But we are not speaking of a continuum of cognitive function. We are speaking of life and death. Whether a thing is dead or alive does not depend on our observation of it. A corpse will rot just as well despite the presence or absence of an observer.
Arguably, there is a continuum of cognitive function that pertains to individuals, as well as to populations (as you suggest). We might say that cognitive function increases from infancy, reaches a peak somewhere on the spectrum, and then begins to decline with age. But this would be a generalization. And to speak of a continuum of cognitive function pertaining to a population is also a generalization.
But the living vs. non-living question is not a question of this type. There is a specific answer, and only one specific answer to the question: Is the organism dead or alive? It seems you are trying to change the subject, RWP.
Re: As to whether I am coming at this problem through a filter of religious dogma: as a dogmatist yourself, how would you really be in a position to know?
So will you, if you get untreated gangrene.
But the living vs. non-living question is not a question of this type. There is a specific answer, and only one specific answer to the question: Is the organism dead or alive? It seems you are trying to change the subject, RWP.
Not at all. I dispute it is an either-or question. There may occasionally be a legal necessity to come down on one side or the other, but then the law often has to draw lines where no lines exist.
At the end of life we only sometimes have to confront this question; often death is rapid and catastrophic. At the beginning of life, we clearly go through a continuum of brain development, from a few slightly differentiated cells, to a fully developed brain. When do we have a human consciousness? That's the $64,000 question, isn't it?
On the other hand, if you're only talking about the animal functions of life, some human cells stay alive for hours or even days after the person's clinical death. Some bits of us are dead already; some other bits will significantly outlive our cerebral cortices.
Re: As to whether I am coming at this problem through a filter of religious dogma: as a dogmatist yourself, how would you really be in a position to know?
This, of course, is just a cheap ad hominem. Christianity, of necessity, implies subscription to certain dogmas. I can't imagine why a Christian would find it objectionable to say so. On the other hand, claiming that a person who subscribes to no religion has dogmatic beliefs - why, that's just a slur, isn't it?
You say there is a "specific answer". If that's true, then you should have no problem answering the following questions:
1. Is a quiescent anthrax spore in a vacuum bottle alive or dead?
2. Is a human body in DHCA (Deep Hypothermic Cardiac Arrest) for two hours alive or dead? They have no heartbeat, no brain activity, the blood has been drained from there body and is in a bucket on the floor, and their body has been cooled to extreme lows. Their cells are undergoing the kind of progressive damage seen in refrigerated meat.
3. If your answer to question #2 is "alive", how about the same human body after three weeks?
4. If your answer to question#3 is "dead", then at what moment or event did they instantaneously cross the line from "alive" to "dead", and how is that instant determined?
5. Is a million-year-old pollen grain alive or dead?
6. Sperm in liquid nitrogen?
7. Frozen embryos?
8. Dehydrated brine shrimp eggs?
9. Henrietta Lacks, whose body was buried in in the cemetery across the street from her family's tobacco farm in Virginia in 1951?
10. A crystallized Tobacco Mosaic Virus (TMV)?
11. A TMV decomposed into its constituent parts?
12. The viral parts in question#11 decomposed into their constituent molecules?
13. The molecules in question#12 decomposed into their constituent atoms?
14. The atoms, molecules, or parts in questions#11-13 reassembled back into a virus?
In your answer for each of these questions, please state the specific reasons for your "alive" or your "dead" answer in the particular case. Make sure your criteria are entirely consistent in all cases, and are specific enough to allow them to be applied to new cases I have not yet mentioned without giving answers which fly in the face of the common sense assessment for those additional cases.