On Wednesday, January 29, 2014 11:26:17 PM UTC-5, stathisp wrote: > > On 30 January 2014 13:30, Craig Weinberg <[email protected] <javascript:>> > wrote: > > >> > What's wrong with the way a cadaver functions? > >> > >> Many changes occur after death, the end result of which is that in a > >> cadaver, the parts are in the wrong configuration and therefore don't > >> work together as they do in a living person. > > > > > > Wrong for whom? They are in a better configuration for certain > microrganisms > > to thrive. There's probably more complexity in the computation of a > > decomposing body than a healthy one . > > > >> > >> Death is said to occur > >> when the changes are irreversible, but people who have themselves > >> cryonically preserved hope that future technology will allow what is > >> currently thought to be irreversible to become reversible. > > > > > > Had we not already discovered the impossibility of resurrecting a dead > > person with raw electricity, would your position offer any insight into > why > > that strategy would fail 100% of the time? > > Actually, we can sometimes resurrect a dead person with raw > electricity in cases of cardiac arrest, which would previously have > been defined as death. It's a case of the definition of death changing > with technology. In future, there will probably be patients who would > currently considered brain dead who will be able to be revived. >
That does not resurrect a dead person, it just helps restart a still-living person's heart. True, cardiac arrest will eventually kill a person, but sending electricity through the body of someone who has died of cholera or a stroke is not going to revive them. My point though is that there is nothing within functionalism which predicts the finality or complexity of death. If we are just a machine halting, why wouldn't fixing the machine restart it in theory? We can smuggle in our understanding of the irreversibility of death, and rationalize it after the fact, but can you honestly say that functionalism predicts the pervasiveness of it? Craig > > -- > Stathis Papaioannou > -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
