The essay aims at establishing the finite, temporal nature of human existence as a first step in the project of laying a philosophical foundation for giving meaning to one’s life. We will first examine the conflict between the desire for immorality and the knowledge that an afterlife is unlikely. We then critique several views of immortality—philosophical, para-psychological, theological, transcendental, and technological—with a view to freeing ourselves from hope and illusion. Although we briefly discuss the role of a Caring God in relation to the possibility of immortality of the soul, it is not until the next chapter that we focus on theism and the consequences of the Death of God in more detail.

1. Toward a Method for Investigating Theories of Immortality

Theistic humanism distinguishes the mortal body from the mind or some special feature of mind. That special feature of the mind—call it the soul—is supposed to survive death and enjoy (or suffer) an eternal afterlife. I suggest that the concept of immortality does not survive a critical assessment of the basic features of lived experience. I know I am not on popular ground here, as I am well aware that the belief in immortality of the soul is widespread and resistance to questioning this belief can be quite passionate. In a careful study of how and why people believe in God and the afterlife, Shermer, cites several polls in the United States that indicate a large majority of people report that they believe in heaven.[1] I suspect that the reason for this is that comfort is commonly sought over wisdom, even when it means believing something without warrant. In order to understand the persistence of the belief in immorality despite a complete lack of empirical evidence for such a belief, we will engage in a meditation on mortality. Our meditation on mortality begins with the conflict between our desire for indefinite life and the understanding that we must die.

It is not easy to come to terms with one’s mortality. There seems to be a conflict, at least in the Western world, between the will to live indefinitely and the clear understanding that every earthly life must end. Unless one has unshakable faith in the afterlife, the awareness of the inevitable evokes anxiety. For this reason the discovery of one’s own mortality is often quickly repressed. But there comes a day when one asks the question about whether one is mortal in earnest, as if a great deal were at stake. In such moments of contemplation one might ask, “How do I come to terms with my mortality?” Should I believe in the possibility of indefinite life here on earth, though there are not yet any (and probably cannot be any) reports of success stories to support this view? Should I maintain that there is an eternal life after death, though there is no way to ever prove this? Or do I bite the bullet and try to live without hope, a mere mortal? There is so much at stake in these questions, yet it is just here that so many of us let down our intellectual guard. And once this guard is down our hearts are tempted to reach beyond what we know in the attempt to quell anxiety.[2]

The immortals among us are not ashamed to have let down their intellectual guard in exchange for assenting to the comforting idea of everlasting life. They generally admit that the earth is not the center of the universe and that humans have been to the moon; they may even accept the theory of evolution and the basic laws of physics. Yet they believe whole heartedly in their own indefinite—or even better—eternal personal survival, in one form or another, in heaven or on earth, despite contrary indications from everything else in their experience that their beliefs are highly dubious. Our immortal friends, however, are not at a loss for intellectual and psychological support. Not only do some theists and parapsychologists hold out the possibility of everlasting life, but so too do some scientific futurists.

How do we mere mortals fare when surrounded by so many believers? We are often the subject of the ridicule, compassion, or pity of our immortal friends, as if we have committed some grave error by our intellectual honesty and humility. I am sure that some immortals pity us out of purity of the heart. They would really like us to see things their way. Not only would it reinforce their own belief (which, I suspect, is often haunted by unbelief), but would bring genuine relief for their concern about our fate. But we neither crave nor celebrate their charity. So it is important that we be unequivocally clear. We will not ask the immortals to change their minds. We only insist that there is no reason why we should change our position without some warrant, based on empirical evidence, lived experience, or logical necessity. The only arguments proffered by the immortals turn out to be wishful thinking (which takes on philosophical, theological, and para-psychological forms) or cyborg fantasy (which takes on a variety of futuristic forms).

Why bother challenging these arguments for immortality or indefinite life extension? The reason is simple: There is a lot at stake. For the manner in which one deals with death determines to some degree the sort of world in which one lives and the general tenor of one’s everyday experience of being in the world. Those free spirits who can say yes to their mortality will be in a position to live out their lives with an authentic appreciation for each irrevocable moment. They will not waste time projecting this meaning into another world. If an immortal tells them that their project is absurd, the reply will be simple and straightforward: Better to live this absurd life than a farce.[3]

If we are to think carefully and not grasp at our first intuitions about the concept of immortality, our method of inquiry ought to be clear and explicit. First we ought to define our terms. I will address two different versions of immortality. One holds out the hope that the individual person survives death and enjoys an eternal afterlife. The other maintains that something of the human spirit survives biological death, even if it is not the individualized soul. I will address both versions of immortality, since both have their takers.

We will employ three methods: scientific objectivism, conceptual analysis, and phenomenology. As mentioned in the introduction, scientific objectivism is basically the scientific method; it relies a great deal on sense perception, sometimes with the assistance of instruments that enhance our access to the phenomenon in question. When interpreting the data, the scientific method employs experiments in order to test hypotheses and determine what natural laws are at work that explain the data. Conceptual analysis does not rely so much on empirical observation because it is more interested in the relationships between ideas. This would include the sort of knowledge we attain in mathematics, geometry and deductive logic. And the phenomenological method relies on lived experience as expressed in careful introspective reports. My strategy here is to employ these methods in a complementary manner.

The scientific method does not support immortality of the soul. We know from empirical observation that the human body expires upon death; at least, as organic matter. After termination of its biological functions, the body decomposes and takes on other forms in the ecology of the life–death cycle. Every time we eat food we may be reminded of the cycle of life, death, decay, fertilization, and birth. Now what does this mean conceptually, that is, how do we make sense of biological death? In the West, the body, up until the seventeenth century, had been viewed as the focal point of a life force, a force that was interpreted as us in our inner most being. If this life force is considered the animating but non-physical feature of human reality, it could conceivably survive the dissolution of the body. But that hope has been discarded by a paradigm shift in biology. During the last century, this life force has been reinterpreted as physical–chemical (organic) processes, and as such it is subject to dissolution. If biological life is required for the perseverance of the individual, and biological life is grounded in the body, and the body inevitably terminates at some point in time, it follows necessary that all hope for immortality is lost.

One strategy for resolving the mortality problem would be to argue that biological life does not tell the whole story of the human person because personhood includes some feature (a soul perhaps) that survives biological death. To make this conceptual move, we need to view the immortal feature of the person as in some way different from the body. There are theological, philosophical, and some para-psychological theories that would support such a contention. After a brief survey of these views, I will argue that all of these approaches are implausible and that all humans are mortal, even the ones that claim to be immortal.

2. A Philosophical Argument for Immortality: Substance Dualism

Traditional arguments for immortality of the soul in Western philosophy since Plato hinge on the notion that the human mind or some feature of the human mind either pre-existed its embodiment and/or will continue to exist after its embodiment. The strategy is basically to argue that mental states do not have the same properties as physical states (property dualism), or more radically, that the mind is an altogether different sort of being than the body (substance dualism). If mind has different properties or is a different sort of being than the body, perhaps one or more of these differences can account for the pre-embodiment and/or post-mortem survival of at least some aspect of individual human minds or souls.

Descartes is the most famous of the mind—body substance dualists. One of the motivations for Descartes’ project of demonstrating that the human soul can be conceived of and exist independent of the human body is because if the project is successful, it provides a rational basis for believing in the immortality of the soul. This motivation is expressed in two of Descartes works: Discourse on the Method (1637) and Meditations on First Philosophy, in which are demonstrated the existence of God and the distinction between the human soul and the body (1641). In the Discourse, Descartes argues that “our soul is of a nature entirely independent of the body, and consequently that it is not bound to die with it. And since we cannot see any other causes which destroy the soul, we are naturally led to conclude that it is immortal.”[4] In the synopsis that precedes the Meditations, Descartes tells the reader that the arguments presented in the Meditations “are enough to show that the decay of the body does not imply the destruction of the mind, and are hence enough to give mortals the hope of an after-life.”[5] In particular, the body is conceived as a composite that can perish as a result of a change in the shape and configuration of its parts. The mind, however, maintains its unity throughout its modifications.

For even if all the accidents of the mind change, so that it has different objects of the understanding and different desires and sensations, it does not on that account become a different mind; whereas a human body loses it identity merely as a result of a change in the shape of some of its parts. And it follows from this that while the body can very easily perish, the mind is immortal by its very nature.[6]

Descartes argued that the mind, rather than being a system of particles in motion located in space, appears to be something that imagines, thinks, judges, opines, remembers, perceives, and feels. Let’s take an example to see what Descartes means. Assume that Maria is sad. How much does her sadness weigh? What shape does it have? What is its velocity and mass? None of these questions make sense because her sadness is not located in space. Even if you place Maria in an MRI machine, no MRI image will reveal her sadness, but only the patterns of activation in her brain that are associated with her sadness. Now since all of these sorts of mental processes can be conceived without also conceiving of physical properties, Descartes thought that the mental processes could exist without the physical properties. He may have been mistaken about the validity of this argument. I will take that question up in just a moment. For now let us note that if the argument were valid, it would mean that thinking things and physical things are different sorts of beings. When two things are different with regard to the sorts of beings they are, we call this an ontological difference.

Let us assume for a moment that Descartes is correct about the separate ontological status of mental processes. If biological death is the result of a rearrangement of fundamental particles and mind does not appear to be composed of particles located in space, then the obvious arguments in favor of biological death do not seem to apply to mental life. The mind could perish for some other reason, but at least those reasons should be different from the ones used to account for the demise of the body. Substance dualism leaves the door open for the possibility that the soul does not share the same fate as the body.

There are however, serious objections to Cartesian substance dualism; one is internal and one is external. The internal critique, based on Descartes own admissions, is that the separation of mind and body make it difficult if not impossible to account for their close union and interaction. Once we offer a way to bridge mind and body to account for their interaction, we end up compromising the strict divide between the two sorts of beings (mental and physical). For presumably interaction requires a causal relation. But only a physical event can cause another physical event and only an idea can cause another idea. Descartes himself was aware of this problem and took the unfortunate measure of identifying the pineal gland as the mediation point between mind and body.[7]

The external critique has to do with the form of Descartes’ argument. He appears to move from the statement

• X can be conceived in separation from y, to the statement
• X is separate from Y.

Thomas Hobbes, in an objection that Descartes published along with the Meditations, points out that Descartes’ has not demonstrated that mind is not the effect of the body. For it is logically possible that physical properties support or bring about the mental ones even if we can conceive of the mental processes without conceiving of physical ones. So even though I can conceive of sadness without thinking about neurons, it could be that some pattern of activation of neurons is the cause of the sadness. Moreover, even if we cannot conceive of how mental processes arise form physical ones, this would not entail that those mental processes do not in fact arise from physical ones.

Even within Cartesian dualism there are some ways out of these difficulties, but they introduce more problems than they solve. Some early modern philosophers who insisted upon a strict mind body dualism argued that God set up the world so that what happened in the mind would run parallel to certain corresponding events in the body.[8] This would explain why my arm goes up when I will to raise my arm (God, as causal agent in the physical world, makes the arm move, or had arranged for it to move from all eternity, at the very moment I will that it move). If we use this notion of constant divine intervention to explain every voluntary motion it makes the world a lot more complicated than a theory that would unify mind and body. It really depends too much on divine intervention to get the two worlds, mental and physical, to work together and one might wonder why an all powerful God would create such a cumbersome edifice in the first place.

Whatever the ultimate constitution of the mind and body, they seem to share a parallel, if not identical, causal connectivity. The last sixty years of neuroscience research demonstrates that modifications in the body (and in particular, the brain) usually have their reflection in modifications of psychic life and vice versa. Recent neuroscience, then, does not support a total separation of mental and biological existence. So let us follow the chain of evidence where it leads.

One important modification, for our purposes, of the body, is its death. What modification does that correspond to in the mind? If there were some aspect of mind that could possibly survive biological death, we would expect to have found it invulnerable to modifications in the body that suppress its mental life, such as anesthesia and brain damage, but no such feature of psychic life has been found. The more damage to the brain, the more the mental functions are compromised, and if we suppose the complete destruction of the brain, we can reasonably extrapolate to the complete annihilation of mental life. This is why brain death is commonly considered legal death. In all likelihood then, if we extend the correlation of mental and physical events to what happens at the end of life, the former perishes with the latter. As neuroscientist P. S. Churchland points out “The preponderance of the evidence indicates that when the brain degenerates, mental functions are compromised, and when the brain dies, mental functions cease.”[9] Philosophical arguments for immortality then, seem to flounder on this irony: the very condition of immortality—the separation of mind and body—poses an irremediable theoretical problem of accounting for the unity of mind and body. The argument undercuts itself.

3. A Parapsychological Argument: Near-Death Experience

For the moment we will put aside metaphysical issues and address the empirical evidence for an afterlife. One of the major inspirations of those disposed towards believing in the afterlife is reports of near death experiences (NDE’s).[10] Some proponents of life after death point to patient reports of near death experience as evidence that the soul enters an after death mode of being. P. S. Churchland describes the typical experience:

Visual experiences involving tunnels with shimmering lights at the far end, feelings of great peacefulness, feelings that one is being led on a journey, and sometimes the experience of seeming to see one’s body below on a gurney are typical of experiences called “near death experiences.” These experiences are alleged to be evidence that the patients have experienced the otherworld of the afterlife.[11]

One champion of documented NDE’s as evidence for life after death is medical doctor and writer Deepak Chopra. He cites a 1991 Gallup poll that indicates 13 million Americans reported they had had an NDE.[12] Shermer observes how this NDE phenomenon goes to the heart of the question: “Whether the near-death experience represents a bridge to the ‘other side’ is another matter, but those who experience it often treat it as a religious or spiritual awakening.”[13] The important question here is whether such out of body experiences are veridical or merely psychological. If they are veridical, though they may be associated with some neurological state of the brain, they nevertheless point to another sort of reality; the shimmering lights would be an indication of another world or perhaps even some feature of the after life itself. If they are merely psychological in origin, the shimmering light is likely a mere phantasm, existing only in the imagination and, again, correlated with certain neurological states of the brain. So which interpretation of the shimmering light is the correct one?

Hume suggests that in order to believe testimony about an event that appears to violate the laws of nature as we know them, the falsehood of the testimony should be more miraculous than what the testimony claims.[14] In this case, it is no stretch of reason to suppose that such reports are well meant but false. Since the phenomenological evidence, based on patient reports, does not give us confidence about which version of the shimmering light is the correct one (veridical or phantasm), we can only determine which version is more reasonable. As we have seen, near death experiences are open to interpretation, including natural explanations that refer to states of the brain. Such a natural explanation might go something like this. When one is near death, a certain pattern of activation in the brain may occur that is associated with the sensory experience of entrance into another realm of being. As neuroscientist P. S. Churchland indicates, patients whose brains are under stress and starved of oxygen may, as a result of their brain state, have such psychological out of body experiences. Shermer discusses neurological research of out of body experiences where scientists were able to generate out of body experiences in a woman “through electrical stimulation of her brain’s right angular gyrus, part of the temporal lobe that is thought to play a role in the way the brain analyzes sensory information and monitors the difference between self and non-self.”[15] If I understand Shermer correctly, he thinks that if we can show correlation between certain neural events and the near death experience “it means yet another blow against those who believe that the mind and spirit are somehow separate from the brain, from pure neural activity” and that “these studies are another step in the long historical tradition where mysterious phenomena are subsumed under the blanket of science and naturalism.”[16] Well, not so fast. The question as to whether the mind is somehow separate from the brain is a metaphysical issue. We need not resolve the metaphysical question in order to theorize about the origin of the near death experience.

Admittedly, an unprejudiced account of NDE’s cannot presuppose that they originate from another world. But such states are also not obviously to be accounted for by neurological processes alone. If I mentally add 2 + 3 = 5, there are certainly neurological processes that correspond to the addition. But this does not mean the addition is somehow not a veridical experience. Let us suppose that a neuroscientist can generate this same experience of adding by stimulating the right set of neurons in the right pattern according to the right timing. This still does not mean that when I add 2 + 3 = 5 unassisted by the intervention of the neuroscientist that my experience is not real and that the proposition represented in my experience is not true. Mere correlation between a neurological state and a mental still does not establish that the former is the necessary cause of the latter. As Chopra points out in a paper in which he debates Shermer, if by giving alcohol and having someone dance for a subject brings about the mental state of happiness, this does not mean, absent the alcohol, that there is no such thing as real happiness.[17]

Shermer relies principally on a naturalistic view of mind to undermine NDE’s. Although I do not agree with Shermer that naturalizing mind is the “scientific” thing to do, there is a good reason in this case to prefer the naturalistic explanation to the supernatural one. Hume points out, if there is a supernatural explanation and a natural explanation for a given phenomenon, the natural explanation ought to be preferred, or else we could employ the supernatural explanation to argue for the existence of just about anything.[18] Thus, based on Humean principles, we should presumably attribute near death experiences to a psychological experience associated with some state of the brain, not an actual temporary disembodied state of the soul.[19]

The argument for reincarnation is similar to the near death or return from death arguments.[20] Those who report recollections of previous lives could either be constructing memories or actually recalling events in previous lives. Applying Hume’s method, we should prefer the natural explanation over the supernatural one. The reports of former lives are most probably constructed memories, much as we produce experiences in dreams.

All this is not to claim that the separation of some feature of the mind (call it “soul” if you like) from the body is logically impossible. There are an infinite amount of things that are logically possible but not likely. Actually existing flying leprechauns are possible because the concept of leprechaun and the concept of flying are not contradictory, but I do not know anyone who would say they exist or will someday exist; maybe that’s because there is nothing important at stake if flying leprechauns exist. What immortality has going for it, by contrast, is the great human interest in its actuality. One’s interest in something actually existing, however, does not make it true that it exists. At least from an empirical stand point, there is no reason to believe in the immortality of the soul based on NDE’s.

Since starting with the empirical evidence, even with some conceptual and introspective help, fails to produce any plausible notion of immortality of the soul, let us see if, by starting from a theory of the soul, we might have more success. A conceptual explanation would not depend entirely upon the scientific method; it would start with an overall theory of human nature and then show how immortality of the soul fits neatly into the conceptual scheme and does not contradict the facts. We find such a view in the theology of Saint Thomas Aquinas.

4. A Theological Argument for Immortality: The Mind-Body Composite

Italian philosopher and theologian Saint Thomas Aquinas [1225-1274] argued that the human being is a composite of soul and body, the soul being the animating and structural (formal) feature of the body. A simple way to imagine how this works is to compare the soul–body relation to the blueprint–building relation. The building materials alone do not constitute a house, just as the biological stuff alone does not constitute a human body. It is the materials in a particular design that constitutes the house. And it is the biological stuff in a certain design that constitutes the human body. So for Aquinas, the soul is the blueprint (or form) of the body and this particular blueprint also animates the body so that it is not mere dead matter.

Aquinas maintained that the human body decomposes when it loses its form. It is not that the body is completely annihilated; the stuff it is made of can mix with other matter to form some other thing. A special feature of the soul, however, survives. This is the intellect. The intellectual feature of the soul, though joined for a time to the body, is a separate substance. This is an important aspect of the intellect because as a separate substance the intellect may persevere even after the death of the body. Aquinas offers the following explanation in The Summa Theologica:

We must assert that the intellectual principle which we call the human soul is incorruptible [immortal]. For a thing may be corrupted in two ways—in itself and accidentally.

Now it is impossible for any subsistent being to be generated or corrupted accidentally, that is, by the generation or corruption of something else. …Therefore, whatever has being in itself cannot be generated or corrupted except in itself.[21]

A substance has a very special status. It is something that exists without the intervention of anything else (except God). When something changes, it is some accidental feature of the thing that changes, not its substance. For example, Mary goes from being unmusical to being musical (after ten years of piano lessons). Her musical abilities (accidents) have changed, but she is still substantially Mary. So a substance endures through is accidents, modifications, or changes.

The argument for the immortality of the soul based on its substantial nature employs a deductive argument. A substance, by definition, can exist independent of other substances (supported by the Good God’s creative and preserving power). According to Aquinas, the mind (or at least the intellect) is a substance, so the mind does not depend upon the body for its continued existence (though for Aquinas, the body does depend upon the soul for the body’s continued existence). Since God preserves the soul after the demise of the body, the soul is immortal.

Although Aquinas has a valid argument (his conclusion does follow from his premises) it is not at all certain that his premises are true. The problem with this argument is that it assumes that the soul, or some feature of the soul, is in fact a substance. By defining the mind as a distinct substance subject to God’s creative and preserving powers, one has already stacked the deck in favor of immortality of the soul; the argument assumes what it is trying to prove.

Aquinas also has another, even more interesting argument for the immortality of the soul, one that we have briefly mentioned in our discussion of desire.[22] In the same section of the Summa Theologica, Aquinas argues that the intellect knows about things that are eternal. After having been exposed thus to the eternal, the intellect naturally “desires always to exist.” And since “a natural desire cannot be in vain” it follows that “every intellectual substance is incorruptible.”[23]

Let us take each of Aquinas’s premises in turn. The first premise, that the intellect is acquainted with the eternal, is arguably true. For example, I know that 2+3=5 and I know that this mathematical truth is not subject to change or decay. It is eternally true. The second premise is also arguably true. As mentioned above, we do seem to want, at least in some sense, to be eternal, having become acquainted with the idea of the eternal. The most critical premise is that what we naturally desire cannot be in vain. If we accept these three premises, the conclusion does follow, that we are immortal.

Assuming that we cannot help but desire to be eternal; does this mean we are being inconsistent in doubting the existence of that which we desire? Can we desire something that we think we probably cannot have? Why is it that our doubts about immortality do not eliminate the desire for it? These are very interesting questions and deserve some response. For it appears that our desire for immortality is indeed inconsistent with our understanding that we are mortal.

Again, let us assume that Aquinas is correct. There is a natural desire for immortality based on the intellect’s knowledge of eternal truths. It is still possible, however, for critical reflection to introduce a serious reservation about the possibility of satisfying this desire. For some, this reservation about immortality could be sufficient to overcome our natural desire for immortality. We would be left with a fear of death that would be consistent with our understanding that we are mortal. But let us assume that we are wrong about this. Let us assume then, that the desire for immortality still persists, even though we understand that we are mortal. There is still no contradiction in desiring what one understands one cannot have, though there would indeed be an inconsistency between what we desire and what we understand. I think physicist and theologian John Polkinghorne’s formulation of the problem is more tenable: “Only God, it seems, can take from death the last word. If the human intuition of hope—that all will be well, that the world makes ultimate sense—is not a vain delusion, then God must exist.”[24] Here we can answer, against Polkinghorn’s optimism, that perhaps such hope is indeed a “vain delusion.”

Another problem with Aquinas’s argument is that it does not entertain the possibility that some desires are irrational. If one understands that the soul is not immortal and yet continues to desire it, one’s desire is simply irrational. But this should not be strange to us. Do not some athletes desire to run faster than is physically possible for them, yet continue to strive for the impossible? Do not some people desire a romantic relationship that they know is not possible, yet their desire is nevertheless ignited by the presence of the image of the beloved?

Finally, it is not at all clear that the there is a natural desire for life after the death of the body. Such a desire may be culture relative. For example, many persons in Vedic and Buddhist traditions seek release from rebirth as well as death and practice meditations that aim to liberate them from their individual selves rather than extend the term of life for all eternity. So I am not convinced by Aquinas’s conceptual arguments for immorality of the soul. A related sort of argument that mixes conceptual and practical issues is the moral argument, to which I will now turn.

5. A Moral Argument for Immortality: Kant’s Postulates

In a move similar to that of Aquinas, Kant, in the Critique of Practical Reason (1788), argues that when Reason[25] is employed in our practical lives, we discover that we are obligated to obey a moral law and to bring about the highest good. The obligation to become good persons is not just any ordinary obligation. It is categorical, that is, something we must do without ulterior motive and no matter what. Also, Kant believed that most of us could not possibly achieve this goal during our short lives on the planet. Now if it is not possible for us to come to terms with the moral law in our lifetimes, yet we are nevertheless obligated to come to terms with the moral law, Kant thinks we are then morally required to postulate the immortality of the soul. This means we ought to believe we are immortal, even if there is no scientific proof for this claim.[26] Let us examine this argument in a bit more detail.

For Kant human Practical Reason provides a moral law in accordance with which we must intend to act in order to develop a good will. This is the law we know as the golden rule, but Kant puts it more formally as acting in such a way that you would will everyone else to act. This is the moral stance because it is impartial and does not depend upon individual desires and interests. We are basically good if our will subordinates itself to the moral law rather than inclinations and self love. For example, if there are two persons serving food at a soup kitchen and one is there because she is doing community service by court order and the other is there because she thinks that everyone should contribute to those who are needy, only the latter is good, even though both are performing identical behaviors. It is the intention that counts. For Kant, the only thing in the world that is good without qualification is the good will. Thus a good will does not merely act legalistically in conformity to the moral law; the good will respects the moral law and therefore looks to it as the incentive that informs practice.

Kant also argues that even though a good person (someone with a good will) does not choose to behave in certain ways in order to make herself happy, the highest good would nevertheless involve both virtue (a life more and more in accord with the moral law) and happiness. So even though happiness is not the motive of the good person’s behaviors, being good makes one worthy of happiness and the highest good would provide for just such a reward.

Kant recognizes that you can’t always get what you want in this life, but you can try to be good and let the chips fall where they may. He is also not naïve about how often it is precisely the good guys that get a bad deal: “consequently, no necessary connection, sufficient to the highest good, between happiness and virtue in the world can be expected from the most meticulous observance of the moral law.”[27] But the moral law commands us to bring about the highest good and the highest good would guarantee that both virtue and happiness should be attained. Notice there is an inconsistency here similar in form to that of Aquinas, but here it is a command of Practical Reason that appears to be frustrated. In Kant’s case however, the command is not merely hypothetical (will the good so you can be happy); it is categorical (will the highest good no matter what). So while in the case of a frustrated desire one could argue that the desire is irrational, in the case of Kant’s moral law it is Practical Reason itself that commands us to will the highest good.

The lack of a guarantee of coincidence between willing the good and happiness on earth is not the only problem facing the person who faithfully wills the good yet who has limited time to completely develop her good character. In order to attain the highest good, one must become holy. Holiness is defined by Kant as “complete fitness of the will to the moral law.” “Hey,” one might say, “nobody is perfect.” The holy one, however, is indeed solely and completely motivated by the moral law. And such an achievement requires “endless progress to that complete fitness.” Since we are absolutely obligated to achieve this endless progress and such an achievement cannot be attained during our short lives, such progress is possible “only under the presupposition of an infinitely enduring existence and personality of the same rational being; this is called immortality of the soul.”[28] Kant then fills out the picture of the necessary conditions for becoming holy by also postulating the existence of God and Freedom of the Will. It is God who makes immortality of the soul possible, and it is human freedom that provides the condition for individuals to will the good.

In summary, for Kant, Theoretical Reason cannot attain a complete idea of immortality of the soul because such a state is beyond any experience that we can have in this life. Practical Reason, however, postulates immortality because it is one of the necessary conditions for the possible fulfillment of our obligation to bring about the highest good, our holiness. I detect a problem here. Both theoretical reason and practical reason belong to the same Reason, a Reason that is employed in different spheres, one theoretical, the other practical. Is Kant’s Reason then, in conflict with itself? Whatever conflict it may have had, theoretical reason, which normally hesitates to extend its reach beyond possible experience, takes a bow to practical reason so that practical reason can fulfill its imperative.

The problem with Kant’s approach is that it assumes that Reason provides us with an objective moral standard, the moral law, and that Reason issues a categorical imperative (an absolute obligation) to fulfill this law. What Kant has done is smuggle immortality in through the backdoor of Reason, by moralizing Reason.[29] The moral law may be a very useful tool to adopt as one’s moral standard, but this does not mean that one has been obligated by Reason to adopt this law. Also, even if Reason did issue such a command, just as Aquinas’s desire may be impossible of fulfillment, so too might Kant’s moral law. Where Kant has a theoretical edge over Aquinas however, is that such a result would make Reason itself irrational. To avoid this, my suggestion is that, even on Kantian grounds, we should not allow the practical use of Reason to override the caution of the theoretical use of Reason, which only allows the extension of its concepts to possible experience.[30]

6. Arguments for Immortality Based on the Relativity of the Self

Both Aquinas and Kant are concerned about the personal immortality of the soul. In order for their theories to hold water, a special status must adhere to the individual soul. But what if the human soul were not so separate from the rest of the universe? There are some interesting alternatives to theories about the outright survival of an individual separable soul that might still satisfy the desire for some form of immortality. Some persons experience or believe they can experience their own consciousness as part and parcel of a universal consciousness; the individual soul presumably perishes, but the universal soul is presumably eternal. The goal is to identify oneself, in the end, not with the individual soul, which works out to be an illusion or a mere relative truth, but rather with the universal soul, which turns out, happily, to have been either the “real” self or a very important aspect of the self all along. An analogy makes this notion clear. Imagine that your consciousness is like a wave (individual consciousness) on the ocean (universal consciousness); the wave will grow, travel, and dissipate on the shore, but the ocean will persevere in existence. The goal would be to see the wave as essentially the ocean and identify as much as one can with the broad, endless ocean. A wide variety of views support this basic vision of the finite human soul’s participation in the infinite soul (or consciousness).[31]

6.1 Spinoza

The great philosopher Boruch (or Benedictus) Spinoza [1632-1677], who taught Cartesian philosophy in Amsterdam, tried to solve this theoretical mind body problem by conceiving of mind and body as two distinct aspects of one and the same being.[32] The mind, he thought, is so intimately connected with the body, that the connection between them is more than a mere causal relation. The mind is the idea of the body, that is, the mind is the very experience of having a body, and it is what it is like to be a body in the world. Let us unpack this idea.

While I am listening to the birds outside there is a state of my body that includes the stimulation of the inner ear, the auditory nerves, and the sound processing centers of the brain. At the same time, there is more to hearing the bird’s song than those patterns of activation in the brain as viewed from a third person point of view. There is also something it is like[33] to be in the hearing state, and that qualitative experience of hearing sound, is the inward side of a state of my brain. So it is not that the state of my brain causes something to happen in a separate mind. The mind and body are numerically one and the same thing, but they are nevertheless qualitatively different. How can one and the same thing have within it qualitative differences?[34] Take a piece of yellow paper shaped like a rectangle. The paper is one thing, yet its yellowness is not the same as its rectangularity. These are qualitative differences in the same object. So too with human reality, it is both mental and physical, the mental being the inward feature and the physical being the outward feature; neither features exists in numerical separation from the other. Numerical difference would be a difference between two things. Qualitative difference can exist within one and the same thing with respect to different features of that thing.

So how does Spinoza handle the issue of mortality? The idea of the human body that constitutes the mind is at root a conatus, that is, the effort to persevere in existence. Just as the body avoids danger and rejects pathogens by forming antibodies, the mind experiences an effort to flee danger and pursue life. This is not only a property of human existence, but is at the teleological (telos means end or goal) center of all living things, that is, all living things strive towards an end: their own perseverance in existence. What is so special about human existence? We not only have this effort to persevere in existence, but we are aware of this effort, and so have desires. And this awareness puts the human being in the peculiar position of wanting to persevere in existence while knowing that it is mortal and must therefore die some day, some moment. For Spinoza, such thoughts detract from our very power for existence; it slows us down in our everyday pursuits. So he thought that the rational person would not dwell on death but on whatever life is left to live.[35]

Spinoza looked at life from the point of view of eternity, and saw himself as just a finite expression of the entire power of existence of the universe. Yes, we are part and parcel of the whole. Like waves in the sea, we emerge from the whole and dissolve back into the whole. If we could only identify with the whole from which we arose, we would be liberated from the fear of death. But the body knows this is a difficult task, for it is this individual existence, this flesh and blood about which the effort to persevere is concerned, not the whole universe![36]

6.2 Transcendentalism: Emerson

The North American philosopher and transcendentalist, Ralph Waldo Emerson [1803-1882], called the infinite consciousness the oversoul.[37] For Emerson, the oversoul is God radiating his wisdom and moral sense through us, “For the Maker of all things and all persons stands behind us, and casts his dread omniscience through us over things.”[38] The over-soul is also that spirit which unites us to other persons because it is the self same Unity in which all persons participate:

The Supreme Critic on the errors of the past and the present, and the only prophet of that which must be, is that great nature in which we rest, as the earth lies in the soft arms of the atmosphere; that Unity, that Over-soul, within which every man’s particular being is contained and made one with all other; that common heart, of which all sincere conversation is the worship, to which all right action is submission; that overpowering reality which confutes our tricks and talents, and constrains every one to pass for what he is, and to speak from his character, and not from his tongue, and which evermore tends to pass into our thought and hand, and become wisdom, and virtue, and power, and beauty.[39]

Emerson seems to reduce the being of the individual soul to the point of disappearance as she comes to realize that all being resides on the side of this over-soul: “From within or from behind, a light shines through us upon things, and makes us aware that we are nothing, but the light is all. A man is the fasade of a temple wherein all wisdom and all good abide.”[40] In Emerson we hear the echoes of some Eastern traditions.[41]

6.3 The Vedic Tradition

In the Indian Vedas (sometimes called Hindu philosophy), the individual soul, atman, is viewed as an illusion, or a sort of relative being, along with the rest of the world of experience. It is the ultimate reality, Brahma, who creates this illusion. The Svetasvatara Upanishad declares

The whole world the illusion-maker (mayin) projects out of this [Brahma]. And in it by illusion (maya) the other [individual soul] is confined. Now, one should know that Nature (Prakriti) is illusion and that the Mighty Lord (mahesvara) is the illusion-maker (mayin).[42]

By realizing that one’s individual soul is illusory[43] and the Brahma soul is the all pervading reality, one is liberated from the cycles of birth and rebirth because one lets go of the attachment to this temporal life and identifies with the Brahma:

The one soul (hamsa) in the midst of the world—this indeed is the fire which has entered into the ocean. Only by knowing Him does one pass over death. There is no other path for going there.[44]

We also see this identification with the Brahma at work in the most famous of the Hindu texts, The Bhagavadgita:

For the Yogi, whose mind is perfectly calm, who is sinless, whose passion is subdued, and who is identified with Brahma, supreme happiness comes (as a matter of course). The sinless Yogi thus, uniting his self constantly with God, easily enjoys the eternal bliss of oneness with Brahma. The Yogi, who is united in identity with the all-pervading, infinite, consciousness, and looks on all with an equal eye, sees the Self present in all beings, and all beings existing in the Self. He who sees Me (the Universal Self) present in all beings, and sees all beings existing in Me, I am never out of sight of him, nor is he ever out of sight of Me. He who, established in unity, worships Me as residing in all beings (as their very Self), that Yogi, though engaged in forms of activities, dwells in Me.[45]

The goal expressed in these passages is to reinterpret one’s temporal individual self (atman) in terms of the Universal and Eternal Self (Brahma) during one’s earthly life, so that one will be identified with the Brahma upon the end of the earthly life. It would be an error, however, to see the goal of the Yogi as a rebirth or continuation of individual (personal) existence; it is precisely the release from such existence that is the goal.

It is hard for us in the West to comprehend why anyone should wish for rebirth to end. From the point of view the Svetasvatara, the cycles of reincarnation only prolong suffering. Even though some incarnations are better than others, the better ones are desirable only because they take one closer to final liberation. The problem of immortality here is not about wishing to go on forever, but getting rid of the wishing and overcoming one’s attachment to earthly life.[46]

6.4 Buddhism

The Buddhist approach to the problem of mortality is to emphasize the relative nature of the individual self, the wave on the sea. Rather than seek to liberate the self by merging with Brahma, some Buddhist thought seeks release from attachment to this relative self by realizing that it is a mere momentary construction, without any enduring identity. The problem then, is not that my soul is mortal, but that I have been attached to it. If I can overcome my attachment to the constructed self, I can overcome a large part of the suffering associated with its demise and the demise of other individuals. This Buddhist departure from Brahmanic thinking is set out clearly in Vietnamese Buddhist monk Thich Nhat Hanh’s rendering of the life of the Buddha. In the following passage, the Buddha is speaking with Uruvela Kassapa, a spiritual leader in Brahmanic religion:

They sat by the lotus pond and conversed. Kassapa said, “Yesterday you said that the presence of a leaf resulted from the coming together of many different conditions. You said that humans, too, exist only because of the coming together of many other conditions. But when all these conditions cease to be, where does the self go?” The Buddha answered, “For a long time humans have been trapped by the concept of atman, the concept of a separate and eternal self. We have believed that when our body dies, this self continues to exist and seeks union with its source, which is Brahma. But, friend Kassapa, that is a fundamental misunderstanding which has caused countless generations to go astray. You should know, friend Kassapa, that all things exist because of interdependence and all things cease to be because of interdependence. …In truth, there is nothing which is separate and eternal. There is no self, whether a higher or a lower self.”[47]

The Buddhist doctrine of non-self provides a solution to the inconsistency of naturally desiring eternity for one’s soul while understanding that such an outcome is not likely; get rid of the desire, natural or otherwise. Let us assume, for a moment, that one cannot make this move. Somehow, even though one meditates on the impermanence and merely constructed nature of the self, the body obstinately clings to this world. How then, could we make sense of the desire, grounded in the body, to persevere at any cost, and the understanding that such perseverance is unlikely? One solution, mentioned above, is to bite the bullet and argue that the will to live is just irrational. But this claim requires some theoretical justification, or else it has no more plausibility than Aquinas’s argument for immortality based on the rationality of desire. Could it be that the will to live is just a blind animal thrust towards existence that has evolved over millions of years and manifests itself in the human spirit wherein it can reflect on itself and thus poses a problem for itself?

6.5 The Irrational Will to Live: Schopenhauer and Nietzsche

The philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer [1788-1860] argued that the will to live and the fear of death are blind instincts and are not based on knowledge. In an essay, “On Death and Its Relation to the Indestructibility of our True Nature,” Schopenhauer writes:

That powerful attachment to live is therefore irrational and blind; it can only be explained from the fact that our whole inner nature is itself will to live, to which, therefore, life must appear as the highest good, however embittered, short, and uncertain it may always be; and that that will, in itself and originally, is unconscious and blind. Knowledge, on the contrary, far from being the source of that attachment to life, even works against it, for it discloses the worthlessness of life, and thus combats the fear of death.[48]

Evidently, Schopenhauer was not very optimistic about life. He maintains the illusory nature of the ego, but points to its evolutionary function as something that serves a purpose that is not really that of individuals. He believed the individual will to live is at the service of the species will. The species will uses the individual for the benefit of the continuation of the species, but the individual labors under the illusion that she is fulfilling her own goals and objectives.

The will to live manifests itself indeed primarily as an effort to sustain the individual; yet this is only a step to the effort to sustain the species, and the latter endeavor must be more powerful in proportion as the life of the species surpasses that of the individual in duration, extension, and value.[49]

Even romantic love, which many of us think has to do with the fulfillment of individuals, is just a tool in the hands of the species will to get us to reproduce.

Nature can only attain its ends by implanting a certain illusion in the individual, on account of which that which is only a good for the species appears to him as a good for himself, so that when he serves the species he imagines he is serving himself…. This illusion is instinct. In the great majority of cases this is to be regarded as the sense of the species, which presents what is of benefit to it to the will. Since, however, the will has here become individual, it must be so deluded that it apprehends through the sense of the individual what the sense of the species presents to it, thus imagines it is following individual ends while in truth it is pursuing ends which are merely general….[50]

So when you think you are attracted to a certain individual, it is the species will at work, using your sexuality to bring about the ultimate goal of love and passion: reproduction of another realization of the species will. Sex is the species will disguised as lust or as romantic love. For Schopenhauer, having sex is always a matter of being the “dupe” of the species.[51] Now one might argue today that Schopenhauer did not take sufficiently into account the role of contraceptives; don’t contraceptives override the species will? Not at all. Schopenhauer argues that those very features of the opposite sex that are attractive are usually associated with the aspects of human physiology and character that can vouchsafe the survival and nourishment of the future offspring. After the age of fertility has passed, the body begins its physiological descent towards death. Though contraception may undermine the ultimate end of the species will, individuals are still the expendable moments in the life of the species, used up in the illusions of love. It is a sad story. Each individual comes into being and passes out of being entirely while the species-will perseveres. Unlike some forms of Vedic philosophy, there is no identifying with a more general will. Who wants to be part of such a cunning game anyway? And unlike Buddhism, there is no heart of compassion at the ground of all being, only a ruthless will to live that uses us up in the tragic comedy of life.

The species will is not a very friendly or comforting universal, nothing to celebrate; in fact, it continues to use individuals even if their entire lives are a suffering until death. From the point of view of the individual, one is tied to the will to live as if it were one’s own, but it is tragically the individual who fails to persevere in existence while the species will lives on in other individuals.

The silver lining in all of this, for Schopenhauer, is that just as the will to live is irrational, so too is the fear of death. Schopenhauer marvels at our concern for not being after life is over but our lack of concern for the eternity in which we did not exist prior to birth:

If what makes death seem so terrible to us were the thought of not being we would necessarily think with equal horror of the time when as yet we were not. For it is irrefutably certain that not being after death cannot be different from not being before birth, and consequently is also no more deplorable. A whole eternity has run its course while as yet we were not, but that by no means disturbs us. On the other hand, we find it hard, nay unendurable, that after the momentary intermezzo of an ephemeral existence, a second eternity should follow in which we shall no longer be.[52]

For Schopenhauer, since there was an eternity (the past) in which we were not, and this does not bother us, there is no reason to be bothered by the eternity (future) in which we will not be. In “On Truth and Lie: in an Extra-Moral Sense” Nietzsche expresses a similar insight, but on the level of world history:

In some remote corner of the universe, poured out and glittering in innumerable solar systems, there once was a star on which clever animals invented knowledge. That was the haughtiest and most mendacious minute of “world history”—yet only a minute. After nature had drawn a few breaths that star grew cold, and the clever animals had to die. One might invent such a fable and still not have illustrated sufficiently how stretched, how shadowy and flighty, how aimless and arbitrary, the human intellect appears in nature. There have been eternities when it did not exist; and when it is done for again, nothing will have happened. For this intellect has no further mission that would lead beyond human life.[53]

Schopenhauer argues that each individual life is a moment between two eternities of non-existence. Nietzsche similarly maintains that all of human history is but a moment, before and after which there is no memory of human reality having existed in the universe. These insights are not easy to digest, especially if one is concerned that something of oneself or at least one’s culture survives in perpetuity. Perhaps human reality has invented gods and angels, in part, in order that some higher consciousness could bear witness to its plight and destiny. Human reality finds it difficult to endure the thought that its star will “grow cold” and that it is not at the center of some grand master-plan of the universe. But if we realize that we ourselves can give at least a limited meaning, our own meaning, to the passing moments, they will matter to us so long as there is human memory.

7. Scientific Futurist Arguments for Indefinite Life[54]

Philosophers, theologians, parapsychologists, transcendentalists, and naturalists are not the only ones that have tried their hands at overcoming human finitude. Some scientific futurists employing assumptions drawn from the fields of physics, artificial intelligence, cybernetics, and cognitive science, argue that it will soon be possible for humans to extend life indefinitely and broaden the scope of conscious control over the environment.[55] Some futurists appear to be motivated by the same despair over human finitude that we found in religious traditions.[56] For example, physicist Gerald Feinberg [1933-1992] argued in the 1960’s that one of humanity’s collective goals ought to pivot around overcoming certain features of human finitude:

My own feeling is that the despair of the conscious mind at the recognition of its own finitude is such that man cannot achieve an abiding contentment in his present form or anything like it. Therefore, I believe that a transformation of man into something very different from what he is now is called for.[57]

The aspects of human finitude targeted by Feinberg and other futurists generally include mortality and limited conscious control over the environment.[58] While the futurists considered here may differ with regard to what humanity might do once it has overcome these deficiencies, all agree that the removal of such limits is empirically feasible, desirable, and likely to be accomplished in the near future.

Cognitive science, an interdisciplinary approach to the study of mind, provides theoretical support for some of the futurist programs. Since the middle of the last century, with the advent of new imaging technologies and more sophisticated human brain damage and animal research, cognitive neuroscience has sought to explain the basic information processing functions that underlie human behavior. Cognitive science combines the theoretical and experimental investigations of artificial intelligence research, psychology, linguistics, philosophy, and neuroscience, to account for human mental processes. At the heart of the cognitive science program is an attempt to understand how patterns of activation in the brain give rise to the outward behaviors associated with those patterns. Cognitive science combines two fundamental concepts to explain mind: functionality and computation.[59]

The basic idea of functionalism is that the way to test for whether there is a bonafide mind is not to focus on the materials something is made of, but whether or not it is organized in the right way so that it can carry out mental processes. To use an analogy from home, a home heating system can perform the same function whether it burns gas, petroleum, wood, corn, or any number of fuels. And it can use aluminum, steel, copper, clay, or any number of substances for its basic structure. By analogy, the functionalist focuses not on what sort of stuff minds are made of, but how minds are structured. It is the structure that is the key to how a system can produce the information processing and behavioral functions of a mind. Functionalism is combined with computationalism in normal cognitive science. What goes on between the input stimulus and output response is the processing of information.[60] At a basic level, one only needs to determine the number and kind of information processing modules and the means of their implementation to explain mental processes. In the case of human minds, the mental processing functions are implemented on the brain, so neuroscience and functional analysis will mutually inform each other about both the functionality of neural connections on the one hand, and the cognitive architecture on the other.

Now for the point that is germane to our immediate topic. It follows from computational functionalism that mind is medium independent.[61] This means that a mind could be implemented on other substrates besides organic brains; perhaps even digital machines will do the trick. Since brain processes are, deep down, electro-chemical processes, we could theoretically reproduce the basic properties of neurons using different materials, quite possibly including materials that will last longer and compute even faster than organic brains. This notion has given rise to the development of artificial neurons.[62]

We have now come far enough to set out the futurist arguments for indefinite life. The two most important assumptions of computational functionalism for our purposes are 1) mental processes are medium independent, and 2) mental processes are transferable and reproducible. These two assumptions are closely related. Assumption 1) basically claims that what is important for the existence of mental processes is not the biological stuff they are made of, but rather the manner in which that biological stuff is organized. So theoretically, some other sort of stuff, organized in the right way, could give rise to mental processes of the sort we encounter in human reality. Assumption 2) basically claims that mental processes are implementations of computational processes. Let us follow the argument for indefinite life as it develops from these two assumptions in order to see the implications for how we understand the subject of experience.

With these two assumptions in mind we can examine two life extension strategies: cyborg and transplant.[63] The cyborg view sees humans as natural born cyborgs because the plasticity of the brain makes us naturally suited to integrating new tools into our neural computational processes by attaching or implanting these tools into our bodies. As philosopher Andy Clark points out in Natural Born Cyborgs, “it is the presence of this unusual plasticity that makes humans…natural-born cyborgs: being primed by Mother Nature to annex wave upon wave of external elements and structures as part and parcel of their own extended minds.”[64] These hybrid beings will have biological bodies progressively more enhanced and partially replaced by artificial parts. There are already persons who consider themselves as cyborgs and seek community with other cyborgs.[65]

The cyborgs will utilize prostheses and wireless interfaces with the environment that will extend the reach of conscious experience in a transparent manner; we will not notice that we have become hybrids because the mechanical parts will be microscopic and seamlessly integrated into our bodies, extending and multiplying our perceptual and conceptual capacities, making spatial location irrelevant to everyday life. We will live indefinitely because longevity research will introduce interventions that extend life and curtail or even reverse aging, our biological parts will either be regenerated by stem cell or other types of tissue, genetically re-engineered, or replaced by biomorphic inorganic parts.

Is there hope for baby boomers to live long enough to live indefinitely? Futurist Raymond Kurzweil, who anticipated that advances of contemporary longevity research, in Fantastic Voyage (2004), teamed up with Terry Grossman, M.D. to provide suggestions for those who want their best chance at living long enough to become such cyborgs. Kurzweil lays out a nutrition and exercise program in order to help us get to the next bridge so that we can benefit from the life extending technologies that are just on the horizon. In a recent interview with Craig Hamilton, Kurzweil describes the three bridges to extending human life:

Terry Grossman and I have described what we call the “three bridges” to radical life extension. Bridge one has to do with taking full advantage of today’s knowledge of biology in order to dramatically slow down aging and disease processes. This will enable us to stay in as good a shape as possible for when bridge-two technologies become available. Bridge two is the biotechnology revolution, which will give us the tools to reprogram our biology and the biochemical information processes underlying our biology. We’re in the early stages of that revolution already, but in fifteen years we will have, to a large extent, mastery over our biology. That will take us to the third bridge, the nanotechnology revolution, where we can rebuild our bodies and brains at the molecular level. This will enable us to fix the remaining problems that are difficult to address within the confines of biology and ultimately allow us to go beyond the limitations of biology altogether. So the idea is to get on bridge one now, so we can be alive and healthy when the biotechnology and nanotechnology revolutions come to fruition. Our aim is to live long enough to live forever.[66]

Kurzweil’s view begins with a cyborg view, but seems to end in a transplant view. We presumably can so radically re-engineer both our biological and artificial parts that we end up “beyond the limitations of biology altogether.” The transplant view maintains that the entire structure of mind that is implemented on organic brains can be reproduced in artificial mediums, thus dispensing with the stigma of mortality that attaches to organically constituted brains. More than a half century before Kurzweil’s work on indefinite life, mathematician Nobert Wiener [1894-1964] imagines:

It is amusing as well as instructive to consider what would happen if we were to transmit the whole pattern of the human body, of the human brain with its memories and cross connections, so that a hypothetical receiving instrument could re-embody these messages in appropriate matter, capable of continuing the processes already in the body and the mind, and of maintaining the integrity needed for this continuation by a process of homeostasis.[67]

As we have seen, the theoretical justification for the possibility of such a mind transplant is that mind is identified not with any specific sort of material, but with a certain sort of organization and structure. So any suitable materials with the right order could conceivably implement an individual human mind.

For Wiener, what makes the human brain so unique is its great complexity. Complexity is important because “the structure of the machine or of the organism is an index of the performance that may be expected from it.”[68] So we might expect more from an extremely complex brain than from a simple one; the complex brain is capable of more combinations of relationships between synapses. But future imaging and neuromorphic technologies should be up to the task of reproducing these relationships. Thus, in principle, one may some day be able to scan a brain into another type of medium and reconstitute the patterns of activation in a duplicate.[69]

Futurist and roboticist Hans Moravec, in both Mind Children (1988) and Robot (1999) offers a vision of the forms intelligent robots might take in the near future and suggests the possibility that humans may be able to transfer their own minds into these robotic structures. The transplants will leave behind their biological bodies altogether by reproducing, neuron for neuron, the structure of the brain, in a neuromorphic correlate, that is, an artificial brain that has the same properties as the biological brain. In Robot, Moravec clearly points to the possibility of mind transplants:

Why not use advanced neurological electronics, like that which links it with the external world, to replace the gray matter as it begins to fail? Bit by bit our failing brain may be replaced by superior electronic equivalents, leaving our personality and thoughts clearer than ever, though, in time, no vestige of our original body or brain remains. …Our mind will have been transplanted from our original biological brain into artificial hardware.[70]

Transplanting minds will allow us to overcome all vestiges of the biological stuff that threatens to degenerate and that makes us vulnerable to accident and disease. The transplants will transfer the structure of their brains, in all its details and with all its functional properties, to some other longer lasting and self-repairing substrate.

What will cyborgs and transplants do with their new found indefinite life spans? In Feinberg’s vision, a major collective goal of humanity should be to extend our consciousness control over the world. The extension of our control of the environment would involve a merging of all conscious life in the universe. And today, we can image an added interface with artificial intelligence. Once a universal consciousness is formed, it should extend its power and reach over the entire universe.[71] When the goal is attained, there would be nothing outside of us (or rather, the universal consciousness) because the universe would be the body of the universal consciousness. Admittedly there are a lot of gaps in this story, not only because I have not spelled out Feinberg’s entire vision, but because many of the details are left out of his book, to be worked out by future generations.

This notion of establishing universal consciousness as a collective goal of humanity raises some interesting questions. No offense to Feinberg, but it does sound a bit totalitarian. What could possibly motivate a futurist to give up her individual conscious experience by merging it with not only other human consciousness, but every other creature on earth that is capable of awareness? I could see merging with some divine consciousness as somewhat pleasant, but please, must we merge with everybody and everything? And why should we want to have the universe itself as our body? What is so fulfilling about having complete control over everything? It seems to me that the old Gods having died, Feinberg wants to create a new one. And it will be us.

In the end, Feinberg’s project is not only about overcoming mortality and enhancing conscious experience, but changing our sense of identity; the subject of experience extends her control over all the earth becoming all powerful: “The complete internalization of the external world would eliminate the objects of consciousness; it would simply mean that all of these objects would be under the control of the consciousness, instead of only some of them as at present.”[72] What about an alternative project of letting other subjects of experience create their own meaning for this earth and respecting the natural environment and other animals? Why not enjoy being receptive towards what we are not rather than trying to turn everything into ourselves? Maybe by recognizing the rights of other living things and earth we can find some deeper unity with them that preserves their being for themselves. As philosopher William A. Luijpen points out, “The progressive possibility of dominating the world strangles the power to wonder over the world. According as technology progresses, man finds himself and his own creations more and more and forgets that the world was”already” there before he transformed it into energy.”[73] Like Artistotle’s God, thought thinking itself, Feinberg’s universal consciousness knows only itself. It has turned the world into itself, like the God of Consumption.

What if we just want to be left alone? What if, like Odysseus, we give up the possibility of becoming an immortal in order to return to our homes and be with our loved ones, yes, our human, all too human loved ones? Feinberg says that “we cannot, however, allow people to determine the lives of their children in this respect. If some extension of consciousness becomes possible for everyone…I believe that the step is too important in the life of an individual to let the prejudices of his parents determine this part of his fate.”[74] Just as the religious consciousness is totalitarian, subsuming the entire universe into its scheme of good and evil, heaven and hell, promises and prohibitions, Feinberg’s universal consciousness seems to take up everyone, even future generations, into its nirvana. If we want to rescue our children from Feinberg’s universal consciousness, we may have to hide out for a while.

Of course not all futurists would share in Feinberg’s vision. Both Moravec and Kurzweil leave a lot of the details of how things will turn out when we are transplanted up to future generations. The futurists of both stripes rely on new technologies to overcome some of the problems posed by human finitude, the very same problems that motivate many of the religions of the world. Rather than live within the limits of reason, they too, dressed in their lab coats and professorial robes, with an air of positivism and the authority of scientific jargon, take off on the wings of hope and suppress their dubious premises.

The cyborg view does not solve the mortality problem because it retains a reliance on the biological brain for the persistence of the individual. To be sure, we end up with an enhanced, more adaptive body, but one nevertheless grounded in biological life, subject to disease, accident, and death. Even if regenerative technologies, longevity research such as that of David Sinclair, stem cell technology, and neuromorphic implants are used to continuously repair and replace damaged cells, we know that pathogens adapt to our adaptations and that it is therefore probably only a matter of time until the organism succumbs to disease or environmental catastrophe. And even if biotechnology could extend life several decades, it may not offer the quality of life we are looking for. As Fukuyama points out,

If there is no molecular shortcut to postponing death because aging is the result of the gradual accumulation of damage to a wide range of different biological systems, then there is no reason to think that future medical advances will proceed with a neat simultaneity, any more than they have in the past. …In the future, biotechnology is likely to offer us bargains that trade off length of life span for quality of life.[75]

Fukuyama points out that while we may enjoy an extended retirement between the ages of sixty-five to eighty, the next stage, going beyond eighty, may offer a slow degenerative death, where we become more and more dependent on others to carry out our daily tasks. Is this the sort of indefinite life that one really wants?

The transplant and clone scenarios may grant the individual a new lease on life, but they raise an interesting problem relevant to the identity of the subject of experience. If the biological individual “Sarah” is asked to face the biomorphic clone “Sarah-B” which of them is really “Sarah”? It seems to me that what makes the biological Sarah the real Sarah is precisely the identification with this particular body. The mind is the idea of a specific body and even if some other body were constructed in exactly the same way, it would be numerically distinct and therefore have a numerically distinct consciousness in its twin. This is why twins, however genetically similar, are different people. Split brains that share the same body, still have different perspectives because they do not share the same inputs from the environment.[76]

A more serious problem with transplanted minds is that while the neuromorphic clone may have an identically structured brain and utilizes the best computational hardware such that it behaves in the same way as the original, there is no guarantee that it will have an inner life. The robotic version of us could be zombies. As American philosopher John Searle points out, there may be some special property unique to biological stuff such that there is a qualitative feel, that is, there is something it is like to be a biologically based person while there is not something it is like to be an inorganically based mind. If Searle is correct, at least one property cannot be reproduced in artificial substrates—experience. So though my clone may be immortal, it won’t be me and it won’t know what its like to be immortal; it will merely go through the motions. This means only the original will have to confront its own mortality, exercise freedom of the will, and take itself as a project (by the act of self transcendence). Of course, to attribute special status to organic structures as the unique dwelling of consciousness is also open to criticism. If structure is what determines the possibility of conscious experience, then theoretically, an inorganic alternative with the right structure should be able to implement conscious experience. But as evolutionary biologist Barry Chernoff remarked, there could be some unique properties of organic chemistry that make it especially suitable for life.[77]

Another problem with out right rejection of artificial brains as the hosts of experience is the threshold problem. Biologist Francis Crick has published a thought experiment that asks us to imagine that some part of our brain is replaced with artificial neurons.[78] Are we still there? Then we imagine that progressively more parts are replaced. Is there a threshold upon which we disappear and a new being comes forward into consciousness? I am not sure. If the neuromorphic replacements do in fact share all of the relevant properties, then conscious experience could be implemented in an artificial substrate. And since we are not here talking about clones but gradual replacement of our brain tissue the identity problem also would not apply.

Even if a cyborg did not succumb to disease and a transplant could be us, artificial substrates are not guaranteed to last forever. Let’s be frank; aging is not the only thing that makes biologically based life finite. Even if we solve the aging problem, machines made from any sort of material are subject to destruction. With the best of care all manor of natural disaster and human caused catastrophe can bring any temporal being to an end. Indefinite life is not eternal life and cannot satisfy the desire for immortality. For even if one lives a million years, should the will to live persevere, death will be too soon. Tomorrow is always too close, even if it arrives the day after tomorrow.

Polkinghorne has suggested an interesting theological resolution to the problem of the limitations of indefinite life. Rather than rely on human ingenuity to transplant the mind to a more durable substrate, Polkinghorne suggests that God resurrects individuals using their “information bearing pattern.” “Though this pattern is dissolved at death” says Polkinghorne, “it seems perfectly rational to believe that it will be remembered by God and reconstituted in a divine act of resurrection.”[79] Far from being “perfectly rational,” this ruse appears to idealize the technician (making her a God!), raising more problems than it solves.

8. Living with Mortality

What basic message can be gleaned from the existence of finite rational beings that seek some eternal significance to no avail? There is neither empirical nor phenomenological evidence, nor any good theoretical argument for any of the above versions of eternal or indefinite life for individual humans. We probably did not exist, at least as such and such individuals, for an eternity in the past and most likely we will not exist for an eternity after we are gone. Schopenhauer was probably correct: there is indeed a will to live, but it is not based on reason and it will not deliver us to a universal will. Rather it deploys reason to advance human life in community. We are mere mortals.

Of course I do not expect this analysis to satisfy those who insist that there must be more to life than this brief period of mortality. If they do not bring arguments to the table, either based on rational deduction from true premises or probabilistic arguments based on empirical evidence or some phenomenological evidence based on intersubjective collaboration, I confess my disadvantage; for I am unwilling to believe in something because it may make life more bearable and death more palatable. Here we part ways with the immortals. But in parting, I say to my immortal friends, do not bemoan my misfortune and I will not celebrate your victory, for one of us is wrong.

Notes

References

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Churchland, Paul M. Matter and Consciousness. Rev. ed. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 1988.

Clark, Andy. Natural-born Cyborgs: Minds, Technologies, and the Future of Human Intelligence. New York: Oxford University Press, 2003.

Copeland, Jack. Artificial Intelligence: A Philosophical Introduction. Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishers, 1993.

Crick, Francis, and Christof Koch. “Sidebar.” In David J. Chalmers, “The Puzzle of Conscious Experience.” Scientific American 237 (December 1995): 62-68.

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Kurzweil, Raymond. “The Coming Merging of Mind and Machine.” Scientific American 10 (November 1999): 56-60.

Kurzweil, Raymond, and Terry Grossman. Fantastic Voyage: Live Long Enough to Live Forever. New York: Rodale Books, 2004.

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Nietzsche, Friedrich. The Will to Power. Translated by Walter Kaufmann and R. J. Hollingdale. New York: Vintage Books, 1967.

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[1] “In a poll of 1,1010 adult Americans conducted on March 11 and 12, 1997, Time reported that belief in heaven is still quite strong, with 81 percent reporting belief, and 88 percent looking forward to meeting ‘friends and family members in heaven’ when they die.” Michael Shermer, How We Believe: Science, Skepticism and the Search for God, 2nd ed. (New York: Henry Holt and Company, 2003), 25.

[2] I am indebted to Albert Camus, The Myth of Sisyphus and Other Essays, trans. Justin O’Brien (New York: Vintage Books, 1955), who in turn quotes Pindar, for the idea in this sentence.

[3] For an example of the philosophy of the absurd, see Camus, Myth.

[4] Rene Descartes, The Philosophical Writings of Descartes. Vol. 1, trans. John Cottingham, Robert Stoothoff and Dugald Murdoch (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1985), 141 (hereafter cited in notes as CSM1); see also Descartes’ “Dedicatory letter to the Sorbonne,” and the “Synopsis,” both of which precede Meditations on First Philosophy, in The Philosophical Writings of Descartes. Vol. 2, trans. John Cottingham, Robert Stoothoff and Dugald Murdoch. (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1984) (hereafter cited in notes as CSM2).

[5] Descartes, CSM2, 10.

[6] Ibid.

[7] This pineal gland theory appears in Descartes, Treatise on Man, CSM1, 100; Descartes, Passions of the Soul, CSM1, 340-341.

[8] In The Search after Truth, Malebranche states, “Not only are men not the true causes of the movements they produce in their bodies, there even seems to be some contradiction (in saying) that they could be. A true cause as I understand it is one such that the mind perceives a necessary connection between it and its effect. Now the mind perceives a necessary connection only between the will of an infinitely perfect being and its effects. Therefore, it is only God who is the true cause and who truly has the power to move bodies.” Nicolas Malebranche, Philosophical Selections, ed. Steven Nadler (Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Company, 1992), 96. Malebranche writes in “Elucidations of the Search after Truth,” “I deny that there is a relation between our thoughts and the motion of matter” (ibid., 112).

[9] Patricia Smith Churchland, Brain-Wise: Studies in Neurophilosophy (Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2002), 393. See also Paul M. Churchland, Matter and Consciousness, rev. ed. (Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 1988), especially the section on dualism, 7-22.

[10] NDE’s were first popularized in Raymond A. Moody’s 1975 Life After Life. For a brief background on NDE and references to earlier studies of the phenomenon, see also Michael Shermer, Why People Believe Weird Things (New York: W. H. Freeman and Company, 1997), 77-82. Shermer’s 1997 work first brought Moody’s work to my attention.

[11] P. S. Churchland, Brain-Wise, 394-395; see Shermer, Why People Believe Weird Things and Shermer, How We Believe, for a discussion of research and poll data on NDE.

[12] Deepak Chopra, Life After Death: The Burden of Proof (New York: Random House, 2006) 37, with text notes on 258. Chopra also mentions a study by Pim van Lommel et al. on NDE and states that Dr. Pim van Lommel “was astonished by the finding that patients were having a full-blown NDE after their brains had ceased any activity—they were flatline until revived.” But Chopra’s source for van Lommel is Mary Roach, Spook: Science Tackles the Afterlife (W. W. Norton, 2005). In the original article by Pim van Lommel and others, Lancet 358 (2001): 2039-45, it is not van Lommel who observed these flatline patients; van Lommel cites Michael B. Sabom, Light and Death: One Doctor’s Fascinating Account of Near-Death Experiences (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 1998), 37-52. Here is a direct quote from van Lommel: “Sabom mentions a young American woman who had complications during brain surgery for a cerebral aneurysm. The EEG of her cortex and brainstem had become totally flat. After the operation, which was eventually successful, this patient proved to have had a very deep NDE, including an out-of-body experience, with subsequently verified observations during the period of the flat EEG.” See also Chopra, Life After Death, 43 with text note on 258.

[13] Shermer, How We Believe, 26.

[14] David Hume, Writings on Religion, ed. Anthony Flew (Chicago and La Salle, Illinois: Open Court, 1992), 70.

[15] Shermer, How We Believe, 241; see also Shermer’s discussion of the Lancet publication of a Dutch study of near-death experiences (ibid., 243).

[16] Shermer, How We Believe, 243.

[17] See Michael Shermer and Deepak Chopra, “The Great Afterlife Debate: Michael Shermer v. Deepak Chopra,” Skeptic, http://www.skeptic.com/reading_room/debates/afterlife.html (accessed January 18, 2007), Chopra’s response, para. 2.

[18] See Shermer, Why People Believe Weird Things, 45-46, on what Shermer calls Hume’s maxim.

[19] Shermer provides a good briefing on neurological and psychological explanations for NDE’s in Shermer, Why People Believe Weird Things, 80-82. Of course, if it can be shown that a person can have an NDE during a period when there is no brain activity at all (see Chopra, Life After Death), then these naturalistic explanations would be undermined.

[20] See Chopra, Life After Death, 176-179 on reincarnation and NDE’s.

[21] Saint Thomas Aquinas, Introduction to Saint Thomas Aquinas, ed. Anton C. Pegis (New York: Random House, 1948), Summa, Q. 75, Art. 6, p. 288.

[22] I am indebted to an article by Stephen Wang, “Human Incompletion, Happiness, and the Desire for God in Sartre’s Being and Nothingness,” Sartre Studies International, 12, no. 1, (2006) for an understanding of Aquinas’ argument for immortality that is based on desire.

[23] Aquinas, Summa, Q. 75, Art. 6, p. 289.

[24] John Polkinghorne, Belief in God in an Age of Science (New Haven, Yale University Press, 1998), 21.

[25] I will use a big R (Reason) here to emphasize that Reason, for Kant, is a faculty of the human mind that plays a critical role not only in the structuring of all experience, but also in providing the rules for morality.

[26] It turns out that these are not the only postulates. For Kant, God and free will are also necessary conditions for making it possible for me to obey the moral law and achieve the highest good. See Immanuel Kant, The Critique of Practical Reason, trans. Lewis White Beck (New York: The Bobbs-Merrill Company, 1956).

[27] Ibid., 118.

[28] Ibid., 126-127.

[29] I follow Nietzsche here, who derides Kant’s Practical Reason as the Categorical Imperator! See Friedrich Nietzsche, The Will to Power, trans. Walter Kaufmann and R. J. Hollingdale (New York: Vintage Books, 1967), 157.

[30] For example, Kant states clearly “It is a question of whether speculative reason, which knows nothing of that which the practical reason offers for its acceptance, must take up these principles and seek to integrate them, even though they transcend it, with its own concepts, as a foreign possession handed over to it; or whether it is justified in stubbornly following its own isolated interest, rejecting…everything as an empty sophism which does not certify its objective reality by manifest examples from experience, doing so however much it is interwoven with the interest of the practical (pure) use of reason and however far removed from contradicting the theoretical, merely because it infringes upon the interest of speculative reason by removing the bounds which the latter has set itself, opening it to every nonsense and delusion of the imagination.” Kant, Critique of Practical Reason, 125. If only Kant had not submitted to the interest of practical Reason!

[31] For the ocean analogy from a Spinozist perspective see Stuart Hampshire, Spinoza (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1967). For the analogy from a Buddhist perspective, see Thich Nhat Hanh, The Heart of the Buddha’s Teaching, trans. Sister Annabel Laity (New York: Broadway Books, 1998).

[32] I support a version of the Spinozist view in Frederick B. Mills, “A Spinozist Approach to the Conceptual Gap in Consciousness Studies,” The Journal of Mind and Behavior 22, no. 1 (Winter, 2001).

[33] I adopt this language from Thomas Nagel, “What is it like to be a bat?” in Problems in Mind: Readings in Contemporary Philosophy of Mind, ed. Jack Stuart Crumley II (Mountain View, CA: Mayfield Publishing Company, 2000).

[34] I discuss this issue of property dualism in Mills, “A Spinozist Approach.”

[35] In this and the following paragraphs I am interpreting passages from Spinoza’s masterpiece, The Ethics, in Benedict De Spinoza, On the Improvement of the Understanding, The Ethics, Correspondence, trans. R. H. M. Elwes (New York: Dover Publications, 1955).

[36] This insight that the body knows it fears death is found in Camus, Myth.

[37] Ralph Waldo Emerson, “The Over-soul,” published in Essays, First Series, new ed. (Boston, J. Munroe and Company, 1847), http://www.emersoncentral.com/oversoul.htm (accessed June 22, 2006).

[38] Ibid.

[39] Ibid.

[40] Ibid. Emerson’s transcendentalism was probably indirectly derived, at least in part, from German idealism, in particular, the philosopher G. W. F. Hegel [1770-1831], who referred to the oversoul as Absolute Spirit. For Hegel, the Absolute Spirit is not only the divine radiating through humans, but it is the creator of the world. As creator (imagine here, some sort of divine artist!), the Absolute Spirit seeks to realize itself, that is, to see itself in the entire process of world history. History then, in a sense, is the mere playing out of the development of the Absolute Spirit. We humans are, in effect, merely finite expressions of the infinite life of Spirit. See Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, Phenomenology of Spirit, trans. A. V. Miller (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1977).

[41] See Chopra, Life After Death, 104.

[42] Robert Ernest Hume, trans., The Thirteen Principal Upanisads, rev. ed. (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1931), 404. The bracketed ‘individual soul’ was provided by a foot note in the original text. All other bracketed and parenthetical notes in this passage are in the cited text.

[43] Or, alternatively, by realizing that one’s soul is really founded upon the universal soul.

[44] Hume, Upanishads, 410. As Lewis M. Hopfe and Mark R. Woodward point out “the goal of most Indian religions is to break the cycle of karma and samsara and be free from the burden of life. This breaking free from life is called moksha.” Religions of the World (New Jersey: Prentice Hall, 2001), 83.

[45] Bhagavadgita or Song Divine, Sanskrit text and an English translation (Gorakhpur, India: Gita Press, 1978), 150-151.

[46] Chopra, Life After Death, combines Vedic philosophy with insights from physics, psychology, and neuroscience to argue that consciousness projects the universe and that there is life after death. This life after death, however, may in early stages retain memories and individuality, but ultimately, if it is to be liberated, becomes one with the soul of the universe. For example: “As long as you continue to feel like the person you were, you can’t experience the unknown” (ibid., 84); “…something eternal, boundless, and unchanging cannot be personal” (ibid., 31); “the soul is impersonal. It is Being , with no added qualities” (ibid., 130). See also ibid., 83, 87, 121, 220, 227, 239.

[47] Thich Nhat Hanh, Old Path White Clouds, trans. Mobi Ho (Berkeley, CA: Parallax Press, 1991), 172.

[48] Arthur Schopenhauer, The Will to Live: Selected Writings of Arthur Schopenhauer, ed. Richard Taylor (New York, NY: Doubleday and Company, 1962), 120.

[49] Schopenhauer, Will to Live, “The Life of the Species,” 107.

[50] Schopenhauer, Will to Live, “Metaphysics of the Love of the Sexes,” 77.

[51] Ibid., 80.

[52] Schopenhauer, Will to Live, “On Death,” 120-121.

[53] Friedrich Nietzsche, The Portable Nietzsche, ed. and trans. Walter Kaufmann (New York: The Viking Press, 1968), 42.

[54] I use the term scientific futurist instead of transhumanist in order to avoid some of the ideological baggage that may be attached to the latter term. The main idea is that such futurists believe that humans can achieve indefinite life by means of new technologies.

[55] Shermer, commenting on the futurist oriented Extropy Institute, describes their view as scientism. “Scientism is their religion, technocracy their politics, progress their God. They hold an unmitigated confidence that because science has solved problems in the past, it will solve all problems in the future, including the biggest one of all—death.” Shermer, How We Believe, 60.

[56] See Shermer’s discussion of the religious motivations that might have motivated physicist Frank Tipler to construct a theory of the universe whereby “when the universe eventually collapses, humans and their supercomputers will utilize the energy of the collapsing process to recreate every human who ever lived…” Shermer, Why People Believe Weird Things, 266. Shermer’s critique, however, is not limited to psychologizing Tipler, but is based more importantly on the limited and controversial nature of the empirical evidence and the over extension in the use of logic employed by Tipler in his books.

[57] Gerald Feinberg, The Prometheus Project: Mankind’s Search for Long Range Goals (New York: Anchor Books, 1969), 50.

[58] Feinberg, Prometheus Project, 95.

[59] Computation should be taken broadly here to include digital, cybernetic, dynamic, parallel distributed processing (PDP), neural net and hybrid forms of computation.

[60] According to computational functionalism, the human being is an information processing machine and its mental processes are patterns of activation in an appropriately organized system, that is, a system that performs cognitive functions. This view owes an intellectual debt to Norbert Wiener’s [1894-1964] work in cybernetics. Cybernetics basically argues that a human being is a dynamic machine that implements communication and control functions by sending and receiving messages. According to Wiener, “communication and control belong to the essence of man’s inner life…” Norbert Wiener, The Human Use of Human Beings (New York, NY: Da Capo Press, 1954), 18. What is essential to this “inner life” is the exchange of information, for it is by this exchange that a human being adjusts to her environment and thereby has a chance to survive and flourish. “Man is immersed in a world which he perceives through his sense organs. Information that he receives is coordinated through his brain and nervous system until, after the proper process of storage, collation, and selection, it emerges through effector organs, generally his muscles” (ibid., 17). The information that is received by the human machine is only processed when the messages received from the environment (through sensors) are decoded. Messages are patterns that carry information. What is critical to the constitution of the message is not the material through which it is conveyed, but the pattern from which persons extract a meaning. To be sure, the material must be adequate to the task. The point is that the messages may be transmitted in a number of different media, and each mode of transmission likely distorts or reduces the quantity and quality of the information conveyed. Pattern conveys information not in itself, but only for a machine that can extract content. Morse code, for example, can be conveyed by light reflected on a mirror, smoke signals, radio audio signals, the beating of drums, intermittent whistling, and any number of modes of transmission; the message will be essentially the same because the message is derived from the pattern. The beeps by themselves, however, like the phonetic noises of words, are meaningless until the intelligent machine decodes patterns them. Both the sender and receiver of Morse code can understand what the patterns mean. This account of how information is conveyed is the pattern-identity theory of information. Interestingly, Wiener also uses a pattern-identity argument for the identity of persons.

[61] Medium independence is referred to as “multiple realizability,” in Jack Copeland, Artificial Intelligence: A Philosophical Introduction (Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishers, 1993), 81. See also Daniel C. Dennett, Consciousness Explained (New York: Little, Brown and Company, 1991), 430.

[62] See, for example, the fascinating article, by Kwabena Boahen, “Neuromorphic Microchips,” Scientific American 292 (May 2005).

[63] It is also worthwhile to read about the transhumanist movement. For a partial description see Shermer, How We Believe, 257. I have left out views that expect genetic engineering to help solve the problem of aging and mortality.

[64] Andy Clark, Natural-born Cyborgs: Minds, Technologies, and the Future of Human Intelligence (New York: Oxford University Press, 2003), 31.

[65] See, for example, Steven Mann, “Cyborg seeks community,” Technology Review 102 (May 1999).

[66] Raymond Kurzweil, “Chasing Immortality: The Technology of Eternal Life,” an interview with Raymond Kurzweil by Craig Hamilton. Published in Enlightenment Magazine (September/November 2005), http://www.wie.org/j30/kurzweil.asp. See also Raymond Kurzweil and Terry Grossman, Fantastic Voyage: Live Long Enough to Live Forever (New York: Rodale Books, 2004); Raymond Kurzweil, “The Coming Merging of Mind and Machine,” Scientific American 10 (November 1999).

[67] Wiener, Human Use of Human Beings, 96.

[68] Ibid., 57.

[69] Ibid., 57, 65, 96.

[70] Hans Moravec, Robot (New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 1998), 170; see also 192.

[71] Feinberg, Prometheus Project, 180.

[72] Ibid., 179.

[73] William A. Luijpen, Existential Phenomenology (Pittsburgh, PA: Duquense University Press, 1963) 49. Heidegger points to the danger of man being subsumed by the technological culture which sees nature and the human being as all part of a standing reserve, a use value. At such a point “he himself will have to be taken as standing-reserve.” Martin Heidegger, The Question Concerning Technology, in Martin Heidegger: Basic Writings, ed. David Farrell Krell (New York: HarperCollins Publishers, 1977), 332.

[74] Feinberg, Prometheus Project, 186-187. Feinberg, however, does seek to be as democratic as possible in other areas of goal setting discussed in Prometheus Project.

[75] Francis Fukuyama, Our Posthuman Future: Consequences of the Biotechnology Revolution (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2002), 69.

[76] I have not answered the scenario where two brains are wired to the same inputs of a body. In such a case, I would admit, we could have two brains sharing the same body. But then the brains themselves would, within their own structures, have inputs and connections not shared by each other. If they did share all the same connections, they would be numerically the same brains!

[77] Author’s conversation with biologist Barry Chernoff, December 27, 2006.

[78] Francis Crick and Christof Koch, “Sidebar,” in David J. Chalmers, “The Puzzle of Conscious Experience,” Scientific American 237 (December 1995).

[79] Polkinghorne, Belief in God, 22.