought experiment, suppose that clinical immortality were possible, in which through advanced life support machinery or similar, the bodily functions of a comatose human could be kept running in perpetuity. Is it good news to keep a vegetative human's heart pumping for aeons? According to the vast majority of ethicists, "Not at all," since unending biological functioning is not what is at issue in immortality. Ultimately, what one desires is some sort of permanent preservation of personal identity, not just unceasing metabolic integrity.

This brings up the philosophical issue of the meaning of consciousness. As another thought experiment, suppose a surgeon replaces part of a man's brain with a pacemaker (this is actually done to treat Parkinson's). After this procedure is done, the patient comes out of his anesthesia feeling like the same person. For the intentions of this experiment, suppose that doctors already fully understand the brain and are able to successfully move sections of the brain's neural network and memories onto hardware where they can perfectly emulate the "architecture" of the brain. Over a period of time, suppose that the individual has many more operations with the intent of gradually replacing parts of his brain with computer hardware. Eventually, the man has a brain made entirely out of computer parts. The man comes out claiming that he is the same person as before. He has the same memories and acts the same.

Now suppose that instead of replacing parts of his brain with hardware, he copies the entire brain onto hardware. The computerized version of this man's brain acts the same way, and claims that it is the same man who underwent the procedure. The original man is still alive, however. Are the machine and the man the same person? Are they somehow linked in consciousness? These are the types of situations that illustrate the lack of knowledge concerning the meaning of consciousness that we as a civilization currently possess.

Immortality - Undesirable immortality

Essential to many of the world's religions is a doctrine of an eternal afterlife. But well known narratives from Christianity and Islam show why freedom from annihilation and death could (in principle) not be desirable:

Instances from other religions could be added, especially from Buddhism, which considers the eternal rebirth to human life an essentially undesirable condition, to be overcome (though with a goal of attaining a higher level, not the ceasing of existence).

Mere perpetual existence is obviously not enough. Ultimately, one desires that this existence be of a desirable quality. As the prevalence of suicide suggests, people would often prefer not to exist at all, than exist in a severely unpleasant environment.

Immortality - When talk of a soul arises

When talk of a "soul" arises, immediately, concerns of psychology and metaphysics become relevant. Suppose, as yet, another thought experiment:

An engineer produces a wondrous, new, nanotechnology machine. At two key moments during life, he might eagerly announce, a human would step into this device. At the first trip into the device, a full molecular scan of all 7 x 10²⁷ atoms [5] in the body is recorded. At the second trip into the device, ideally many years later, the molecular structure is instantly dissimilated. Furthermore, during this second trip, a reference is taken of the earlier scan, and an appropriate amount of organic goo is added or subtracted to precisely match the configuration of materials original to the 7 x 10²⁷ atoms as configured at the first scan. As an application—Jones at 30 walks in; Jones at 30 walks out. Years later, Jones at 80 walks in; Jones (allegedly) at 30 walks out. Has the engineer done Jones a favor?

According to most ethicists, the engineer has not done Jones a favor even if Jones could, as it were, "wash, rinse, and repeat" this whole cycle indefinitely. First off, it is anything but clear that the human exiting the machine at the second trip is Jones. Call the person who steps out (whether he is Jones or not) "Jones*". Presuming that memory is a physiological structure encoded by neural pathways, Jones* would not preserve the memory of Jones, since Jones* would not have the encoded neural pathways of an 80-year-old, but only of a 30-year-old. Hence, all that Jones was (after 30, anyway) as the collection of memory experiences upon second entry into the device is lost; thus, Jones is effectively dead. Immortality would offer little if the best results obtainable were a recurring coda of temporal duplicates.

Second, even if the eager engineer were to modify his machine (due to popular demand) so as to configure all the neural pathways of Jones* to match Jones, this would still present problems. Jones does not want a perfect duplicate to exit the machine at the second trip, but Jones himself wants to exit the machine. Granted, if all were done discreetly, Jones' wife, Jones' mistress, and Jones' poker buddies would think that Jones* was Jones, and even Jones* himself might think he was Jones, but thinking that X is true is hardly a guarantee that X really is true.

Third, the Jones/Jones* problem is at issue in religious accounts of resurrection. Since humans share substantial quanta of their atoms with others who have preceded them in history (i.e., coffins leak, eventually, and nature cycles the organic material back through the biosphere), any resurrection cannot use all the original atomic collection for each individual to be resurrected. New material would be required; thus, worries about a duplicate thinking that s/he was the original person arise for the pious as well as for the pagan. The theological answer to this objection is that either: A) it doesn't matter if all your exact biomatter is exactly the same at the time of resurrection as when you died, so long as your soul is inside. Or B) if God is going to use divine power to resurrect a slew of people he can use divine power to re divide up the biomatter as well if that's important.

Apparently, on any account where immortality requires a remanufacture of a body in order to maintain character identity, seemingly insurmountable difficulties present themselves, especially due to the Heisenberg uncertainty principle. Some views of quantum immortality approach the general issue of immortality differently.

Adapted from the Wikipedia article "Concepts of immortality", under the G.N U Free Docmentation License. Please also see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki