"Matt Giwer" wrote in message
om...
Elschlager wrote:
Just thought I would present some information about the
contents of
the book

A) *** Say a little bit more about what the theorem on
all souls is
about ***

Case 1. Ten years ago Aunt G was crogenically frozen at
death, and a
190 years from today she will successfully be unfrozen
and brought
back to life. She will indeed be successfully brought
back to life 190
years from today. That is a given in case 1.

Case 2. Here is the other situation. Aunt G died 10
years ago. It was
a "regular" death: there was no cyrogenesis or anything
special.

I and many others too, would feel, or sense, or believe,
or think, or
be sure that there is a difference, a "real" difference
between these
two cases - a difference in the nature of things.

The theorem in the book states that in terms of the
"nature of things"
there is no difference whatsoever between 1 and 2. To
me, that is
surprising. But that is what some theorems do. They
state surprising
results.

Does the book define life and death so that stating there
is no
difference means something?

B) *** What do you mean by "soul"? ***

(1) The book's preface states that the words "soul",
"sentience",
"consciousness", "mind", "awareness", "I-ness", "being"
are words
that have different nuances, and in places more than
differences in
nuance, but they all swirl around the underlying mystery
that this
book approaches. In other words, these words are used
pretty
interchangeably in terms of the analysis in the book.
The difference
between these words is not what this book is delving
into.

Is the author Joss Whedon?

It is very simple to tell if humans have souls. We simply
find
indentical twins where one does and one does not have a
soul. That may
be difficult to find so we simply to observe people
without souls.

Without playing games, as we cannot observe with and
without cases it
is mental masturbation to attempt to describe something
which
presense or absense cannot be observed. Tell me we can
describe light
without a wavelength, a circle without curvature or a
human without
the nature of a human.

(2) The book attempts to list characteristics or
properties of what we
take to be mind (that is, soul, sentience, being,
consciousness, and
so on). To list characteristics or properties is one
scientific
approach, especially when one is trying to establish a
foundation for
science moving into a new area.

As above this is not scientific. These are descriptions of
the nature
of a human as angles and sides are descriptions of the
nature of a
square. We cannot have a square without sides nor a human
without
whatever he chooses to name.

The fabric of the universe could also be phrased as "the
nature of
things." Not only that, but in science, some of the most
important
features of the nature of things can appear as
un-understandable magic
(see the sections on Fizeau and Newton).

We discriminate particles by their characteristics. Take
away or
change a characteristic and it is a different particle or
does not
exist at all.

As we cannot separate out a "soul" the use of the word
soul is like
spin in particles, misleading people to think the particle
actually
spins. It is reasonable in this case to avoid the word
soul and do the
particle physics, up, down, strange, charm. Those have
sort of human
meanings so I suggest instead of soul we call it spin and
then
describe it.

To me, the whole question is kinda moot. I used to believe
the current cryogenic process was to all practical purposes
equivalent to real suspended animation (with the provision
that the life extension company survived long enough to
effect unfreezing.) Then I saw a documentary (PBS I guess)
on the company's freezing process--after seeing how it's
done in practice, I don't see a chance in hell that the
body, never mind the brain, could ever survive enough for
serious resuscitation. I have since stopped saving money for
the process to be done on myself.

First, the body remains at too high a temperature for too
long before the freezing process is even started from what I
could see--or even from when the company even usually gets
to it.

Second, the initial steps in the process (preparing the body
with anti-freezing protectant solutions etc.) are so
violent/traumatic (think liposuction,) I doubt any cells
could survive at all in viable form for reanimation. I hope
I'm wrong, for the sake of those pioneers who have already
tried it...but I no longer have my immortality bets on
cryogenics--maybe stem cell and genetic research...but very
quickly, I hope! ...tonyC