It all hinges on if brain death is the complete annihilation or degradation of the soul that lives on it, or not. One is gone to the extent that the patterns of

It all hinges on if brain death is the complete annihilation or degradation of the soul that lives on it, or not. One is gone to the extent that the patterns of information that live in the brain and comprise the individual are permanently gone, and not just on pause after what is today considered neurological death. If that fire (and the entire structure, really) isn't completely put out, maybe it's possible to re-kindle it? As a tangent, Ted Chiang has written a wonderful sci-fi short, on a very mechanical parallel world that touches on this very non-mechanical topic: http://www.lightspeedmagazine.com/fiction/exhalation/ http://www.lightspeedmagazine.com/fiction/exhalation/