The same would be true of a real-world medical procedure that replaces the heart and lungs with support-reliable mechanical equivalents. (There are “heart and lung machines” but I believe they’re cumbersome and greatly inferior to the natural organs they substitute for. I’m envisaging something much better than that.) Would you consider someone “undead” merely for having been through such a procedure?
Frankly, the cyborg zombie beetles of Professor Mahrabiz seem more undead than Twilight vampires. Decaying zombies are probably undead, and Harry Potter Inferi are definitely undead, as are Dungeons and Dragons undead (where the vitalistic dualism is very explicit.)
The same would be true of a real-world medical procedure that replaces the heart and lungs with support-reliable mechanical equivalents. (There are “heart and lung machines” but I believe they’re cumbersome and greatly inferior to the natural organs they substitute for. I’m envisaging something much better than that.) Would you consider someone “undead” merely for having been through such a procedure?
My interpretation of ‘undead’ is that it is based on some form of vitalism....
Could you then give an example of what you would accept as a legitimate undead creature?
That’s… actually complicated.
Frankly, the cyborg zombie beetles of Professor Mahrabiz seem more undead than Twilight vampires. Decaying zombies are probably undead, and Harry Potter Inferi are definitely undead, as are Dungeons and Dragons undead (where the vitalistic dualism is very explicit.)