1) The document discusses how assuming an "Open Lifespan" where aging is slowed and lifespan extended indefinitely through future technologies could resolve issues with Rawls' original position thought experiment. 2) Rawls does not specify whether people know their age in the original position, but knowing one's age could compromise impartiality if lifespan is closed and health declines with age. 3) With Open Lifespan, all adult ages would have similar mortality and health risks, allowing one to know their age without bias while still pursuing a rational life plan. 4) Open Lifespan provides a more just framework than closed lifespan for political philosophy by reducing age as a basis for discrimination.

1. Open Lifespan and (not)
knowing our age in Rawls’
Original Position
Attila Csordas
Cambridge, UK

2. The puzzle of aging
mass-spec based proteomics
bioinformatics
business
mitochondrial
biology
stem cell
research
14 year old Attila decides
this problem
gives meaning to his life ->
rational life plan
2 reasons
philosophy
of longevity
Open Lifespan
activism in
longevity
community
science
personal narrative
technology
politics

3. Hallmarks of aging, Cell, 2013
PMID: 23746838
‘An average 16–20% of life is now spent in late-
life morbidity’ ~ Decades of late-life is now
spent fighting age-associated diseases,
compromising human life.
healthspan/lifespan
treatments/interventions under
way
we genuinely don’t know how
far we’re going to push lifespan

4. Dominant binary and misplaced
thinking on human longevity
mortal beings
can die
finiteness
closed lifespan
immortals
death defying
infinity
living forever
perpetual
most plants
most animals
humans God gods
humans in
thought experiments?
sub specie aeternitatis
a philosophical bias
natural and social sciences

5. Open Lifespan: indefinite
mortal beings
can die
limited lifespan
immortals
death defying
infinity
living forever
perpetual
plants
animalshumans
God
gods
mortal but
not essentially
bounded
lifespan
finiteness infinity
‘indefiniteness’
still mortal
‘indefinity’
open-endedness

6. Open Lifespan project
openlifespan.org/book/

7. Open Lifespan, Open Life, Open
Healthspan
Here we consider Open Life as a possible world (or society to
be closer to the lingo of political theory), where people can
choose Open Lifespan, an open-ended, indefinitely long
healthy lifespan. Open Lifespan is achieved via Open
Healthspan Technologies developed and accessible enough
that all people can choose to go through continuous
interventions to counteract the biological aging process and
have a fixed, small but nonzero mortality rate due to external
causes of death.

8. Open Life should be the central possible
world and default anthropology in moral
and political philosophy

9. Open
Life
Actual
World
Less
Probable Worlds
Highly
Probable Worlds
Limiting
Possible Worlds
current
thinking

10. Open
Life
Actual
World
Less
Probable Worlds
Limiting
Possible Worlds
Highly
Probable Worlds
Increasing
Life Expectancy
Closed Lifespan
Breaking Maximum
Closed Lifespan
Barrier
Open Lifespan
Open
Lifespan
thinking

11. Rawls and knowing our chronological
age behind the veil of ignorance
one argument to show that assuming Open Lifespan
instead of Closed Lifespan is a better assumption

12. Veil of ignorance in original
position is a model of equality
1. rational life plan to pursue the conception of the good and
primary goods enable this plan, social and natural ones
but individuals don’t know their particular conception of the
good
‘individual’s set of coherent, systematic purposes and
intentions for his life’ Nozick, p577 Phil Explanations
2. don’t know their share of distribution of primary goods
3. Rawls admits that they must have adequate level of health
and intelligence to pursue rational life plan

13. Background assumptions
Knowing our age or not: Rawls does not mention
chronological age explicitly, assumption is that for his
argumentation which aims for simplicity age is not needed so
it is behind the veil of ignorance.
Closed Lifespan: capped maximum lifespan and current life-
expectancy with well-known health trajectories
Persons with biological bodies: Although the ‘thick veil of
ignorance’ abstracts away from most characteristics of people
to focus on impartiality, it cannot be as thick as to abstract
away from biological bodies as carriers of those persons

14. Strategy: dilemma
First branch of the dilemma: People know their
chronological age explicitly, assuming closed lifespan, people
in late life would be well aware of the frequent occurrence of
age-associated diseases and functional decline ->
compromised life plan, compromised impartiality due to
health care requirement prioritisation

15. Strategy: dilemma
Second branch of the dilemma: People don’t know their
chronological age -> We don’t know at which point we are in our own
life trajectory -> we cannot assess whether our life is going according
to our life plan. We don’t need to know our particular rational life
plan but we need to know at which point we are at in executing our
life plan to be able to see whether we align to this life plan or to be
able to see whether we need to amend our life plan. Knowing our
own age serves as a basic reference point in the execution of our
life plan. Knowing our own age is therefore instrumental in us being
rational being in the Rawlsian sense so we need to know our age in the
original position (+-n years if we consider life stages, life periods or
life sequences instead of instants and particular ages) in order to fulfil
the rationality criterion.

16. Bring in Open Lifespan
let’s assume that the original position is a possible world
where Open Lifespan is accessible for all who are choosing it.
Open Lifespan based on open healthspan equalises (or
neutralises) all adult chronological ages with respect to
probability of potential health status by keeping age-
associated functional decline and increasing mortality
continuously at bay. So mortality rate is practically the same
for all adult chronological ages.

17. Resolving dilemma with Open Lifespan
Knowing our chronological age under Open Lifespan won’t
compromise our impartiality in the ‘health care’ sense
On the other hand, this does not lead to complete age-
ignorance, and we know just enough about our age (or life
stage, period) to use it in the execution of our life plan to
maintain its instrumental role in pursuing our conception of
good.

18. Conclusion
Theoretical Conclusion: The Open Lifespan assumption saves
Rawls’ crucial justice as fairness argumentation. This is a
theoretical conclusion, dealing with the inner things of
philosophy.
Practical/normative Conclusion: Open Lifespan leads to a
more just society than Closed Lifespan as justice as fairness
has a bigger chance to succeed in a society where age cannot
be used as a ground for discrimination.
Open Lifespan should be a central possible world in
philosophy to have a dynamic, flexible and still realistic and
extensible anthropology, ethics and political philosophy.

19. Discussion, Questions
Rawlsian framework ignores humans as biological beings, largely
ignored health and totally ignored aging and this resulted in a political
philosophy
blind and insensitive towards biology and conceptualising health issues
Rawlsian framework is bad at temporalising, dynamising a just society
Rawls tries to keep inequalities at bay by distancing ourselves from our
social status and natural contigencies but biological aging is not a
contigency in this respect as genetic lottery is. When we were born is
contingent but the trajectory from that point on is not contigent. Equality
of opportunity should be provided accross all life stages and Open
Lifespan fits the bill.
Rational life plan is entirely possible with indefinite lifespan
Thanks!