John Martin Fischer and the Immortality Project

Congratulations to John Martin Fischer on being awarded $5 million by the Templeton Foundation for the Immortality Project (see here for a nice write up in the Washington Post).  Between John's new project, Al Mele's $4 million Big Questions in Free Will Project and Chandra Sripada's $1.2 million The Science of Ethics Project, the contributors to Flickers of Freedom have done a great job in the past few years of securing funding for researchers to explore a number of interesting issues at the cross-roads of philosophy, theology, and science.

Comments

[John Fischer]

Thank you very much, Thomas.

I would also like to thank Al Mele, who has helped me (already) very significantly in offering helpful advice. I hope to follow in Al's footsteps, if at all possible, in providing outstanding leadership. He has set a high standard!

And, as always (and I do mean ALWAYS [ha]), I appreciate the support of our great community of scholars and friends working on free will/moral responsibility.

One of the reasons I'm an Immortality Optimist is that I think I'll need an infinite amount of time to convince all of you that Semicompatibilism is the True Theory of Freedom and Responsibility...

[R. Clarke]

John, when you discover the secret, remember those who knew you when.

[Manuel "Still Mortal" Vargas]

Congratulations!!!

[Eddy Nahmias]

Hi John, congratulations! I look forward to some interesting connections between immortality and free will (if we really lived forever--and I mean *forever*--wouldn't we make every possible choice we could make, in which case, would it really matter which choices we made?) And I hope some people think about whether it's even conceivable for creatures like us to be immortal.

[V. Alan White]

Congratulations indeed John!

If you need a theme song, something to "Forever in Blue Jeans"--"Forever in New Genes??"--might be doable.

[Tom Clark]

This is a great test for naturalism since in its free will and immortality projects Templeton is deploying some serious resources and brilliant minds in the (unstated) hope of finding some respectable scientific-academic basis for the supernatural, e.g., being causa sui, having an immortal soul. Good luck, and may the best worldview win!

[Chandra Sripada]

Congratulations John!! That is really great news!

Just a quick clarification: Dan Jacobson, along with Justin D'Arms, are the primary investigators for the Science of Ethics grant.

[John Fischer]

Thanks, Tom. Well, as you perhaps know, the best world-view hardly ever really "wins". So, just as an example, I think the only person I have really convinced of the (manifest) truth of Semicompatibilism is my mom. And I didn't have to do any work to do that! Also, some philosophers who had expressed some sympathy with the view are now writing thoughtful and probing critiques. But of course that is what philosophy is all about, and it makes things more exciting.

Seriously, I have seen absolutely no "hidden agenda" or "unstated hope" from the Templeton Foundation in funding the Immortality Project. After all, I am the Project Leader, and I myself am a naturalist and compatibilist. Although I have utmost respect for religion and also for libertarian views about free will, I do not myself accept those positions. I think the crucial thing for me is to be fair, scientifically and philosophically rigorous, and open-minded, letting the chips fall where they may.

[James Laird]

Wow, that’s really exciting!

Perhaps one of the fundamental challenges when analyzing if it’s possible for “you” to exist forever, will be to define the meaning of the word “you”.

[Tom Clark]

Thanks John. The Templeton mission says

"Our vision is derived from the late Sir John Templeton's optimism about the possibility of acquiring 'new spiritual information' and from his commitment to rigorous scientific research and related scholarship."

So depending on what's meant by "spiritual information," the claim that JTF harbors supernatural hopes seems plausible, although I was wrong about it being unstated. You'll hold them to their "commitment to rigorous scientific research and related scholarship," so if the hopes have any hope, it will come to light.

[Neil Levy]

I guess this was always the next step: once you have achieved immortality through your work, you need to turn to achieving it by not dying. There's that pesky heat of the universe to worry about, though!

An infinite series of congratulations, John.

[John Fischer]

Neil,

Thanks!

Oh, darn, the Heat Death of the Universe--forgot about that. But that is the least (or one of the least) of my worries right now...