X-Message-Number: 1073 Date: 28 Jul 92 22:42:28 EDT From: Charles Platt <> Subject: CRYONICS Re: Life Force -------------- I basically agree with everyone who has said, one way or another, "There's nothing you can do to argue logically against an article of faith." At the same time I think it is important for us to be a little more humble and remember that *our* outlook is *also* an article of faith. There is no proof that the mechanistic view of the world is sufficient. There could indeed be a life force which comes and goes capriciously or according to some logic which we cannot yet discern. Yes, the mechanistic view does *seem* to be sufficient *so far,* but for a long time, Newtonian mechanics seemed sufficient too, for similar reasons (no one could find anything that it didn't explain). To continue playing devil's advocate: suppose that the strength of the "life force" is a function of complexity and order; an index of the degree to which entropy does NOT exist. In that case, we could assume that in a perfectly preserved frozen brain, the life force is as strong as ever (albeit dormant) and could last for years. In a damaged brain, the life force is damaged. In a decaying brain, the life force gradually disappears. In a brain under repair by nanotechnology, the life force is being recreated. I run through this argument to emphasize again that there's no way to prove who's right and who's wrong. What concerns me is not proving the issue, but finding the best strategy for tempting someone away from the life-force position. No one was able to give me a case history describing successful conversion of life-force-believer into cryonicist; and I suspect (alas) the reason for this is that no one who replied to me has succeeded in achieving a conversion of this kind. --Charles Platt Rate This Message: http://www.cryonet.org/cgi-bin/rate.cgi?msg=1073