From: kqb@cbnewsl.cb.att.com (kevin.q.brown)
Subject: Re: The "Life Force" Argument
Organization: AT&T Bell Laboratories
Date: Wed, 29 Jul 1992 17:07:05 GMT

[ I have appended below five messages responding to Charles Platt's
  recent query re: the "Life Force" argument. - KQB ]

    ------------------------ Forwarded Message ------------------------

>Date: 28 Jul 92 02:45:37 EDT
>From: "Steven B. Harris" <71450.1773@CompuServe.COM>
>Message-Subject: Life Force??

To: Charles Platt:


   Obviously it will be fuitless to argue against someone who is
going to say that nobody will ever be brought back from
the "dead" because, whenever someone is resuscitated, that proves
they were really "alive."   Duh.  That's going to be either a
semanic game involving hidden syllogisms, or else a confession of
faith, like some people's belief in fate.  I try to stay far away
from both kinds of poison.

   Is life "mechanistic"?    Life is "mechanistic" to the
extent that we know it can depend on structure and NOT function
or metabolism.  We know this from our long list of frozen un-
damaged novelties, like worms and 10-legged crustacean Tardi-
grades, little critters which may not look like much, but are
pretty darned complex to be called robots or zombies.  You can
dry out a Tardigrade and freeze it in liquid helium-- for that
matter you can do the same for any mammalian embryo (want the
ref?).  That's COLD-- only 4 degrees above absolute zero. 
There's no question of any metabolism at these temps:  there just
isn't any.  In fact, there is nothing but a solid lump of atoms,
whose _only_ real characteristic is how they're connected.  Not
what they're doing, because they're not doing very much of
anything (there's some quantum zero point motion, but it doesn't
enter into chemical reactions).  

   Now I don't know if your wife or editor has done much thinking
about Tardigrades or embryos in liquid helium, but you need to
clue them into the fact that these things are not "asleep." 
There is no metabolism ticking over that you can point to as the
banked fires of life.  Instead, these things are inanimate.  No
metabolism.  No liquid.  No cellular function.  No chemical
reactions.  We're talking rock here at nearly absolute zero.  Or
dry dust just sitting on a shelf.  But if you warm it up and add
water, pretty soon it crawls.  Or grows into a baby.  Or what-
ever.   To ME that's counterintuitive.  Life is not supposed to
be like that.  But it is like that.  We can accept the fact, or
ignore it.  I chose to accept it.  And accepting it, I choose to
accept the philosophy it entails.

                                           Steve

    ------------------------ Forwarded Message ------------------------

>Date: Mon, 27 Jul 92 20:49:23 PDT
>From: lovejoy@alc.com
>Message-Subject: Re: cryonics: #1061


> From whscad1.att.com!kqb@netcomsv.netcom.com Mon Jul 27 19:21:09 1992
> From: Charles Platt <71042.3557@CompuServe.COM>
> Message-Subject: Cryonet
> 
> To Cryonet/Sci.Cryonics 
> 
> 
>          How Do We Tackle the "Life Force" Argument? 
>          -------------------------------------------
 
> >From [Charle's wife's and literary agent's] perspective, a victim 
> of cold-water drowning who 
> is restored to life never really lost that "life force" and 
> therefore was not really dead. Conversely, it is impossible 
> for them to believe that the life force would survive in a 
> detached head immersed in liquid nitrogen, especially bearing 
> in mind the damage that results from freezing. Therefore, as 
> far as they are concerned, cryonics cannot work. 

Note the contradictory assumptions:  In the case of the drowning
victim, the assumption is made that the "life force" is an
independendent variable (a cause), and life is an effect thereof (the
presence of the life force caused the revival of the patient).  In the
case of the cryonics patient, the assumption is made that the physical
state of the life form is the independent variable (the damage to the
patient determined the presence of the life force), and the life force
is merely an effect of the physical state of the organism.

So which is it?  Does the physical state of the patient determine the
presence or absence of the life force? Or, does the presence or absence
of the life force determine the physical state of the patient?

If the molecular structure of a living man were to be scrambled one
molecule at a time, precisely when would the "life force" be
irrevocably departed?  How can this be known?  Why not assume the
best?

Also, why is it assumed that once the life force "is gone" (whatever
that means), that it can never come back?  There is no proof of that,
nor any compelling reason to think so.  In fact, most mystics believe
that the "life force" (usually called the soul) survives the "death" of
the physical organism.  If so, then it should "return" for the same
reasons that it "came" when the organism first developed in the womb.
If the initiation of physical life processes were sufficient to attract
a life force or soul once, then it should be so again.


> I now realize, however, that my view is a minority view. I 
> think my wife and my literary agent speak for the vast 
> majority of people in the world, who have a sense of wonder 
> about life and feel that the mechanistic approach is a kind 
> of insult to it. 
> 
> Unfortunately, many cryonicists tend to dismiss that outlook 
> too casually. They forget that our mechanistic view is itself 
> an article of faith. We cannot *prove* the nonexistence of a 
> soul, a spirit, or a life force. We can only say there isn't 
> any evidence for it. But "absence of evidence is not evidence 
> of absence"! In other words, if we are open minded, we have 
> to admit that people with a spiritual outlook *could still be 
> right.* 


True, but irrelevant.  The mechanisitic outlook does not depend on the
non-existence of a soul, a spirit, or a life force.  It depends only on
the fact that the physical mechanisms of biological life are causative of
life and consciousness, and that life is therefore not an effect of some
non-mechanistic mystical uber-reality.

The "life force," if there is one, survives freezing when the human
that is being frozen is an embryo.  Why would an embryo's "life force"
survive this process, but not an adult human's?  Similarly, many other
animals survive freezing with their life force intact.  The difference
between those who do and those who do not is simply a matter of tissue
complexity and native biochemistry (such as natural antifreeze
proteins).

The existence of a "life force" is not the issue.  Even if there is
such a thing, the evidence is clear that death (and consciousness)
depend solely on chemistry.  Clearly, we do not observe "life force"
imposing life where the underlying chemistry does not permit it, nor do
we observe "life force" preserving life and/or consciousness when the
biochemical processes on which they depend are disrupted.  Revival only
occurs when the appropriate physical changes are accomplished.

Death can always be imposed by sufficiently inhibiting the physical
mechanisms of life.  The status of an organism (whether it is alive or
dead) can always be accurately predicted/determined by examining the
state of its physical mechanisms.  Consciousness and life have always
been observed to end when their enabling physical mechanisms are
interdicted, and they have always been observed to resume when those
mechanisms are repaired. Thus we prove cause and effect; the logic is
relentless and compelling.

So if a "life force" exists, it is merely an **effect** of the physical
process that we call life, not a cause.  Therefore, if the cause of
life (the biochemical process) is reinstated, all the consequential
effects will also necessarily be reinstated, including the "life force"
(if it exists).

--lovejoy@alc.com (Alan Lovejoy)

    ------------------------ Forwarded Message ------------------------

>Date: 28 Jul 92 05:20:31 EDT
>From: Bob Smart <72027.3210@CompuServe.COM>
>Message-Subject: Life Force

There may indeed be something to what's been called the "Life Force" view of
what separates the living from the dead.  However, before we can tell, we
need to define our terms VERY carefully.
 
Is "life force" something that is bestowed at conception, or at birth, or
sometime during gestation, and when it's gone, it's gone? Does it run out or
expire after a while, and then you die regardless of your structural
integrity?  Or does it stay with you until some illness or trauma renders
you incapable of hosting it?  In the case of the drowning victims who get
revived, did their "life force" actually depart, and then return, or did it
never really leave them to begin with? What is the relationship, if any,
between "life force" and identity? That is, is "life force" some
generalized, anonymous, homogeneous resource like electricity or gravity, or
is the "life force" in one individual somehow qualitatively different from
that in another individual? Is "life force" conserved in the Universe? Is
there a finite supply of it?
 
I don't know quite what to say to "life force" believers, and I think it's
important to acknowledge that at the beginning of any discussion along those
lines.  This just isn't the kind of thing that science is EVER likely to
give us a definitive answer for.  That's not to say it's a trivial or silly
question; it just means that if you want an answer, you must look to
something other than science to provide it.
 
And that brings me to the questions with which I began this essay.  If a
Believer insists on trying to make this a scientific question, perhaps the
place to begin is by trying to characterize this "life force" stuff.  If the
Believer can set out a model for how "life force" behaves, we can test the
model against clinical observations...and probably come to the conclusion
that NOBODY really understands in detail how "life force" works or what it
is.  The more of the above questions you can get your Believer to answer,
the better you'll both understand the discussion, at least.
 
For cryonic-evangelist purposes, getting the Believer to admit uncertainty
about the workings of "life force" is net progress, because once a Believer
agrees that he or she doesn't know how "life force" works, that means they
also can't be so absolutely certain that suspension would destroy it.
Probably, the best you can reasonably hope for is to get a Believer to say,
"I guess I don't really know either." That's an improvement over "I know for
sure that cryonics can't possibly work," and it may be what we have to
settle for. After all, we can't PROVE the concept is wrong, so we have to
admit that it might be correct. If we can similarly get a Believer to
understand the difference between belief and certainty, that's probably all
we really have any right to expect.
 
I don't think a debate about this kind of topic can produce any meaningful
resolution until the terms are rigorously defined.  "Life force," without
additional clarification, is semantic noise and in that form, is not fodder
for rational conversation.  Left vague, it can only be a matter of feelings
and intuition, which simply aren't debatable.  If we "agree" that people
have souls, but we each have radically different concepts of what a "soul"
is and how it operates, even the apparent "agreement" is meaningless!  WITH
rigorous definitions, I think any discussion of this type can be brought to
one of the following conclusions:
 
       1. I know exactly what I mean by "life force," and by that
          definition it is clear that "life force" is not incompatible
          with suspension and revival.
 
       2. I know exactly what I mean by "life force," but there is
          no way to know what effect suspension would have on it as
          I have defined it.  It might work; it might not.
 
       3. I don't even know what I really mean by "life force," so I
          have no rational grounds for insisting that cryonics would
          interfere with or destroy it.  It's a matter of opinion, not
          one of certainty.
 
I've left out a fourth possibility, which would include a rigorous
understanding of "life force" coupled with proof that cryonics is
incompatible with "life force." That's because I think any definition of
"life force" which can be shown to be incompatible with cryonics will ALSO
prove to be incompatible with other medical procedures and accidents from
which people are known to have recovered.  Resolution of this paradox will
(I claim) always eventually lead to one of the other 3 outcomes if the
discussion continues long enough.  The least favorable of the 3 terminal
states are both "agnostic" in nature, which is good enough to refute "it
CAN'T work" arguments.
 
The trick is keeping the discussion going long enough to get past state #3.
State #3 is based on an emotional stand, not a rational one, so debate in
this area is bound to be highly emotionally charged.  If you can get past
this one unscathed and still on speaking terms, you've probably got it made.

    ------------------------ Forwarded Message ------------------------

>Date: Tue, 28 Jul 1992 10:57 MST
>From: MVOELKER@CCIT.ARIZONA.EDU
>Message-Subject: Re: cryonics: #1061

Dear Charles:    I too have run into versions of the "Life Force" argument,
and I've never been able to successfully counter it--success being defined as
getting the other party to even consider the validity of my (our) "mechanistic"
view of living things. Yet "vitaliists" often treat machines as living things!
For instance "That damn computer (or car, or vcr, etc,) just doesn't *want* to
behave (operate) properly! Arrgh!" And note that your wife and agent are giving
a mechanistic argument against cryonics working--they say that the level of
damage sustained by a person (a little for a resuscitated drowning victim, a
lot for a neurosuspension patient) determines whether the person's "spirit"
continues to function/exist/hang around. Is the difference of opinion merely
semantic? If a living thing is a "spirit" inhabiting a body, what determines
when the "spirit" leaves or enters the body? Maybe you could genuinly ask them
for details on this, and so get your wife and agent to think more about their
ideas of life and consciousness. Why do they think that damage sustained in a
cryonic suspension will cause the "soul" to quit, but other forms of damage
won't? If their attitude boils down to "because cryonics has never been shown
to work", then the only way to convince them is to conduct the experiment--
which is precisely what the suspendees are doing! So challenge them to answer
the question themselves, by trying it. You might also point out that,
historically, the vitalist view of the world has been losing ground almost
continuously (with some backsliding now and then) for centuries; ancient
animist philosophies considered all natural events to be controlled and
activated by spirits or demons or angels, even such obviously (to modern eyes)
mechanical phenomena as the motion of the planets and the flow of water.
You might also ask them why being a machine is so bad--maybe they think all
machines have to be clunky things with gears and levers. Well, this is a lot of
advice from someone who started this letter my admitting that he's never
successfully gotten an animist to consider the mechanistic viewpoint--
good luck!       Mark Voelker

    ------------------------ Forwarded Message ------------------------

>From: kqb@whscad1.att.com
>Message-Subject: Re: The "Life Force" Argument

Charles,
Other people have offered numerous logical answers to your query.
Now I have a few non-logical (although hopefully not illogical)
suggestions.  I offer these suggestions because, once you educate
your audience with the facts and logical arguments about cryonics,
if they still have problems with it then their problems probably
are not logical, but rather psychological or emotional.  (Is there
a sci.psychology.armchair news group?)

Everyone has their own preferred ways of perceiving, understanding, and
interacting with this world.  I suspect that the ways preferred by your
wife and literary agent are complementary to your own, but not the same.
Thus, what convinces you that cryonics may work and is worthwhile
pursuing may not convince them because they need different criteria to
be convinced than do you.  For example, in everyday life the "gut feel"
approach generally works quite well.  (If someone talks a good line but
somehow makes you suspicious, then pay close attention to your "gut feel"!)
What we call "logic" is only one of many methods we use for evaluation.
What cryonics lacks, for your wife and your agent, is *congruence*;
you can give a logical argument for it but have no other *kind* of
evidence in its favor.  And too many other kinds of evidence ("gut feel",
social custom, aesthetics, etc.) are not in its favor.  It's kind of
like encountering something that sounds like a duck and smells like a
duck, but doesn't look like a duck.  What is it?  Your "gut feel"
certainly would be uncomfortable calling it a duck.

So what can give a person a "gut feel" for cryonics?  Perhaps meeting
a lot of other people who are signed up for cryonic suspension.  Yes,
I know this doesn't make logical sense, but it is persuasive to encounter
in person a group of people who, except for their interest in cryonics,
seem quite normal, or, more likely, more intelligent than normal.
(This goes back to the notion of congruence; if someone with N noticeable
characteristics gets high marks in N - 1 categories, but has strange
views in the Nth category, then maybe that Nth category isn't so crazy
after all.)

Another approach is to admit to oneself that the "life force" concept
has its intuitive appeal and that directly opposing it is likely to
just produce resistance to seeing the situation any other way.  With
some creativity, however, one may be able to put a useful, new spin
on the "life force" concept that preserves its intuitive appeal yet also
does not seriously violate the cryonicists' view of how the world works.
My idea is to concede in principle that they may be right about the
"life force" but that they have an impoverished perception of its range
of applicability.

The everyday, "gut feel" perception of "mere matter" and "machines" is
something that is "dead, lifeless".  Thus, rather than violate that
"gut feel" and reduce humans to "dead, lifeless" things by using the
normal, logical, reductionist argument, it is better to improve their
perception of the "life" or "life force" inherent in ordinary matter.
What I propose is not so much a logical argument as an exercise in
visualization and, thus, another mode by which to gain a "gut feel"
for an issue important to cryonics.  Yet, I am afraid that my attempt
below does begin to invoke some "quantum mysticism" that has a high
barf-factor for die-hard empiricist/cryonicists, so I now will put on
my asbestos suit to protect me from any flame-throwing cryonicists. :-)

  Visualization Exercise

  In everyday life most things (and thus "gut feel") are linear; they
  can be sliced and diced and added as much as one wants and there is
  no indivisible unit of existence.  Matter is thus perceived as
  "dead, lifeless" because it is just "inert stuff".
  The world of quantum mechanics is different.  Particles jump from one
  energy level to another and pop in and out of existence.  There is no
  "dead, lifeless" matter because it all scintillates for those who have
  eyes to see it.
  Now imagine these little quantized units of "life force" continually
  jostling around, combining and recombining in ever more complexly
  structured systems.  What we normally call life is a coordinated dance
  among a multitude of these complex systems.  Whenever matter is combined
  into complex systems in this way, the "life force" inherent in all matter
  naturally makes them behave in a manner that we recognize as life.
  What happens when we freeze such living systems?  They slow down.
  Also, due to their physics and biochemistry, the spatial interrelationships
  among their parts change (but hopefully not too much).  When the systems
  are cold enough, macroscopic change effectively stops.  But the quantized
  "life force" has not been destroyed.  The particles still exist and
  they still jostle around, no matter how cold they get, but they do so
  a lot slower now.  That is what cryonic suspension accomplishes.
  Provided the changes incurred during freezing are not too great, we
  someday will be able to restore cryonically suspended systems (including
  people!) back to functioning order.  When the structure is restored,
  and the temperature raised, the matter knows what to do.  Welcome back!

This visualization exercise may leave unanswered whether or not uploading
could conceivably work, but not even cryonicists agree about that.

Another approach, perhaps the most effective approach, is to do nothing.
If the person *wants* cryonic suspension to work then he or she will find
a way to make it sound reasonable.  (Also, conclusions are always more
convincing when discovered for oneself than when handed down from someone
else.)  By the way, since I assume that both your wife and literary agent
do, overall, hold you in high regard, your consistent, determined efforts
for the success of cryonics should, in time, make it more attractive
to them, so that they indeed will be more likely to *want* it to work.
(Remember the "congruence" argument above.)  Persistence pays for those
who intend to persist.

                              Kevin Q. Brown
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