Some thoughts on the idea of longevity, which has come up in the recent "Smullyan Shmullyan" thread:
Firstly, although at present I think I would like to live forever, I don't actually need to live forever to be happy with my lifespan. Rather, I only need to live until such time as I no longer mind dying. I could refine this last statement further if I want: I only need to live until such time as (a) I no longer mind dying; (b) I either don't expect that or don't care if in future I will mind dying; (c) I have reached this conclusion in the absence of depression or despair; and (d) whatever other state of mind I care to name that has a non-zero probability of occurring. I figure the requisite state of mind for a happy death might occur in as little as a few hundred years, and almost certainly within a few hundred thousand years of continuous cognition.
Secondly, although a wish to die or indifference to one's survival is usually seen as evidence of mental illness, it need not logically occur in the setting of other symptoms of mental illness, such as depression, delusions and hallucinations (even though in practice it usually does). A person who wishes to die might be going against the "prime directive" of every naturally evolved organism, but he is not as a result of his death wish committing an error of logic or of empirical fact, in the way a person who is paranoid is. Evolution throws up organisms which want to live and reproduce, organisms which want to live and reproduce but whose metabolism is dependent on some very rare element, and organisms which don't want to live and reproduce. The first of these thrives, while the other two die out. If we are interested in who is being rational, the suicide has more in common with the platinum-eaters than with people who think they have been abducted by aliens.
Finally, the very notion of continuity of personal identity, which is necessary if "survival" is to have any meaning, is just as much a product of evolutionary expedience. That is, it is no more logically necessary that an organism is the "same" individual from one moment to the next than it is logically necessary that an organism will strive to survive from one moment to the next. Those organisms which run away when a predator approaches because they believe they will be the same individual in the next moment will thrive, while those which believe that the organism with their approximate shape, memories, position etc. in the next moment is a completely different individual, and don't care if that other individual gets eaten, will die out. Such considerations do not apply to most of the devices that humans produce, which "replicate" on the basis of usefulness rather than a desire to survive and have progeny. A car does not care if it is wrecked for spare parts for use in another car, or a modern sculpture, or whatever, while even a non-sentient organism such as a bacterium is essentially a machine with no purpose other than maintaining its structural integrity from moment to moment and producing exact copies of itself.
Stathis Papaioannou
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Received on Wed May 24 2006 - 06:44:18 PDT