[Corpora-List] What is corpora and what is not?

[Patrick Juola]

On Mon, Oct 8, 2012 at 9:24 PM, Laurence Anthony <anthony0122 at gmail.com> wrote:

>  "There is no precise definition of what separates the living from the
> non-living."
>
> Maybe this is true in biology but I'm sure there is in other cases.
> For example, most doctors and governments have a very precise
> definition of whether or not a person is living or non-living.


Actually, no.  You're actually eloquently proving my point.  Most
doctors do not have a very precise definition; they use (at a
metaphorical gunpoint) the definition of death defined by the local
government.   Depending on which bank of the Delaware River you are
on, you may or may not be dead -- but the doctor has nothing to do
with that decision, as it's purely a legal one, made by people with
little or no medical or biological knowledge.

The doctors tend not to bother with this particular issue except to
the extent that a bad definition impacts medical practice.   In
particular, most states (New Jersey is a notable exception) now accept
"brain death" as the criterion, in part because the medics lobbied for
a change when organ transplantation became practical, as one wants to
harvest the organs as quickly as possible.   The use of a bad
bright-line definition (the kind many on this thread are arguing for)
acted to retard medical practice and to damage the science being done

... which again supports my point.



> Perhaps some people on this list would tell doctors that they are just
> being silly and wasting everybody's time discussing whether somebody
> is alive or dead.

Nope.  No one would tell the DOCTORS that because, by and large, they
don't discuss that question.   The ones discussing the question are
the medically-uninformed lawyers.


> And the doctor would reply, "OK, what properties do we need to look
> at? And, what values do we assign to 'alive' and what properties do we
> assign to 'dead'?
>
> Isn't that a definition?

Nope.

First, that's not what the doctor would say.   The doctor would ask
"why do you need to know if the person is dead?" and then try to
figure out what particular value would be served by any particular
decision.   If we need to decide whether a person is dead because we
want to turn off the heart-lung machine, that's different than if we
need to decide if they're dead to harvest their organs, which in turn
is different if we're going to probate their will.  There's no need
(medically speaking) for those to require the same set of properties,
and ample reason legally and philosophically to separate them.

Which, in turn, means that whatever you answered is not a definition.
>
> This discussion is definitely going off track. My point is a rather
> simple one. Definitions are important!

Yes, and like most oversimplified points, I consider it to be
fundamentally wrong.

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