First, there is no “soul” and consciousness is merely an emergent property arising from the interaction of the cognitive and physical processes of the brain.
Putting it another way, we’re conscious (that is, self aware) because we believe ourselves to be so. However, the vast majority of what we do occurs “below’ the level of consciousness not matter what we want to think.
Second, being “dead” and “death” exist in a gray zone. There is no hard and fast definition. What was viewed “death” just 10 years ago, let alone 100 years ago, isn’t quite what is viewed as “death” today. There are legal definitions, but they lag behind medical science.
As for the rest of your freshman-level philosophical gobbledeegook, the ‘answers” you want are wholly determined by the parameters you set. Change the parameters and the answers change. Let’s look at temperature for example. If you assume low temperature hibernation akin to the frogs you mention, there will be no loss of memory. The dainty quantum electrical dance occurring the brain’s neurons has merely been slowed not disrupted or ceased.
However if you assume a flash “freezing” to a single digit Kelvin state, the quantum electrical dance I mentioned in the first example is irreversibly disrupted because the atoms making up your neurons are now part of a fermionic condensate and thus not the everyday matter you assume. After “cooling” to that point, you’re not going to be able to “unscramble the egg”. That is the matter making up the body you “froze” will undergo such elemental changes that is won’t in anyway resemble a body when you “thaw” it back out. In fact, there’s a damn good chance that the elements the body consisted of will separate from each other in the “thawing” process.
In the end, the question of whether you’re “dead” or not or whether you’re the “same” person or not will depend more on legal opinions than scientific or philosophical ones. Let me suggest a few Known Space short stories by the science-fiction author Larry Niven which examine these issues; specifically the story entitled The Defenseless Dead.
The ideas behind the story are twofold. First, medical advances have made organ transplants easy and foolproof. Second, if you can keep replacing failing organs with newer ones, you won’t die. This leads Niven’s future society to create “organ banks” much like blood banks today and, unlike today, those banks are filled with the various bits and pieces of condemned criminals. Because everyone wants to live forever and a supply of organs is the only way to achieve that, Niven’s society imposes the death penalty for crimes like jaywalking or false advertising. Not surprisingly, the death penalty acts a deterrent and the organ banks are running low. Another source of supply may be available: terminally ill people who had froze themselves centuries earlier hoping the future would hold a cure. The question now is whether or not those people can be declared dead so they can be disassembled for their parts.
Happy reading!
Do not date. Do not impregnate. Do not co-habitate. Above all, do not marry. Reclaim and never again surrender your personal sovereignty.
megatoad69 4 years, 3 months ago.
