The only true cause of death is birth.

Use this philosophy forum to discuss and debate general philosophy topics that don't fit into one of the other categories.

This forum is NOT for factual, informational or scientific questions about philosophy (e.g. "What year was Socrates born?"). Those kind of questions can be asked in the off-topic section.
Steve3007
Posts: 10339
Joined: June 15th, 2011, 5:53 pm

Re: The only true cause of death is birth.

Post by Steve3007 »

LuckyR wrote:All of the people alive are 7% of all the people who have ever lived.
I've heard this quoted before and it's quite interesting because, on the fact of it, you'd think it would be difficult to quantify because the point in time at which we decide the first homo sapiens came into existence is arbitrary. There is obviously no objectively existing dividing line such that a non-human mother one day gave birth to a human baby. Only a continuum. So the total number of humans who have ever lived, and therefore the size of that percentage, is dependant on where in pre-history we arbitrarily decide to place that dividing line. But on the other hand, the total human population of the world before about, say, 10,000 years ago was a miniscule fraction of what it is today, so moving that dividing line by thousands or perhaps even tens of thousands of years probably wouldn't change that percentage by very much at all.

Image
Steve3007
Posts: 10339
Joined: June 15th, 2011, 5:53 pm

Re: The only true cause of death is birth.

Post by Steve3007 »

Scott wrote:It is a counterexample which proves that human birth does not require sex.
Sy Borg wrote:A Clintonesque technicality :) It may not be sexual intercourse as such, but the sperm donor at the fertility clinic was engaged in a sexual act. Sex begets life that begets death that begets more life that has sex ...
I think in considering what actually happens when a sperm meets an egg, and calling that sex, you're ultimately going to come back to birth, or conception, or something that amounts to the same thing: the creation of any entity with a finite lifespan (e.g. a living thing) is the one necessary condition for its destruction. That seems to be Scott's point, and it seems to me to be trivially, tautologically true. It's part of the definition of what it means to have a finite lifespan. But although it is inescapable I still disagree with Scott's conclusion that we can regard that creation as "the only true cause" of that destruction. I disagree with that usage of the word "cause" for reasons touched on by LuckyR:
LuckyR wrote:Sure, it is a great example of the confusion between causation and association. It is true that every single person who dies has also been born. That is association. Death is a change from the alive state to a second state called death. The cause of this change is never one's own birth. That is a lack of causation.
That association exists simply because of the definition of "finite lifespan". Everything with a finite lifespan has, by definition, a beginning and an end; a creation and a destruction; a birth and a death. To me, stating a definition like that does not constitute establishing a cause.
User avatar
LuckyR
Moderator
Posts: 7935
Joined: January 18th, 2015, 1:16 am

Re: The only true cause of death is birth.

Post by LuckyR »

Steve3007 wrote: April 6th, 2021, 5:28 am
LuckyR wrote:All of the people alive are 7% of all the people who have ever lived.
I've heard this quoted before and it's quite interesting because, on the fact of it, you'd think it would be difficult to quantify because the point in time at which we decide the first homo sapiens came into existence is arbitrary. There is obviously no objectively existing dividing line such that a non-human mother one day gave birth to a human baby. Only a continuum. So the total number of humans who have ever lived, and therefore the size of that percentage, is dependant on where in pre-history we arbitrarily decide to place that dividing line. But on the other hand, the total human population of the world before about, say, 10,000 years ago was a miniscule fraction of what it is today, so moving that dividing line by thousands or perhaps even tens of thousands of years probably wouldn't change that percentage by very much at all.

Image
Nice summary of the statistical reality surrounding this issue.
"As usual... it depends."
User avatar
AmericanKestrel
Posts: 356
Joined: May 22nd, 2021, 6:26 am
Favorite Philosopher: Yagnyavalkya
Location: US

Re: The only true cause of death is birth.

Post by AmericanKestrel »

Scott wrote: March 16th, 2021, 1:13 pm The only true cause of death is birth.

Anything that is born will die. Everything that is created will be destroyed.
Of course. This is a fundamental truth. Freedom from the cycle of birth and death is moksha.
"The Serpent did not lie."
Nick_A
Posts: 3364
Joined: April 19th, 2009, 11:45 pm

Re: The only true cause of death is birth.

Post by Nick_A »

Scott wrote: March 16th, 2021, 1:13 pm The only true cause of death is birth.

Anything that is born will die. Everything that is created will be destroyed.

When it comes to so-called "causes of death", the rest is at best merely a matter of perspective, if not a deceptive shell game.

For example, consider a cigarette smoker who dies with lung cancer shortly after catching the common cold.

Would it even make sense to debate about whether the so-called "cause of death" was (1) cigarettes, (2) suicide, (3) lung cancer, or (4) the common cold? I propose that it would make no sense to have such a debate or to assert that one of those is or could be the cause.

No human can be saved from death. Thus, nothing else causes a human to die because the death is inevitable from the birth. The human will die regardless of whether they smoke, whether they catch a cold, whether they get lung cancer, whether they drive a motorcycle, whether they are suicidal, or whether they desperately cling to life in terrified fear of death. Neither the presence nor absence of any of those things--or any other things like them--will prevent the person from dying. Thus, those things and anything like them cannot be a true cause of death.

One could argue instead that a given event or factor (e.g. the presence of smoking versus non-smoking) would speed up the time of the death. Slightly accelerating or postponing the timing of something is very different than causing it. Moreover, analogous to accelerations or decelerations in Newtonian physics, these factors are cumulative not mutually exclusive, and are thus in practice immeasurable and countless if not infinite. For example, if 8 dogs are pulling a sled, it does not make sense to say which dog is the cause of the sled moving, nor is it true that only the dogs are responsible for the sled moving. Rather, there are countless and presumably infinite factors at play, such as but not limited to friction, gravity, the weather, and how much the guy riding the sled ate for breakfast.

Imagine the proverbial sled is going down a steep ice-hill, having black-hole-like properties, and thus the sled will reach its destination very soon regardless of any of those other factors, and some of the dogs are futilely trying to pull the sled up the hill but can only at best slightly decrease the rate of acceleration. That would be a more accurate analogy to anything attempting to prevent human death, such as exercising daily instead of smoking cigarettes daily. There is no preventing death, and no practical way to significantly change to its timing on cosmological scales. The length of a human life is but an itsy bitsy teeny tiny sliver in cosmological spacetime.

As a human, each of us is going to die very soon. Every human dies quickly.

There is no cause of death, besides birth itself.

Once born, the death is inevitable.

We are going down the black-hole-like ice-hill quickly, from birth to death, and no dog can reverse the trajectory.

When one of us humans reach the bottom of the ice-hill (human death), it is absurd and nonsensical, worse than false, to point to any one dog, or even a few dogs, or even dogs as a whole versus gravity or what the sled rider ate, and accuse that thing of being the cause. It doesn't matter what any of the dogs did, and what the rider ate or didn't eat, and thus those kinds of things cannot logically be considered causes.

If you take the cause away, then the result cannot happen. Therefore, if you take an alleged cause away, and the result does still happen, then the alleged cause is no true cause at all, reductio ad absurdum.

Thus, the only cause of death is birth.
Quite true. The cycle of life spans birth to death. The question is if this cycle can reflect different objective qualities and can a person respect the whole cycle rather than arguing over one fragment like abortion? It doesn't seem so simply because we don't know what objective quality means in respect to the purpose of life so the debate devolves into which fragment has value determined by "experts."
Man would like to be an egoist and cannot. This is the most striking characteristic of his wretchedness and the source of his greatness." Simone Weil....Gravity and Grace
Post Reply

Return to “General Philosophy”

2023/2024 Philosophy Books of the Month

Entanglement - Quantum and Otherwise

Entanglement - Quantum and Otherwise
by John K Danenbarger
January 2023

Mark Victor Hansen, Relentless: Wisdom Behind the Incomparable Chicken Soup for the Soul

Mark Victor Hansen, Relentless: Wisdom Behind the Incomparable Chicken Soup for the Soul
by Mitzi Perdue
February 2023

Rediscovering the Wisdom of Human Nature: How Civilization Destroys Happiness

Rediscovering the Wisdom of Human Nature: How Civilization Destroys Happiness
by Chet Shupe
March 2023

The Unfakeable Code®

The Unfakeable Code®
by Tony Jeton Selimi
April 2023

The Book: On the Taboo Against Knowing Who You Are

The Book: On the Taboo Against Knowing Who You Are
by Alan Watts
May 2023

Killing Abel

Killing Abel
by Michael Tieman
June 2023

Reconfigurement: Reconfiguring Your Life at Any Stage and Planning Ahead

Reconfigurement: Reconfiguring Your Life at Any Stage and Planning Ahead
by E. Alan Fleischauer
July 2023

First Survivor: The Impossible Childhood Cancer Breakthrough

First Survivor: The Impossible Childhood Cancer Breakthrough
by Mark Unger
August 2023

Predictably Irrational

Predictably Irrational
by Dan Ariely
September 2023

Artwords

Artwords
by Beatriz M. Robles
November 2023

Fireproof Happiness: Extinguishing Anxiety & Igniting Hope

Fireproof Happiness: Extinguishing Anxiety & Igniting Hope
by Dr. Randy Ross
December 2023

Beyond the Golden Door: Seeing the American Dream Through an Immigrant's Eyes

Beyond the Golden Door: Seeing the American Dream Through an Immigrant's Eyes
by Ali Master
February 2024

2022 Philosophy Books of the Month

Emotional Intelligence At Work

Emotional Intelligence At Work
by Richard M Contino & Penelope J Holt
January 2022

Free Will, Do You Have It?

Free Will, Do You Have It?
by Albertus Kral
February 2022

My Enemy in Vietnam

My Enemy in Vietnam
by Billy Springer
March 2022

2X2 on the Ark

2X2 on the Ark
by Mary J Giuffra, PhD
April 2022

The Maestro Monologue

The Maestro Monologue
by Rob White
May 2022

What Makes America Great

What Makes America Great
by Bob Dowell
June 2022

The Truth Is Beyond Belief!

The Truth Is Beyond Belief!
by Jerry Durr
July 2022

Living in Color

Living in Color
by Mike Murphy
August 2022 (tentative)

The Not So Great American Novel

The Not So Great American Novel
by James E Doucette
September 2022

Mary Jane Whiteley Coggeshall, Hicksite Quaker, Iowa/National Suffragette And Her Speeches

Mary Jane Whiteley Coggeshall, Hicksite Quaker, Iowa/National Suffragette And Her Speeches
by John N. (Jake) Ferris
October 2022

In It Together: The Beautiful Struggle Uniting Us All

In It Together: The Beautiful Struggle Uniting Us All
by Eckhart Aurelius Hughes
November 2022

The Smartest Person in the Room: The Root Cause and New Solution for Cybersecurity

The Smartest Person in the Room
by Christian Espinosa
December 2022

2021 Philosophy Books of the Month

The Biblical Clock: The Untold Secrets Linking the Universe and Humanity with God's Plan

The Biblical Clock
by Daniel Friedmann
March 2021

Wilderness Cry: A Scientific and Philosophical Approach to Understanding God and the Universe

Wilderness Cry
by Dr. Hilary L Hunt M.D.
April 2021

Fear Not, Dream Big, & Execute: Tools To Spark Your Dream And Ignite Your Follow-Through

Fear Not, Dream Big, & Execute
by Jeff Meyer
May 2021

Surviving the Business of Healthcare: Knowledge is Power

Surviving the Business of Healthcare
by Barbara Galutia Regis M.S. PA-C
June 2021

Winning the War on Cancer: The Epic Journey Towards a Natural Cure

Winning the War on Cancer
by Sylvie Beljanski
July 2021

Defining Moments of a Free Man from a Black Stream

Defining Moments of a Free Man from a Black Stream
by Dr Frank L Douglas
August 2021

If Life Stinks, Get Your Head Outta Your Buts

If Life Stinks, Get Your Head Outta Your Buts
by Mark L. Wdowiak
September 2021

The Preppers Medical Handbook

The Preppers Medical Handbook
by Dr. William W Forgey M.D.
October 2021

Natural Relief for Anxiety and Stress: A Practical Guide

Natural Relief for Anxiety and Stress
by Dr. Gustavo Kinrys, MD
November 2021

Dream For Peace: An Ambassador Memoir

Dream For Peace
by Dr. Ghoulem Berrah
December 2021