{"id":2951,"date":"2020-07-29T11:27:27","date_gmt":"2020-07-29T11:27:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/2020\/07\/29\/can-a-dead-animal-be-buried\/"},"modified":"2020-07-29T11:27:27","modified_gmt":"2020-07-29T11:27:27","slug":"can-a-dead-animal-be-buried","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/2020\/07\/29\/can-a-dead-animal-be-buried\/","title":{"rendered":"Can a Dead Animal be Buried?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Arguably not. Here is an argument:<\/span><\/p>\n

\n

1) A dead animal can be buried if and only if it is identical to its corpse.<\/span><\/p>\n

2) A dead animal is not identical to its corpse.<\/span><\/p>\n

Therefore<\/span><\/p>\n

3) It is not the case that a dead animal can be buried.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Argument for (2):<\/span><\/p>\n

\n

4) If a dead animal is identical to its corpse, then it survives its death as a corpse.<\/span><\/p>\n

5) No animal survives its death as a corpse.<\/span><\/p>\n

Therefore<\/span><\/p>\n

2) A dead animal is not identical to its corpse.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

\"Lone<\/a>Suppose you hear that I was involved in a terrible auto accident. You ask whether I survived. You get the response, "Yes, here he is in the morgue. The good news is that he survived; the bad news is that he is dead." If you find that response absurd, then you will accept (5) and with it (3), and you will understand that a dead animal cannot be buried. You will agree that you cannot bury me, "on the lone prarie"<\/a> or anywhere; you can only bury my corpse which is not me. Even if I am only a living human body, I am not identical to 'my' corpse either before death or after it.<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

When an animal dies, it ceases to exist, and you cannot bury what does not exist.<\/span><\/p>\n

But intuitions differ. Suppose that a 200 lb. man dies in his bed, and that a man is just a living material thing.  If the man ceased to exist at death, but the 200 lb. mass in the bed did not, then something new came into existence in the bed, a corpse. If that sounds absurd, you may be tempted to say that one and the same thing that was alive is now dead, and that that one thing  will be buried. So you did bury old Uncle Joe after all and not merely his remains.  And the old cowboy's request not to be buried on the lone prarie, where the coyotes howl and wind blows free, makes sense.<\/span><\/p>\n

Welcome to the aporetics of death and burial.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Arguably not. Here is an argument: 1) A dead animal can be buried if and only if it is identical to its corpse. 2) A dead animal is not identical to its corpse. Therefore 3) It is not the case that a dead animal can be buried. Argument for (2): 4) If a dead animal … Continue reading “Can a Dead Animal be Buried?”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[21,184,142],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2951","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-aporetics","category-death-and-immortality","category-existence"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2951","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2951"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2951\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2951"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2951"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2951"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}