#10 – Would heaven be worse than oblivion? Fischer on the afterlife.

Mortality Matters: Meaning & Death

In this episode, I focus on the second half of Fischer's response to Williams' pessimistic criticisms of immortality in which he concentrates on supernatural conceptions of the afterlife. I first consider whether the afterlife is even possible for beings like us. Notably, any who believe that there is an afterlife (whether that be good or bad) must also think that death is a transition of some sort, typically a separation of soul from body, and that the transmigration into heaven or hell preserves the personal identity of the one who dies. Neither assumption is obvious and both are subject to challenge.
Next, I consider various conceptions of the afterlife in which there may be certain goods that would be otherwise unavailable, such as conversing with God or with good people from the past. Fischer underestimates how good heaven could be by focusing too much on a traditionally Christian conception of it. There is no good exclusive to mortal existence for which there could be no coherent conception of an afterlife that would include it, so however good eternal existence in heaven would be, it would be no worse than an immortal continuation of our lives in our material plane. For this reason, all of the arguments Fischer gives as to why immortality wouldn't be so bad would likewise apply to the afterlife, and then some.
Lastly, I discuss the desirability of various immortality scenarios depending upon who gets to be immortal, disagreeing with Fischer about the socioeconomic inequalities an indefinite life extension therapy would create as well as the prospects of overpopulation. Despite painting himself as a moderate between immortality pessimists and optimists, Fischer's definitions requires these to be not only mutually exclusive but exhaustive characterizations of our attitudes about the subject, so there is no conceptual room for what he takes to be his middle-ground position. Fischer may regard himself a realist about the desirability of immortality, but he is far too pessimistic about the desirability of human life continuing through future climate change.