this post was submitted on 12 Jul 2026
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Disagree. Disgusting fascist take but ok Steve https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adriana_Smith_pregnancy_case
How does this have upvotes? Calling someone fascist for thinking a living body isn’t a corpse? Man this place is such a shit hole sometimes.
I understand the fascist comment earlier, this time not sure how you define it?
Good, bad, fascist, whatever, doesn't matter, to a disagreement on nomenclature. A biologically functioning body with a working ATP cycle, isn't a corpse. Ethics and morality are irrelevant.
brain dead is considered dead.
no matter if cells still have atp.
it's a corpse.
there's no biological definition for human death. besides a vague "is it curable"
death used to be cardiac death, but we figured out how to save people who had cardiac death, so we move the goalpost to brain death.
It's literally not a corpse, it's a brain-dead person / body.
You started this debate with Steve by using sensationalizing language, and I'm here to provide definitions and lay this discussion to rest:
https://www.oxfordlearnersdictionaries.com/definition/english/brain-dead?q=Braindead
https://www.oxfordlearnersdictionaries.com/definition/english/corpse?q=Corpse
We can all agree that what they've done is horrible, there's no need to distort language to make a point.
A corpse can not carry a pregnancy, a brain-dead body apparently can if assisted.
I'll see myself out.
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC4206160/
"Is brain death death" and "is a brain-dead person a corpse" are two different questions. The answer to the first is yes, the second is no. You can be dead, but until your body starts decomposing it's not a corpse.
That's simply not correct. A corpse would have more rights to autonomy. You can't force a corpse to donate life saving organs, but you can make a woman.
If brain dead is dead bacteria are dead.
A brain dead body isn't a person, but that doesn't make it a corpse. All the biological functions continue. The ATP cycle continues. The body takes in nutrients and uses them to maintain their normal biological functions. Corpses don't do that.
that isn't biology, it's philosophy.
we don't have a good definition of What's alive either
Actually we do have a pretty solid biological definition for life.
That which takes in nutrients, processes them to support itself, and expells waste products. Anything that dose those things is life. That's why viruses aren't considered alive. They don't do those things.
The person part you're right, is more philosophical. I only mention it because it seems to better fit what people are calling "dead" in this case.
OK, spores aren't alive. dissecated watebears aren't alive
the highschool definition isnt used by biologists because it's oversimplified and doesn't hold up to the diversity of life.
All of that is true.
None if it refutes anything I'm saying.
the things I mentioned have no metabolism, don't absorb nutrients, and don't excrete.
by your definition they are dead.
the things I mentioned have no metabolism, don't absorb nutrients, and don't excrete.
by your definition they are dead.
Right. So?
Is fire alive? it takes in nutrients (Hydro carbons+oxygens), reacts them to support itself, and expells waste products (CO2+water), in fact, that's the same input and output as many organisms. Is fire a living organisms?
you missed growth (also fire)
and reproduction (also fire, but also problematic as it means a single rabbit isn't alive but a couple are)
BTW, not an appeal to authority, just a notice that I might know what I'm talking about. I have a PhD in biology.
there are more interesting candidates for life definition, Dawkins considered that maybe the question is a waste of time and what matters is the genetic unit, "living things" are just things that spread genetic material.
Others theories are based on chaos theory, thermodynamic cascades,matter/energy waves...
Fire can be thought of as alive, in a sense. I'd hesitate to say it isn't. But realy, it's more accurately a chain reaction. Fire isn't a 'thing', it's not a system of repeatitively interacting parts. That said, I have no problem extending the label "Life" to non-biological systems. A machine that can maintain and repair itself is certainly alive.
Reproduction also isn't necessary. DNA or other form of heritable instructions aren't necessary. Muels and Ligers are genetic dead ends, but very much alive themselves.
fire, isn't alive. it isn't biologically.
and we aren't a thing, we replace our matter constantly, hence the matter wave idea.
The point is that basically every definition will fail in some edge cases.
and it ends up being more about philosophy than biology,
the whole point is that there's no biological definition for life. we have one for medical context (brain dead, but mostly depending if it can be reversed, as soon as/if we figure how to resuscitate a brain dead person, we will have another threshold for the definition).
I think there's a really good infinite monkey cage episode about this, one of their best episodes, I think it's "what is death" from series 8. not 100% sure. but it's a great listen anyways
As I said, life is unrelated to biology.
Yes, as parts wear out they are replaced, but they aren't single use. That is the nature of a system. As I said, a system can be considered a thing. Fire is not a thing, because it is not a system of reusable parts that interact with each other multiple times. It's better described as a chemical chain reaction. Every molecule is used exactly once. However the illusion of continuity of the flame, can be useful at times to be considered alive. But it's certainly not the most accurate label for fire.
Agreed. Again, my definition has nothing to do with biology. Mechanical systems might be able to perform the actions of life. Even some software may be considered alive within it's environment.
The issue at hand anyway, isn't the line (zone really) between life and death, but the definition of a corpse. To me that seems pretty clearly the point when a system stops working to maintain itself, stops fighting entropy. The remaining structure of the system then starts to break down, falls apart into it's constituent pieces. Corpse-ing is the process that starts, when the process of dying ends.
there, you're getting too philosophical and abstract.
fire isn't alive, isn't cannot evolve, no evolution... and you're definitely failing biology.
point is that the highschool definition is bs, no biologist uses it, yet you're stubbornly stick to it like a contrarian.
Again. Alive isn't biological.
You're very hung up on only biological things being alive. Which is strange when you yourself said biology has not good definition.
Biology is the study is life.
If it is alive, it is under the purview of Biology.
what you're doing, is trying to fit anything that fits the Highschool definition as alive. and you end up with chemistry rather than life.
You are very hunged up on highschool oversimplifications.
if fire is alive, would using a lighter count as abiogenesis?
Do you see how that doesn't work?
Biologists called themselves "The Study of Life", some 200 years ago. They did so with very little knowledge, and lots of ambition. Also known as hubris.
And fire is clearly chemistry and not biology.
We just study life and don't bother with the definition, its a "you know it when you see it" kind of thing
I'm not sure you're a good advocate for the sciences.
'how fire isn’t technically alive'
Why not?
It fits all the high school definition?
I explained that.
See. You didn't actually read what I wrote. You're not good at this.
you just said it can be considered alive, but then you say isn't
my point is simple, ask anyone with a biology degree,. that highschool definition is oversimplified and not useful. there is no working definition of life
You really don't know how to read do you?
I never mentioned high school. I never took biology in high school. I took physics instead. I gave you my specific definition. You thought it sounded like something you remember from high school, and ignored what I actually said.
Fire doesn't actually support itself. Each flame is gone in an instant, unique to the molecule it came from.
But is creates the illusion of continuity, which can make life a useful analogy for it sometimes.
If you still don't understand. I don't know how better I can explain it for you. I've already given you too much credit. I'm done.
Fire 100% supports itself, each flame dies but that is like saying each of your proteins get denatured and recycled, the carbon you eat eventually turns into CO2, all your matter changes at some point.