Reply #103: You may assert that, if and only if,

[kiahzero]

You can medically determine that death is defined as the inability to state that sentence. Find me any medical research or even philosophical argument (Philosophy of the Mind, etc) that the inability to state that sentence defines death, and you have yourself yet another necessary condition for life.

In postulate "C", above, I assume that "it" refers to "life" and not to a "living human". If my assumption is incorrect, please do let me know, because then I think a whole other problem may present itself.

Yes, that assumption is correct. I thought that "it" was clearly referring to "life"... sorry for the confusion.

I understand "d", above, to say that in order for the "life" that is posited in postulate "C", above, brain waves are necessary, but not sufficient.

In other words, I understand you to say that murder can only occur is something called "life" is taken by one human from another. And I also understand you to conclude by your logic that "life" means at least the existence of brain waves within a human. And you leave open the possibility, logically, that something other than brain waves m ight be necssary in order for the condition you call "life" to exist within a human.


By saying that the condition stated above is necessary, but may not be sufficient, I have created the following Boolean expression (all of these are true-false predicates):

Life = HigherBrainFunctions * <unknown>
which means:
Life = HigherBrainFunctions AND <unknown>

Where unknown may be either TRUE, or another predicate.

Your interpretation appears that I created the following expression:
Life = HigherBrainFunctions OR <unknown>

Which is not the case. Had I created that expression, the higher brain functions would be sufficient, but not implicitly necessary.

My point in stating "necessary, if not sufficient" was that there may exist an additional condition for life to exist, and such a condition does not falsify the above proof.

So, to put it simply, your objection is valid, but your interpretation is not. I did not arbitrarily choose this condition for the presence of life - I proved it from an axiom (the medical definition of death).

I would like to thank you, however, for actually arguing the logic of my statements without attacking me from an emotional standpoint. Such things help to strengthen the argument for protections of abortion - before I posted this proof here, I had run it by a few other people. One, my girlfriend who happens to be studying philosophy, pointed out a logical fallacy in my Lemma regarding the relationship between life and death. Because of that, the proof is stronger than it was previously.