Death, with a capital D, the one represented by Dementors, the one defeated by True Patronus means "destruction of a consciousness" in my understanding. It's why animals are unaffected by Dementors, why the Patronus charms are animals, ... so ending Death with a capital D would make prevent the destruction of a consciousness, but wouldn't prevent death (with a small d) of bacteria, plants, and most animals.
Perhaps I'm misunderstanding the thrust of your argument, but surely this wouldn't work in a reductionist universe like the one Harry believes he's living in, since there consciousness isn't a thing so much as a shorthand for certain electrical events in the brain? In other words, while humans differ from animals in having self-awareness, it is not the case that there is a thing called "consciousness" that humans have and animals don't. (cf. Cambridge Declaration on Consciousness)
The way I see Harry defeating death is more in the shape of casting a spell similar to Merlin's Interdict, a global enchantment, that saves the data that makes someone this person whenever a consciousness is terminated, and respawn it in a functional body. Such kind of global spell definitely can rely on high-level concepts such as "consciousness" or "self-awareness", exactly like the Interdict of Merlin relies on similar high-level concepts.
And where to draw the line for animals an implementation details, that is relevant in what Har...
This is a new thread to discuss Eliezer Yudkowsky’s Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality and anything related to it. This thread is intended for discussing chapter 96. The previous thread is at almost 300 comments.
There is now a site dedicated to the story at hpmor.com, which is now the place to go to find the authors notes and all sorts of other goodies. AdeleneDawner has kept an archive of Author’s Notes. (This goes up to the notes for chapter 76, and is now not updating. The authors notes from chapter 77 onwards are on hpmor.com.)
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