Friday, August 23, 2019

A Thought Experiment


Can you prove "life"?

Before you think it's all that obvious, consider:  the difference between "alive" and "dead" is mere animation.  Animate things are "alive."  Inanimate things are "dead."  Technically, that means stuff like rocks and water and clouds, and we seldom think of clouds as "dead" because they were never "alive," and "dead" usually means "once alive but no longer."  I mention this to clarify, and nothing more.  Animate things are alive.  Inanimate things, including things that were never animate, are dead.

Now, is animation proof of life?  Terri Schiavo was animate; was she alive?  Some said yes, some said no.  Who was right?  You see it isn't so simple as animate and inanimate.  She was animate, but was she alive?  Was it right and just to do all that was medically possible to keep her alive?  Or was she "dead" except for that "inanimate" part, and she deserved to be allowed to die, to stop interrupting the natural processes of her own body and "let her go"?*  And why are some things animate?  Because they come from animate things?  That seems to be the only possible answer, if we stick with the standards of atheism (one cannot "see" the "soul", the elan vital, the animae vitae).  Why are some things alive and some dead, and how do the live things pass on the state of being alive?  And when something is no longer alive, why is it dead?  Because it is inanimate?  Because its physical condition was "no longer able to sustain the operations of life"?  What kind of circular logic is that?  Basically you say its dead because its inanimate.  Which is not really saying anything except that it isn't "alive" anymore.**

Yet what is "alive," beyond "animate"?  And then we're back to cases like Terri Schiavo.  So, can you prove someone is, or is not, alive?  And to whom do you prove it?  Terri Schiavo's husband?  Or Terri Schiavo's parents?  Is one of those two sets of persons "reasonable," and the other not?  I suppose we could say that, but in the end the resolution was one of brute power:  the state overruled the objections of the parents.  In the end, our insistence that our position is the "reasonable" one is the same exercise of power.

Did that prove she was already "dead" before she actually lost all animation?  The parents did not think so, nothing was proven to them.  Is that any stronger an argument than the argument of the atheist, above?  Nothing is proven to the atheist about God, so nothing is proven?

Seems to me it's the same argument.  And whether you find either convincing, is up to you.  But if you don't, that's up to you, too.  The only difference is, the life of someone you love is not at stake.

Indeed, what is at stake?  Bragging rights?  Really?

How rational and logical and mature of you.

*Don't neglect what a slippery slope argument it is, to decide that which is animate is already dead and should be "left to die," v. that which is alive and should not be murdered.  The issue animates ethical discussions as far back as Plato's "Euthyphro."

**Or, as I've discussed at greater length, how do we establish existence?

(and a yet simpler response:  "I love my wife!"  "Can you prove it?"  "No."  "Then I don't believe it." "Believe" is doing a lot of work there, especially since it doesn't matter whether you believe I love my wife or not.  Nor can I prove it.  Is it, then, unreal, or untrue?  By what standard?)


You don't believe - I won't attempt to make ye:
You are asleep - I won't attempt to wake ye.
Sleep on! sleep on! while in your pleasant dreams
Of Reason you may drink of Life's clear streams.
Reason and Newton, they are quite two things;
For so the swallow and the sparrow sings.
Reason says `Miracle': Newton says `Doubt.'
Aye! that's the way to make all Nature out.
`Doubt, doubt, and don't believe without experiment':
That is the very thing that Jesus meant,
When He said `Only believe! believe and try!
Try, try, and never mind the reason why!'

--William Blake

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