philosophy – Open Lifespan

Open Lifespan as conservatism: a defence of human life as existing value, part 3: particular valuing, the pan-biological argument

In part 1 I introduced 3 kinds of conservative dispositions or attitudes, following G.A. Cohen.

Valuing the valuable -> Particular Valuing
Valuing the valued -> Personal Valuing
Accepting the given

In part 2 I mentioned 4 different arguments in the context of Particular Valuing that can be formulated for the ongoing and unending preservation of individual human lives:

The pan-conservative argument: Valuing all actual, existing entities in general,
The pan-biological conservative argument: Valuing all actual, existing biological lives in general,
The pan-human, weak anthropocentric, conservative argument: Valuing all actual, existing human lives,
The ecological diversity argument: Valuing all actual, existing, living instances of ecological diversity.

In part 2 I worked out the first, most general pan-conservative argument in detail.

Today we discuss the more specific pan-biological conservative argument: Valuing all actual, existing biological lives in general.

Open Lifespan as conservatism: a defence of human life as existing value, part 2: particular valuing, the pan-conservative argument

In part 1 I introduced 3 kinds of conservative dispositions or attitudes, following G.A. Cohen.

Valuing the valuable -> Particular Valuing
Valuing the valued -> Personal Valuing
Accepting the given

Today we start to discuss different arguments to be made for indefinite healthy longevity a.k.a Open Lifespan in the context of Particular Valuing.

Now if we think along the line of Particular Valuing a la Cohen, we can make an argument for the ongoing and unending preservation of individual human lives according to at least 4 different respects/arguments:

The pan-conservative argument: Valuing all actual, existing entities in general,
The pan-biological conservative argument: Valuing all actual, existing biological lives in general,
The pan-human, weak anthropocentric, conservative argument: Valuing all actual, existing human lives,
The ecological diversity argument: Valuing all actual, existing, living instances of ecological diversity.

In the current post I spell out the general form of the argument in details using the first type of pan-conservative argument as a vehicle. Continue reading “Open Lifespan as conservatism: a defence of human life as existing value, part 2: particular valuing, the pan-conservative argument”

Open Lifespan via conservatism: a defence of human life as existing value, part 1

Introduction

Open Lifespan (OL) is the philosophy of biomedical longevity thinking itself and its limits. Its central part seems to be rooted in political philosophy, but not in the sense of applied ethics, so the task is to re-apply existing concepts in this discipline in order to illuminate its own problematics and in order to seek potential answers to t he problems of those pre-OL political philosophies. The original formulation of OL philosophy started referring to and in the context of the central and centrist liberal tradition, but now it’s time to look to the left and to the right for further considerations and new angles. At the time of this writing, this means looking into Marxian formulations on the left, and libertarian and perhaps conservative conceptualisations on the right. Generally, political philosophy as a political tradition, as well as an academic discipline ignored health and life expectancy issues actively and down-prioritised the central role these issues play in the life of individuals and institutions, so this tradition has a lot to compensate for.

For a starter let’s cite from Open Future: Open Life(span) as a foundation to reinvent liberalism:

Strange as it sounds but Open Lifespan is about conserving life if viewed from an unbiased angle. It is about conserving, maintaining human life using what we are familiar with as human life as its starting point. Open Lifespan is life conservatism at its most revolutionary, as I said it earlier when immersing this thought into liberal thinking.

G.A.Cohen’s Resucing Conservatism essay

The philosophically deepest formulation of conservatism I’ve found so far was G.A. Cohen’s unfinished Rescuing Conservatism: A Defense of Existing Value, Chapter 8 of Finding Oneself in the Other

Cohen says his conservatism is of a Hegelian type, by which he means exploring ‘modes of finding oneself in the other’, where ‘the subject is at peace with the object’.

In our current essay, we use his deep conceptual advances and apply it to a mode of finding and re-finding oneself in oneself, in the longer term. This is eminently doable, as Cohen himself does not say, his small c conservatism only applies in a Hegelian, ‘other’ setting and as it actually requires intellectual effort to realise the value of human longevity. What we loose though, apparently, is the Hegelian ‘subject-object’ type-of conservatism, which is not that big of a sacrifice to make in our context.

The meat of Cohen’s assay is distinguishing between the following 3 kinds of conservative dispositions or attitudes.

3 cases:

Valuing the valuable -> Particular Valuing
Valuing the valued -> Personal Valuing
Accepting the given

In what follows we introduce all 3 of them. Continue reading “Open Lifespan via conservatism: a defence of human life as existing value, part 1”

OL and the economy of time, part 4: how and why can Open Lifespan society be classless?

In the previous, third part of our study we introduced our main thesis defining Open Life Society as the Free Association of Open Lifespan (Citizen) Producers. We started to work out an argument, using only the vocabulary of OH workers and OL citizens leading to the conclusion that in an OL Society that can be characterised as Free Association of Open Lifespan (Citizen) Producers, literally everybody should do OH duties for that OL society to qualify as such.

In other words the defining feature of OL Society is OH technology and work, and in terms of social roles it means OH workers are the one defining this society.

For the basic thought experiment and vocabulary please check Open Lifespan Possible World part of Part 2.

The main bundle of problems I’d like to discuss today is related to whether such an OL society can be described as a class society?

The crucial problem to analyse here is whether OH workers in an OL society can form an actual economic class in the Marxian sense.

The answer is an unambiguous NO, OH workers cannot form a class and hence OL society is not a class society. But we need to leave behind some conceptual sweat before we can reach this conclusion. So let’s start the intellectual exercise.

First, I introduce the concept of class, class division, class society, class oppression, class struggle following mainly G.A. Cohen’s reading of Marx.

Second, I specify the Open Lifespan possible world a bit further to situate the class-question.

Third, I introduce separate arguments to show why OH workers cannot form a proper class in an OL society.

Fourth, I try to describe the role of OH worker further by describing it as a mandatory social role.

OL and the economy of time, part 3: Towards a Free Association of Open Lifespan Producers

Continuing the Open Lifespan and the economy of time series here. The following draft contains top level theses and foretells conclusions, a Grundrisse if you like, not as formally elaborated argument yet, as content beats the form currently. As such, this post is the most significant so far in terms of leading into the heart of the analysis and emerging new insights, but not in a yet analytical way. The ampleness of the draft material enforces this and the modified summary reflects the current status. Conceptual hardship remains but the robust outlines shine through. For the basic thought experiment and vocabulary please check Open Lifespan Possible World part of Part 2.

Summary of the whole study

Open Healthspan as a Service (Product) completely re-defines production as an activity by re-producing, re-generating indefinitely Open Lifespan bodies and lifetimes, including that of Open Healthspan workers providing these very services. This service leaves no space for alienation anymore. No objectification of labour, no externalisation of work -> no alienation. An Open Life Society, equipped with Open Healthspan as the main service product implements the real economy of time by exclusively producing additional healthy human lifetime. It neutralises the logic of capital but not killing it off with a revolution or anything. Just makes it redundant by making abundance in only one dimension by default, that of biological human lives. Leaves scarcity in other dimensions as it is. An Open Life Society is the Free Association of Open Lifespan (Citizen) Producers. It continuously produces abundant human labour time and indefinitely and mutually reproduces all of its citizens. Continue reading “OL and the economy of time, part 3: Towards a Free Association of Open Lifespan Producers”

Imagining Life Beyond Current Life Span study published in Innovation in Aging

In What is it like to be 572 year old? Self-imagining Open Lifespan; part 1, slides from 2017 I mentioned a philosophical thought experiment I thought up to have a device to exercise and test intuitions related to Open Lifespan from an individual point of view.

When I checked psychological research looking into distant self-simulation I’ve found that this philosophical idea can be exploited as a psychological tool. My favourite orienting academic paper was Turning I into me: Imagining your future self. So I contacted the first author, Professor C. Neil Macrae, out of the blue, who then connected me to the last author. The last author, now assistant professor of psychology, Brittany Tausen, then took the idea and turned it into a professional project: surveys were conducted including 700+ people enough for 3 different studies looking at different angles. We had a pretty good manuscript within ~3-4 months calculating from the birth of the idea itself, and that was early 2018. Next comes 2 years of painful peer-review experience at different journals, but eventually persistence, professionalism and innovation won, so here’s the paper, published in Innovation in Aging, and you can read it as free access!!!

The Mental Landscape of Imagining Life Beyond the Current Life Span: Implications for Construal and Self-Continuity

and here’s Translational Significance

The dialectics of Lifespan: Closed, Immortal, Open

A more descriptive, but alas longer, title would be: The dialectics of Lifespan: Mortal Closed, Infinite Immortal, Mortal Open.

Introduction

In what follows I present an intentionally dialectical thought process of mine. Although it’s my first such explicit attempt, it’s been in the making for a while, so first does not mean immature or naive [1].

My philosophical education and willingness prepared me to express myself using the techniques and manners of analytical philosophy. But it also gave me plenty exposure to other traditions of philosophy. Dialectics has a pretty ancient, and as such, dignified, ancestry within Western-style philosophy, starting explicitly with Plato’s version of back-and-forth dialogue between usually Socrates and his partners in dialogue. In this post the main concern is a dialectic process extracted from Hegel by more contemporary philosophers of the analytical school.

By introducing a dialectical process concerning how our human lifespan can be considered in 3 different ways what I aim to gain are the following 3 features evoking reactions from the readers:

Heuristic as an epistemological a-ha experience: by showing Open Lifespan through the lens of other, contradicting or opposing concepts
Existential Reality Check on what’s possible and feasible.
Political Message to instigate turning the Existential Reality check into a political expression by providing some of the heuristic.

What is not aimed here is to use the dialectical process as a distinctive method, as opposed to default analytical tools, and as having its own explanatory import. I believe that all dialectical processes present in philosophy, can be expressed in simple analytical means, devoid of this extra clothing, even if it means a reinterpretation of the ingredient concepts. On the other hand, I don’t claim, and stay neutral, whether all analytically presented concepts or arguments can be turned into dialectical processes.

Open Lifespan and the economy of time, part 2: resources might be scarce, except human lifetime

In the first post of this series I introduced my study applying, connecting concepts in the Marxian tradition to my problem and programme, that of Open Lifespan. Also I referenced the texts, I’ve been using. More often than, not, this investigation will lead to showing philosophical differences from this tradition, but expressed with the vocabulary of this tradition. The content of the current post has been sharped that way.

Summary of study

The rough summary of these notes: Open Healthspan as a Service (Product) completely re-defines production as an activity by re-producing, re-generating indefinitely Open Lifespan bodies, including that of Open Healthspan workers providing this very services. This service leaves no space for alienation anymore. No objectification of labour, no externalisation of work -> no alienation. An Open Life society, equipped with Open Healthspan as the main service product implements the real economy of time by exclusively producing additional healthy human lifetime. It neutralises the logic of capital but not killing it off with a revolution or anything. Just makes it redundant by making abundance in only one dimension by default, that of biological human lives. Leaves scarcity in other dimensions as it is. Continue reading “Open Lifespan and the economy of time, part 2: resources might be scarce, except human lifetime”

Open Lifespan and the economy of time, part 1: introduction, literature

(Observing) History is funny, in the horror movie sense of funny. Something’s funny going on, either as an external or an internal observation, sensation or impression. This is the second sense of funny, the strange, the odd, the weird. This is not the first sense of funny, the humorous one. The second sense of funny turns full creepy at the time of a crisis. In the current world situation we know exactly what causes this funny feeling, a pandemic that endangers our lives, livelihood, values and default societal structures in yet unknowns ways besides the known ones.

History-making, or changing the course of history by humans on the other hand, is not particularly funny, but can derivatively be, in both senses, when observed from the outside. Making history is … hard, in the first place. But, it can still be simple if the historical problem’s particularity suggest a fix, the universality of which can be recognised along that particular dimension. I believe that the proper reaction to the coronavirus pandemic is conceptually simple, but practically it’s not easy. Simple, but not easy.

In brief, the Coronavirus pandemic is the single most important practical argument I’ve ever seen emerging, to develop a robust healthy longevity technology protecting people of all ages & put that into the centre of human society and politics. In the pages of this book blog, I’ve worked out several such arguments myself but philosophical depth pales in comparison to this single actual biological reason. In my number one professional life, as the Founder of an aging/longevity startup I now work on a combined COVID-19 and immunosenescence targeted proteomics molecular test. Connecting biological survival to healthy longevity.

Apologies for this detour. It does not seem to me a detour anyway, but a way of showing the connection to what follows.

The bulk manuscript notes of the following project has been compiled together during fall/winter season of 2019. Last time I worked on this more seriously was in this January, when I could still afford that in the evenings, as my secret pet philosophy sub-project. It had ~2 readers so far, coming from the specific philosophical tradition, the texts of which my text is using. For many it might seem esoteric, because of the concepts and references. Am just going ahead and break it into parts to be able to share it here and make on-the-fly corrections, addendums, re-writes, logical re-grouping to lighten it up.

Here it goes. Continue reading “Open Lifespan and the economy of time, part 1: introduction, literature”

Correspondence with Graham Oppy on mathematical difference between infinite & indefinitely long lifespans; part 3

For the initial email exchange please see: Correspondence with Graham Oppy on mathematical difference between infinite & indefinitely long lifespans; part 1

For second email exchange please see: Correspondence with Graham Oppy on mathematical difference between infinite & indefinitely long lifespans; part 2

Email #5, 24th of February, 2020

Hi Graham,

the difference between indefinite and infinite lifespan I want to grab mathematically is this, conceptually framing it: if one is treated with what I call Open Healthspan Technology, all of the known internal ageing related caused of death is prevented, but this does not mean that there won’t be unknown ones emerging that might kill people off, and it certainly does not mean any external causes of death (all of your wipe-our scenarios and much more) will be eliminated, so this means indefinite lifespan with a daily non-zero mortality rate.

As opposed to this scenario, infinite lifespan is what I call immortality means a zero mortality rate on a daily basis, so practical invincibility that applies to all known ways to death (internal and external) that now can be avoided. And here we can include all of your wipe-our scenarios too. Continue reading “Correspondence with Graham Oppy on mathematical difference between infinite & indefinitely long lifespans; part 3”