It’s a good week for it in North America. Los Angeles will get a very good view tomorrow night. For viewing information for your location, go here and click on the city nearest you.

When we last left the Williams children, they were still disputing the disposition of Ted Williams’ remains, and had requested mediation.

Talks have apparently broken down, and the matter is going to court, and getting quite nasty. A new witness has come forward saying that Ms. Ferrell was truly estranged, and that Ted Williams would never have confided his wishes to her. We’ll presumably see what kind of evidence each side actually has when they get before a judge.

On the theoretical front, Bruce Baugh expands on my previous commentary on cryonics and the ill-defined nature of death. Despite what seems to many to be common sense (as expressed by such trite phrases as “dead is dead”), “dead” is not, in fact, dead. Death is a gradual process of cells winking out, one by one, and absent a sudden dissolution of the body there is no clear dividing line between life and death, despite the apparent neatness of coroners’ and doctors’ declarations.

Which raises the next issue that I’ve ignored up until now, which is the vehemence with which the medical establishment and the cryobiological community is so opposed to the concept of cryonics (seemingly emotionally and beyond reason).

Here’s an example, in a letter to the editor of the San Diego Union-Tribune, in response to a moronic editorial last week, on July 17. Unfortunately, there’s no URL for the editorial, and it costs $1.95 to non-subscribers, which is more than a $1.95 more than it’s worth. Here’s the abstract:

Cryonics is a crime against natural order

Baseball legend Ted Williams’ death has revealed to the more gullible what they may take for a better way to immortality: It’s called cryonics and its advantage is that it’s not your mirror image that survives, as in cloning, but really you.

People silly enough to seek physical immortality, if that’s not a contradiction in terms, have been cheered by the hoopla around the slugger’s new frozen home, home at least for now as the family sorts things out. More attention surely means more investment in cryonics, which just may mean lead to an immortality breakthrough.

Beyond that, however, is our conviction that cryonics is one of the dumbest ideas we’ve ever come across. Even if Williams’ immortality were possible — which it never will be because of the impossibility of recreating the millions of cells that constituted the “Splendid Splinter” in, say, 1941, the year he hit .406–who could wish such a thing?

And here is the letter cheering on this idiocy:

From 1986-1992, I served as chairman of the Committee on Evolving Trends in Society Affecting Life for the California Medical Association. This panel, surely a candidate for first prize in length of title, actually served as the association’s ethics committee.

About 14 years ago, the Hemlock Society pushed legislation in California that would allow physicians to be involved in “assisted suicide.” Naturally, our committee discussed this legislation at length and the association adopted our recommendation against enactment it. It subsequently was defeated.

Concurrently, a physicist in Sunnyvale, diagnosed with a slow-growing brain malignancy, sued his local district attorney and coroner and the state attorney general to allow his physician to euthanize him in advance of natural demise so that his head could then be frozen and stored by the Alcor Foundation.

Phil Donahue planned a program to discuss this suit and invited me to participate in debate with the plaintiff, the then-director of the Alcor Foundation and its attorney. I expressed reluctance to engage in a debate with three opponents, only to be assured that 150 people in the audience would surely be “on my side.” Participation was an experience I will never forget ? and the assurance was on the mark.

You are absolutely correct in that an idea such as cyonics “is an offense against human nature, against natural law, against the natural order of all life.” The fact that several hundred people have accepted this cockamamie concept and contributed tens of thousands of dollars is sufficient evidence that the evolvement of human beings as highly intelligent creatures is far from complete.

ALAN L. LASNOVER, M.D.
Elfin Forest

“Elfin Forest” seems an appropriate abode somehow.

Both the editorial writer and the good doctor (even ignoring their lack of understanding of the concept) make the “argumentum ad naturum” fallacy–the notion that that which is natural is therefore intrinsically good. I’ve discussed the fallaciousness of this argument in the past.

Why the hostility? Part of the answer, I think, is that it represents a major paradigm shift, and the scientific community has never been very good at handling those, at least not quickly.

But a more fundamental reason, I believe, is that if you accept the cryonicists’ argument, it is tantamount to accepting the notion that almost everyone who is prematurely declared dead, and is then either buried to rot or burned beyond recognition, is being unwittingly murdered.

And if that’s the case, it is the greatest holocaust in history, being performed out of ignorance rather than malice. If I were a member of the medical profession, I’d find the ethical implications of standard practice to be, at the least, extremely troubling. It’s much easier to pretend that the old ways are the best, because it doesn’t arouse any such potential moral dilemmas.

[Update at 11:30 AM PDT]

Eric Olsen indicates that he still doesn’t quite grok the concept.

Rand says that most of the people being frozen for cryonic purposes are within that range and aren’t truly “dead” yet. Even this is possible I suppose. But attendant to this point is a dirty little secret, or I don’t know if it’s a real secret, but I haven’t seen anything on it yet: freezing the body does not stop the process of deterioration, it only slows it down. The periods of time we are talking about before science is going to solve the problems required to revive a “dead,” deep-frozen body, let alone a freaking DISEMBODIED HEAD, are very long indeed – somewhere between dozens and thousands of years – and during all of that time the body is slowly deteriorating, becoming DEAD not just “dead.” And once it’s REALLY DEAD, it is dead, trite phrase or not.

At liquid nitrogen temps, it slows it down to the point that it might as well be stopped (unless Eric has some actual data to the contrary), particularly if vitrified, in which the body takes on a glasslike state. There will be very little deterioration over a period of decades (which is all that most cryonicists are expecting will be necessary for the required technology advances). Repeating once again, cryonicists are not making any guarantees–they’re just doing the best that can be done, with the technology available at any given time.

Next, in response to my comment here, in response to someone’s concern about being reanimated as the same old and decrepit person that was originally suspended, that:

“It is assumed that any technology that can repair the extensive damage caused by freezing can repair anything, so reanimated patients would presumably be restored to youthful vigor. It’s not an unreasonable assumption.”

Eric asks:

From a scientist (or engineer) who is very careful to distinguish between science and belief, this strikes me as bizarre. This is clearly a belief. It does not strike me as unreasonable to think we might reach a point in the future when we can repair the “extensive damage caused by freezing.” I don’t know it might be, and it could be hundreds of years, but I’ll accept that as a reasonable possibility. But how do you get from there to “repair anything”? Repair incinerated bodies? Repair bodies crushed and encased in molten steel? Repair a broken relationship? Repair original sin? What can this open-ended nonsense mean? And why is it not “an unreasonable assumption”?

It’s simple logic. The damage to cells caused by the freezing process is tremendous. It is a much worse structural insult than the result of almost any known disease. Apparently Eric doesn’t understand just how difficult a problem reanimating a corpsicle will be.

Any future technology that is capable of repairing that amount of damage would find restoring the cells to full health a trivial additional task, and in fact, it would be difficult to reanimate a person without restoring her to full youth and vigor, almost automatically. Reanimation, if it works at all, can reasonably be expected to work well, and if the technology hasn’t advanced to that point, then it won’t be done, per the guidelines of the cryonics contract.

Finally, he responds to my point above about the holocaust:

Regarding the medical community, I don’t think they are opposed to cryonics because they are afraid of being declared murderers for declaring only-sort-of-dead-bodies dead. I think they are against it because it is a waste of time and money and space and hope. Science has always moved forward and the point at which people were thought to be dead, or as good as dead, has moved forward over time along with it. I am reminded of a Monty Python scene where the cart comes around for plague victims:

“Bring out your dead.”
“I’m not dead yet.”
“But you may as well be.”

People with fatal diseases have been “as good as dead” for most of history. In fact it wasn’t that long ago that simply being really old was thought of as good as dead, and the codgers were sent off to die in a cave after they reached a certain age. We do not hold doctors responsible retroactively for actions based upon the knowledge of the day. This would be absurd. Doctors, along with everyone else, can only act upon what they know. We don’t blame medieval physicians for drilling holes in people’s heads to let out the bad spirits, it’s what they did at the time.

That’s exactly my point. Just what is the “knowledge of the day”? Cryonicists believe (with some basis) that their knowledge is the knowledge of the day. The arguments in their favor are, to me, irrefutable, if disconcerting. To think that no future technology will exceed our own, or be capable of repairing a suspendee, is hubris of the highest order. But if the medical profession accepts that knowledge, it has very unpleasant implications, in which they must either suspend all, or accept the fact that they’re murdering all.

The “holocaust” Rand speaks of is simply an extension of the rule of “as good as dead” carried to our time: if the heart is stopped, the lungs stopped, no brain activity, and rigor mortis has set in, then there is surely no reason not to declare that person “dead” and dispose of them in a proper receptacle.

Yes, there is. Until you can know for sure that the damage done to the body is beyond the repair capability of any future technology (a very brave and egotistical assumption), then there is a reason. Certainly someone whose body has been burned, and the ashes scattered, is beyond help and hope, but rigor mortis is certainly no indicator of irreversibility. Remember that some cryonicists are totally unconcerned with their bodies–they believe that storing the brain only will allow their survival, and I certainly can’t prove them wrong.

But even if Eric is correct, most suspensions are performed prior to that point. Ideally, the suspension team is at the “death”bed, and ready to take action immediately upon legal declaration of “death.” The only case in which a situation that Eric describes would occur would be in an accident, or an unexpected death in which the patient is not found immediately.

The morality of the “state of the art” is not retroactive: we hold those in the past only up to the standard of the time. The standard of today is “no visible signs of life, stiffening and turning green = dead.” This is not a “holocaust” but simple common sense. And common sense is what is so missing from the whole cryonics perspective. No need to get into the theology, philosophy or morality: it just isn’t practical and probably never will be.

“Common sense” is greatly overrated. General and special relativity defy common sense. So does quantum mechanics. I’m pretty impervious to arguments from “common sense.” I prefer empirical evidence and logic.

I agree that the doctor should not be held morally culpable if he’s not aware of the implications of his actions. But I contend that this is exactly why the medical community can’t accept the cryonicist argument–not because it’s not correct, but because the ethical and practical consequences would be so tremendous.

Some researchers think that they’ve found extraterrestrial glycine. They’ve found simple molecules before, but if true, this is the first discovery of an amino acid, the building blocks of proteins, and life itself.

This will provide a lot of grist for the mill of the where and how of life’s origins.

Daniel Pipes says that the Iranian mullahcracy, and eventually Islamism itself, is doomed.

By virtue of getting more or less what they wanted in 1979 (i.e. no Shah), the Iranian population realized it had control over and responsibility over its destiny. This development, unknown among Arabic-speaking populations, has led to something quite profound and wondrous: a maturation of the Iranian body politic. It has looked at its choices and thumpingly comes down in favour of democracy and a cautious foreign policy.

The contrast between the maturity of Iranian politics and the puerile quality of Arab politics could hardly be greater. Yes, both are dominated by tyrannical regimes, but Iranians can see their way out of the darkness. It is conceivable that before too long, the apparently disastrous Iranian revolution of 1978-79 will be looked back on as the inadvertent start of something wholesome and necessary.

Instantman discusses a Leno monologue last night in which he derided the latest Congressional pay raise.

Actually, Congressional pay is the least of my worries–in terms of the total budget, it’s spitting into a hurricane. The big problem is all the other things that they come up with to spend money on, many of which I don’t even want.

As for their salaries, I’d be happy to double them, as long as they promised not to come in to work.

Instantman discusses a Leno monologue last night in which he derided the latest Congressional pay raise.

Actually, Congressional pay is the least of my worries–in terms of the total budget, it’s spitting into a hurricane. The big problem is all the other things that they come up with to spend money on, many of which I don’t even want.

As for their salaries, I’d be happy to double them, as long as they promised not to come in to work.

Instantman discusses a Leno monologue last night in which he derided the latest Congressional pay raise.

Actually, Congressional pay is the least of my worries–in terms of the total budget, it’s spitting into a hurricane. The big problem is all the other things that they come up with to spend money on, many of which I don’t even want.

As for their salaries, I’d be happy to double them, as long as they promised not to come in to work.

I’ve added a new space-related blog to the left. It’s called Saturn Follies, and it’s a collection of anecdotes from the Apollo days. If you’re interested in space history (both true and mythological), it’s an entertaining site, and a worthwhile one. Many of the Apollo veterans are passing on, and it would be nice to capture some of their knowledge. Unfortunately, they’ve probably forgotten more about this stuff than a lot of us will ever know.

Andy Borowitz has the hot scoop, as usual.

Blue: President Bush will make major economic speech today; investors are advised to convert their 401(k) plans to gold coins and foodstuffs.

He says it’s not–it’s philosophy, but I don’t know how you can make authoritative statements about souls and think that it’s not a religious discussion.

Blogger “Mark” (no idea what the last name is), deigns to educate us on why cryonics won’t work. We are appropriately grateful.

Most, if not all, of the above links, however, make a fundamental mistake in philosophical anthropology by treating the human being dualistically. Cryonics assumes that after death the body that was a human being is still a human being in some way. Cryonics then assumes that there eventually will be a technique of some kind, a Frankensteinian spark that will bring the corpse back to life.

This is a nice set of strawmen.

In fact, cryonicists assume nothing of the kind. First of all, cryonicists don’t accept that a body that’s been properly suspended is dead at all, so the Frankenstein comment (a nice little pejorative phrase, that) is inapplicable.

The best response to this silliness, this tendency toward conceiving of the human being as body and soul, whether it be Platonic or Cartesian or any other variation of dualism, is found in the philosophical tradition that started with Aristotle and culminated in Aquinas.

And the best response to this silliness is a) cryonicists don’t necessarily believe in dualism–in fact, just the opposite, and b) none of those philosophers are infallible, even assuming that they believe what the author claims that they do.

But even though they probably have no relevance to cryonics, let’s see where he’s going with this, at least for entertainment.

In this tradition, a human being is not a body with a soul in it, a kind of ghost in a machine. A human being is not the soul itself, a sort of spirit merely using a body. And a human being is not simply a body, a mechanical, purely material entity. But knowing what it isn?t doesn?t move us much toward understanding human nature. So what then is the nature of the human being? To understand the approach of Aristotle and Aquinas you first need to understand the principles of ?matter? and ?form.?

In his treatise On The Soul, though you?ll find the idea in many other places, Aristotle explains that the everyday things we encounter, rocks, plants, animals and the like are all composed by two principles: a material principle or principle of potency, and a formal principle or principle of act. In other words, everything we encounter in our daily lives (with the exception of things like heavenly bodies for which Aristotle had a different theory) is composed of matter, the principle of potency, potential to be some kind of thing, and form, the principle of actuality, actually being a particular kind of thing, e.g. a granite rock, a geranium, or a gazelle. The matter is only the potential of a thing to be ?this particular thing?; matter does not exist by itself (this sounds strange if you don?t keep the fact that matter is a principle of potency in mind). The form is the act by which a thing is ?this particular kind of thing?; and again, with an exception we?ll see shortly, the form does not exist by itself. It is only in a composite of matter and form that ?this particular thing? exists. The composite of matter and form produces a thing which we can point to and say ?this? thing.

This potency-act, matter-form approach was the brilliant solution Aristotle proposed to escape the many cul-de-sacs of early philosophical thought. What?s important in the cryogenic discussion is the fact that a living thing is a composite of matter and form where the form is a ?soul,? a principle of life. When the composite is sundered at death there is what Aristotle called a ?substantial change? that occurs. Just as wood burns to ash, so a living thing when it dies, when the composite of matter and form that made it not only a certain kind of thing but ?this particular thing? no longer exists, there is an immediate change and the form ceases to exist (with one exception that we?ll soon see). The death of a living thing is a complete and irreversible change because the destruction of the composite is the destruction of its principle of act, its form or ?soul.?

So Mark claims to be able to define and detect the exact moment at which a body goes from living to dead. He claims that this is an objectively verifiable instantaneous change in state. If so, he should write up a description of exactly how to measure this, so we can come up with better means of legally declaring folks dead, instead of the ambiguous and arbitrary techniques that we have today. This is a legal and medical breakthrough.

The reality, of course, is that there is no point in general at which a body passes from a live state to a dead one, except in the case of information death (e.g., being incinerated instantaneously, or smashed into a flattened unrecognizable pulp). Simple death by natural causes, or even violent wounds, if the violence isn’t to the brain, is a gradual process, not a distinct binary one.

Cryonicists accept that the victim of an information death is truly dead, and there’s no point in trying to preserve the remains. However, in most cases, most of the information that constitutes the person remains, and the sooner he or she can be preserved, the more of that information will persist to allow reanimation later. Such a person is not, however, dead.

While a dead body may look like an organic whole, an entity with a single principle organizing it, the truth is that a dead body is a complex of organs and compounds that are themselves undergoing substantial change to less organized elements. Cryonics assumes that after death the ?form? of the body, its organizing principle, remains. But this is not the case. And that?s because the ?form? of a human being is a principle of life, the soul, and when a human being is no longer alive, when the soul no longer ?informs? the human being, the being is no longer human. What made the being human is also what made the human living. You can?t be a human being and not be alive; you can?t be dead and be a human being.

Can our philospher tell us wherein this “soul” resides? Can he show us what instrument we can use to detect its presence or absence, and so determine whether the body is alive or dead?

No.

He simply uses tautological arguments. And again, since the body that he’s describing is not dead, simply in suspension, his equating life with humanity and death with non-humanity is meaningless.

I?ve mentioned that there?s an exception to the fact that when a composite being with principles of matter and form ceases to exist, when a living thing dies, the form ceases to be. For a living thing the form is a soul. So when a living thing dies its soul ceases to exist. The exception, which Aristotle likely didn?t grasp fully, but which is thoroughly worked through in Aquinas, is the human form or soul. Aquinas demonstrated that the human being?s fundamental constitution as a rational creature implied a principle of activity which per se did not require a body. In other words, a human being?s fundamental way of being, thinking, understanding, abstracting, occurred without bodily mechanisms. And since activity follows from existence (i.e. you can?t act if you don?t exist), an activity that does not require a body must derive from something that exists without requiring a body. The technical term for this is ?subsistence.? The human soul, unlike any other soul or principle of life (e.g. orange tree, oyster, orca), subsists even after the matter-form composite corrupts. Aquinas refers to the separated soul as an incorporeal subsistent thing with an incomplete nature (since its nature is to inform a human being in a matter-form composite).

You would think this would bolster the cryonics industry. After all, if the soul is still around isn?t there hope that it might again inform the human being? Well, no. The nature of the soul after death can only be known in sort of a negative way, by saying ?what it is not,? or by extrapolating what we observed when the soul was not separated, since an incorporeal subsistent thing is beyond our senses. But Aquinas suggests that the separated soul exists in a sort of twilight zone. It no longer has sensory input and consequently can only understand (it has to still ?do? something if it exists) in an imperfect way. Still, as an incorporeal subsisting thing it cannot be manipulated by us (nor can it be created by us, but that?s for another post). No matter how long you wait for the wonders of technology, there simply is no way for corporeal beings (that?s us) to influence incorporeal entities like separated souls. Science can?t create a human soul and science can?t cause a soul to again inform the human being it once did. It?s not that we don?t know how. It?s that we are barred metaphysically from doing so. The creation of a human soul would require the infinite power of the Creator since it would require creation of something from nothing. The causing of a separated soul to again inform the human being it once did would require the infinite power of the Creator because it would require the ability to move incorporeal substances.

This may all be true.

It may also be nonsense.

Since there’s no scientific way to determine its validity, cryonicists assume that there is no such thing called a soul, or alternatively, that it will take care of itself or that God will take care of it as needed, but it’s not necessary to be concerned with it in order to suspend and reanimate a person. Any other assumption would be both non-scientific and pointless, until we can come up with the soul detector requested above.

Never mind that the technology is primitive. That?s just a matter of time for cryonic proponents. But cryonics runs into several related fundamental problems of philosophical anthropology ?

1) death is a substantial change and thus irreversible

But since the cryonics patients haven’t gone through that irreversible change, this argument is irrelevant

2) the human being is not present in an organ or in a corpse

This is a partial strawman, since cryonicists don’t believe that the patient is a corpse. However, the first clause is wrong; the human being is present, for the most part, in the brain. At least that’s the operating assumption. It may be wrong, but Mark certainly hasn’t proven it to be so.

3) infusing life into a corpse again would require the ability to control an incorporeal subsistent principle (the human soul) which is not possible for corporeal beings in the land of the living

Since souls are irrelevant to the discussion, and the cryonics patient is not a corpse, this is another strawman.

So, sad as it may seem to some, Walt Disney won?t be watching Teddy Ballgame put the wood on the ol? apple anytime in the future.

Even sadder, Walt Disney was never frozen. This is an urban myth.

Not unlike much of the rest of the posting.

[Update at 9:10 PM PDT]

One more comment. I’ve never before read the words “philosophical anthropology” in conjunction with each other. I think that he’s just making it up, and blowing smoke. This post of “Mark’s” is an excellent example of the old aphorism “a little knowledge is a dangerous thing.”

This is a blog that will definitely not go on my link list.