X-Message-Number: 2701
Subject: CRYONICS Philosophical Issues
From:  (Charles Platt)
Date: Tue, 26 Apr 94 01:15:27 EDT

I didn't comment before on the philosophical issues raised here, because 
for me they don't apply. It is easy to explain, however, WHY I feel they 
don't apply.

People who fall into snow drifts or drown in cold water have been revived 
after periods of more than three hours of zero detectable brain 
activity. To me, this doesn't seem qualitatively different from 
resuscitation after a period at below-freezing temperatures. Since 
resuscitated patients do not seem "soul dead," it seems tempting to 
conclude that cryonics cases would be no different.

Of course, it is possible that a resuscitated person is not, in some 
sense, the SAME person as before. Identity may in fact change, and this 
may be subjectively undetectable. If it is undetectable, however, 
there's not much point in worrying about it.

I feel that it is still conceivable that a "soul" exists, but if it does
so, it must derive from structure, or pattern. This would be the only way
to explain why a resuscitated person with little brain damage seems the
same as before, while a similar patient who does sustain brain damage
loses his or her "life force," if such a thing exists. By this reasoning,
if a living person has a soul, a frozen person also has a soul, except in
cases where the damage prior to freezing was severe enough to destroy the
"soul supporting" structure. 

Ralph Merkle would probably argue that even if the structure is largely 
destroyed, it may still be possible to reassemble the component parts. 
This would suggest that a soul could be reconstituted. But since this 
discussion entails at least two unprovable assumptions, both of them 
stretching credulity, I see no point in taking it any farther.

Really this is all quite half-baked, for a which I apologize. The best 
argument still seems to be that until anyone can prove some loss of 
identity or of "soul" as a result of freezing, cryonics remains a better 
option than any of the usual alternatives.

--CP

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