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I hesitate to participate in this thought exercise because immortality is not even possible. How many memory cells do we have in our brain? When will the limit be reached? More importantly, the current nature that we have now will not allow the tolerance of immortality. If you are immortal, you will not be able to kill your self. It may be something you will wish to do. Our current makeup is that we end up with satiation. Like drinking water, you drink so much until you are done. Life also will have a point when you are done with it. If you are forced to drink water when you are not thirsty at all, you will vomit. The mental equivalent state of satiation is called boredom. There may be a specific threshold, let us say 153.3 thousand years. Anything past that threshold will be boring and eternal boredom is a terrible fate. We currently don't have protection against eternal boredom. Eventually, everything will be experienced and it will be abstracted. "Been there done that" will become been at that type of place and experienced it. To be immortal certain modification will have to be made to our Psychology. We will not be human anymore. Philosophically death is part of the definition of life. Psychologically death does give meaning to life. Even if, life just "is".

After giving you and Nicky a hard time, I figured the least I could do was sort of get back on topic. Death doesn't give life meaning. Life gives life meaning. Death gives life a purpose, though, which is to stay alive--usually. I could be wrong.

This is totally dismissive about the field of psychology! Human psychology refers to the nature of the human mind. One's psychology is a different concept than psychology the nature of human thought. Now, at least value pertains to seeking some end by choice - and it is part of human nature to actively seek those ends by choice. What psychology shows, Kyary, is that people have an innate capacity to recognize scarcity. Scarcity is a major basis to decide value, because it is so easy and notable to recognize. As far as philosophy, this doesn't say -why- life should or does have meaning.

Ayn Rand declared 'Life' to be the standard of value, but I highly doubt her account was survivalist. A key idea in Galt's speech is that a moral man is primarily motivated by the desire to gain values, not by the desire to avoid of suffering, i.e. his ultimate goal is pleasure derived from things that enhance his life, rather than from momentary pleasures that will kill him in the long run. Imagine a fictional world where all things that preserved us - food, sleep, exercise and so on - gave us pain rather than pleasure. Would that be a life worth preserving? I believe Ayn Rand would not hesistate to say that what makes life worth living is happiness, not survival at any price. If the pain-body mechanism was skewed like that, life would cease to be a value. Galt's talk about commiting suicide over losing Dagny strongly suggests that Rand did not regard all life as worth preserving, only a life where happiness is possible. Here's where I agree with Rand: human beings have a vast array or needs, physical and psychological. Some of them are unique to us (art, philosophy, variety, challenge) and some are common in the animal world (food, sunlight). But here's where I disagree: her trying to box-in every human need into either the 'preservation of body' or 'preservation of consciousness' category. My objection springs from a point of view that is not popular with objectivists, namely that human beings, like all animals, are genetically programmed to feel pleasure from things that enhance both survival and reproduction. Sex, romantic love and child rearing are utterly useless for your survival, but produce intense pleasure and spiritual fulfillment within people. Why? Because that's the nature of your body. Does this view contradict Rand? This view denies that all human needs are tied to survival. However, it does not contradict the essence of what Rand is saying, namely that man's moral purpose is happiness. Rand went to great lenghts to point out that life is the standard of value, not happiness, because only a course of life-preserving values will actualy lead to happiness. But the point remains that happiness and pleasure are the stars of the game, and that the entire reason why we pursue life at all, is because life is very fun to live. If happiness requires struggle, then that struggle becomes eclipsed by how amazing happiness is. In other words, if we replace 'Life' as the standard, with 'Happy life' as the standard, we get closer to what Rand herself meant, but her view that reproduction is merely 'a characteristic' of living organisms, and that every single human need serves a survival role, only confuses this part of her ethics.