Each person should decide how long their own life lasts

The argument

A second argument for this position rests on who the decision belongs to. Proponents hold that the length of a life is among the most personal matters there is, and that nobody else is entitled to set a limit on it. At present nobody chooses: a span is imposed by biology, and people accommodate themselves to it because they must. If that constraint can be lifted, they argue, the question of how long to continue becomes a question for the person living the life, and the default answer should be whatever they want rather than whatever their cells happen to permit. The argument is often framed through the ordinary way people respond to death. Proponents observe that the loss of someone is treated as a grief rather than as a scheduled event accepted with equanimity, that the dying generally want more time, and that enormous effort goes into securing a few additional months when the alternative is an ending. They take this as evidence that the preference for continuing is close to universal, and that the serenity people express about mortality in the abstract tends to dissolve in the particular case. An option that lets those who want to continue do so, they argue, is responsive to what people actually want rather than to what they have learned to accept. Proponents also stress that the position asks for an option and not an obligation. Nobody would be required to live indefinitely; those who found a long life empty or wearying would remain free to end it, as some already choose to do. What the project removes is the imposition, not the possibility of stopping. On this account humans should strive for immortality because doing so transfers a decision about a person's own life from biology to the person whose life it is.

Premises

Counter-arguments

Critics reply that framing this as individual choice obscures who would actually get the choice. A treatment of that kind would be expensive and scarce for a long time, so the realistic near-term result is that the wealthy extend their lives while others do not, an inequality more fundamental than any existing one because it concerns how long a person exists at all. They also dispute that the decision is genuinely private: lives that do not end mean positions, property and power that do not change hands, and the burden falls on people not yet born who cannot be consulted. Others question the option framing, arguing that once an indefinite span is available, declining it becomes a decision requiring justification rather than a free alternative.

Rejecting the premises

[Rejecting P1] Critics object that a decision with this much effect on others cannot be treated as a purely personal one. [Rejecting P2] They note that a biological limit falls on everyone equally whereas a purchasable one would not, so replacing it is not obviously an improvement. [Rejecting P3] They argue that the option would be distributed by wealth, making it a privilege rather than a choice open to each person. [Rejecting C] They conclude that the project would transfer the decision to those able to afford it rather than to everyone whose life it is.