X-Message-Number: 5950 Date: Sun, 17 Mar 1996 20:39:55 -0800 From: John K Clark <> Subject: SCI.CRYONICS RE:Cryonics/Legal/Gerbils -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- In #5946 John Sharman <> On Sat, 16 Mar 96 Wrote: >Death BY DEFINITION is an irreversible state. If you want to use that definition of death it's fine by me. that just means that those frozen in liquid nitrogen are not dead, or at least may not be dead. >The law, the sciences, medicine tend to have resort to >definitions because they are fields in which precision is >important Face it, it's all pretty hazy. I am quite certain you can not give me a precise, non circular definition of "definition". >"Meanings" are what you find set out in dictionaries and >can include definitions but do not have to do so in every >case. Now that you've firmly established what death really is, we'll use the same technique again for something else. I've always wondered what the meaning of life is, now I know all I have to do is look up "Life" in the dictionary. By itself a dictionary is nothing but one big circular definition. All the definitions in a dictionary are made of words, and those words also have definitions made of other words also in the dictionary, and round and round we go. The way out of this paradox is the fact that much, perhaps most, of our knowledge in not in the dictionary because it is not made of words. Dictionaries can be fun, but don't take them too seriously, especially in philosophy where it's customary to push concepts to extremes to see where they'll break. Usage, context and example is where meaning comes from, that is after all, where the lexicographers got the knowledge to write their book in the first place. They're ordinary people, they don't have knowledge about Nature that the rest of us don't have, they don't have God's home telephone number or E mail address. >If a fair slice of the population believes that death is >reversible, then that's that. Well it's an original idea I'll give you that, determining a scientific fact from a popularity poll. OK folks let's have a show of hands, who's in favor or the Schrodinger Wave Equation holding sway over the universe? >If I take you at your word you are saying that a person once >legally dead can never be legally alive again whereas I know >that you believe the contrary. You like definitions I'll give you one, I don't claim it's perfect but it's the best I've ever seen. "Legal Death" is the point at which government bureaucrat will finely grant us the right to do what we want with our own bodies. As the very name implies it's a legal term and has nothing to do with Science. You challenge us to find logic in this and naturally we are unable to do so, because as I said, this has to do with the law, and there is no relationship between logic and the law, except perhaps an inverse one. >BTW after a thunderstorm my phone was dead, but it's fine now. You mean, a deterministic machine was operating properly until some of the atoms in it were pushed by the thunderstorm into places where they could not interact with other parts of the phone and then the repair men put the atoms back into their original orientation so it functions just like it did before? Can you think of any reason why this wouldn't work for things other than telephones? John K Clark -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: 2.6.i iQCzAgUBMUzjdn03wfSpid95AQHJkgTuOgu/t9MQ3iE8WXbI4AaZJVDS7ehzV5hQ JVoM2WO+ldR5/w5udb5OAhD3sE7rLqjVecfxljWYf8cIn2MObBkUorNUO6OldvKg jNkR4h+emE02H80fdedjnq5ZFNzUCAUqIXIeb0hVMRR2yWkW/LXw6j6PbXr41MwW iTIIhP2CrQYQI/iDdZVowzaAz8R6D+LlBiTqtK4TEhcH7n/MnQE= =W2NC -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- Rate This Message: http://www.cryonet.org/cgi-bin/rate.cgi?msg=5950