Immortality without Boredom more

© 2009 The Authors Journal compilation © 2009 Blackwell Publishing Ltd Ratio (new series) XXII 3 September 2009 0034–0006 IMMORTALITY WITHOUT BOREDOM Lisa Bortolotti and Yujin Nagasawa rati_431 261..277 Abstract In this paper we address Bernard Williams’ argument for the undesirability of immortality. Williams argues that unavoidable and pervasive boredom would characterise the immortal life of an individual with unchanging categorical desires. We resist this conclusion on the basis of the distinction between habitual and situational boredom and a psychologically realistic account of significant factors in the formation of boredom. We conclude that Williams has offered no persuasive argument for the necessity of boredom in the immortal life.1 1. Introduction The attention on scientific research that has the potential to extend our life span has sparked new interest in the long-standing debate on whether prolonging life or obtaining immortality would be desirable. The main argument against the desirability of immortality, developed by Bernard Williams in 1973, presents us with a dilemma between two scenarios.2 In the former, an individual with unchanging interests and life goals continues to exist indefinitely. There are only a limited number of experiences she can have, and can wish to have, given her interests and life goals. After satisfying her interests and achieving her goals, she is affected by boredom to the point that her life becomes unbearable, and she no longer wishes to live. In the alternative scenario, the immortal life remains exciting and worth living, because there are new interests to satisfy and new life goals to attain. But sameness of interests and life goals is crucial for personal identity. In 1 The first draft of this paper benefited from comments by Francis Longworth, and discussion with Erik Angner and Larry James during the Happiness and the Meaning of Life one-day conference which was held in Birmingham on 19th May 2007. We also acknowledge the intellectual support of the ‘Dying and Death for the 21st Century’ research group at the University of Birmingham. 2 B. Williams, ‘The Makropulos Case: Reflections on the Tedium of Immortality’ in Problems of the Self , (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1973), pp. 82–100. 262 LISA BORTOLOTTI AND YUJIN NAGASAWA this scenario we are presented not with the indefinitely long life of one individual, but with the conjunction of many shorter lives belonging to different individuals who have different interests and life goals. In this latter case, the question whether immortality is desirable cannot be meaningfully answered, because, if the subjects of the mini-lives are distinct, none of them individually is immortal. The first scenario is based on the conviction that the range of experiences worth having by one individual with certain interests and life goals would be limited. In an indefinitely long life, the repetition of such experiences would be inevitable and it would ultimately generate boredom. Allowing interests and life goals to change, as in the second scenario, is only an apparent solution, as it is not compatible with Williams’ assumption about personal identity, that what defines one as a unique individual is sameness of interests and life goals. More recent attacks on the desirability of immortality are inspired by this argument and further articulate the thought, already present in the original 1973 paper, that an indefinitely long life would lack meaning. This lack of meaning would be due to the detachment and emptiness caused by repetitive experiences in the absence of interests to satisfy and goals to attain. Williams is concerned with the meaning of life, which is a classic philosophical issue, and treats it as a conceptual problem. The cogency of his argument, however, depends crucially on empirical facts about the quality of the immortal life and about the likely causes and consequences of permanent states of boredom. On the basis of a useful distinction between two types of boredom and classical and recent psychological evidence on boredom proneness and the likely causes of boredom, we shall argue that there is no reason to believe that an indefinitely long life would be necessarily boring to the point of becoming undesirable, even when we concede that such a life would be characterised by the repetition of similar experiences. 2. The Makropulos Case It is likely that when the technology for prolonging life becomes available, many people will welcome the chance of becoming immortal, but will they live to regret their choice? If we were convinced by the argument that the immortal life would be boring © 2009 The Authors Journal compilation © 2009 Blackwell Publishing Ltd IMMORTALITY WITHOUT BOREDOM 263 to the point of becoming unbearable and meaningless, then debates about the sustainability of a population with increasing life expectancy, which often presuppose that living longer is a desirable goal for the individual, would be reshaped. Moreover, we would value lifestyle choices aimed at the prevention of dying to a lesser extent and we would be less keen to support and invest into those research projects aimed at achieving longer lives. Williams starting point is the idea that ‘a state of boredom, indifference and coldness’ where ‘everything is joyless’ ensues after one has lived the same experiences over and over again. Williams describes the case of Elina Makropulos, a woman who was given the elixir of immortal life by her father and went on to live for over 300 years. Elina is a literary character, created by ˇ Karel Capek for the theatre, and then revisited by Leo Janacek in an opera with the same title, The Makropulos Case.3 Williams’ description of the case is very sketchy, so we will supplement it ˇ here with further details found in Capek and Janacek. What is special about Elina? It is important to notice that, both in the play and in the opera, Elina is a character with a distinct personality, life goals and interests that have been present in all stages of her long life. Elina has lived for 300 years without any sign of ageing, and has had an intense love life and a very successful career as an opera singer. But to keep the secret of her unusual longevity, she had to change name and country a number of times, leaving those she loved behind or seeing them die. Maybe because she suffered this type of loss too many times, Elina develops some detachment from the people around her. She claims she does not care for the well-being of her children (she cannot even remember how many she had) and she looks indifferent to the many declarations of love that she receives, treating her suitors with contempt. Other characters in the play accuse her of being unable to love and ‘cold as a corpse’. Towards the end of the opera and the play, Elina expresses the thought that life is beautiful when it is short and that it is the fact that it does not last forever that gives it meaning and direction. In the end, Elina decides not to take the elixir that would give her another 300 years of youth and she dies. 3 ˇ K. Capek, ‘The Makropulos Case’ in Four Plays (ed. and transl. by P. Majer and C. Porter). (London: Methuen, 1999), pp. 165–260. © 2009 The Authors Journal compilation © 2009 Blackwell Publishing Ltd 264 LISA BORTOLOTTI AND YUJIN NAGASAWA Williams decribes her situation as follows: Everything that could happen and make sense to one particular human being of 42 had already happened to her. Or rather, all the sorts of things that could make sense to one woman of a certain character.4 Notice that the assumption here is that there is only a limited number of experiences that would enrich and give meaning to a certain stage of a woman’s life, unless she could change interests and personality every time she was getting to the bottom of all the meaningful and rewarding experiences available to her. Williams believes that the reason why Elina wants to die is that, after 300 years of being the same age and doing the same things, she is tired. She finds the constant repetition of similar experiences unbearable and, as a consequence, she develops detachment from her own life. She wanted to be a proficient singer, and she achieved that goal. She aspired to love as a companion and as a mother, and she did that, many more times than she thought she would. So any experience of that kind that comes her way seems no longer exciting or enriching. As Williams explicitly recognises in the paper, the Makropulos case is not a good illustration of what would happen in a world of immortals. In the play, Elina is one of two or three people on Earth who drank the elixir and, as a consequence, had a prolonged existence. Her being different from the people around her is probably partly responsible for her solitude and sense of detachment. Because she cannot share her secret, she feels isolated. In a world where immortality was available to many, this sense of not being understood and of not having anybody to share the concerns of one’s life with, would not necessarily apply. But it is of course possible that the other aspects of Elina’s experience would be shared in the world of immortals that we are imagining, as these immortal beings would also, presumably, according to Williams, exhaust at some stage the list of experiences that could make their lives meaningful and worthwhile given their interests and life goals.5 A good illustration of this scenario can be found in the short story written by José Luis Borges, The Immortal, where an 4 5 Williams, ‘The Makropulos Case’, p. 90. Williams, ‘The Makropulos Case’, p. 90. © 2009 The Authors Journal compilation © 2009 Blackwell Publishing Ltd IMMORTALITY WITHOUT BOREDOM 265 entire community of immortal people is affected by a permanent state of apathy.6 The sense of detachment Williams describes in Elina is analysed in terms of her having exhausted all her categorical desires. These are desires that are not conditional on one’s continued existence but constitute a reason for wanting to go on living. The desire to eat a piece of carrot cake is (usually) not categorical. That desire alone would not ‘propel one into the future’, that is, it would not be sufficient by itself to give one a reason to continue to live.7 On the other hand, parents often have the desire to take care of their young children and be there to offer them guidance and support. That desire can play the role of a categorical desire by providing a sufficient reason for wanting to continue to live. The only way, Williams argues, to be immortal and not develop the form of detachment from one’s own life that results from the exhaustion of categorical desires is to have an indefinite number of disjoint lives, rather than to extend one’s unique life – but this would not count as the genuine survival of the same person. An extreme scenario of this kind is illustrated in Michel Houellebecq’s novel, The Possibility of an Island, where immortality is achieved via a cloning technique.8 Between the human ancestor who is the protagonist of the story (Daniel) and his subsequent clones (Daniel2, Daniel3, etc.), who are labelled as ‘neohumans’, there is no physical continuity, strictly speaking, as the clones are new individuals. All they share is the genetic code as all the subsequent clones are derived from the human ancestor’s DNA. There is no psychological continuity either, as memories are not transferable. But this problem is obviated by requiring that clones read the life story of their human ancestor and the life stories of the clones who existed before them. Although there is a genetic link between the individuals called ‘Daniel’, it is obvious that they are different individuals with different life stories, feelings, opinions, interests and desires. The issue that needs addressing in relation to the Makropulos case is whether Williams is right in thinking that the repetition of potentially rewarding experiences can cause the sense of detachment from one’s own life that Elina suffers from. Wisnewski J. L. Borges, ‘The Immortal’ in Labyrinths (London: Penguin, 2000). Williams, ‘The Makropulos Case’, p. 86. 8 M. Houellebecq, The Possibility of an Island (transl. by G. Bowd) (London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 2005). 7 6 © 2009 The Authors Journal compilation © 2009 Blackwell Publishing Ltd 266 LISA BORTOLOTTI AND YUJIN NAGASAWA rightly observes that Williams’ position is convincing only if we intend by boredom a quite radical state of exhaustion of categorical desires, as opposed to the temporary emotional state that can emerge from repetitive experiences or lack of novel stimulation.9 We shall develop this objection further. This is our reconstruction of the first horn of the dilemma in Williams’ argument: (1) If you are immortal and have unchanging categorical desires, then you will have similar experiences repeatedly. (2) If you have similar experiences repeatedly, then you will at some stage exhaust all your categorical desires. (3) If you exhaust all your categorical desires, then you will be afflicted by pervasive boredom. (4) If you have pervasive boredom, then you will suffer from lack of motivation to act, feelings of detachment and loss of meaning. (5) If your life is affected by lack of motivation to act, feelings of detachment and loss of meaning, then it is not worth living. Conclusion: If you are immortal and have unchanging categorical desires, then your life is not worth living. In the rest of this paper we shall challenge the view that the notion of boredom that derives from the repetition of similar experiences is the notion of boredom that is likely to make life meaningless and undesirable. 3. Situational and Habitual Boredom Many of the premises of Williams’s argument are vulnerable. In particular, they suffer from lack of support and are implausible on the basis of considerations of psychological realism. Let’s briefly consider the claim that we derive from premises (1) and (2), that if we are immortal and have unchanging categorical desires, then we will exhaust our categorical desires. Wisnewski challenges this aspect of Williams’ argument by observing that the type of boredom that would truly make life 9 J. Wisnewski, ‘Is the Immortal Life worth Living?’, International Journal for Philosophy of Religion 58 (2005), pp. 27–36. © 2009 The Authors Journal compilation © 2009 Blackwell Publishing Ltd IMMORTALITY WITHOUT BOREDOM 267 undesirable, if not unbearable, is not a necessary feature of immortality. Even in the immortal life new situations could emerge in which people who seem to have already exhausted all their categorical desires form new ones without changing any essential feature of their personality. Wisneswski’s example is that of a man who has the categorical desire to be the best living musician and, in order to satisfy this desire, he learns to play all musical instruments to perfection. It is conceivable that, once he has achieved this aim, the man first feels satisfied with himself but then he is unable to find further reasons to continue to live. As Wisnewski argues, the invention of a new musical instrument could change this man’s situation. Levy suggests that there are categorical desires that might never be properly exhausted, because their satisfaction involves openended activities.10 The example used is that of valuable activities whose aim ‘cannot be fixed prior to the activity itself’ and ‘is gradually defined in the course of its pursuit’, such as the pursuit of truth and justice or the practice of artistic creativity. What people take truth and justice to be is likely to develop in the course of their activity of discovery and need not be predetermined. The aim of this categorical desire could be a moving target. The claim is that interest in these types of projects could keep people engaged for an indefinitely long time. The repetition of similar experiences might not give rise to the exhaustion of unchanging categorical desires given the nature of some categorical desires (Levy’s open-ended activities) and the potential for having experiences that are similar but not identical to previously valued experiences (as in the case of Wisnewski’s musician). Moreover, Williams’ argument seems to depend for its persuasiveness on the extent to which the exhaustion of categorical desires affects the meaningfulness and desirability of one’s life. Even conceding that all the categorical desires of a unique individual might at some point be fully satisfied, this condition does not seem to necessarily lead to desiring death as opposed to life. Not having an independent reason to continue to live is not the same as having a reason to bring about one’s own death, or even to come to believe that one’s life is not worth living. Life might lose its interest if there is nothing that one desires independently 10 N. Levy, ‘Downshifting and Meaning of Life’, Ratio XVIII (2005), pp. 176–189, at pp. 184–185. © 2009 The Authors Journal compilation © 2009 Blackwell Publishing Ltd 268 LISA BORTOLOTTI AND YUJIN NAGASAWA of one’s own continued existence, but death might be judged as a worse option than a life in which some pleasure is obtained from the satisfaction of conditional desires and in which the possibility of new categorical desires emerging cannot be safely ruled out. For the purposes of the present discussion, though, we shall assume that Williams’ distinction between categorical and conditional desires is unproblematic and we shall not put any pressure on premises (4) and (5) of his argument. Rather, we want to suggest that the type of boredom which is likely to emerge from the repetition of similar experiences is not the type of boredom that could have pervasive effects on the desirability and meaningfulness on one’s existence. Some psychologists call situational the type of boredom that arises from poor stimulation or repeated experiences.11 This type of boredom does not usually have long-term consequences and can be characterised as a state of relatively low arousal which is attributed to an inadequately stimulating situation.12 A common case of situational boredom is when the subject is bored with something specific, i.e. an experience or an activity that might also have been regarded by the subject as very pleasant to start with, but is then perceived as boring because it has been repeated too many times. Gabriel defines these episodes of boredom as ‘expectable products of a monotonous, repetitious, non-stimulating environment’.13 The boredom that is manifested in personal dissatisfaction and lack of involvement and that signals low interest in one’s present and future life has been called habitual (Bargdill) or chronic boredom (Eastwood et al.).14 This type of boredom presents very different phenomenology from situational boredom: the subject is not bored with something specific, but with life in general. Among the phenomena either correlated with habitual boredom or directly stemming from it, we find inactivity, withdrawal, anxiety, alienation, anti-social behaviour, alcohol and drug abuse, 11 R. Bargdill, ‘The Study of Life Boredom’, Journal of Phenomenological Psychology 31 (2000), pp. 188–219. 12 W. L. Mikulas and S. Vodanovich, ‘The Essence of Boredom’, Psychological Record 43 (1993), pp. 3–12. 13 M. Gabriel, ‘Boredom: Exploration of a Developmental Perspective’. Clinical Social Work Journal, 16 (1988), pp. 156–164, at p. 156. 14 Bargdill, ‘The Study of Life Boredom’; J. Eastwood, C. Cavaliere, S. Fahlman, and A. Eastwood, ‘A Desire for Desires: Boredom and its Relation to Alexithymia’, Personality and Individual Differences 42 (2007), pp. 1035–1045. © 2009 The Authors Journal compilation © 2009 Blackwell Publishing Ltd IMMORTALITY WITHOUT BOREDOM 269 and even depression and suicide (Vodanovich 2000). Gabriel observes that in cases of habitual boredom, ‘boredom does not appear responsive to external influences but rather reflective of a recurrent state of inner life’.15 The condition that psychologists call habitual or chronic boredom has not escaped philosophical attention. Wisnewski (2005, 31) offers a characterisation of habitual boredom by using Williams’ own terminology: ‘we no longer have categorical desires propelling us into the future, and by virtue of this fact, we become bored with life’. Overall and Walker refer to this phenomenon as ‘ennui’.16 What are the consequences of the distinction between situational and habitual boredom for the argument by Williams? He does not explicitly distinguish between types of boredom in the paper and argues that the state of boredom that is sufficient for making one’s existence meaningless and undesirable is due to the exhaustion of categorical desires. Our main strategy will be to resist premises (3), that we are going to be affected by pervasive boredom if we exhaust our categorical desires, because it is an empirical claim with no evidence going for it. If we take seriously the distinction between situational and habitual boredom, Williams’ pervasive boredom is more plausibly identified with habitual boredom on the basis of the description of Elina’s behaviour. And the best available hypothesis about likely causes of habitual boredom is that it arises from the loss or outright absence of categorical desires rather than from their satisfaction. If Williams is talking about habitual boredom in his paper, then the claim we derive from premises (2) and (3) of his argument, that if we have repeated experiences, then we develop habitual boredom, also turns out to be implausible, or at best unsupported. The repetition of similar experiences seems to be a trigger for boredom, but there is no empirically grounded connection between the repetition of similar experiences and habitual boredom. These two considerations undermine the very motivation for Williams’ argument: if the loss or absence of categorical desires is responsible for the onset of habitual boredom, and not their exhaustion which would come from the repetition of similar Gabriel, ‘Boredom’. C. Overall, Aging, Death, and Human Longevity (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2003); M. Walker, ‘Boredom, Experimental Ethics, and Superlongevity’ in C. Tandy (ed.) Death and Anti-Death (vol. 4), (Palo Alto: Ria University Press, 2006). 16 15 © 2009 The Authors Journal compilation © 2009 Blackwell Publishing Ltd 270 LISA BORTOLOTTI AND YUJIN NAGASAWA experiences, then habitual boredom does not seem to be a special feature of immortality. The loss or absence of categorical desires, as opposed to their exhaustion, is a phenomenon that affects shorter as well as longer lives. 4. Boredom and Goal Satisfaction A common trend in classic and recent psychological studies of boredom is to treat boredom as a trait rather than a state. It emerges from empirical investigations conducted with subjects affected by boredom that their condition is much less dependant on the contextual factors of their experience than we might think, and is instead positively correlated with character traits or other individual constants. This is thought to be the case especially for habitual boredom. Greenson suggests that habitual boredom is due to an ‘inhibition of fantasy’, whereas Bernstein believes that it comes from a lack of emotional awareness.17 More recently, Eastwood and colleagues have confirmed a positive correlation between research participants’ boredom proneness and their lack of emotional awareness.18 The study finds that it is possible to predict how prone to boredom individuals are and how difficult it is for them to cope with boredom on the basis of the degree of attention they pay to their thoughts and feelings and their capacity for examining and labelling their moods. On the basis of these results, the hypothesis is that boredom is not caused by ‘an impoverished environment’, but it is ‘the result of an internal psychological process’ which affects some individuals more than others. Even if we concede that the repetition of similar experiences is an unavoidable feature of the immortal life (premise one), there are no reasons to believe that habitual boredom is a necessary consequence of the repetition of similar experiences (from premises 2 and 3). Although the repetition of similar experiences is regarded as a trigger of situational boredom, it does not seem to be correlated with the behaviours manifested by people affected 17 R. Greenson, ‘On Boredom’, Journal of the American Psychoanalytic Association 1 (1953), pp. 7–21; H. Bernstein, ‘Boredom and the Ready Made Life’, Sociological Research 42 (1975), pp. 512–537. 18 J. Eastwood, et al., ‘A Desire for Desires’, p. 1037. © 2009 The Authors Journal compilation © 2009 Blackwell Publishing Ltd IMMORTALITY WITHOUT BOREDOM 271 by habitual boredom. We cannot have reliable evidence on the incidence of boredom in immortal beings for lack of experimental subjects, but we can study the incidence of boredom-related behaviours in subjects who are exposed to more repetitive lifestyles, such as people in prison.19 Findings suggest that behaviours associated with boredom are more frequently manifested in these populations, but they do not tell us whether boredom is due to those features of a life in prison that are comparable with likely features of an immortal life (such as repeated similar experiences), or to those features that are specific to, say, the prison situation (where experiences are limited in a specific way, e.g. by lack of freedom and isolation). Prima facie, the finding that boredom proneness in all its forms, and especially proneness to habitual boredom, depends on personality traits or constants of the individuals who are the subject of experience puts additional pressure on the motivation for Williams’ argument: why should we regard boredom as a necessary feature of the immortal life? But we are happy to concede that environmental triggers might play an important role in how boredom (including habitual boredom) develops, or even that they might be necessary for its onset. These are empirical claims that need further investigation, but the picture of boredom emerging so far is that it is the result of different factors, some related to constant traits of the individual and some related to low stimulation and the repetition of experiences. Even if constant traits were the most reliable predictor of boredom, one could argue that they would not lead to boredom in the absence of appropriate environmental triggers. If the immortal life is richer of repetitive experiences than the mortal life, the argument goes, then these triggers would be much more abundant in the immortal life, increasing the risk of habitual boredom for all those already pre-disposed to it. 19 See A. Sieminska, E. Jassem and K. Konopa, ‘Prisoners’ Attitudes Towards Cigarette Smoking and Smoking Cessation: A Questionnaire Study in Poland’, BMC Public Health 6 (2006), pp. 181–190; R. Richmond, T. Butler, J. Belcher, A. Wodak, K. Wilhelm and E. Baxter, ‘Promoting Smoking Cessation among Prisoners: Feasibility of a Multi-Component Intervention’, Australian and New Zealand Journal of Public Health 30 (2006), pp. 474–478; and L. Rhodes, Total Confinement: Madness and Reason in the Maximum Security Prison (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2004); C. Haney, ‘Mental Health Issues in LongTerm Solitary and “Supermax” Confinement’, Crime and Delinquency 49 (2003), pp. 124– 156. © 2009 The Authors Journal compilation © 2009 Blackwell Publishing Ltd 272 LISA BORTOLOTTI AND YUJIN NAGASAWA In order to properly evaluate this possibility, though, we need to unpack the thought that the repetition of similar experiences is sufficient for habitual boredom, and consider whether we have any reasons to believe that habitual boredom comes from the exhaustion of categorical desires (premise 3). Serious doubts can be shed on the link between the exhaustion of categorical desires and habitual boredom. Bargdill has concentrated on habitual boredom and attempted to investigate empirically the possible reasons for it.20 Utilising the (admittedly controversial) method of individual situated narrative, he analysed some subjects’ accounts of their own experience of boredom and found some common aspects. Either they had never had any life goal, or they had them and failed to satisfy them. In this latter case, Bargdill found a fairly common pattern. At first, subjects had goals that made them interested in their lives, but after encountering some obstacles towards the realisation of those goals, they gave them up and changed the direction of their lives accordingly. Bargdill calls this phenomenon ‘compromising life projects’. Instead of recognising their own responsibility in what was perceived as failing to achieve their life goals, subjects often attributed this responsibility to external factors or other people, often developing anger and frustration. The psychological literature confirms that habitual boredom has very serious consequences for the well-being of the individual suffering from it, often leading to self-destructive and anti-social behaviour.21 If immortals were by necessity affected by habitual boredom, this would definitely constitute a good argument against the desirability of immortality. But for the research participants in Bargdill’s study the patterns of behaviour characterised as manifestations of habitual boredom were caused by never having had any life goal or having stopped pursuing a life goal without attaining it, and therefore perceiving themselves as failures. The research participants in that study had all, one way or the other, failed to give a direction to their lives. The case of Elina Makropulos is very different. She had no further life goal to aspire to, because she had already pursued and satisfied all her existing life goals. Her circumstances would not be a reason for her to believe that she had failed to give a direction 20 21 Bargdill, ‘The Study of Life Boredom’. Bargdill, ‘The Study of Life Boredom’. © 2009 The Authors Journal compilation © 2009 Blackwell Publishing Ltd IMMORTALITY WITHOUT BOREDOM 273 to her life. Elina’s story is a story of success, not of failure. The evidence gathered by Bargdill does not support any correlation of the type that Williams postulates between goal satisfaction and habitual boredom. Recall the dilemma we started with. Williams argues that either one has a series of disjoint mini-lives in each of which one has new categorical desires to satisfy; or one extend one’s own life forever. In the former case, all one’s lives would be exciting and worth living, but there would be no sense in which the subject of those lives is a unique individual. The very idea of survival is compromised. In the latter case, the personal identity condition is satisfied, but one’s life is doomed to boredom. In the Makropulos case, Elina cannot be different from herself and develop new categorical desires to keep her engaged and motivated. Once she has satisfied all her original categorical desires, she finds that she no longer enjoys her life experiences and is ultimately stuck in an existence devoid of meaning. In order to properly understand Elina’s decision to stop living and the way in which she described her pervasive lack of motivation and her withdrawal, we need to assume that she has a version of habitual boredom (as opposed to situational boredom). In support of this reading, Williams characterises Elina’s boredom as a feature of all her perception, as if there was really nothing that could surprise or interest her anymore. But it is implausible to think that this radical state of boredom stems from the repetition of experiences and the exhaustion of categorical desires. As we have attempted to show by reference to the psychological evidence, although boredom can be triggered in part by the limited range and quality of the subject’s experience, it seems to depend heavily on the psychological characteristics of the individual and their capacity to acquire or maintain some life-goals. Elina might not find any reasons to live at the end of her first 300 years, but she is in a very different position from the inmates of maximum security prison. Although she has been separated from those she loved in the past and she has experienced some limitation of freedom by having to disguise her identity, she has given the direction she wanted to her life and achieved what she had set out to achieve. It is the failure in developing, pursuing and ultimately achieving life goals that is most likely to determine habitual boredom. The view that some of the alleged features of the immortal life, i.e. the repetition of similar experiences and goal exhaustion, are significant © 2009 The Authors Journal compilation © 2009 Blackwell Publishing Ltd 274 LISA BORTOLOTTI AND YUJIN NAGASAWA factors in the occurrence of habitual boredom is unsupported and unmotivated. The Makropulos case does illustrate something significant, that for some individuals the exhaustion of life goals, together with feelings of isolation and failure of integration, would render life unbearable. But we cannot find in Williams’ argument any good reason to believe that in general or by necessity an immortal life would be afflicted by habitual boredom. 5. Objections In this final section we shall address some objections to the argument we presented. Here is a first attempt to defend Williams’ claim that the immortal life would be necessarily boring. We claimed that detachment from one’s own life and loss of meaning are effects of habitual boredom and would not be a typical consequence of situational boredom, but the repetition of similar experiences that could characterise the immortal life is likely to generate situational boredom and at best be only a trigger for habitual boredom. We concluded that there is no good reason to believe that the immortal life would necessarily be plagued by habitual boredom. An obvious reply is to suggest that situational boredom can give rise to habitual boredom, and therefore a more substantial link can be identified after all between the repetition of similar experiences and the detachment from one’s life that makes the Makropulos case so tragic. In the interpretation of the psychological data on boredom we found no persuasive argument that situational and habitual boredom are related in this way and the phenomenology of the two experiences of boredom as it is manifested in first-person reports and third-person descriptions seems to be dramatically different. Ultimately this is an empirical question and we do not mean to rule out a priori the possibility that a link between situational and habitual boredom could be identified in the future. If such a link were discovered, then it would be reasonable to expect the immortal life to contain more cases, or more dramatic cases, of habitual boredom. However, in his paper Williams has failed to give us any conceptual or empirical argument for this conclusion, and therefore his way of reaching the conclusion would remain unwarranted, even if the conclusion turned out to be true. © 2009 The Authors Journal compilation © 2009 Blackwell Publishing Ltd IMMORTALITY WITHOUT BOREDOM 275 Another related worry could be articulated as follows. We assume that what Williams has in mind, when he argues that immortal life is not worth living, is that the immortal life would be plagued by habitual boredom. However, he could be thinking about a really persistent form of situational boredom, which could be equally harmful if experienced for eternity. In our view, the literary evidence in Williams’ paper does not support this reading, given that Williams associates the relevant type of boredom with the exhaustion of categorical desires and with a failure of engagement with all available experiences, rather than with a sustained but relatively circumscribed lack of interest. But, even if he had in mind just a persistent form of situational boredom, what is missing in his argument is a reason to believe that situational boredom could be so harmful and generate lack of motivation to act, feelings of detachment and loss of meaning (premise 4). If he thought that situational boredom could have serious effects, but not as serious and damaging as those described in premise 4 of his argument, then his conclusion would remain unsupported. The target of Williams’ argument is to show that death is preferable to living for an indefinitely long time. The argument we just considered is an instance of a more general strategy, aimed at showing that immortality is undesirable because it would be ‘more of a bad thing’. This strategy cannot be used to rescue Williams, because it is not in the spirit of Williams’ argument. Williams defends the undesirability of immortality but concedes from the start that all things considered death is a bad thing. The question becomes: how can more of a good thing (life) becomes worse than a bad thing (death)? How can the successful talented passionate Elina lose the desire to live? The arguments aimed at showing that, when life is not that good (e.g. it is afflicted by boredom), having more of it would bring even more misery are not addressing the same problem as Williams’ argument. Finally, we would like to consider a set of methodological objections to our argument. Is the psychological evidence sufficiently authoritative in this context? Is it at all relevant? Let’s address authority first. For our objection to Williams’ to go through we don’t need to buy into any specific theory about what boredom is, how it manifests itself or what causes it. There is a lively debate in the psychological literature about each of these three issues and the jury is out. The studies on boredom proneness differ in their interpretation of which specific trait of an individual might be the © 2009 The Authors Journal compilation © 2009 Blackwell Publishing Ltd 276 LISA BORTOLOTTI AND YUJIN NAGASAWA determining factor in the occurrence of boredom, but they seem to converge on the view that the factor is a constant trait, and not just the combination of external features of an individual’s experience. We only need to claim that this hypothesis about the occurrence of states of boredom is plausible in order to put pressure on the premises of Williams’ argument. Reference to the existing psychological evidence is methodologically less objectionable than relying on anecdotal evidence, fiction or intuitions, primarily because of the possibility that, as there are significant individual differences in boredom proneness, there can be to divergent intuitions about the nature of boredom and the likely causes of its occurrence. What mechanisms cause boredom and what type of behaviour is caused by it are empirical questions, and if empirical data about the phenomenon are available, then the appeal to anecdotes, fiction or intuitions cannot be regarded as a better way to answer those questions. Let’s move to the second methodological worry. Why should empirical data about human behaviour in the mortal life be of any relevance to human behaviour in an immortal life? The change of conditions and circumstances could make an important difference to the quality of human experience. This is a good point, and it is an objection that should invite greater caution in any philosophical discussion of immortality. The psychological evidence on boredom is informative about how humans are likely to behave, but because the data concern mortal beings, they can be only a tentative guide to the experience of boredom in the immortal life. The assumption we make throughout the argument is that human nature would not be drastically changed in this respect if life were to be extended. But if you are worried about the legitimacy of this assumption, Williams makes it too. No fictional scenario can be immune from the worry that we are making inferences about what immortality would be like based on our experiences of the mortal life. The necessity of boredom in the immortal life cannot be defended just by reflecting on the concepts involved, as there is nothing in the mere idea of immortality that suggests the necessity of boredom. The claim that the immortal life would be unavoidably or necessarily boring needs to have some other grounds, and it is based on Williams’ views about why people get bored in the mortal life. His views might have an intuitive appeal, but are supported neither by argument nor by the available empirical evidence. © 2009 The Authors Journal compilation © 2009 Blackwell Publishing Ltd IMMORTALITY WITHOUT BOREDOM 277 6. Conclusion In this paper we had no ambition to offer a comprehensive answer to the question whether the immortal life would be desirable. Rather, we aimed at advancing the debate on the desirability of immortality by reconsidering the claim that the immortal life would necessarily plagued by boredom. We found this claim unjustified on the basis of the best current understanding of the phenomenon of boredom in the psychological literature. The type of boredom that brings about loss of meaning and detachment from one’s life ensues in the absence of life goals or as a result of the failure in pursuing the life goals one has, and it correlates with individual traits and constants. Boredom can be triggered by low stimulation and repeated experiences, and although these triggers can be seen as necessary for boredom to develop, they are not sufficient. It is possible that the reason why we have not found a correlation between the exhaustion of categorical desires and habitual boredom is that in the mortal life the exhaustion of categorical desires is not such a common phenomenon. It could become a more serious problem for immortals, and evidence that it correlates with habitual boredom could become available then. But Williams has no independent argument to endorse this claim. So, as we stand, we should not rule out the possibility of immortality without boredom. Department of Philosophy University of Birmingham Edgbaston, Birmingham B15 2TT L.Bortolotti@bham.ac.uk, Y.Nagasawa@bham.ac.uk © 2009 The Authors Journal compilation © 2009 Blackwell Publishing Ltd