Length of death experiments
Length of death experiments have many uses and gives us a great deal of information about what it take to produce consciousness and ixperiencitness. What happens at death? There is a change in how the body functions. The condition of the body at death will determine what needs to be done to the body to make it conscious again. If a body has been blown to pieces, the pieces will have to be reconnected in the right order to get the original structure and functioning of the body. But what if the atoms and molecules are used in a different placement but end up with the same over all structure, will they still produce the same functioning? It is true that atoms of the same kind can have different physical properties and or states. For instance, being isotopes of each others or the electrons being in different energy states. It is likely that there are physical properties of atoms that we still know little or nothing about. The physical state that an atom is in will determine how it functions in relation to the other matter that it interacts with. Though the effect is small gravity can effect the atom from any where in space. Different patterns of matter through space can have the same gravity effect on each atom. This is a simplifying process, meaning that we do not have to have all the knowledge of what is happening in the universe to understand how it effects one atom or an entire body.
A dead body still chemically functions or changes but not in a way that produces consciousness. The atoms are still vibrating because of the heat of a body. Various chemical process are still occurring as the body breaks down. But the right chemical processes are not occurring to produce consciousness. External conditions can be applied to the body to make it change in desired ways. How many different ways can we modify a body? There are an enumerable amount of ways to change the structure and functioning of the body over time. Awaretheory calls this the externapath and all the different ways grouped together is called the externacontinuum. We can imagine many externapaths that technology can not create at this point in time but might be able to produce in the future. We can imagine many possible externapaths that will return the original dead body to a possible live state. The question is what will be the consciousness and ixperiencitness of the original after the application of each different externapath is used? If we wanted to actually create the consciousness and ixperiencitness of the original person before his (or her) death what end state in terms of structure and functioning of the body would we want to produce?
Once we determine the end state or states that we want to produce in the body to make it alive again does it matter how long that it takes to produce that end state? In other words does it matter how long the person is dead for? This is what length of death experiments is concerned with. Awaretheory predicts that it does not matter how long it takes if the structure and functioning that is desired is created. Awaretheory also predicts that there are an extremely large amount of possible externapaths that will produce the desired structure and functioning that produces the original's ixperiencitness.
What we are dealing with when are are doing length of death experiments is different externapaths that take different amount of time to produce the correct structures and functionings in the original body. Awaretheory predicts that it does not matter how long that it takes as long as in the end the ixperiencitness that was produced in the body before death is produced after the body reanimated.
Lets consider specific experiments of specific types and ask the question what happens to the ixperiencitness and consciousness under these particular situations?
There are many cases where the heart and breathing stops for a few minutes and then the doctors revive the person. The consciousness changes or is different than it otherwise would have been (because the person is unconscious while actually dead) but the ixperiencitness has not apparently changed upon revival. We do not have the technology to see the ixperiencitness that is being produced by a body but most people believe that the revived person has the same ixperiencitness as he had before (if they understand what the ixperiencitness concept means).
When the body is cold because of drowning in cold water the body has been revived for longer periods of time, like for periods of half of an hour or so. Why this long and why not longer? When matter is colder it changes slower and needs less energy per uint of time. So it takes more time for irreversible damage to occur. If there is not enough food (energy) for the brain to function properly for a long enough period of time then the brain and body dies. If you take oxygen away from a fire it goes out and if you do not give it back soon enough it will not start up again. This is a crude analogy of what happens to the brain at death in many cases. Chemical processes need energy to make then occur in the brain. Heat is one source of energy but besides this the brain requires chemicals that have energy stored in them that is released upon oxidation (like a fire). This oxidation process produces some heat but also makes and breaks chemical bonds building complex useful molecules. In or for the neuron this energy source produces among other things the potential that is needed over and over again to create the electrical signals between the neurons that create consciousness.
When a person is dead this is not happening in the correct way to produce consciousness. We presently do not know how to restart this process if the body has been dead for any length of time beyond a few minutes. What is happening in the body when it is alive is a complex sequence of processes that are interdependent on each other. The structure and then the functioning has to be recreated correctly for consciousness to be reestablished or produced again.
Any imaginable end process can be imagined in terms of structure and functioning for a body given the original starting chemicals as the limiting factors. This means that you can start with George Harvey's dead body and with the right externapath end up with the structure and functioning of a body that is identical to the singer Madonna's body when she was exactly 21 years old. Why exactly 21 years old? Because at 21 years and one second old her body will have changed. Bodies are constantly changing. The changing physical processes in the brian is what produces consciousness. A slightly different externapath would have created this one second later point in her life. This recreated body will act like Madonna at that point in her life given the the influences of the new environment. But will it produce a consciousness that she will actually experience or in other words will it have her ixperiencitness? Awaretheory predicts that it will have Madonna's ixperiencitness. We can now imagine applying an extending externapath to the body and the parts that may not have been needed to create Madonna (because she may be smaller and have a some what different elemental composition) to recreate the structure and functioning of the original George Harvey when he was exactly 50 years old.
These experiments are not about what other consciousnesses and ixperiencitnesses can be produced with one body but to see how the length of the externapath or length of death alone effects the ixperiencitness. Awaretheory predicts that the length of death alone does not effect the consciousness and ixperiencitness produced by a body. Awaretheory is testable eventually if not presently. An endless amount of potential experiments can be designed and imagined. And the best rationally based scientific arguments are what awaretheory predicts.
With out doing the exact experiments what can we predict when it comes to length of death experiments. One prediction is that identical structure and functioning should produce identical behavior. The behavior gives us an indication of what the consciousness that is being produced is. We also have one clue and that is if that structure and functioning originally produced a specific consciousness once we have reason to believe that it could do it again. What has changed to make it different? We can also get information about the consciousness by observing behavior and asking questions about the consciousness. The important question is will it have the same ixperiencitness? If the the ixperiencitness produced by the revived body is not the original's ixperiencitness then whose ixperiencitness will it be? And why that particular one and not any other? To predict another ixperiencitness you need to have good scientific reasons.
We can imagine the construction of a sequence of scientific experiments where there are several different variables changing slowly in one direction. The first set of experiments will vary only length of non functioning where the structure stays the same until functioning resumes. This can be considered instant freezing to absolute zero where there is no change in the structure or functioning at all. The variable is the length of time the body is in this state. The question is what happens to the consciousness and ixperiencitness when the structure and functioning is resumed?