Am I dead?

The typical cryonicist rambling after a few glasses of wine:

I contest that there might never have been a human being that died of old age in the strictest sense. To say saying that someone died of old age is like saying that someone killed in the coming war died of politics. People do not die of age, they do not even die of gun shots.

Not long ago, when your heart was not beating, you were dead.

Why has this changed? Because nowadays, every Baywatch babe can revive a non-beating heart with a bit of luck and technique. This death is reversible.

Never mind the merits or otherwise of brain stem death- let us assume that tomorrows technology can revive today's corpses. Are they dead? Let us assume that God or (and this has been put to me to often to be funny) the "Singularity" can reach back in time, or follow the light emissions from your body through space, gather all information necessary and revive you, even after your once treasured flesh has long since been digested during some nematode party.

No, - I am not asking ""What consititues me?"" or ""What is continuity of consciousness?"

I am asking is there any other definition of death than a -very necessary- legal one?

*cheers*

PS: this thread is very lighthearted but lets try to keep it CIRA

Dr James Hughes addresses this issue in the following article. He writes about such topics as cryonics, definitions of death, and personhood. For me, I subscribe to the idea of doing everything possible to extend and enhance life. In so doing, I hopefully won't have to find out what happens after death. I'm always happy to muse over the idea with good glass of wine however - BJK

Brain Death and Technological Change:
Personal Identity, Neural Prostheses and Uploading

James J. Hughes
Prepared for the Second International Symposium on Brain Death Second International Symposium on Brain Death
Havana Cuba * February 27-March 1, 1995

Abstract
The death at issue in the brain death debate is not an empiric reality, but a social category, "social death." It is a question of which bodies we are comfortable using and disposing of in certain ways, and not comfortable giving medicine or food as if they were "alive." Until recently both mind and body stopped functioning at the same time, and this "death" and "social death" were generally seen as one phenomenon. There were important exceptions, however, in many cultures where particular diseases and disabilities earned a social death definition before the physical death had occurred.

In the modern world, whole brain definitions of death arose as a result of the technological deconstruction of death as a unitary phenomenon. The whole brain definition was at the outset a compromise between those who prefer a neocortical definition, and those who prefer the whole body definition. This paper argues that the whole brain definition of death is an unwieldy, historical compromise which will unravel as 21st century technologies permit the repair, replacement and manipulation of body, and especially brain, tissue. These technologies will present anomalies to the whole brain definition which will force us towards, and then beyond, a neocortical definition of death. New biological and cybernetic technologies will make clear that social life is properly attributed to any biological system with a particular set of subjective experiences - personhood. These technologies will also create tremendous material incentives for the living to stop treating the permanently unconscious as socially alive

http://www.changesur...h/BD/Brain.html