I’ve addressed philosopher Joshua Rasmussen’s counting argument against physicalism in another OP. While researching that argument, I added myself to his mailing list, and a few days ago, he presented a new argument under the title You Can Know There Is Life After Death — Without Dying.
In the other thread, I jokingly wrote:
The argument goes something like this:
Premise 1:
Yes, six plus one would equal seven even if there were no pinecones.
Premise 2:
Triangles can come and go, and I would still exist.
Conclusion:
There is life after death, and you can know it.
I’m quote mining for the sake of laughs, of course, but it’s actually not that much of an exaggeration to say to say that the argument boils down to the above. Those are the actual examples Rasmussen uses in the course of justifying his premises.
Rasmussen’s article can be found here, on Substack. Next I’ll describe the argument and how those examples fit into it.
The article begins:
I’m about to share something with you that you have never heard before, and it could change your life. I am going to show you, by a unique pathway of deductions, that your future does not depend on your body. There is life after death, and you can know it.
You don’t need to wait until you die to find out whether you still exist. Nor do you need to find a religion to trust, or to trust anyone who claims to have knowledge of life after death. Instead, you can gain this knowledge for yourself.
That’s a bold claim. The argument:
1. We know what it means for one thing to be independent of another and we can reason our way to conclusions about independence. This is where the pinecones come in. We can reason our way to the knowledge that the number 7 is independent of pinecones, and we don’t have to destroy any pinecones in order to reach that conclusion.
2. There is a principle of irrelevance that can be used to extend a determination of independence from one thing to another, or to an entire class. Rasmussen’s example is that having determined that the number 7 is independent of pinecones, we can declare that all of the prime numbers are independent of pinecones. That’s because while prime numbers differ from each other, they don’t differ in a way that’s relevant to the question of whether they are independent of pinecones. We don’t have to consider them one by one.
3. Just as you can reason your way to the conclusion that the number 7 is independent of pinecones, you can reason your way to the conclusion that you — your core being, your essence, your sense of self — are independent of certain things. He refers to this as your “me-ness”. This is where the triangles come in. We can tell, via reason, that we are independent of triangles. “Triangles can come and go, and I would still exist” is how he puts it.
4. We can apply the principle of irrelevance to establish that not only are we independent of triangles, we are also independent of squares, because the differences between triangles and squares are irrelevant to the question of independence. We can further extend the independence to all shapes, to motion, to transitions between shapes, etc.
5. The money shot: “From all of this, tracing irrelevant differences leads to the result: me-ness does not depend on any mere motions or changes in space. From here it follows that your existence (that which has your me-ness) persists independently from the annihilation of any body, including the one(s) you operate now. In other words, there is life after death.
I think this is a pretty weak argument, but I’ll save my criticisms for the comment section.
The main problem with Rasmussen’s argument is in the tremendous and unwarranted leap from
to
That’s true only if Rasmussen assumes that physicalism is false, which is the very thing he’s trying to prove.
Consider: It’s true that my existence doesn’t depend on triangles, but it’s also true that my body doesn’t depend on triangles. It’s true that my existence doesn’t depend on the shape of a pinecone or the trajectory of a rock that is falling from a cliff face somewhere in Tibet right now, but it’s also true that my body doesn’t depend on those things. Those truths aren’t evidence that I am not my body. They’re merely evidence that my existence doesn’t depend on certain things that are clearly outside of me. My brain is not outside of me, so I can’t assume that my existence doesn’t depend on it.
In other words, Rasmussen’s “principle of irrelevance” doesn’t apply here. He’s not entitled to assume that there is no relevant difference between a pinecone that is located outside of me and a brain that is located within my skull. The independence of my existence from pinecones does not imply that my existence is independent of my brain.
The real question has yet to be answered. Can we trust our own minds not to lie to us?
I can confirm, from personal experience, that minds are indeed eminently capable of lying to us.
Expanding on my previous point: If Rasmussen’s argument were sound, it could just as easily be applied to my car. Here’s a reductio:
I can clearly see that my car’s existence is independent of triangles, pinecones, the Statue of Liberty, the motion of dust particles in a Saharan haboob, and the expansion of a balloon when helium is pumped into it. By Rasmussen’s logic, that entitles me to generalize and conclude that my car is independent of all shapes, sizes, matter and motion.
He writes:
Applying that to my car:
Rasmussen might object that reason tells us that cars don’t survive their physical destruction and that humans aren’t like that. The problem is that he doesn’t know that humans aren’t like that, and his argument doesn’t demonstrate it. He has to assume it, and that is tantamount to assuming that physicalism is false. In other words, if he assumes that physicalism is false, he can conclude that physicalism is false. It’s a circular argument, a tautology.
The objection I raise above applies not only to our existence in general, but also to specific mental abilities and experiences. For instance my ability to remember, like my existence, is independent of triangles, pinecones, the Statue of Liberty, the motion of dust particles in a Saharan haboob, and the expansion of a balloon when helium is pumped into it. By Rasmussen’s logic, that means it is also independent of my body and will persist after I die.
Same problem as before: the principle of irrelevance doesn’t apply here because it is relevant that my brain is part of my body while the other things I listed are not. Rasmussen has to assume that physicalism is false in order to assert that my ability to remember is independent of my brain and will persist after my death, but that’s the very thing he’s trying to prove. It’s circular.
It’s even worse, because we know that our ability to remember can be affected by physical changes. Disease and brain damage can devastate our memory systems, which is direct evidence that they are dependent on something physical: the brain.
What’s true of memory is also true of many other mental functions, including even the will itself. If the soul can’t carry out these functions on its own, what does it do, exactly? What would life after death be like without the ability to remember? Without the ability to will?
Come on keiths! Are you loosing your edge? Life after death is an oxymoron. You should have known better since you claim to be an ex-Christian, no?
Let’s get this blog fired up if it is possible… people are dying … literally…lol
J-Mac:
Life after death is no more an oxymoron than wetness after dryness or vigor after exhaustion. There’s nothing logically inconsistent about being alive, then being dead, and then being alive again.
If you’ll notice, I am arguing against Rasmussen. I don’t believe in life after death. That doesn’t make it an oxymoron, though.
Uh, at least for me, dead means dead. All the “return from being dead” cases I’ve ever seen actually rest on the subject not being “dead”, but close to it. For me, death is pretty much by definition permanent and irreversible.
Then again, I have seen various specifications of “clinically dead”, like the heart stopping. But that can’t be death as commonly understood – hearts get restarted all the time. Death means beyond recovery.
And I don’t believe living organisms have any “undying” part. Specifically, no “magic energy” or “immortal soul” or ghostly persistence or whatever. Yeah, we can say they “live on in our memories”, but that’s a figure of speech.
Flint:
For me also. If something is dead, it’s dead. Where we evidently differ is that for me, ‘dead’ just means ‘not alive’.
True. Like you and apparently J-Mac, I don’t think resurrection ever happens in our world. It’s impossible. It’s a practical impossibility, however, not a logical one. I think you and J-Mac are conflating practical impossibility with logical impossibility.
For me, it just means that the processes associated with life have ceased.
Here’s a thought experiment: Imagine an alternate world (henceforth ‘Alt-world’) in which we have the ability to manipulate individual atoms and accurately record their configurations within our bodies. In Alt-world, you do a survey of Bob’s body and record everything there is to know about the individual atoms and their states. Then Bob gets hit by a bus and dies. You carefully collect all of his atoms and restore them to the configuration they were in at the time of the survey. Going forward, his body functions normally, and he acts just like he did before the accident. He is alive.
He was alive, then he was dead, and now he is alive again. There’s no logical inconsistency in that sequence. It’s a practical impossibility in our world because we don’t possess the necessary technology to survey living Bob and then convert dead Bob back to living Bob by manipulating his atoms, but it’s not a practical impossibility in Alt-world, where the necessary technology exists.
If Bob had been hit by the bus in our world, we would certainly consider him dead. When he gets hit by the bus in Alt-world, he ends up in the same state. If we would call him dead in our world, why wouldn’t we call him dead in Alt-world, given that he’s in the same state? He’s not living in either world. Dead is dead. It’s just that ‘dead’ isn’t necessarily a permanent state in Alt-world.
There can be life after death in Alt-world, and it isn’t a logical impossibility in either world. Therefore it isn’t oxymoronic. Which makes sense. When people hear about Jesus or Lazarus coming back to life, they don’t have difficulty understanding the concept. It isn’t self-contradictory.
Agreed. It isn’t just that Rasmussen’s particular argument fails — I haven’t seen any arguments for the existence of the soul that are actually persuasive, though I enjoy looking at new ones as they appear. Hence this thread.
Uh, no. There have been science fiction stories where people are subjected to the alt-world recording technique, the resulting file is transmitted to the destination, and materials on hand for the purpose are rearranged according to the file. So, subjectively our traveler regards himself as having been moved to his destination. Objectively, it’s a brand new person.
A related (maybe more commonly used?) fictional technique is to make a precise duplicate, so that there actually is no physical difference (at the instant of duplication – variation between instances of the subject start immediately).
But in none of these fictional cases is the reconstituted person regarded as the original, undying person. Even in alt-world, you wouldn’t have a person who died and returned from the dead, you have a new person. Perhaps courts would decide if the new person could be considered the “same” person, but this would be a legal fiction.
(And in alt-world, clearly you have an exact recording, from which any number of clones could be recreated. It would be physically impossible to determine which of these absolutely identical copies was the one who “returned from the dead.”)
Anyway, I regard death as a logical as well as physical state.
Flint,
There are all sorts of interesting philosophical questions and thought experiments regarding personal identity, but the question at hand doesn’t depend on them.
Here’s an analogy: you’re in a car accident that dents some body panels and knocks some parts loose. You pull the dents and tighten up the parts. Is this the same car that you had before the accident? Yes, obviously. We’ve moved some atoms around, but we haven’t replaced the car with a new one.
Ditto for Bob:
In both cases we’re just moving existing atoms around in order to repair something. If you want to argue that repaired Bob is a new Bob, then by the same logic you should argue that the repaired car is a new car. Which would be silly.
Taking it further, if rearranging atoms creates a new person, then at every instant of time we are new people. Your atoms are no longer in the same configuration that they were five seconds ago. Does that make you a different person, or are you still Flint?
I would argue that you and I are still Flint and keiths, that the car is still the car, and that Bob is still Bob. And in Bob’s case that means he was alive, then he was dead, and now he is alive again. Life after death is not an oxymoron, just a practical impossibility in our world.
Ah, but you have changed the rules. In the Bob case, the rule is that the car is reduced to its component particles. The analogy, which we encounter in the real world, has to do with restoring very old cars. Nobody makes the original parts, so new parts are machined which match the specs of the originals as closely as possible. But many if not most collectors will not regard a car restored this way as being the original. If a dented fender is replaced with a factory original, it is no longer the same car. Although, like I said earlier, court cases may well decide that the reconstituted Bob is Bob-like enough to protect the continuity of his life, the new life simply a one-for-one replacement for the old one.
In your case, as I read it, you have this impossible technology reconstructing Bob using the exact same (the original) subatomic particles. To me, this is stretching your argument into the “I can’t lose no matter what” territory. For me, pure magic doesn’t follow the principles I regard as logic. It’s a bit too similar to Bill’s invoking magic and miracles to rescue his shroud.
I agree we are all in flux all the time, but regard ourselves as the “same” person with no instant of discontinuity – though I wish a much earlier and very different version of myself had made a few decisions differently!
————————————————————————-
Now, for pure entertainment, are you familiar with equations constructed to be read as limericks? Here is a simple example:
A dozen, a gross and a score
Plus three times the square root of four
Divided by seven
Plus five times 11
Equals 9 squared and not a bit more.
Here is an example that’s quite a bit more interesting
The integral z squared dz
From one to the cube root of 3
All times the cosine
Of 3 pi over nine
Is the log of the cube root of e
Flint:
In my example, no parts are replaced:
We aren’t creating a new car by merely fixing some dents and tightening some parts. The parts are all the same. It’s the same car, just repaired. We’ve reconfigured the atoms. It’s the same with Bob, just vastly more complicated.
Yes, but I’ll stress that “impossible” in that sentence means “practically impossible in our world”, not “logically impossible in any world”. The distinction is crucial.
I lose if you can show that life after death is an oxymoron, as J-Mac claims. Logically impossible. To do that, you need to show that it is logically inconsistent — something that cannot happen in any possible world because it would necessarily lead to a contradiction. “Life after death” isn’t like that.
I’m not invoking magic, because I’m not claiming that we, in our world, can repair Bob. Only that it’s possible in another world, given vastly better technology. There’s nothing self-contradictory about such a hypothetical technology. There’s nothing self-contradictory about moving atoms around and recording their states. In fact, we do these things in our world — just not at the granular level that would be required in the case of Bob. I know where the fender is and I can pick it up and move it. In other words, I know where the fender’s atoms are and I can move them. Just not individually. It’s a difference of degree and precision, not of kind.
Don’t we all!
Flint:
When I saw those limericks, it occurred to me that this would be an excellent test case for artificial intelligence, so I showed Claude those examples and asked him to come up with one of his own. I used Anthropic’s flagship model (Fable 5.1) with the effort set to maximum. It took him 6 1/2 minutes and he came up with TWO limericks, both of which scan properly and are also mathematically correct:
Limerick #2 is the famous Basel problem, which Euler solved.
In mathematical notation:
Limerick #1:
Limerick #2:
That Claude was able to come up with those at all, much less in 6 1/2 minutes, is astonishing. It’s frankly terrifying. Where’s Erik? I’d love to hear him explain why this isn’t an example of genuine intelligence.
Ah, I think we have reached the crux of this issue. I would claim that permanence, irreversibility are inherent in the concept of death. If there is any way to reconstruct Bob, using any hypothetical technology, then in that universe Bob is simply not dead, never was. He was in a dormant state, but in your alt-world, death has been “cured” and no longer logically exists. To win your argument, you have altered the very definition of death. That’s cheating. Like arguing that black is “really” logically white because we can repaint it! No, black is black. It’s an inherent condition, the essence of the concept.
Yes, that’s amazing. I think it would be hard to define intelligence in such a way as to rule out this ability.
Flint:
I should add that I told Claude to make the limerick as interesting as possible and he delivered in spades. Both of his limericks are super interesting. The first one because he managed to fit e, π and i into it, plus a trig function, plus a square root, plus i raised to itself. The second because it incorporates π, an infinite sum, a square root, and it’s a famous, counterintuitive result by the great Euler, so it’s of historical interest too.
Brilliant.
Flint:
The fact that death happens to be irreversible doesn’t imply that irreversibility is part of the definition, just as the fact that shit happens to smell bad doesn’t mean that stench is part of the definition. To paraphrase Shakespeare, shit by any other smell would still be shit.
“Dead” just means “no longer alive”, and Bob is definitely not alive after being hit by the bus. He’s no longer breathing, no longer metabolizing, his body is cold and his brain is no longer functioning. In fact, if the bus was traveling fast enough, Bob may no longer be in one piece. That’s “dead”, whether in our world or in alt-world.
He’s dead, because he is no longer alive. For further evidence that “dead” means “no longer alive”, look no further than Christianity itself. Christians believe that Jesus was truly dead — that he died on the cross. Yet he was resurrected, thus demonstrating that irreversibility is not part of the definition of death. In fact, the idea that Jesus wasn’t actually dead when he was taken off the cross — aka the ”swoon theory” — is considered heretical by Christians. Jesus wasn’t “dormant”, he was dead.
It’s the opposite. You have altered the definition in hopes of winning the argument. The Jesus example demonstrates this, as does the dictionary definition of “dead”:
Flint:
Nope, as all of the above demonstrates. “Dead” just means “no longer alive”. After he gets hit by the bus, Bob is dead, both in our world and in alt-world. Just like Jesus after he was crucified. It’s just that death isn’t irreversible in alt-world because of its amazing technology.
A few additional comments:
If you’re tempted to argue that a “dormant” person is still alive, that would mean that in alt-world, Bob is still alive even if his brain is smeared across the pavement. Good luck convincing the denizens of alt-world of that. You’ll have as much luck as the pet shop owner in the Monty Python skit, trying to convince the customer that the parrot isn’t dead.
Next, suppose the resurrection technology in alt-world is imperfect. Some people can be resurrected, depending on the condition of their bodies, but some can’t because their bodies are too far gone. You would presumably agree that the latter truly are dead, because their condition is irreversible. So death does still exist in alt-world, contrary to your assertion.
Further, what if you can’t know ahead of time whether the resurrection attempt will succeed? That means that after Bob is hit by the bus, you might have no idea whether he is dead or alive, because you don’t yet know if the technology can reverse his condition. Does that make sense to you? More importantly, would it make sense to the people of alt-world?
Now suppose that the technology is improving so that every year it becomes possible to resurrect people who wouldn’t have been resurrectable a year ago. Bob gets hit by the bus and isn’t resurrectable, so by the irreversibility criterion, he is dead. His family puts his body in cryogenic storage. A year later the technology has advanced enough that he is resurrectable. Now suddenly he is alive, even before the technology is applied, because his condition is now reversible and he is therefore considered alive, not dead. It’s life after death without any physical change! Bob was dead, his body hasn’t changed, and now Bob is alive because the technology, which hasn’t even been applied yet, has improved. That makes no sense.
It’s a mess. But all of these problems go away if you just accept that “dead” truly does mean “no longer alive”, just as I and the dictionaries maintain. Then Bob really does go from being alive in alt-world, to being dead, to being alive again. Life after death is practically possible in alt-world, which means it’s logically possible in all worlds, including ours. And if it’s logically possible, then “life after death” is not an oxymoron, contra J-Mac.
A couple more points:
You might try to fix this by stipulating that if at any point in the future the technology becomes capable of resurrecting Bob, then he has never been dead. But that means that you can’t say whether Bob is dead or alive following the accident unless you can say with certainty that the technology will or will not advance enough in the future to resurrect him.
Now suppose Bob is resurrectable but that his family declines to apply the technology for religious reasons. Is he alive because the technology is capable of resurrecting him, or is he dead because his family won’t allow him to be resurrected? If the latter, and if they change their minds at some future point, does he suddenly become alive again, without any physical change whatsoever? It doesn’t make sense.
Like the ones mentioned in the previous comment, these problems go away if you simply accept that “dead” means “no longer living”, which in turn means that life after death is logically possible, which in turn means that “life after death” is not an oxymoron.
I strongly disagree. If we posit a world where death is reversible, then it is not death. End of story. You continue to try to redefine it to meet your needs.
Now, I see you are defining death as “not alive”. I have no problem with this hypothetical world, but I would insist that we need a new word to describe a condition where Bob is not dead, but not alive either. I mentioned stories where Bob is in a state we could call exhaustive description, whereby he is dead if the description is lost, but could be re-instantiated multiple times and each instantiation would be alive (and would be Bob) so long as the description is not lost.
I suppose the term “stored” would be more informative than either “dead” or “alive”. And I fully agree that “life after storage” is perfectly logical. In that world, if the description is destroyed, THEN and ONLY THEN does Bob die.
I have at least one novel where the protagonist exists almost always in the stored state. He’s an interstellar explorer, recreated from storage at each destination. Each instance of storage includes storing the new memories accumulated during each visit. So in your world, is he dead or alive or both or neither while in transit?
(And in that novel, a sequence of circumstances causes his stored record to be somewhat scrambled at one point. The AI running the show has to decide whether to reconstruct as close an approximation as possible to preserve the latest memories, or to abandon this version and revert to the last full backup. There is some consideration there as to whether a mostly-but-not-altogether unscrambled version should be regarded as the “same” person. If not, would you consider this to be “life after someone else’s death”?)
In most stories along these lines (there are many), the characters back themselves up regularly, just in case. Then there are plot issues around whether one can be immortal at the cost of permanent amnesia, and other such issues. In some cases, they back up their memories regularly, as a separate process. The result is eternal youth and all the problems that entails. Kind of interesting stuff.
Flint:
Sorry, but you’re not in charge of the language. ‘Death’ and ‘dead’ have established meanings, and those meanings work just fine. There’s no need to change them. Death is irreversible as a practical matter (in our world), but that’s a contingent fact, not part of the definition.
When Christians recite the Apostles’ Creed, they say that Jesus
We all know what they mean by that, including you, I’m willing to bet. They mean that after his crucifixion, Jesus’s heart was no longer beating, he had stopped breathing, he was no longer metabolizing, his body grew cold, rigor mortis set in, etc. He was dead. What they buried in the tomb was a dead body, not a living one. Then, through a miracle, he came back to life. His heart was beating again, he was breathing, etc. He was alive. For Jesus, according to Christians, there was life after death. There is nothing incoherent or inconsistent about that, just as there is nothing incoherent or inconsistent about the fact that in alt-world, Bob too enjoys life after death.
After Bob gets hit by the bus, he is dead, both in our world and in alt-world. His heart is no longer beating, he has stopped breathing, he is no longer metabolizing, his body has grown cold, rigor mortis has set in, etc. He is dead, just like Jesus. Then, in alt-world, the Ronco Resurrectomatic (As Seen on TV!) restores him to life. Life after death.
Again, it’s the opposite. I’m using the accepted meaning while you’re trying to change it. You’re free to spend your time yelling at clouds and arguing with the dictionaries, but the rest of us will continue using the word according to its actual meaning. The fact that you’re upset at the word’s meaning is not a reason for the rest of us to change it.
“No longer alive” is actually better, because “not alive” includes things like rocks that were never alive in the first place.
Why? There is no need for a new word. The existing words — “dead” and “alive” — do the job just fine. In both our world and in alt-world, Bob is alive until the bus hits him. Then he is dead. In our world, he remains dead forever. In alt-world, the Resurrectomatic restores him to life. There is life after death in alt-world. It all fits together. No need for a new word.
I don’t understand why you find this problematic, other than your apparent desire not to be wrong. Why not bite the bullet and use the word the way the rest of us do, including the lexicographers? Why fight the dictionaries?
OK I’ll bite. Today’s lexicographers use the word correctly in light of current and all historical technical reality (though clearly I’m not a Christian so I’m not required to believe in the resurrection). So long as dead people cannot be brought back to life (as has always been the case), there is no life after death, and no compelling evidence of it, and death in our world is permanent. The dictionary is describing all known reality.
What you have done is ring in a technology so advanced as to be essentially magic (and in that future, it would seem nothing is logically impossible. I challenge you to name anything that would remain impossible. Hell, the easiest way to cure future death is to go back in time and change history This is probably more feasible that what you propose). I would argue that, if this becomes technically possible and is applied more or less regularly, the lexicographers would alter their definition to match the new reality. I’d think they would at least have to note that death is no longer necessarily a permanent condition. I certainly would not be surprised if a new word evolved to describe recoverable death.
Out of curiosity, are there any dictionaries that make the point that death is logically reversible, but not reversible in practice?
keiths, you are defending your position by citing fiction. Yes, of course, in fiction you can make anything come true. So what? Your alt-world is itself pure fiction. Your argument holds water only in this fictional world. To support it, you must cite a fictional dictionary, not one reflecting reality as we know it.
(And you might note that each gospel has its own version of the resurrection; these versions are not compatible, but since they are fiction they can make up any details that suits them.)
Flint:
It doesn’t depend on “current and historical technical reality.” The lexicographers define it correctly because the definition that they (and I) offer is the correct one, the one that reflects how people use the word. “Dead” means “no longer alive”, period. It’s not contingent on death being permanent, and that’s why the word works perfectly well in alt-world and in Christian discourse as well as in our world. In both our world and alt-world, Bob is dead after the bus hits him and Jesus is dead after the crucifixion. In alt-world, Bob comes back to life, but that doesn’t mean he wasn’t dead. In Christian theology, Jesus comes back to life, but that doesn’t mean he wasn’t dead.
The dictionary doesn’t describe death that way. It doesn’t mention permanence because permanence is not part of the definition. It just defines “dead” as “no longer alive”, which is correct.
I think the problem is that you’re confused about the meaning of “logically possible”. If something is logically possible, it just means that it entails no logical contradiction or inconsistency. It doesn’t mean that it is possible in our world or that it ever will be. I mention logical possibility in this discussion because for J-Mac to be correct that life after death is an oxymoron, there would have to be something contradictory or inconsistent about the concept. There isn’t. Life after death is logically possible regardless of whether it is actually possible in our world.
They wouldn’t need to alter the definition. “Dead” would still mean “no longer alive”.
If someone stops moving they are still. If they start moving again they are in motion. If someone stops living they are dead. If they start living again they are alive. There is nothing logically contradictory or inconsistent about motion after stillness or life after death. Both are logically possible.
No, and that’s because irreversibility is not part of the definition. “Dead” just means “no longer alive”. The dictionaries (and I, and the rest of the English-speaking world) have it right.
Flint:
Yes. I’m citing fiction, and dictionaries, and usage all across the English-speaking world. In all of those contexts, “dead” means “no longer alive”.
It works in our world too, because in both worlds, “dead” just means “no longer alive”.
Dictionaries in alt-world define “dead” as “no longer alive”, but so do the dictionaries in our world. The same definition works in both worlds, and that’s because it isn’t contingent on death being permanent.
“Shit” refers to excrement. Shit happens to stink, but that is not part of its definition. If Eli Lilly invents a pill that makes shit smell like petunias, it will still be shit. If shit smells like petunias in alt-world, it is still shit. The same definition works in both worlds. As with “shit”, so with “dead”.
There’s no need to fight the dictionaries, Flint. “Dead” just means “no longer alive”, as I’ve already pointed out:
I’m not disputing that description. I’m amused that you must hypothesize an entirely fictional reality for a transition to “no longer dead”. I tried to tell you that in fiction, you can make anything true. Should I repeat this? I’ll also repeat that if we say that time travel becomes possible in the future, we’d waste no time erasing unpleasant pasts.. But alas, time travel remains as fictional as your technology to resuscitate Bob. If we can legitimately up and declare a necessary (if wildly implausible) future technology, made of whole cloth, then you win. Congratulations. I’ve read a great deal of science fiction, but no author I’ve ever found would have the chutzpah to stick your future technology into a story. No plot could survive it.
I mean, sheesh! Hell, why NOT use magic? In the far future, magic might actually come true. Who’s to say it won’t? You’re saying “logical death is different from actual death because I SAID SO! All I need to do is DREAM.” Yeah, right. In my fictional world, no such technology ever becomes possible. So there! Whose fictional future do you read your dictionary as supporting? It would be more honest to say “death isn’t permanent because I don’t want it to be permanent.”
(And really, are you that frightened of death, that you must twist logic into a fictional pretzel to avoid it? If the time comes to reconstruct me after death, I hope they bring me back younger. Getting old sucks.)
keiths:
Flint:
Sure you are. You claimed that I’ve altered the definition of “dead”, yet my definition of that word is just “no longer alive”. That means that you think the actual definition is different. You’re disputing my definition, unless you’ve changed your mind since then. Have you?
Um, that’s because in the real world — our world — there is no life after death. I thought we agreed on that. Alt-world is a hypothetical world. And in case you think it’s illegitimate to discuss hypothetical worlds, I’ll point out that we all do it whenever we state a counterfactual. You did it right here:
When you say “that universe”, you are referring to a hypothetical world in which the technology is available. It’s a possible world, and that means the technology is logically possible.
Flint:
You can’t, actually. For instance, to use the classic example, there is no such thing as a married bachelor, not even in fiction. “Married bachelor” is a contradiction, an oxymoron. It’s logically inconsistent, because “married” implies “not a bachelor”. A married bachelor is logically impossible. Life after death isn’t like that. It doesn’t violate the rules of logic or create a contradiction. It’s logically possible and therefore not an oxymoron.
True.
I don’t. I don’t think we’ll ever be able to resuscitate people. It’s a logical possibility but not a practical possibility in my opinion. And since it’s logically possible, it’s not an oxymoron.
Um, I haven’t said anything about “logical death”. I’ve said that life after death is a logical possibility.
That’s fine. There are fictional worlds in which resurrection is or becomes technically possible, leading to life after death, and others such as yours in which it isn’t and doesn’t. It remains logically possible, however, because it entails no contradiction or inconsistency.
The dictionary defines “dead” as “no longer alive”, and that definition works fine whether or not resurrection is or becomes possible.
Speak for yourself. I think death is permanent.
Dude, I’ve been saying throughout this discussion that I don’t believe in life after death. I don’t think it’s possible in our world. I don’t know how to make it any clearer. All I’m saying is that life after death is a logical possibility. That is, it doesn’t entail a contradiction or logical inconsistency. It therefore isn’t an oxymoron.
The reason it isn’t an oxymoron is that “dead” simply means “no longer alive”. It doesn’t mean “no longer alive and never will be”. Likewise, “shit” means “excrement”. It doesn’t mean “excrement that stinks”. Therefore, life after death is logically possible, as is shit that doesn’t stink.
Slow down and ponder this.
OK, I understand what you’re saying. Something can be impossible (except in imaginary alternate universes, of course) but still logically possible if it does not entail some inherent contradiction. I suppose magic could be considered logically possible. Time travel, now, might create logical contradictions – the classic example is Heinlein’s story “All You Zombies” where the protagonist is his own mother AND his own father!
But logically it could mean that, since there is no contradiction. Life after death, logically, can be either possible or impossible without contradiction.
(In my experience, there really IS such a thing as a married bachelor – the married part is a legal fiction, the bachelor part is a behavior. And trust me, nothing is more discouraging than being married to an unmarried woman.)
Flint:
Exactly. “Logically possible” really means “true in at least one possible world”, even if that world isn’t our own. The only way something can be logically impossible is if there are no possible worlds in which it is true. Married bachelors can’t exist in any possible world, and that means they are logically impossible.
keiths:
Flint:
Actually, no, because in that case you’re changing the definition and are therefore referring to a different concept.
Here’s an analogy that shows why that doesn’t work. Imagine a possible world in which “three” refers to the number we call “four” and “four” refers to the number we call “three”. In that world, a speaker who says “three is greater than four” is making a true statement, but that’s only because “three” and “four” map to different numbers in their world vs ours. The actual numbers they refer to are ordered the same way in their world as ours — they’ve just swapped the labels. What we in our world refer to as “three” is less than the number we refer to as “four”, and that’s true in all possible worlds, regardless of the labels that are applied to them in those worlds.
I remember a story you quoted a long time ago in which someone is asked “If you call a tail a leg, how many legs does a dog have?”. The answer they give is “Four. Calling a tail a leg doesn’t make it a leg.” Same principle.
Only if you redefine “bachelor” to mean a man who behaves in a certain way rather than one who is unmarried. If you use the conventional definition by which a bachelor is an unmarried man, then “married bachelor” is logically impossible. It’s an oxymoron.
“Married bachelor” is an oxymoron, but “life after death” is not, contra J-Mac.
I wasn’t being entirely serious. To me, marriage is as much a state of mind as it is a legal condition. Weddings are real, marriages not so much…
And I continue to believe that permanence is an ihherent, intrinsic property of death. But I suppose this is a matter of what definition you prefer. I know dictionaries just say dead means not alive, but that is a negative definition, telling us what death is not, but not telling us what it is. Wikipedia gives us a good idea here: “Death is the irreversible cessation of biological functions.” Reversible death is an oxymoron, a logical contradiction. You can’t posit some fantabulous future technology to revive corpses without redefining death. Now, I don’t mind redefining death, but I will also be honest enough to admit if that’s what I’m doing.
Flint:
Here’s what you’re missing: a thing can have properties that are not part of its definition. “X has property P” does not automatically mean that property P is part of X’s definition. Returning to my earlier example, shit has the property of stinking, but stinkiness is not part of its definition. The number 3 has the property “is a solution to the equation
“, but that is not part of its definition. Death has the property of permanence, but permanence is not part of its definition.
Those properties are contingent: shit would still be shit even if it smelled like petunias, 3 would still be 3 even if it weren’t a solution to
, and “dead” would still mean “no longer alive” even if it weren’t permanent.
I prefer the correct one, which is the one that reflects how English speakers use the word. They use it to mean “no longer alive”, so that is the definition you find in dictionaries.
There’s nothing wrong with negative definitions when you’re dealing with a dichotomy. A person can be dead or alive. If they’re dead, they’re not alive. If they’re alive, they’re not dead. Those “Wanted: Dead or Alive” posters exhaust the possibilities.
Flint, dictionaries tell us what words mean. When they give the definition of “dead” as “no longer alive”, they are telling us what the word means. You’re drifting into old man yelling at clouds territory if you find yourself saying “The dictionaries are all wrong!”
Only if you insist on your incorrect definition. Irreversibility isn’t part of the true definition. No rules of logic would be violated if a dead person came back to life. Christians say “On the third day he rose again from the dead”. While you and I think that statement is false, that doesn’t make it an oxymoron. It’s perfectly intelligible in a way that “married bachelor” and “false truth” are not.
No redefinition would be needed, just as no redefinition is needed when we talk about Jesus’s resurrection. Why do you think a redefinition would be necessary? What would go wrong if we left the word alone and used the existing definition?
Well, that’s what you’re doing. Are you honest enough to admit it?
I’m honest enough to recognize that the dictionary definition (what you call the “true” definition) and the wikipedia definition (what I call the correct definition) are different. Wikipedia defines death as the irreversible cessation of biological processes. (I note with interest that you very carefully pretended you didn’t see this). So if we are reduced to appeal to authority rather than common sense, then I’ll appeal to mine and you can appeal to yours. You go right ahead and define “irreversible” as meaning “reversible” because you seem married to this position and convinced that the dictionaries’ limited definition is the complete definition. Alternatively, you might be curious as to how all the dictionaries define irreversible. Maybe they’re all wrong? For me, redefining “irreversible” as actually meaning “reversible” is a weak argument, no matter how fervently you wish it were otherwise.
I might also point out that the dictionary definition of death is in this sense ambiguous. The dictionary does NOT say death is irreversible, but it also does NOT say death is contingent, temporary, or provisional. I think it’s a mistake to read into the dictionary definition ideas that are not there, and argue that the dictionary must mean death is reversible because it doesn’t say otherwise! That sort of reading is forcing the dictionary to mean something it doesn’t say. I wasn’t satisfied with this approach; I preferred a definition that resolved this ambiguity.
(I also note that this is the sort of process the judicial system does all the time. The Constitution does not say that X is protected (X could be nearly anything). So If a law is passed protecting (or outlawing) X, is the law constitutional? Where the ultimate authority simply does not say, how is this silence to be interpreted? Historically, that depends on who is doing the interpreting. Often, the dissents are the most entertaining documents, because they say (formally and politely, to be sure) that the majority is forcing an interpretation for which no basis exists except self-interest – that the desired result comes first, and the legal rationalization follows later.)
Flint:
Dude, you’re yelling at clouds. The dictionaries are not all wrong and the clouds are not out to get you. There isn’t a vast conspiracy of evil lexicographers trying to foist an erroneous definition on us. Citing a single definition in a Wikipedia article, of all things — by someone who isn’t even a lexicographer — is not persuasive.
Common sense tells us that professional lexicographers are experts who are fastidious about definitions. Their opinion carries weight in the same way that any expert’s does. Beyond that, common sense tells us that if a dictionary definition matches the way people actually use a word, then it is correct. Meaning is based on usage. People use “dead” to mean “no longer alive”. The dictionaries reflect that, and the dictionaries get it right.
I know you’re unhappy about being wrong, but does it really help matters to attribute a bizarre argument to me that I have never made?
Flint:
That’s because definitions are not supposed to enumerate all of the properties of the things being defined. The definition of shit does not mention the smell, and that’s because lexicographers understand their job. They know that although shit stinks, that is a contingent property, not an essential one. Shit that didn’t stink would still be shit. It’s “bodily waste discharged through the anus”, not “bodily waste discharged through the anus but only if it stinks”.
Yes! And since irreversibility is not part of the definition, it’s a mistake to read it in. Don’t make the mistake you are warning against.
The dictionary doesn’t mean that death is reversible. When lexicographers define “dead” as “no longer alive”, what they’re saying is that if you’re no longer alive, you’re dead. They’re not saying anything about reversibility or irreversibility. That’s because they understand their job and don’t share your confusion about the role of definitions.
Definitions are not required to enumerate all of the properties of the things being defined. It would be a mistake if they did. A lexicographer who included smell in the definition of shit and irreversibility in the definition of death would be a bad lexicographer.
Death makes people sad, it results in life insurance payouts, it is a consequence of war, and it causes you to be ineligible to vote. Those are all properties of death, but none of them belong in the definition. Neither does irreversibility.
“Dead” means “no longer alive”. Christians understand that, which is why they describe Jesus as being dead after his crucifixion despite the fact that (according to their beliefs) he became alive again. Non-Christians get it too, which is why they understand what Christians mean when they say that Jesus rose from the dead. It’s perfectly intelligible and not self-contradictory. It isn’t an oxymoron.