The Value of Life: Against Transhumanism

Introduction

Transhumanism is a philosophy that wants human beings to become something more than what they are or to rise above natural limits. Death from old age is one of the natural limits which Nick Bostrom thinks we can avoid. In his writings on transhumanism, Bostrom gives his readers a number of ways people could possibly avoid having to die of old age. He seems to think this is only a good thing, but other philosophers like Epicurus do not completely agree. This paper will argue that a life worth living is also one which has to end someday and that death is part of what gives life its quality. The paper will begin with a summary of Bostrom’s views about why people should look forward to lives that do not include age or death. Next, it will lay out some arguments against this kind of transhumanism, drawing on Epicurus, and after that offer, a few ways Bostrom might counter those arguments. A short, final argument and a review of the main points will make up the paper’s conclusion.

Summary

Bostrom begins by answering why transhumanists would want longer lives. He points out that we all have moments when being alive feels great. To him, a longer life means more chances to feel these great moments. He makes it clear that extra years of age do not count as far as a transhumanist is concerned. The goal is healthy years. This view is one that focuses on the amount of good a person can experience, rather than the overall quality of life, or how much suffering they experience.

Bostrom also goes on to claim that being natural is not all it is cracked up to be, and because of that, there is no reason to be a natural human. The fact that people change nature every time they create tools or build something is given as an example that it is actually natural for humans to change things around them. Some natural things are bad, and some are good, according to Bostrom, so he believes that it is up to humans to decide which is which. This applies to humans too. He believes that being a natural human is not something to be proud of. Instead, he values what he calls “humaneness”, which is certain traits humans have that are considered good. We can stop being natural humans but still keep humane traits. Bostrom even includes death as a natural thing that can be gotten rid of.

Death is natural, but Bostrom claims that nobody actually wants to keep it unless they are fooling themselves. Natural things are only good if we decide they are, and he feels that nobody would really think death was a good thing. Some of the first human myths are about a search for everlasting life, and many religions believe in a life after death (which, in Christianity, is attained by living life by God's standards), which must mean that most humans through history have wanted to live forever. Bostrom believes that because death could not be avoided people have made excuses for it and claimed that death was a good thing. Now, on the other hand, science might allow people to ignore death by old age. Bostrom thinks that if people were given the choice to live longer or die that almost everybody would choose to live.

Argument Against Transhumanism

Life, as far as this paper is concerned, is made up from what Epicurus calls “sense-experience”, so a good life is one that has high-quality sense experiences. There is not anything that we are aware of without using our five senses. We see objects when there is enough light, we hear sounds and what people are saying, and we can feel the texture of an apple. If we did not have any senses at all we would not have any idea that the world even existed, which means that our experiences are created by what our senses tell us. This is what Epicurus calls “sense-experience”, and his view is that “…all good and bad consists of sense-experience and death is the privation of sense-experience”. This would mean that good sense-experience creates a good life, and that bad sense-experience makes a bad life because without experience there is no way for people to choose what is good or bad. There might be kinds of experiences that do not depend on senses, but we would have no idea what they were, let alone how to judge their value, so there is no point in discussing them.

It is important to realize that both Epicurus and Bostrom seem to assume that our current life is the only one that we should be concerned with. There might be a life after death which has sense-experience, but there is no way of knowing that until after we die. When Epicurus says that “…death is the privation of sense-experience” he is assuming that we will not experience anything after we are dead. If this is the case, then being dead has nothing to do with the quality of life. As he says, death “is nothing to us; since when we exist, death is not yet present, and when death is present, then we do not exist”. Bostrom, on the other hand, believes that it is dangerous to go around believing that it is alright to die, which would only make sense if he believes that life is a good thing and that ending life is a bad thing because of it. Either way, how death affects our current life is the only thing that matters when it comes to the quality of life. Whether or not there is life after death has nothing to do with this argument, so it can be ignored.

Human lives can only be quality lives if they have a time limit. Bostrom wants human beings to have longer lives so that they have the time to have as many happy experiences as they choose to. To him, a good life is about having plenty of time. Epicurus does not believe that. He writes that “just as he does not unconditionally choose the largest amount of food but the most pleasant food, so he savors not the longest time but the most pleasant”. Epicurus is saying that a person can have too much of one thing. He also writes that it is best to avoid pleasures that bring suffering and that sometimes a little bit of pain can be worth feeling if it helps bring happiness later on. To Epicurus, a good life is about balancing experiences so that one feels more that is good than is bad but without life and death that can’t happen. When time is unlimited people are bound to start repeating experiences. Even nice experiences become stale if they are repeated too often. Imagine watching your favorite movie every single day. Think of how boring pizza can be when you eat it too often. Once a person has done everything interesting it will become less interesting, and after a while, there is nothing left but unpleasant experiences and boredom. Epicurus would not consider that good life. It would be much better to die before that happened.

The other problem with living for too long is that when everybody has time to do everything people and experiences start to become less unique. Events become boring not just because they have happened before, but also because they are expected. Part of having fun is being surprised and wondering what will happen next. Part of being unique is being different from others. When people never die their lives could go on for so long that every single person will share the same experiences because they have all had time to do everything. Everybody would have climbed Mount Everest, gone to space, and explored the bottom of the ocean. They would talk about the same things, and there would not be much to make them different. One of the only ways to stay unique would be to avoid doing certain things and miss out on them. Uniqueness could become about avoiding certain things, which would mean that people were reducing the number of quality experiences they would have. Exactly the opposite of what Bostrom would want! Death not only allows us to avoid repetition and protects our uniqueness, but it also improves the time we have.

Since death puts a limit on our lives we are motivated to live the best life that we possibly can. It is why people work so hard to get ahead in life, to buy a house and build a family. Without death, the meaning of choice is lessened. Normally, we only have the time to make some choices, but not others. Becoming a doctor takes years, and so does becoming a teacher, or an engineer. Most people can only choose one or two options because they only have a certain number of years before they die. People have to decide which options are the most important to them, whether they want to be a doctor or a teacher, for example. Without a time limit, people would go ahead and choose both. This might not sound so bad, but when there is no cost to making a choice it is easy to take for granted. According to Epicurus, a pleasant life comes from “sober calculation which searches out the reasons for every choice and avoidance”. The pleasure of doing something does not just come from the experience. It matters how we feel about doing that thing, and how important it is to us. Some people enjoy rock climbing, while others do not care about it. The difference is that those who enjoy rock climbing think it is worth doing, and they give up other activities in order to do it. That gives the activity a special purpose. Death forces people to make these kinds of decisions, to choose what matters to them, and pushes them to do their best before they lose the chance.

One of the ways death gives purpose to our lives is that it gives people a reason to make a lasting impact. This might be a way of showing that a person’s life had meaning or a way to make sure they are not completely gone when they are dead. Of course, it would be strange to try to leave a reminder of one’s life if one did not expect to die and giving life meaning could always be put off to tomorrow if one never had to worry about age. As in the last paragraph, part of what makes life pleasant is making sure one makes the best choices. According to Bostrom, “The quest for immortality is one of the most ancient and deep-rooted of human aspirations”. Aspiration is the keyword there. In Bostrom’s view the “quest for immortality” is literal, but to Epicurus, it is about living a life worth remembering. If we succeeded in living forever then the search would be over. If, on the other hand, the goal is to make an impact on the world then living forever gives each human infinite chances to make an impact, and because of that, each chance loses its value. Even if a person manages to do something amazing, as more years pass the achievement would seem less impressive compared to all the years that they wasted. Or, if they tried to be amazing all the time, the effort would become very tiring. Even if we live forever, we can’t improve the world and ourselves constantly.

One last problem with avoiding death by old age is that death would become more horrifying. Death is more acceptable because we do not know how it will come, and we are lucky enough that sometimes it comes naturally, without much pain. Without old age to bring a natural end to our lives, all that we are left with are unnatural ends such as car accidents, or suicide. Knowing that life will end in that sort of way is bound to be a bitter fact. The advice of Epicurus is not to dwell on death because “that which while present causes no distress causes unnecessary pain when merely anticipated”. When a person never has to die, however, it would be difficult not to be afraid of accidental death or wonder if their life will someday be so dull or painful that they would rather kill themselves. Taking Epicurus’s advice would not be easy since death would no longer be an event everybody had to accept. It would become something that only happened to unlucky people, and everybody would wonder when they will become unlucky.

Transhumanist Counterargument

Of course, Nick Bostrom would likely claim that all the arguments made above are simply more apologies for death and that once longer life is within reach there is no good reason to take it. Making excuses for death has been going on for hundreds of years, and even Bostrom would agree that there might be a good reason to do so. He writes that there is “some degree of sense then to create comforting philosophies according to which dying of old age is a fine thing (“deathism”)”. When there is no other choice than to die someday people have to come to terms with it in some way or another, so finding comfort in the idea of an afterlife is useful. Explaining that death gives life extra value is just another way of coming to terms with what we can’t control, Bostrom would claim.

Another point Bostrom might make in defense of transhumanism is that nobody knows for certain if living longer than a natural life span creates a poor quality of life. All the arguments are given against transhumanism lack any real examples because so far nobody has ever lived that did not grow old and die except for those who died in accidents or due to disease. Bostrom would say that the best way to find out if there are bad side effects to living for a long time is to go ahead and try it out. He is aware that there might be downsides. He gave an example of another kind of transhuman science, the creation of clones, and it was his opinion that “we have to compare the various possible desirable consequences with the various possible undesirable consequences. We then have to try to estimate the likelihood of each of these consequences”. The same idea applies to increase life spans. There are already some people who live to be nearly one hundred years old, and sometimes slightly more than that. If those people do not become tired of their lives then maybe an even longer life would also be fine, especially if a person was healthy and had a young body the entire time.

Final Argument

In the end, Bostrom’s arguments fall flat because it is clear from his writings that transhumanist philosophy is a philosophy that fears death and only cares about continuing life, not about making life better and accepting that it will someday end. Epicurus gave us a philosophy to oppose Bostrom’s a long time ago, and it is still correct. He wrote that “a correct knowledge of the fact that death is nothing to us makes the mortality of life a matter for contentment, not by adding a limitless time [to life] but by removing the longing for immortality”. Bostrom’s philosophy does not accept death, but according to Epicurus, one has to accept death to lead a life of true happiness. If one accepts death then they can live life without fear, not giving any thought to risks or trying to hold on to life without any purpose. The quest for immortality is what stands between us and a good life, not the limitations of age.

Conclusions

This paper has argued that death is needed in order to give life meaning, purpose, and quality. The views of Epicurus were used to support this argument, which was made up of four premises. First, that life was made of sense-experience, and that a good life came from good experiences. Next, those good experiences are only possible if we have to die someday because death makes each life unique and prevents repeating experiences. The ways that death motivates a person was given after that. The last premise was that without a natural end to life death becomes more painful and frightening. A few of Bostrom’s count-points were outlined in response to the paper’s argument, but the words of Epicurus are enough to cut through them. Immortality is not something which people should want and looking for it only makes death seem more terrible while accepting death allows people to live good and worthy lives.

Bibliography

Bostrom, Nick. The Transhumanist FAQ: A General Introduction. Oxford: World Transhumanist Association, 2003. http://www.transhumanism.org/resources/FAQv21.pdf. PDF e-book

Epicurus. “Letter to Menoeceus,” Readings on Ultimate Questions: An Introduction to Philosophy, 3rd Edition, edited by Nils Ch. Rauhut, Renee J. Smith, and Robert H. Bass, 13-15. Harlow: Pearson, 2009.