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An Introduction to Immortalist Morality
radically alter the minds and bodies of those who desire it.
For instance we could imagine brain refresher drugs which
prevented brains from becoming too inflexible. The people
living in the far future might be able to alter their bodies
and personalities as easily as the people of today change their
clothes. The fact that some people living today get tired of
life is more likely to be a practical, biological problem than a
philosophical one.
IDENTITY
Another philosophical concern emerges. An individual
might worry that if he lived long enough he would cease to
be himself and become someone else. After all, exactly what
is the self? Astronomer Martin Rees recently expressed this
worry:
Im reconciled to extinction losing all consciousness
as well as rotting away physically. Indeed, I think we
should welcome the transience of our lives. Individual
immortality would be deleterious for lifes further
development unless we could transform ourselves, men-
tally and physically, into something so different from
our present state that the transformed entities wouldnt
really still be us. If technology allowed me to transcend
these limitations, I would only be the same person in the
sense that I would retain some memories of early life.
But even over present life spans it is not clear how much
continuity of personality is really preserved. Each of us
is a bundle of sensations somehow woven together as a
continuous thread or world line. [4]
The idea that we are just a bundle of sensations dates back
to philosopher David Hume, but other philosophers such as