The Hope of Glory

Previous chapters defend a variety of claims about what matters in survival. This chapter puts those claims through their paces by applying them to a new topic: personal immortality. I begin by using the distinction between persistence and survival to clarify the idea of personal immortality. I then show how claims defended in earlier chapters allow us to block familiar objections to the desirability and to the possibility of immortality. Here are two examples. Chapter 4’s conclusion that the Selfer view is false plays an important role in my reply to the Tedium Objection. And my answer to the Why Question in terms of numerical identity provides the resources to argue that what matters in survival will not slowly ‘fade out’ over time and change.