Susan B. Levin argues that the human confidence that an ageless body would be better is irrational. She offers a Kantian-inspired argument to show that human understanding cannot rationally access the experiences of a post-human and ageless existence.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFGeroscience and philosophy of aging have tended to focus their analyses on the biological and chronological dimensions of aging. Namely, one ages with the passage of time and by experiencing the cellular-molecular deterioration that accompanies this process. However, our concept of aging depends decisively on the social valuations held about it.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFWe have recently stated the reasons why we claim that biological ageing is undesirable. Räsänen has responded to our article by arguing that this process has certain desirable aspects and, therefore, our position is inconsistent. Räsänen develops two arguments to defend his position.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThe technical possibilities of biomedicine open up the opportunity to intervene in ageing itself with the aim of mitigating, reducing or eliminating it. However, before undertaking these changes or rejecting them outright, it is necessary to ask ourselves if what would be lost by doing so really has much value. This article will analyse the desirability of ageing from an individual point of view, without circumscribing this question to the desirability or undesirability of death.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFIn the philosophical debate on aging, it is common to raise the question of the theoretical definition of aging in terms of its possible characterization as a disease. Understanding aging as a disease seems to imply its medicalization, which has important practical consequences. In this paper, we analyze the question of whether aging is a disease by appealing to the concept of disease in the philosophy of medicine.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFMed Health Care Philos
September 2021
Biomedical innovations are making possible the enhancement of human capabilities. There are two philosophical stances on the role that medicine should play in this respect. On the one hand, naturalism rejects every medical intervention that goes beyond preventing and treating disease.
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