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Human expunction

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 February 2017

Robert Klee
Robert Klee*
Affiliation:
Department of Philosophy and Religion, Ithaca College, Ithaca, New York 14850, USA
*
e-mail: klee@ithaca.edu
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Abstract

Thomas Nagel in ‘The Absurd’ (Nagel 1971) mentions the future expunction of the human species as a ‘metaphor’ for our ability to see our lives from the outside, which he claims is one source of our sense of life's absurdity. I argue that the future expunction (not to be confused with extinction) of everything human – indeed of everything biological in a terran sense – is not a mere metaphor but a physical certainty under the laws of nature. The causal processes by which human expunction will take place are presented in some empirical detail, so that philosophers cannot dismiss it as merely speculative. I also argue that appeals to anthropic principles or to forms of mystical cosmology are of no plausible avail in the face of human expunction under the laws of physics.

Keywords

biospheric instabilityfeasible space travelhuman extinction
Type
Research Article
Information
International Journal of Astrobiology , Volume 16 , Issue 4 , October 2017 , pp. 379 - 388
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2017 

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