You’re not likely to find a remotely reasonable hypothesis, even in the Methodsverse where magic abounds, by which the internal parts of a thinking computation can be damaged by damaging the brain, and yet removing the whole brain leaves the soul capable of internal thinking.
Why not? Letting a brain decompose kills the “thinking computation”, while cryonizing it supposedly does not.
Similarly, damaging a living brain may damage the attached soul, while death of a reasonably intact brain could be interpreted as a detachment of a reasonably intact soul.
Are you supposing that oxygenating a human’s blood without the use of lungs would result in the loss of their soul?
I think you will find that the only way to exclude such hypothetical possibilities is to define death as sufficient brain damage (although I suppose you could define it as cessation of neural activity if you don’t mind the possibility of dead people coming back to life; that would still result in a very large proportion of souls being damaged)
Why not? Letting a brain decompose kills the “thinking computation”, while cryonizing it supposedly does not.
Similarly, damaging a living brain may damage the attached soul, while death of a reasonably intact brain could be interpreted as a detachment of a reasonably intact soul.
Taboo death
A perfect taboo. In the literal non lesswrong sense.
Sure. “Last breath”.
Are you supposing that oxygenating a human’s blood without the use of lungs would result in the loss of their soul?
I think you will find that the only way to exclude such hypothetical possibilities is to define death as sufficient brain damage (although I suppose you could define it as cessation of neural activity if you don’t mind the possibility of dead people coming back to life; that would still result in a very large proportion of souls being damaged)
Sure, but they’ll get it back (and lose 30 IQ points and a whole bunch of cool) if cursed by gypsies.
We are not talking about anything real-world, remember. The original setting: