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    It is not possible to make eternal life desirable by vary... — Carmelics
    Home/Afterlife & Death
    HistoryEditSee Inverse

    It is not possible to make eternal life desirable by varying one's categorical desires over time.

    Afterlife & Death
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    2 reasons for
    1 reason against

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    Reasons For

    2 perspectives
    Reason for 1 of 2
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    • 1.Personal identity over time requires psychological continuity via overlapping chains of memory and intention (Parfit, Reasons and Persons).
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    • 2.Radical serial replacement of categorical desires severs these overlapping chains, producing a numerically distinct person rather than a persisting self.
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    • 3.A life desirable to a future person numerically distinct from me cannot satisfy my current rational interest in my own survival.
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    Reason for 2 of 2
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    • 1.Categorical desires are not merely contingent preferences but constitutive of the evaluative standpoint from which any life is judged worthwhile (Frankfurt, 'Freedom of the Will').
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    • 2.If the evaluative standpoint itself is serially replaced, no single perspective persists to render the cumulative eternal life coherent or desirable as one life.
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    • 3.A life that is desirable only from successively non-overlapping standpoints is not one desirable life but a sequence of unrelated finite lives, none of which is eternal.
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    Reasons Against

    1 perspective
    Reason against
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    • 1.For an endless life to be desirable, it must clearly be me who lives forever.
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    • 2.For an endless life to be desirable, the state in which I survive should be adequately related to the aims I now have in wanting to survive at all.
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    • 3.If I replace my categorical desires, life under the future desires becomes detached from life under my current categorical desires, violating at least one of these conditions.
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    Topics

    Afterlife & Death

    Related

    A life desirable to a future person numerically distinct from me cannot satisfy ...A life that is desirable only from successively non-overlapping standpoints is n...Categorical desires are not merely contingent preferences but constitutive of th...For an endless life to be desirable, it must clearly be me who lives forever.
    +6 moreShow less
    For an endless life to be desirable, the state in which I survive should be adeq...If I replace my categorical desires, life under the future desires becomes detac...If the evaluative standpoint itself is serially replaced, no single perspective ...Personal identity over time requires psychological continuity via overlapping ch...Radical serial replacement of categorical desires severs these overlapping chain...Replacing my current character with an entirely different one later in life make...

    Similar

    It is not obvious that eternal life is undesirable if it involves chan...90%Williams's claim that immortality cannot be made desirable is not esta...82%A freely chosen eternal destiny apart from God is metaphysically impos...78%We cannot rationally rule out the possibility of an afterlife for huma...78%

    Source

    AI-extracted2/3 agreementValid
    SEP: death
    Williams (1973)
    View source passageHide passage
    If we could find a way to extend our lives indefinitely, yet avoid the ravages of senescence, and remain healthy and mentally competent, couldn’t we avoid becoming jaded with life by gradually varying our interests over time, adding to and perhaps replacing some of our categorical desires, again and again? Several theorists including Nagel (1986, p. 224, n. 3), Glover (1977, p. 57), and Fischer (1994), have argued that the lives of superseniors need not become dull and tedious. Williams’s view is that it is not possible to make eternal life desirable (which claim is not identical to the claim ...
    Extraction notes

    Validity: The premises faithfully represent Williams's two conditions for desirable eternal life and his reasoning that varying categorical desires fails to meet them, which collectively support the conclusion that eternal life cannot be made desirable through such variation, and this argument is explicitly present in the source passage.

    Confidence: This is Williams's explicit argument against the possibility of making eternal life desirable through desire variation.

    Details

    Type
    claim
    Perspectives
    3 (2 for, 1 against)
    Edits
    1 edit