When Does Death Occur ?

[Tarski]

Tarski:

Even in a protective coma it is still a hope that the person will come out of it.

Yes, and?

This only means that the body is not so damaged as to prevent a return to function --a reboot so to speak.

I can't see why this contradicts anything I said.

[thesometimesaint]

The brain also has an ability to heal itself, albeit to a limited extent. The purpose of the coma is to prevent further damage and allow the brain to heal.

[Tarski]

The brain also has an ability to heal itself, albeit to a limited extent. The purpose of the coma is to prevent further damage and allow the brain to heal.

Fine. What are you getting at? Do you have an argument to the effect that life and death are not even in principle a matter of biology--that the introduction of the oh so vague notion of "spirit" is needed?

[CV75]

It seems that there is a "missing ingredient" .Life,be it plant or animal,comes from life.Medical science can keep cells alive indefinitely but they had to be alive to begin with. Once they are dead they stay that way. Whole organs can be kept "alive" for a period of time but not indefinitely.People can be kept alive by machine for quite a while but there does come a point of no return.Even if all the ingredients are present for life to work there is no way yet to do the Dr Frankenstein trick and put the genie back in the bottle.( love mixed metaphors)

Are you talking about “keys,” as when God breathed life into Adam, Elijah brought the child back to life, or when Jesus raised Lazarus or other such examples? These keys can be exercised on a cellular, chemical, quantum and other levels. Even a dead cell exists until it deteriorates into smaller particles that exist just as much as the cell did. There is a spiritual component to each of these conditions.

I remember watching a Star Trek show where the character Data was shown to have met all the criteria to be classified as a life form and was granted rights and privileges in the Federation. Would you give him that status? What do you think about Data, or the Terminator or Pinocchio enjoying possessing or exercising the keys of the priesthood, or receiving blessings and sealings from the priesthood?

You have to define what you mean by living, dead, spirit, etc. I'll post again when I see a reply.

[Tarski]

Are you talking about “keys,” as when God breathed life into Adam, Elijah brought the child back to life, or when Jesus raised Lazarus or other such examples? These keys can be exercised on a cellular, chemical, quantum and other levels. Even a dead cell exists until it deteriorates into smaller particles that exist just as much as the cell did. There is a spiritual component to each of these conditions.

??

Now you are just making stuff up. Worse yet, you are still just inserting words (now "keys") without explanitory power. Until you tell us exactly how "keys" work on the cellular, chemical, quantum levels, you have added nothing. Frankly, it sounds like a paradigmatic case of magical thinking.

[blackstrap]

Consider the lawn mower engine. All the parts are there to cut lawn.There is fuel,plugs pistons, blade etc. and yet something is missing. SPARK. Now all the components are there to produce spark and yet no spark comes. It requires the energy of an outside force to spin the rotor and generate the spark.I know that this is a poor analogy because some mowers are really hard to start even if all the components are working. The same can be said of an individual cell.No one yet has manufactured a living cell from scratch. No one yet has been able to take a once living cell and start the factory up again. And even were it to be done we would have to conclude that it takes an outside force to accomplish it.

Edited October 11, 2011 by blackstrap

[Tarski]

Consider the lawn mower engine. All the parts are there to cut lawn.There is fuel,plugs pistons, blade etc. and yet something is missing. SPARK. Now all the components are there to produce spark and yet no spark comes. It requires the energy of an outside force to spin the rotor and generate the spark.I know that this is a poor analogy because some mowers are really hard to start even if all the components are working. The same can be said of an individual cell.No one yet has manufactured a living cell from scratch. No one yet has been able to take a once living cell and start the factory up again. And even were it to be done we would have to conclude that it takes an outside force to accomplish it.

If all the parts are there to produce the spark, including a charged battery, and if they are arranged in the propery way, the spark will be there. Sparks, electricity, batteries, electrons--all of it is physical.

Cells have been frozen solid and then revived. It is all chemistry. Why are you bent on regressing to the mysticism of the elan vital? The molecular biological revolution has happened.

[thesometimesaint]

Tarski:

We (LDS) don't have a adequate definition of Spirit, beyond that it is eternal and animates the body. We definitely have no science to back it up. It would be like explaining the elements in terms of Quantum Physics to a bunch of ancients Greeks who understood the elements as Earth, Wind, Fire, and Water. It just wouldn't make any sense to them. We're in the same boat of not understanding, albeit it in a different section of that boat.

[bu11fr0g]

Knowing when something is dead requires to know when it is alive, and that can be tricky.

Tarski's definitions fall apart pretty easily.

There are a lot of animals and plants that do not have brains, but can nevertheless die.

When is a potato dead?

Is a virus alive enough to die?

Are bacteria alive enough to die?

Earthworms?

Tadpoles? Caterpillars? Fertilized eggs?

Human cells can be kept alive infinitely (HeLa cell lines being an easy example).

Human death is then largely a legal construct and presently is determined by the lack of all brainstem activity (except for anencephalics which are humans that are considered to have never been alive in the first place).

Edited October 11, 2011 by bu11fr0g

[Tarski]

Tarski:

We (LDS) don't have a adequate definition of Spirit,

I noticed.

beyond that it is eternal and animates the body.

It seems that in the wake of molecular biology, the motivation for positing something called "spirit" has vanished. The story is one about Kreb cycles and what not.

We definitely have no science to back it up. It would be like explaining the elements in terms of Quantum Physics to a bunch of ancients Greeks who understood the elements as Earth, Wind, Fire, and Water. It just wouldn't make any sense to them. We're in the same boat of not understanding, albeit it in a different section of that boat.

Except that the notion of "spirit" belongs on the primitive "Earth, Wind and Fire" side of the ledger.

The idea is rather funky:

[Tarski]

Knowing when something is dead requires to know when it is alive, and that can be tricky.

Tarski's definitions fall apart pretty easily.

Wow. Agreeing with me and claiming I am wrong in the same breath.

As far as the distinction between living and dea in general I said that there was no fact of the matter more or less because of the things you bring up.

Then when I addressed the question of when a person is dead, I brought up suffcient but not necessary criteria that amouont to the kind of considerations considered in the legal notion of death that you mention.

There are a lot of animals and plants that do not have brains, but can nevertheless die.

Yup.

And?

When is a potato dead?

Making my point about there being no fact of the matter once again.

Human death is then largely a legal construct and presently is determined by the lack of all brainstem activity

Fine. I said irreparable massive brain damage. But fine. Even with the question of the "death" of a person there are borderline cases and hence ultimately no fine grained fact of the matter.

If there were a spirit we could just say a person is dead when his or her spirit leaves the body. But alas, this primitive notion is in its own way "dead on arrival".

Do you have an argument in favor of the need for the concept of a "spirit" to settle any issues?

Edited October 11, 2011 by Tarski

[thesometimesaint]

Tarski:

Nice song but a little dated.

We're talking about a religious definition not a scientific one. After all life as we know it scientifically is essentially a biochemical/electrical reaction to a stimulas. That stimulas may be internally generated or externally generated. Life in a religious sense is more nuanced, but we know it when we see it. I for one have no desire to be kept "alive" as a human carrot.

Edited October 11, 2011 by thesometimesaint

[Tarski]

Tarski:

Nice song but a little dated.

We're talking about a religious definition not a scientific one. After all life as we know it scientifically is essentially a biochemical reaction to a stimulas. That stimulas may be internally generated or externally generated. Life in a religious sense is more nuanced, but we know it when we see it. I for one have no desire to be kept "alive" as a human carrot.

And thus the crucial difference with regard to continuing personhood pivots around brain function and not the presence or absense of some indefinable animistic ingredient.

[thesometimesaint]

Tarski:

I've already stated that there is more than one part to the definition of life, and have already agreed that part of that definition includes the science part. You exclude the other part of the definition.

I enjoy science, and have spent considerable time, effort, and my limited talents try to learn what I could about it. I also need that religious side. It satisfies a longing for meaning to my life beyond the nuts and bolts of biology, and the electronics of the neuro-sciences.

That you have no appearant need for the religious part of the definition is of no great moment to me. But it is rather one sided and narrow.

[Tarski]

Tarski:

I've already stated that there is more than one part to the definition of life, and have already agreed that part of that definition includes the science part. You exclude the other part of the definition.

I must have missed the other part of the definition.

I enjoy science, and have spent considerable time, effort, and my limited talents try to learn what I could about it. I also need that religious side. It satisfies a longing for meaning to my life beyond the nuts and bolts of biology, and the electronics of the neuro-sciences.

Well, trying to think about life in strctly scientific terms is not something I do either. Of course, the way LDS use the term spirit seems quasi-scientific to me. It seem to be reified.

There are other ways to think that are more poetic. A person's spirit to me is more a matter of their personality and style. That these are patterns that supervene on the physical is only an in principle fact that has limited day to day practicality. When someone asks me why I am late from work, I don't tell them a story about atoms in the void obeying differential equations with initial conditions, I tell them that I stopped to get a newspaper because I wanted to see if there was a review of a new restaurant but that they were sold out at the first place I went and so on. I explain my behavior in terms of reasons and desires rather than in terms of neurons.

As another example, I understand what the phrase "the better angels of our nature" means and believe it does a better job at communicating the intended thought than any scientific phrase. ( Thinking about literal anthropomorphic angels would even ruin it somewhat).

I am no practitioner of scientism in that I do not think that questions about values and beauty can be reduced to statements from the natural or biological sciences. On the other hand, I am not in favor of being ignorant of the connections.

What I do like to challenge is inappropriate reification of abstract social realities or the needless preservation of primitive animistic categories except as they retain poetic value.

To say that one's spirit leaves one's body at death is similar to saying that one loses one's courage in a moment of weakness. Courage isn't like a caloric that flows in or out of a body and neither is a spirit although the latter idea may have it's origins in the last gasp sometimes made by a dying person--it does sound like "breath" is leaving. Latin: spiritus

On top of that there does seem to be something missing after a person dies. The lifeless body is no longer the active locus of a person. The person is gone. But we should resist the reification that turns the difference into that of some missing "stuff".

The idea that spirit is matter seems admirably materialist, but it is really the sorry end point of an unfortunate and stiffly unpoetic hypostatization.

Edited October 11, 2011 by Tarski

[blackstrap]

Thanks Tarski for your valuable insights.I believe I understand your point of view,ie. there is no such thing as spirit.Got it.

As an aside,paramedics have a saying,"you are not dead until you are warm and dead." Extreme cold can postpone death for quite a while.

[bu11fr0g]

Wow. Agreeing with me and claiming I am wrong in the same breath.

As far as the distinction between living and dea in general I said that there was no fact of the matter more or less because of the things you bring up.

Then when I addressed the question of when a person is dead, I brought up suffcient but not necessary criteria that amouont to the kind of considerations considered in the legal notion of death that you mention.

Yup.

And?

Making my point about there being no fact of the matter once again.

Fine. I said irreparable massive brain damage. But fine. Even with the question of the "death" of a person there are borderline cases and hence ultimately no fine grained fact of the matter.

If there were a spirit we could just say a person is dead when his or her spirit leaves the body. But alas, this primitive notion is in its own way "dead on arrival".

Do you have an argument in favor of the need for the concept of a "spirit" to settle any issues?

We cannot use brain function for an all-encompassing definition of death because there are many organisms that are recognizably alive without a brain, or for that matter, a central nervous system -- plants being a straightforward example.

But if we define life as more than the biology, there we have what I personally view as spirit.

Within this are creative endeavors (painting, writing music, sculpture, knitting, wrapping presents), teaching, joining as a group for an endeavor, and religious endeavors. It is the capacity to worship God, to choose good from evil, to develop ourselves in chosen ways that is our spirit.

And when we have lost our ability to do those things, we are dead, maybe not biologically but for us.

Death was formerly defined as the cessation of breathing and the heartbeat. But technology has enabled many to live long after those have ceased. And we use the brain now, but if there were a way we could continue to engage in activities of the spirit without our brains, then we would have to reinvent our definition of life and death again.

The ultimate question is then whether there is some part of us now that can act & enjoy long after our bodies are decomposed. It is this enduring part of us that is our spirit.

[Bill “Papa” Lee]

I had a strange thought today about life and death and the continuation of cell life. I understand that the cells of some people have been kept alive and growing(and dying) for many years in labs. I wondered what part ,if any, that spirit played in such situations.

Death occurs when the heart stops beating, or when brain dead. Then as the scriptures say; "The soul is taking home to the God that gave it life". "Spiritual death" can come at anytime. (See D&C 121)

Edited October 12, 2011 by Bill “Papa” Lee

[Tarski]

We cannot use brain function for an all-encompassing definition of death because there are many organisms that are recognizably alive without a brain, or for that matter, a central nervous system -- plants being a straightforward example.

??

You don't seem to be reading what I write.

[bu11fr0g]

The comment is related to how to identify the spirit rather than death and is a statement that sets our point of agreement (at least I think that we both agree that brain function does not delineate life nor death). From this agreement that life is not neurologic processes, I then have tried to show an "argument in favor of the need for the concept of a spirit"