Transhumanism on a possibility of real immortality

The paper substantiates a possibility of achieving real (not otherworldly) immortality. It identifies the types of immortality and analyzes critical assessments of the idea of real immortality by the bioconservatives using the methods of abstraction, induction and deduction, analysis and synthesis, mental simulation, hermeneutics and comparison. The paper uses principles of system isofunctionalism, information invariance in relation to its carrier and recognizability of entities to substantiate a possibility of immortality. Four conceivable approaches to immortal human existence are identified and characterized. They include genetically modified and technically improved individual (cyborg), avatar with a human brain, avatar with the human consciousness transferred to it and a digital disembodied individual. The authors consider the first and second options to be the most probable. The paper uses provisions by F.M. Dostoevsky and L.N. Tolstoy to show groundlessness of the bioconservatives’ position on the loss of the meaning of life and happiness by humans in the event of their immortality. It considers the hypothesis of I.I. Mechnikov that if a person lives a long and worthy life, at the end of it he develops a death instinct, i.e. a desire to die, similar to how at the end of a successful working day he needs to fall asleep. The paper concludes that the desire to die could appear with the elderly people losing their vitality due to old age and illness. People of the future will not age and will become almost completely free from illnessesas a result of the transhumanist transformations. Thus, their desire for death would not arise in them. Overcoming negative consequences of the overpopulation in a situation of immortality and deterioration in the living conditions on the planet is possible as a result of the cosmic expansion predicted by N.N. Fedorov and K.E. Tsiolkovsky, i.e. resettlement of the mankind outside the Earth.

 EDN DSXGKO

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