philosophy – Open Lifespan

Applying Kuhn’s Structure to biological aging research, part 1: initial questions

Recently I acquired a free copy of Kuhn’s classic The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (Second Edition with Postscript 1969) and immediately realised its potential to help us understand what’s going on in biological aging/longevity research currently. See my Twitter thread under hashtag #studyingstructure. This book is perhaps the best example of a 20th century philosophy – philosophy of science, to be more accurate – book that is easy to read and easy to popularise and was actually immensely read already. This also means easy to misunderstand and overgeneralise, see the mainstream over-use of the word paradigm, but this does not concern us here, since we are applying it within it’s own domain, to conceptually make sense historical change in a scientific discipline.

Utilitarianism is a double-edge sword for healthy longevity: apropos of de Grey’s ‘suffering’ argument, part 3: why is longevity not a mere side-benefit, but the shining core?

In the first part of our study we’ve introduced Aubrey de Grey’s utilitarian ‘suffering argument’ for making ‘defeating’ aging a top priority for humanity.

Then we have briefly mentioned that our study is going to demonstrate 4 problems related to this utilitarian premise in the context of healthy longevity that might be discouraging the further highlighted use of this or similar kind of arguments in the hands of healthy longevity supporters to successfully appeal to the mainstream.

The second post showed why the hedonistic utilitarian account behind the argument suffers from several conceptual wounds.

Today we are going to deal with Philosophical Problem 2:

The deep philosophical insufficiency of the ‘suffering argument’ in the context of ‘defeating aging’. Briefly, this argument is missing and actively ignores important positive arguments around healthy longevity, so it is not even the half of the philosophical story related to this topic, because it does not acknowledge the existence of those arguments or the need to articulate them. To put it other way, emphasising the ‘suffering argument’ misconstructs the philosophical problem at hand. Continue reading “Utilitarianism is a double-edge sword for healthy longevity: apropos of de Grey’s ‘suffering’ argument, part 3: why is longevity not a mere side-benefit, but the shining core?”

Utilitarianism is a double-edge sword for healthy longevity: apropos of de Grey’s ‘suffering’ argument, part 2: what’s wrong with negative hedonism?

In the first part of our study we’ve introduced Aubrey de Grey’s ‘suffering argument’ for making ‘defeating aging’ a top priority for humanity. After a brief analysis we’ve identified the philosophical core utilitarian premise of the argument:

Humanity’s foremost priority should be the goal that will most greatly reduce the totality of human suffering.

Then we have briefly mentioned that our study is going to demonstrate 4 problems related to this utilitarian premise in the context of healthy longevity that might be discouraging on the further highlighted use of this or similar kind of arguments in the hands of healthy longevity supporters to successfully appeal to the mainstream.

Today we are going to deal with Philosophical Problem 1:

Utilitarianism is philosophically pretty outdated due to some serious counterarguments concerning the utilitarian framework. Here we mainly take a look at the particular flavour of utilitarianism Aubrey is using, which is hedonism and a negative variant of it that focuses on ‘avoiding suffering’. Then we show some problems with how these ‘sufferings’ are defined and re-frame the experience machine argument against hedonism.

The course of the argument today is going to be a mini-class on philosophical utilitarianism to the uninitiated. Our main source: Will Kymlicka: Contemporary Political Philosophy, chapter 2, Utilitarianism p10-52. This ~40 page essay is something that can be studied over throughout a week of coffee breaks. I recommend doing so.

But before the deep dive into this bleeding theory we need to step back and briefly ask whether we are justified to use the term and concept of healthy longevity in the context to this argument while Aubrey is clearly only mentions ‘defeating aging’ in the framing of his argument? Aubrey himself mentions ‘longevity’ in his comment to Premise 2 as Regarding (2), we must remember that longevity is not the goal of defeating aging but merely a side-benefit. Continue reading “Utilitarianism is a double-edge sword for healthy longevity: apropos of de Grey’s ‘suffering’ argument, part 2: what’s wrong with negative hedonism?”

Utilitarianism is a double-edge sword for healthy longevity: apropos of de Grey’s ‘suffering’ argument , part 1: 4 problems

Last time I had a chance to have a longer in person chat with Aubrey de Grey was in 2018 in Cambridge in the Panton Arms Pub. Mostly we were talking science, translational geroscience as it is frequently been called lately in the context of foundational research into biological aging with the explicit purpose of translating it back to human to counteract/slow/stop/reverse the negative consequences of biological aging.

We also exchanged some thoughts on the relevance of the philosophy of healthy longevity in the context of the whole movement and emerging industry. I think I’ve understood Aubrey’s minimalist position while obviously readers of Open Lifespan can observe to me a well articulated philosophy is a crucial ingredient of the success of the whole movement and a super exciting new research topic in itself.

Aubrey, being one of the most visible faces of the longevity movement in the last 15 years or so, had been confronted many times with philosophical issues or counterarguments around this topic and he sort of worked out himself a ‘strongest’ argument during these years. I call this the ‘suffering’ argument. You can already read about this argument in my 2006 blogterview with Aubrey, and am going to comment on that later.

Now this argument has reached its more or less finalised form in a Pairagraph discourse between Aubrey and philosopher John K Davis and was published in August, 2020 under the moniker Should Defeating Aging Be Humanity’s Foremost Priority?

In it Aubrey writes that ‘arguments for or against utilitarianism far exceed my philosophical pay grade’. Although am certainly not paid for doing Open Lifespan, but my philosophical training and specialising on the philosophy of longevity since my MS thesis in 2005 puts me in a comfortable position to work out this very problem in this very context a bit. And am doing this cause working this out has a utility in this field. Honestly, it initially presented itself to me as quite a boring task, since I’ve mostly thought of utilitarianism as an intellectually unchallenging and outdated philosophical position, but my evaluation on this changed as I dug deeper and the process is still ongoing. Such is the nature of actual and active philosophical enquiry. And there’s more to it concerning longevity politics, but more on that later.

In this post I do 3 things. Continue reading “Utilitarianism is a double-edge sword for healthy longevity: apropos of de Grey’s ‘suffering’ argument , part 1: 4 problems”

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