Yes, I think we can stipulate that in great confidence.
And I do think there are useful ways to define death as far as “human death.” I think brain death verified by EEG is a very certain standard…if your brain is necrotic, you aren’t “coming back.”
Similarly, a combination of no pulse along with a lab finding of dessiminated intravascular coagulation is a pretty certain bet.
I don’t think I’m the one you’re going to have any disagreement with on this stuff. 
Just my $.02.
–James
What about immersion hypothermia and near-drowning in young children?
You touch on an interesting point:
Death has an event horizon.
By which I mean: there is a point at which you are still completely alive and quite possibly aware, and yet your immediate death has become certain and can no longer be prevented.
If someone shoots at your head, for instance, and if they aim well, then from the time they pull the trigger your death has become certain, and yet, if they are shooting a very accurate rifle from a distance, you may have one or two seconds before the bullet arrives. An extreme example, but one which easily gets the points across.
Where that “event horizon” is gets changed as we obtain new knowledge. The example of cold-water drowning is a good one; it wasn’t that many years ago that kids who drowned in ice water were just assumed to be dead, yet we now know some of them may have been in a condition from which they could have been revived.
Also your circumstances can dictate this. If you are driving your car and you blow a ventricle, you are dead; if you are in the middle of open heart surgery and the same thing happens, there is a small but real chance that the surgeon might could save you.
Just my $.02.
–James
I agree with Dale and James. Dead is dead - no exchanges, no refunds. If you got better, you weren’t a bona fide stiff in the first place.
As for Bill’s Sci Fi reference, my two favourite stories on that theme are probably Silverberg’s novel Shadrach in the Furnace and Greg Egan’s excellent short story Learning to be Me.
Good versions of the concept also In Peter Hamilton’s Night’s Dawn books and Alastair Reynolds’ books about ‘The Inhibitors’.
In the event of such unlikely technology becoming available, I would consider the downloaded version to be a copy. The original would be dead.
I can imagine a scenario where the dowloaded version was so comprehensive that it would merit treatment as a real person with appropriate rights. Rich territory indeed for Sci Fi writers.
Another interesting fictional question… In many SF versions of teleportation, the original person/object that enters one end of the process is presumed destroyed and what emerges at the other end is a reconstituted copy. See Stephen Baxter’s novel Time and Dan Simmons Hyperion books.
To my mind, teleportation on this basis is nothing of the sort - it would be suicide each trip and replacement by a ringer.
Dead is dead.
All of this seems to point toward one idea to me: in humans the “golden standard” of death seems to be the point at which consciousness is gone and cannot ever return; the ceasing of the mind, the self, the “I.”
Whether or not some body systems continue to function after this permanent loss of the self is where things get sticky, particularly since in the past some of those same systems (such as breathing and heartbeat) were the defining standard of the day as to whether someone was truly dead.
Very sad medical situations arise when these two standards are in conflict.
–James
If resusc was possible then they weren’t dead. That’s why the low temperature is important. The slowing of metabolic processes and demands on the organism is clearly crucial. Had those cases drowned in warm water then they would probably have been dead. Proper dead, not slowed-down-almost-dead dead.
Do tell.
I don’t believe this. As I child I went to Disney on Ice many times, and I never once saw Walt’s head sliding around the rink…
Eric
Huh?
Maybe you could save up a bit before posting.
Reasonable? Telling them to uncork the grave after 4 days and voila! he wasn’t really dead after all? If you’re going to accept a miracle like this, you might as well accept the whole thing…
Orville Redenbacher died in 1995, yet, I saw him advertising his popcorn on TV tonight. Now explain that, if you can.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orville_Redenbacher
“Death is Permanent”
As are far too many marker pens, crayon stains on clothing after going through the clothes drier, and the scar on my knuckle from an unfortunate incident slicing tomatoes as an irrepressible teen at a local burger establishment.
pastorkeith
I dunno. So long as there was a source of water, four days would be doable. And I can assure you I’d be smelly.
Those ads are too creepy. Some of the Orvilles are obviously CG, and others seem to be old footage. They’re both creepy. It’s like commercial necromancy. [zombie]“Buy my popping corn.”[/zombie]
shudder
And…
I saw Colonel Sanders having a pina colada at Trader Vic’s. His hair was perfect.
I would expect nothing less of him, of course. His hair always was perfect.
And I understand the pina coladas are not bad either.
Sandy
I’ll take your word for it, not being all that wild about Piña Coladas, myself. I was at a Trader Vic’s, once. It was okay; it made me think of Applebee’s, but for the Parrothead crowd and more expensive. It was a while back, but if memory serves, I think they may have had Guinness. That’s always good.
Colonel Sanders with a Piña Colada at Trader Vic’s: the vignette is just so…right. It’s sort of like the Elysian Fields for the celebrity departed. I see him alternately wearing an open-necked Hawaiian shirt, shorts and sandals, and his trademark snappy white linen suit getup with the ribbon string tie. I wish he’d make up his mind.