Heartland:
I would suggest focusing on definition of life first. Only then one can have a
decent chance at getting the correct definition of death (absence of life).
Life is not just a collection of atoms arranged into a special pattern. It is,
at
least, a spatiotemporal process guided by a special pattern. Also, it is not
information about the pattern (data), but the process itself (activity).
OK
It's probably useful to think about life in terms of layers of abstraction.
There's
an implementation layer starting with atom layer, then neuron layer, and so on,
that makes life possible, yet is not life itself. Life happens at the
spatiotemporal "process layer" which means that details of implementation layer
beneath process layer are not important as long as its function is preserved.
Suppose you want to watch a movie. It doesn't really matter if the movie is fed
by
DVD player to CRT screen or by VHS player to LCD. This is implementation layer
and
it is almost orthogonal to the process layer of you reacting emotionally to the
movie. Unsurprisingly, you and I are still *alive* even though our
implementation
layers undergo gradual replacement. I'm still alive because my process layer
hasn't
been disturbed by the changes at implementation layers (although it could, of
course).
Stathis:
If the process stops, then life stops, but it restarts when the
process restarts. You would say that there is no temporary stopping:
the person who wakes up is a different person and the old person has
died. But although I agree with your definition of life, I don't agree
with your definition of death.
Once you agree with my definition of life, getting you to agree with my definition
of death shouldn't be hard. It's all about appreciating the difference between an
instance and a type of something and seeing how two instances of process are always
isolated.
At this point it might be useful to think about why we lack access to subjective
experience of a different person. (Yes, I'm assuming my neighbor is a different
person. If you don't agree with this assumption (and if you don't please tell me
why), this will not work.) There is an overwhelming temptation that so many succumb
to to think that lack of access to subjective experience of another person is due
to differences between types of two brain structures (patterns). In reality, it's
*all* due to the fact that any two minds (regardless of whether they share the same
type or not) are two instances of a physical process. Your life does not end when
your neighbor dies and vice versa. This is understandable, verifiable and obvious.
What's missing is the realization that your instance of subjective experience
(process) is as isolated from your copy's instance as it is isolated from your
neighbor's instance. This is why I don't expect *this* life to continue through a
different instance even though the next instance might occur on the same mindware a
minute after the previous instance expires.
There's no such thing as pause in execution of a single instance of process. There
can only be one instance before the "pause" and another one after the pause. Create
and destroy are only operations on instances of processes.
I also believe you cannot consistently maintain that life continues
through replacement atoms in the usual physiological manner but would
not continue if a copy were made a different way. Why should it make a
difference if 1% of the atoms are replaced per year or 99% per second,
if the result in each case is atoms in the correct configuration? If
99% replacement is acceptable why not 100% instantaneous replacement?
If 100% *instantaneous* replacement doesn't interrupt the process then we're
dealing with the same instance of life and I see no problem with that. Also, as I
had pointed out to you few times before, any process is necessarily defined across
time interval >0 so counterarguments based on cases where time interval = 0 are not
valid. In other words, it takes some time to kill the process.
H.
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