Should You Choose to Live Forever?

Stephen Cave is the Director of the Institute for Technology and Humanity at the University of Cambridge, UK. His other books include Immortality (Crown, 2012), AI Narratives (with Sarah Dillon and Kanta Dihal, Oxford UP, 2020), and Imagining AI (with Kanta Dihal, Oxford UP, 2023). He also advises governments around the world on the ethics of technology and has served as a British diplomat.John Martin Fischer is a Distinguished Professor in Philosophy at the University of California, Riverside, and in 2017 he was appointed a University Professor in the University of California, one of twenty-two in the ten-campus system, and the only philosopher. He has published widely on the topics of this debate, including: The Metaphysics of Death (Stanford UP, 1993), Our Stories: Essays on Life, Death, and Free Will (Oxford UP, 2009), and Death, Immortality, and Meaning in Life (Oxford UP, 2019). From 2012 to 2015, he was the Project Leader of The Immortality Project, funded by the John Templeton Foundation.Lord Martin Rees is a British cosmologist and astrophysicist. He is the fifteenth Astronomer Royal, appointed in 1995, and was Master of Trinity College at Cambridge University, from 2004 to 2012, and President of the Royal Society between 2005 and 2010.

“Should You Choose to Live Forever? is one of the newest entries in Routledge’s excellent ‘Little Debates about Big Questions’ series, and it’s the best one I’ve read. . . . it’s so accessible and well-structured (each chapter has its own breakdown of contents and summary at the end). The book serves both as an ideal introduction to the literature for a layperson and as the most up-to-date version of Fischer’s and Cave’s positions. I highly recommend it for anyone working on or interested in philosophical issues related to immortality. As Cave and Fischer show, this includes (or should include) just about everyone.” – Travis Timmerman, Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews“Scientists may eventually be able to extend some people’s lives for many hundreds or even thousands of years. This book is a friendly argument between two eminent philosophers about whether this would be good or bad for those people. Even if none of us now will be fortunate (or unfortunate) enough to be around to experience radical life extension, we can still benefit enormously from this debate’s illuminating exchanges, conducted with wit and verve, about death, the meaning and value of life, the nature of well-being, the metaphysics of personal identity, and many other fascinating and fundamentally important topics.” -- Jeff McMahan, University of Oxford"This book will reward anyone interested in the question of whether there's reason to live forever. And let's be honest, that's all of us. Cave and Fischer offer up a timely debate on a timeless issue." -- Benjamin Mitchell-Yellin, Sam Houston State University

• Foreword Part 1: Opening Statements 1. Why You Should Not Choose to Live Forever (Stephen Cave) 2. Why You Should Choose to Live Forever (John Martin Fischer) Part 2: First Round of Replies  3. Reply to John Martin Fischer (Steven Cave) 4. Reply to Stephen Cave (John Martin Fischer) Part 3: Second Round of Replies 5. Reply to John Martin Fischer's Reply (Stephen Cave) 6. Reply to Steven Cave's Second Essay (John Martin Fischer) Further Readings Glossary References Index