[ExI] What should survive and why?

[Lee Corbin]

Stathis writes

Notions such as "maybe we die every instant" or "maybe we die
whenever our EEGs go flat", are misconceived, and very harmful
for understanding.  Let's get serious!  You can't get out of paradoxes
by making up definitions!

> Well, I thought I was making the same point you are making, and I'm sorry that my attempt at rigor has fallen flat. It seems to me 
> that Heartland is claiming that there is some objective criterion for death which trumps what an ordinary person would understand 
> by the term.<

Sorry---maybe you were making the same point, but maybe not.
Let's look at your next sentence:

> That would mean that you could have a test and be informed that, even though you don't realise it, you died in the last hour (with 
> the appropriate adjustment to the pronouns that that would entail).
<

Why isn't that *theoretically* possible?  Why isn't it *possible*
that this could have happened?  I can imagine being suddenly
shown overwhelming evidence including video tapes of Lee's
behavior over the last weeks---how in some ways it resembled
how I act today and in some ways not, and have to conclude
that by some TREMENDOUS agency beyond our present
unassisted human ability, the old Lee had indeed been replaced
by *me*.  (One easy way is to show that Lee actually commited
moral crimes of which I am incapable.)

>  But all that would mean is that the test is not a valid test for what is commonly understood by the word "death"; or 
> alternatively, that the newly-defined "death" is not the same as the thing that people have always worried about when they were 
> worrying about dying, and perhaps we need a new word in its place (although it would be more sensible to keep the traditional 
> meaning and come up with another word for what the test shows).
<

I agree that in all *practical* situations that have come up, and
will even come up in teleportation and uploading, you are entirely
correct.  We need to nail down the thing that, as you say, people
have traditionally been worrying about.  That's why Heartland
is out to lunch entertaining conjectures that an EEG going flat
for a tenth of a second is *necessarily* death, just because his
arcane definition says it is.  Clearly, we cannot treat life and death
as 1 and 0, as well you and I already know.

>
To push your temperature analogy further, it would be like science discovering the melting point of tungsten, and then declaring 
that boiling water should no longer be called "hot". Even if everyone agreed that this was an appropriate linguistic change, no 
scientific discovery will have any bearing on the hot-like sensation you get when you put your hand into boiling water.
<

Precisely.

Lee