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Death Just Ain’t What It Used To Be
Death faces many definitions and legal challenges as people try to grasp the meaning of
life in all its fleeting wonder, why we are mortal and how one can be certain of death. It becomes
all the more difficult to define an agreed standard when death of the body does not necessarily
mean death overall any more, as might be the case in mind uploading. There are sure to be more
than a few cases brought to courts in the coming decades which test the capabilities of even the
most well versed of judges to tease apart ethics, laws and the expectations of family. There are
sure to be more than a few erroneous issuances or lacks thereof, of death certificates and life
insurance. This paper aims to explore the questions the law really needs now to ask and to
answer, and the potential ways one can view death from a legal standpoint against the backdrop of a new technologically defined age in which death is not the last word.
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Keywords: Death, legal interpretation, law, mind uploading, mindfiles, AI, artificial intelligence, biological limitations, Theseus’ Ship, transporter paradox, generation ships, stasis, resurrection, Hippocratic oath, warnings, faking death, spiritualism, identity, reincarnation, freedom of form, ghost in the machine, bioethics, medical ethics, cyber-ethics, cyberspace.