[lit-ideas] Re: Is 'All men are mortal' unscientific?
- From: "Phil Enns" <phil.enns@xxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Fri, 14 Mar 2008 06:48:35 +0700
Donal McEvoy wrote:
"The fact of death means their was a time that X was alive and a later
time when x was dead. This fact is enough to show mortality whether
or not we know the cause of death ..."
I don't know what the 'fact of death' refers to when talking about a
person still living. If we are talking about a person who is dead,
then the statement 'X is mortal' is hardly an interesting one.
I had written:
"Or, to be mortal is to be subject to all the weaknesses and
vulnerabilities one normally ascribes to human life."
to which Donal replied:
"I am subject to these but am not therefore dead. Both these
approaches to death seem to confuse the concept with the concept of
'causes of death' and of 'nornal human frailty' and this seems odd to
me."
One of the definitions of 'mortal' is being human. That is, being
mortal means being subject to all the frailties of the human
condition, not just death.
Donal again:
"This puts it in tendentious way that is not involved in saying that
death has occurred when, after a time t, a previously living thing is
no longer alive ..."
Since we are talking about a living person, death has not yet occurred.
Sincerely,
Phil Enns
Yogyakarta, Indonesia
------------------------------------------------------------------
To change your Lit-Ideas settings (subscribe/unsub, vacation on/off,
digest on/off), visit www.andreas.com/faq-lit-ideas.html
Other related posts:
