Is a zombie still a Person

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Is it wrong to kill a Zombie? Ahhh arenā€™t they already dead? :hmmm:How do you kill if theyā€™re dead? Just marinate & barbecueā€¦:eek: :rotfl:
 
Much as I loved Shaun of the Deadā€¦

Isnā€™t there actually a serious philosophical argument about zombies, one that relates to the materialist interpretation of personhood? As I recall - although I recall quite imperfectly, I suspect - the argument goes that a zombie (that is, a person with no empathy, no consciousness, no independent intelligence or whatever) could go through the motions of being a fully functioning human being without actually being a real person, precisely because it lacks the essential aspects of personhood, whatever they are asserted to be?
 
Zombies donā€™t exist in the hollywood form - but they have been with us since we found out that drinking water was likeā€¦ totally cool. The word comes from haiti, and means reanimated corpse - although it never really happened that way - it was more of a metaphor. Usually it refers to a hypnotized person, a person who is under the influence of drugs, or a person who is simply mad with perhaps even a brain disorderā€¦i.e. catatonics.

Sourced -
Haiti

In 1937, while researching folklore in Haiti, Zora Neale Hurston encountered the case of a woman who appeared in a village, and a family claimed she was Felicia Felix-Mentor, a relative who had died and been buried in 1907 at the age of 29. Hurston pursued rumors that the affected persons were given a powerful psychoactive drug, but she was unable to locate individuals willing to offer much information. She wrote:
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What is more, if science ever gets to the bottom of Voodoo in Haiti and Africa, it will be found that some important medical secrets, still unknown to medical science, give it its power, rather than gestures of ceremony.[8]
Several decades later, Wade Davis, a Harvard ethnobotanist, presented a pharmacological case for zombies in two books, The Serpent and the Rainbow (1985) and Passage of Darkness: The Ethnobiology of the Haitian Zombie (1988). Davis traveled to Haiti in 1982 and, as a result of his investigations, claimed that a living person can be turned into a zombie by two special powders being introduced into the blood stream (usually via a wound). The first, coup de poudre (French: ā€œpowder strikeā€), includes tetrodotoxin (TTX), a powerful and frequently fatal neurotoxin found in the flesh of the pufferfish (order Tetraodontidae). The second powder consists of dissociative drugs such as datura. Together, these powders were said to induce a death-like state in which the will of the victim would be entirely subjected to that of the bokor. Davis also popularized the story of Clairvius Narcisse, who was claimed to have succumbed to this practice.

The process described by Davis was an initial state of death-like suspended animation, followed by re-awakening ā€” typically after being buried ā€” into a psychotic state. The psychosis induced by the drug and psychological trauma was hypothesised by Davis to re-inforce culturally-learned beliefs and to cause the individual to reconstruct their identity as that of a zombie, since they ā€œknewā€ they were dead, and had no other role to play in the Haitian society. Societal reinforcement of the belief was hypothesized by Davis to confirm for the zombie individual the zombie state, and such individuals were known to hang around in graveyards, exhibiting attitudes of low affect.

Davisā€™s claim has been criticized, particularly the suggestion that Haitian witch doctors can keep ā€œzombiesā€ in a state of pharmacologically induced trance for many years.[9] Symptoms of TTX poisoning range from numbness and nausea to paralysis ā€” particularly of the muscles of the diaphragm ā€” unconsciousness, and death, but do not include a stiffened gait or a death-like trance. According to psychologist Terence Hines, the scientific community dismisses tetrodotoxin as the cause of this state, and Davisā€™ assessment of the nature of the reports of Haitian zombies is viewed as overly credulous.[10]

Scottish psychiatrist R. D. Laing highlighted the link between social and cultural expectations and compulsion, in the context of schizophrenia and other mental illness, suggesting that schizogenesis may account for some of the psychological aspects of zombification.[11]
 
:hmmm: What about in the movie I am Legend (with Will Smith)? The zombies in that movie were humans who had gotten infencted - they hadnā€™t died the first time round. When they got the vaccination, they were human again. šŸ¤·

I just pray Iā€™m gone before the zombie attacks begin šŸ˜ƒ

I say you can kill in self-defense, zombie or no zombie.
 
I received a politecal ad that said, ā€œHave a bite with Ryan!ā€ If I was a good tech. Iā€™d have added a Zombie, and a Vampire to the picture, and reposted it! I think it would have been a good way to get out the vote for our youth! Definitely more fun than the usual ads šŸ˜ƒ
 
Well, of course there are Zombies. They are mostly post menopausal people, who are insomniacs. They are toooo tired to do laundry, and often forget where they are goingā€¦:whacky: šŸ˜ƒ
 
Armor_of_Light said:
I saw off 'em! With extreme predjudice, tooā€¦

They were dead and their souls are gone, so we can just go to town on them.

Iā€™m having a moat put around my house and Iā€™m filling it with gasoline as soon as Obama lowers the price to sayā€¦1.00 a gallon.

Then I can lure a bunch of them in the moat by leaving bags of dirty diapers aroundā€¦they love babiesā€¦ and then whooosh! Up in flames you dirty zombies!
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A of L:

Thatā€™s cruel! What did zombies ever do to you?

God bless,
jd
 
As Iā€™m currently contributing to Zombie Wikia (www.zombiewikia.com) Iā€™ve thought about this a bit. Lets see, if one is going by Max Brooksā€™ (son of Mel Brooks and Anne Bancroft) extension of the Romero mythos, zombies are not the revived dead, they are transformed life. Their brains however have been so altered that nothing recognizable human existsā€“essentially they are ā€œfleshy terminatorsā€ who have a totaly unalterable program (ā€œseek living flesh, grab living flesh, eat living flesh, repeatā€). They cannot be reasoned with, they have less awarness than an earthworm. Whatever was human is gone. They can only be destroyed. Not to destroy them is to let a deadly threat continue to exist.
 
Lion_of_Narnia said:
As Iā€™m currently contributing to Zombie Wikia (www.zombiewikia.com) Iā€™ve thought about this a bit. Lets see, if one is going by Max Brooksā€™ (son of Mel Brooks and Anne Bancroft) extension of the Romero mythos, zombies are not the revived dead, they are transformed life. Their brains however have been so altered that nothing recognizable human existsā€“essentially they are ā€œfleshy terminatorsā€ who have a totaly unalterable program (ā€œseek living flesh, grab living flesh, eat living flesh, repeatā€). They cannot be reasoned with, they have less awarness than an earthworm. Whatever was human is gone. They can only be destroyed. Not to destroy them is to let a deadly threat continue to exist.
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These zombies would technically be humans, but killing them would be fine due to self-defense and defense of others.
 
There is a story that Alexander the great was on one of his campaigns and from the water came people stumbling and decaying. I know this sounds like something from a sc-fi story but whose to know what has went on. They did want to eat the living and when someone died from them there was a fever and they suddenly began to jerk and arose.

šŸ¤·

Bill
 
Armor_of_Light said:
I saw off 'em! With extreme predjudice, tooā€¦

They were dead and their souls are gone, so we can just go to town on them.

Iā€™m having a moat put around my house and Iā€™m filling it with gasoline as soon as Obama lowers the price to sayā€¦1.00 a gallon.

Then I can lure a bunch of them in the moat by leaving bags of dirty diapers aroundā€¦they love babiesā€¦ and then whooosh! Up in flames you dirty zombies!
Click to expand...
:rotfl::rotfl

Iā€™m glad I never got in to gaming that much! :eek:
 
Clearly, an ecumenical council should be convened in Roswell NM to consider this. Just think, we could someday be talking about being a post Roswell church.
 
Armor_of_Light said:
I saw off 'em! With extreme predjudice, tooā€¦

They were dead and their souls are gone, so we can just go to town on them.

Iā€™m having a moat put around my house and Iā€™m filling it with gasoline as soon as Obama lowers the price to sayā€¦1.00 a gallon.

Then I can lure a bunch of them in the moat by leaving bags of dirty diapers aroundā€¦they love babiesā€¦ and then whooosh! Up in flames you dirty zombies!
Click to expand...
I hate to be the one to spoil your dreams, but gasoline evaporates very quickly, so your moat would be an empty chemical burned ditch in 48 hours.
 
Well duh! Of course the moat specifications take into account the chemical make up of gasoline, and Iā€™m specially designing a light weight oil to slick across the top so it wonā€™t evaporate. Even so I wouldnā€™t light up a stoggie on the veranda šŸ˜ƒ
 
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