: We interrupt your regularly scheduled spam to bring you
: this message that likely no one will read,
: resurrecting an ancient topic... pun intended.
: I am a philosopher. I've always been, but in the past few
: years I've actually taken that as my chosen academic
: path, and so have been reading about lots of other
: people's philosophies. And in one of those classes,
: namely Philosophy of Mind, two thought experiments
: were presented intended to prove the thesis of
: substance dualism - that minds or souls are some
: immaterial things apart from physical bodies - and
: these two thought experiments got me thinking about
: the old question we had here once about "What is
: Unlife, and how is it different from Undeath?". I
: started thinking about this because of the term
: "philosophical zombie".
: The two big thought experiments intended to show that
: substance dualism is true are both meant to show that
: mind (or souls) and bodies can exist separately from
: one another and thus that there ARE minds or souls
: separate from bodies, i.e. anti-materialism. The most
: famous of these is Renee Descartes "argument from
: doubt", which argues that he can conceive of the
: possibility of there being no physical universe at all
: (i.e. he can doubt the physical universe) and yet he
: cannot doubt his own existence (the famous "I
: think therefore I am" is actually dubito ergo
: sum , "I doubt, therefore I exist").
: Therefore, disembodied minds are possible.
: The notion of a "philosophical zombie" is
: exactly the opposite of that: it's a "disenminded
: body" so to speak. Not particularly different
: from a real zombie, except it doesn't have to have to
: be a reanimated corpse; it's just a normal human body
: that looks and behaves like a normal person except
: that it has no soul (whatever that means - I don't buy
: into dualist theory myself).
: This got me thinking. Myth obviously operates in a
: dualist mythology. Both kinds of these dualist thought
: experiment seem to be similar to a kind of undeath. So
: what if unlife is something likewise similar to a
: normal, unified mind-body experience?
: So, how's this for a theory...
: Life is the unification of a soul (some immaterial,
: immortal subject of experience, with consciousness and
: willpower) with a body (some object, a hunk of matter
: and energy, that occupies space and time).
: Death is the separation of soul from body; the two cease
: to interact, the soul "drifts off" (so to
: speak), its consciousness and willpower no longer
: restrained by the mortal world; and the body becomes
: just another hunk of mass-energy in the spacetime
: continuum.
: But then orthogonal to those states of being...
: Undeath is where a separate (dead) body or a soul
: continues to behave as though it were alive, even
: though it's not; a zombie (dead body exhibiting
: soul-like properties of animated movement) or a ghost
: (dead soul exhibiting body-like properties of physical
: interaction). Both of these seem to be somewhat
: artificial: giving unnatural form to a dead soul, or
: unnatural motion to a dead body. Undead beings are
: thus not subject to the rules of life and death; they
: cannot be killed because they are not alive, and yet,
: they are still not dead.
: Unlife on the other hand is where a living thing, body
: and soul together, is made to behave as though it were
: dead; soul and body continuing to influence each other
: but no longer really entirely alive, and thus likewise
: immune to the laws of mortality. Soul and body are
: still together but no longer dependent of each other,
: and thus doing something to one (mortally wounding the
: body) won't break the connection and kill the being in
: question. It's a different kind of soul-body union
: than regular life. The Myrmidons could be an example
: of this (living beings granted eternal life, but their
: bodies still subject to age and damage), as could
: lichen (undead necromancers, their bodies reanimated
: by their own souls' magic). The Watcher is often
: thought to be something like a lich, so it would make
: sense that he found the Dream of Unlife.
: So. Satisfactory theory?
Indeed.
Sadly, I have nothing else to add at the moment. :-\
If I do it might be when I least expect it. Like a week from now when I think of some other unrelated topic and suddenly the mind is reminded of this topic and a response is born.
