Against the Tedium of Immortality.
In a well-known paper, Bernard Williams argues that an immortal life would not be worth living, for it would necessarily become boring. I examine the implications for the boredom thesis of three human traits that have received insufficient attention in the literature on Williams’ paper. First, human...
| Publicado en: | International Journal of Philosophical Studies Vol. 20; no. 5; pp. 623 - 645 |
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| Formato: | Artículo |
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Taylor & Francis Ltd
Dec2012
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| Acceso en línea: | Ver este registro en EBSCOhost |
| fields | @attributes: recordID: 1 pdfLink: plink: https://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=hlh&AN=83729026&site=ehost-live header: @attributes: shortDbName: hlh uiTerm: 83729026 longDbName: Humanities International Complete uiTag: AN controlInfo: bkinfo: jinfo: jid: 09672559 5BE jtl: International Journal of Philosophical Studies issn: 09672559 maglogo: N pubinfo: dt: Dec2012 vid: 20 iid: 5 pid: 377 pub: Taylor & Francis Ltd artinfo: ui: 83729026 10.1080/09672559.2012.713383 ppf: 623 ppct: 22 formats: fmt: – @attributes: type: T – @attributes: type: P size: 116KB tig: atl: Against the Tedium of Immortality. aug: au: Bruckner, DonaldW. affil: Penn State University - New Kensington, United States su: Immortality of the soul Williams, Bernard, 1929-2003 Boredom Attention Personality sug: subj: Immortality of the soul Williams, Bernard, 1929-2003 Boredom Attention Personality keyword: Bernard Williams boredom character immortality Makropulos ab: In a well-known paper, Bernard Williams argues that an immortal life would not be worth living, for it would necessarily become boring. I examine the implications for the boredom thesis of three human traits that have received insufficient attention in the literature on Williams’ paper. First, human memory decays, so humans would be entertained and driven by things that they experienced long before but had forgotten. Second, even if memory does not decay to the extent necessary to ward off boredom, once-satisfied desires often return after a sufficient period of time. Eternity would always contain sufficient time for our desires to rejuvenate. Third, even if too many of our desires were satisfied but not yet rejuvenated, we can expect that human ingenuity would continue to invent new pursuits, pastimes, careers, and ways of life that would prevent us from becoming bored as we moved from one to another. Finally, I consider and respond to several objections, including the claims that as much variety as I propose to be put into an eternal life is inconsistent with having one character throughout one’s life and that the sort of character change and memory decay I postulate is inconsistent with personal identity. pubtype: Academic Journal doctype: Article src: R language: English refInfo: copyright: @attributes: flag: Y custom: Copyright of International Journal of Philosophical Studies is the property of Taylor & Francis Ltd and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites without the copyright holder's express written permission. Additionally, content may not be used with any artificial intelligence tools or machine learning technologies. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. item: International Journal of Philosophical Studies holder: Taylor & Francis Ltd dt: @attributes: year: 2012 holdings: @attributes: islocal: N |
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