Re: Hypocrisy

[Husar]

Now I'm gonna be dreaming of brainless wyrm eating brainless babies all night...

Anyway, Rhyfelwyr, brain cells are nerve cells and of course we have nerve cells in our entire body. They're like the internet of the body and the term muscle memory refers to the ability of some of them to remember things (in that case movements) without 100% control by the brain in our head. Whether you can transplant entire memories with a heart seems a bit doubtful, but I wouldn't really say the nerve cells in our body can actually take over functions of the brain. You also can't just rip out your CPU and expect your video card to take over its functions. Now the human body is more flexible than a computer, but not THAT flexible.

So would you be a sport, and in simple English explain just how one can be alive without a brain.

I would assume if the heart is beating, the lungs are breathing and the cells of the body do their work, work together as an organism, then it is technically alive. The brain is not necessarily needed for these functions, it can alter them if needed but they also run "on autopilot". Now whether a baby without a brain is capable of eating or performing said adjustments when necessary is another question and may just be the reason they die in the end. It should also be unable to use the eyes, taste, smell, hear etc. since IIRC all these functions are processed in the missing parts of the brain. If any other brain cells try to take these over, they are probably highly defunct. To me it sounds like a living stick of cells that has only autopilot functions and maybe some basic reflexes. If that sounds cruel, yes, I think it is a very cruel fate, if one can call it a fate.

[Montmorency]

So would you be a sport, and in simple English explain just how one can be alive without a brain.

You don't need a brain for your heart and lungs to work. You do, however, need a brain stem.

[Kadagar_AV]

My points are:

A) Basic premise is still a brain. Will you ever shut up and admit you were wrong?

B) Yes, a body can be functional without being alive (This also answers Husar).

Or do you seriously think this squid is alive? Or is it a zombie squid? Or will you just accept that the squid is, in fact, dead and gone (Or in Squid heaven, no offense meant Rhyf!!)

For the last bit, I give myself 10/10 troll points!!

[Montmorency]

A) Basic premise is still a brain.

If a man is born without a penis, but with a scrotum, would you claim that he has a penis?

B) Yes, a body can be functional without being alive (This also answers Husar).

That squid is not "functional". It's just twitching. A dead man will do that after being killed. A baby without a brain, on the other hand...

[Kadagar_AV]

If a man is born without a penis, but with a scrotum, would you claim that he has a penis?

You watch too much Fox News, if you think you can befuddle the argument enough for a tie.

I mean, really? You can't just admit you drew the "no brain" from your behind, without doing somersaults and ninja volts all over the place?

That squid is not "functional". It's just twitching. A dead man will do that after being killed. A baby without a brain, on the other hand...

I don't know, have you tried pouring soy sauce on even an anencephaly-hindered baby?

[HoreTore]

For plants being alive means growing and being able to reproduce which a cut flower can't do. A crippled 18-years old man can do both.

A cut flower can reproduce.

[Gilrandir]

Theoretically, one could keep the head alive by providing it with oxygen and nutrients, in fact this was done for a short while when doctors did a head transplant between two monkeys.

The Russian science fiction writer Belyaiev about 60 years ago wrote a book called "Professor Dowel's head", a story how a man's head was preserved alive after his body was badly crashed in a car accident. It could function and speak. Don't remember other details, though.

A cut flower can reproduce.

Not all of them can.
But all this dicussion of dead/alive species proves once again what Wittgenstein (and later Rosch and Lakoff) said about categories.
Unlike Aristotle, who claimed that categories are separated entities the membership of which is determined by the presence of a list of features in an object, those guys said that categories are fuzzy.The stucture of a category consists of a prototype (a nucleus) and periphery. The prototype is the object soonest to rememeber and recognize and easiest to verbalize. For example, the prototypical bird for Americans is robin. Periphery contains objects which have "family resemblance" with the prototype. The more the object resembles the prototype, the closer it is to the nucleus. Thus the farthest periphery at the fuzzy ends of a category contains objects which can be referred to another category as well (like whales are where "mammals" category overlaps with "fish" category).

[Husar]

A) Basic premise is still a brain. Will you ever shut up and admit you were wrong?

It's more like a socket for a brain. Just because it's called brain socket and has brain it its name, it is not a brain itself.

B) Yes, a body can be functional without being alive (This also answers Husar).

Define functional. But how about we define life:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Life

Life is a characteristic distinguishing physical entities having signaling and self-sustaining processes from those that do not,[1][2] either because such functions have ceased (death), or because they lack such functions and are classified as inanimate.

Everybody in this thread seems to accept that plants are alive. Those babies may have more functions than a plant, yet you keep claiming they are not alive. signaling and self-sustaining processes may well be there until they cease to function, so the babies are alive.

Or do you seriously think this squid is alive? Or is it a zombie squid? Or will you just accept that the squid is, in fact, dead and gone (Or in Squid heaven, no offense meant Rhyf!!)

does the squid have signaling and self-sustaining functions if you don't pour soy sauce over it? No. So it's dead, unlike the baby which can sustain itself for at least a few days. The squid cannot sustain function even for a split second since it is already dead. It's not that hard to understand. As Montmorency also said, a working heart and lungs provide most of the functions required for a human body to be alive and sustain itself. The other organs may however influence for how long that works.

But if inevitable death is an argument, then none of us are alive.