Comment by unsupp0rted
4 hours ago
"alive" is not a meaningful term. It makes sense only when you have blunt instruments to measure aliveness, like pulse, respiration, heart beat, etc.
Once you go much more granular, there's no particular spot to make a distinction between "alive" and "not alive", until you stop seeing any electrical, biochemical and mechanical activity of any kind, at which point you're basically saying "inert".
Is this dry humor and/or a deliberate attempt to make the reader even more horrified by the experiment? Or only a different sensibility from mine? No judgement. I just really can't tell.
And yet, "my child is alive" versus "my child is dead" have some… meaning.
With what we are learning about how gut flora, can a brain be considered conscious while detached from the digestive system?