Derek Turner - Philosophy of Biological Death
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- Опубліковано 18 кві 2024
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Defining death is no longer simple. Brain death can be irreversible while the heart can keep beating for years. Consider the great costs of prolonging life artificially and the great needs to harvest organs to save the living.
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Derek Turner teaches philosophy at Connecticut College where he is also the Karla Heurich Harrison ’28 Director of the Goodwin-Niering Center for the Environment.
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Closer To Truth, hosted by Robert Lawrence Kuhn and directed by Peter Getzels, presents the world’s greatest thinkers exploring humanity’s deepest questions. Discover fundamental issues of existence. Engage new and diverse ways of thinking. Appreciate intense debates. Share your own opinions. Seek your own answers.
Bioligical death isn't the death of the information that produced the biological organism at the first place. Because the information is still around in some form there is always a chance for re-emergence or material re-realization of the biological organism. So biological death cannot be the final verdict as long as the relevant information that produced the organism at the first place still exists in some form.
Would it be the stoppage of information processing? Plain information isn't useful if it's not being copied/processed.
I mean we could take this as far as the law of ‘information can never be destroyed’ and conclude no one ever dies if we amount death to extinction of information. Does this guarantee life after ‘death’ (as we know it) I’m not sure, I like to think if the ‘environment’ that allows me to exist is eternal then at some point I will come back, we need to define ‘environment’
We know that the environment has some slack, for example every moment is different yet I am continually conscious. The slack being things like my atoms are constantly replacing themselves yet this slack (difference) still permits that I remain as me. However we know the quantum acts differently to the macro and most of our language is perhaps specialised for describing the macro, my point being- therefore change on quantum level may not be change on macro level, at least as far as consciousness is concerned.
Please share your definition of "biological death" and "information".. thank you.
@@MasoudJohnAzizi I like the Shannon's definition of information that in essence is the lack of entropy or disorder. The more a system deviates from the state of maximum entropy or disorder, the more information it contains. The thermodynamic equilibrium state is the dead state of maximum entropy where all thermodynamic processes including life stops. These are the physical definitions of information and death (biological or not) that naturally emerge from thermodynamics. In short to be alive one needs to be in a state far away from thermodynamic equilibrium.
I hope you find this useful.
@@sprightlyrandom1550 This is a very interesting point indeed. I tend to believe that in our expanding universe the information is not only conserved but it's gradually increasing with time. Our immediate environment is the global society we live in and the information that makes us is not only stored in the individual genes but also spread between the members of the society. So the biological death of an individual does not destroy the information that made it at the first place. This is also what makes de-extinction possible. However, due to evolution and increasing information content of our environment it's hard to believe that we will return as we were. In other words "history doesn't repeat itself exactly". If you're interested in some basic quantum treatment of the cosmic evolution we have 2022 manuscript on the arXive that provides an information theoretical account of the cosmic evolution.
Best,
Fantastic discussion .
Wow, that was about as uninteresting as it was unhelpful. If your target was meaningless drivel, you nearly hit a bull's eye.
What we need is intelligent life without the created entanglement with desperation and/or the beast (inflated ego), aka, vanity, greed and envy. Humans are capable of that but as it is, are taught instead to compete with each other in order to survive or live better, acting jus like the less intelligent animals do.
Our evolution hasn't progressed far enough. Still too many deeply engrained emotions.
@@markb3786 True. It makes no good sense to disallow beneficial change. It's in fact quite insane to wallow in tradition that brings hardship to any one of our species.
“Virus with shoes”
i’m a biologist, and have some knowledge of geology, evolution, apoptosis, senescence and grief. However, I regret to report that IMHO this conversation was not very inspiring.
Indeed.
Yooooooo! I'm......loving. Hahaha. PUT BODY YOU GO COLLECT WOTOWOTO.
Interesting. But it also raises the question of the morality of intentionally causing a species to go extinct. I know no one who says that wiping out smallpox was immoral, for example.
That which manifests as smallpox never went extinct. It is possible that human interventions aimed at curtailing it imparted greater suffering than benefit in the long run.. in ways that we are yet to realize.
Oh my God! I hate being nitpicky, but that dude CONSTANTLY saying "Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah" over top of every thing being asked, drove me crazy!
Cry
@@Deductivenightmare Yeah
quality of life is as, if not more, important as its duration, in some cases 🤔
Yes
What is the philosophy of YEAH? What happens to YEAH after it YEAHS?
Why he show this though philosophy and NOT though paleontology proceendings? No Sense It is NOT philosophy.
Much of contemporary philosophy involves engaging with “non-philosophical” disciplines as a partial means of answering philosophical conundrums. Moreover, it’s controversial to assume the nature of the boundary between philosophy and non-philosophy. What is philosophy after all?
@@Deductivenightmare what variables render a discipline as "non-philosophical"?
@@MasoudJohnAzizi an essential condition is that the. Relevant domain of interest not deal with how things in the broadest sense of the term hang together in the broadest sense of the term.
Philosophy means different things to different people. Please share your definition of philosophy. Thanks.
@@Deductivenightmare why is that considered an essential condition? Thanks.
I do wish that before death, and instead of trying to reinvent the wheel, we become prestigious in the lifestyle that is philosophy and as genuine seekers in discussing the philosophy of antiquity, as a collective, acknowledge that those men were far superior to us in thought and the true sciences. I do mean true science. And not the one reduced to mere calculators, whereby everything affirmed is rendered so by touch.
Why should we view ourselves as inferior or superior to any men of past or present? Why not believe that every man is in any man?
Riveting stuff.
The potential dead = biological life, and the realized dead = biological dead.
How so? Thanks.
@@MasoudJohnAzizi Before we can realizing the dead, we had to have a potential to that dead (= biological life):
You had to live if you want to die.
@@kimsahl8555 biological life = product of potential for biological death?
Life is a prerequisite to the dead, and the death is a prerequisite to life. Both life and dead is biological.
Jesus Christ of Nazareth...
God created nothing.
"Philosophy of Biological Death?"
Bilogical death is nothing to be so worried about because it only affects your temporary physical body but not your immortal soul that remains intact and survives forever...
... what you should be concerned about is your soul's eternal fate that solely relies on what you had freely chosen to believe, or not believe, regarding the existence of a loving Creator or GOD, before your physical death...
..if you had chosen to live a life with God's grace, then Heaven is where your soul belongs to live genuinely happy ever after...
..but if you had chosen to believe in Darwin's IGUANA as your Original Mama, ie., had chosen a life without God's grace, then your wish is your command.... your soul will end up in a cold dark empty state (hell) - an absence of God's blessings.... God can not force you Home because your soul is free....
Firstly, anyone with seven or more brain cells knows that accepting evolution is not incompatible with accepting that God exists or that God l’s grace is essential for one’s salvation. You just don’t know what you’re talking about. The confidence you speak of it is disturbing.
@@Deductivenightmare evolution is incompatible with accountability... you can not understand it could be because your head is overloaded with brain cells...
@@Deductivenightmare evolution is incompatible with accountability.... but one may not see it could be because his head is overloaded with brain cells that requires surgery for a complete brain overhaul
@@evaadam3635 Evolution isn’t incompatible with accountability at all. It’s determinism I think you’re referring to. You don’t even know the correct philosophical problems.
@@Deductivenightmare how can you be accountable if you are just a product of evolution beyond your control, not your choice so not fault of your own ?