/sci/ - Science & Math

[Anonymous No.9343098]

Scientifically, what exactly constitutes „death“?

[Anonymous No.9343102]

>>9343098
being dead

[Anonymous No.9343111]

something about the breakdown of sufficiently complex systems?

must be a certain point where cellular death causes these systems of dead things (matter, organic compounds) to no longer collaborate synchronisticlly and therefore unable to continue to self organize.

[Anonymous No.9343112]

Your cells stop functioning and you fall apart into less complex matter, and are recombinated into other systems of energy/matter

[Anonymous No.9343144]

>>9343111
>>9343112
But isn’t that a proof for emergence? That systems have probabilities („aliveness“, for example) which the constituting elements do not?

[Anonymous No.9343508]

>>9343144
Not really. Emergence is a property of a complex system which isn't present in individual components. Your brain thinks. Individual neurons don't. Consciousness is an emergent property of the neurons working together.
On the other hand, you can be dead -- no heartbeat, breathing, brainwaves, any criteria you like -- yet individual cells, maybe even entire organs, are still alive.
When your sub-systems die and all the complex chemistry goes awry, microbes move in un-opposed and start to consume you. That's why haste is important when you're trying to salvage an organ for transplant. You want it to still be living and functioning.

[Anonymous No.9343680]

>>9343098
This is more of a metaphysical question.
Science just says whenever your cells have broken down, but that isn't a specific point. This view may not work in the future if we learn how to repair cells with nano-robots or something.

[Anonymous No.9344201]

>>9343098
Lack of homeostasis perhaps?

[Anonymous No.9344639]

>>9343098
Lack of cognitive brain function. The destruction of either memories or memory expression centers.

[Anonymous No.9344643]

>>9343098
When the soul fades away from physical matter and reaches a higher dimension.

[Anonymous No.9344675]

When a living system(or its essential element(s)) can no longer longer function to interpret information and as a system loses its orientation towards homeostasis, and energy is freed.
The crucial part here is dysfunction, phenomenal life is dependent on biosemiotics to function, orientation towards homeostasis(the biophysical product of biosemiotics) is only lost after the system is already dysfunctional(dead)

[Anonymous No.9344681]

>>9343098
When the soul leaves the body.

[Anonymous No.9344687]

>>9344675
My best guess I meant to add before this, it's sort of hypothetical. Though its easy to reason that the loss of the logical elements of life are what causes it to dysfunction and thus lose its identity.

[Anonymous No.9344691]

>>9343098
I guess loss of higher order functions. Death on a cellular level doesn't happen until a few hours after death as we know it. You can culture cell samples from a dead organism after death.

[Anonymous No.9344821]

>yfw there are atheists on /sci/ RIGHT NOW
*tip* my fellow godless men :^)

[Anonymous No.9344824]

>>9343098

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clinical_death

[Anonymous No.9344925]

>>9343680
It's more "legal" than metaphysical. You have to draw a line somewhere. Sometimes a lot of money is at stake depending on whether A died before B or B died before A.

Definition has changed over time, Used to be "not breathing", then "no pulse", most recently "brain flatlined".
With the technology you mentioned, "death" may still be what we consider it to be today but they may add a footnote saying "temporary".

Personally, I consider irrevocable loss of memories and personality (say, due to destruction of neurons) to be
"death". Might be plenty of life left in the organism but that's not a "person" on the table.

[Anonymous No.9345022]

>>9344925
im not trying to put you down or anything but im genuinely curious about why you think about life the way you do. It seems alien to me. How can you be so anthropocentric? The vast majority of life isn't human. Have you grown up surrounded by nothing but concrete and other people. laws arent even real life, they are completely abstract and are based on convention and authority, not nature. Money? what does any of that have to do with life and death, do you think there is a difference between a human dying, and a different form of organism, per se a tree dying?
Its mind boggling how so many humans are completely unaware of their actual place in this world, we are going to go extinct of loneliness in the future.

[Anonymous No.9345971]

When will science prove that the soul exists?

[Anonymous No.9345991]

>>9343098
>scientifically
Report, sage, hide the thread and move on.

[Anonymous No.9346099]

As far as I've been taught, at least on a cellular level, its very hard to define death. Clearly one can distinguish a dead cell from a living cell, and one can see a cell is stressed/dying - but I don't think there's a clear answer as to at which point along that path from healthy > dying > dead, that death occurs.

For animals and such its a little more obvious, as other people said, its probably just where cognitive function and homeostasis ends

[Anonymous No.9346110]

>>9346099
i am rather ignorant of microblogy but i assume cell death occurs when a cell no longer preforms its essential functions, such as interpreting genetic code as well as other more particular things, then this causes higher order processes to discard the cell in multi-cellular organisms.
i suspect my thoughts here to describe life in general,>>9344925.

[Anonymous No.9346150]

>>9343098
The definition of death has been hazy medically because it used to be when the heart stopped beating but obviously that's not really a good metric as we now know. Before that it was the lack of signs of life. Currently it's when you're brain dead, brain death isn't something anyone has come back from without significant damage. No one has come back from full brain death.

[Anonymous No.9346178]

>>9346110
Cells rarely just die, often when they begin to reach a state of insufficient function they will, through either internal or external pathways, signal a process that results in their "death". For example cells undergoing oxidative stress will trigger their own death through "apoptosis".

Obviously causing a cell to lyse completely destroys it and skips this, but in general cells will kill themselves before they die.

It's because of this I said that its hard to pin point exactly where death occurs in a cell - the end result is clear - but at what threshold does the cell "decide" (for lack of a better word) that it is dead?

[Anonymous No.9346179]

>>9343098

When someone posts on 4chan they are biologically dead since they chances of procreating drop to zero.

[Anonymous No.9346234]

some dude told me it's when you become a closed system

[Anonymous No.9346255]

>>9343098
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qBpRer2npl8
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Icrm9m9bRpY

[Anonymous No.9346273]

>>9346179
Ain't it the truth.

[Anonymous No.9346865]

>>9343098
define "constitutes", then we'll talk, brainlet.

[Anonymous No.9347188]

In a scientific format I guess, death would be when the outflow of the small electric currents created by the brain and the heart are ceased. Consciousness is only created when the brains synapses are sending electrical charges. A heart other than the brain is the only organ that can create its own electric pulses the time your heart beats causing it to contract pumping the blood in essence death is only when the brain is no longer pushing out a registered amount of electricity which can be measured with an EEG and heart is no longer putting out a static charge which can be measured with an EKG.

[Anonymous No.9347197]

>>9343098
Not having qt creepyfu gf.

[Anonymous No.9347664]

>>9347197
This tbqh.
More generally, not having a GF.

[Ebony No.9347689]

>>9343098
The medical definition is that all brain and brainstem activity has ceased. This means the individual can no longer think, plan, or willfully execute action. It also means the body cannot regulate the cells to the coordinated action that sustains the cells in all the tissues of the body.

In a more condensed sense it's when you can't do anything anymore, a lack of power.