A 33-year-old-woman who was diagnosed with chronic fatigue syndrome several years ago noticed a ‘heavy feeling’ and progressive weakness of the upper legs over a period of four months. Climbing stairs became very difficult, and eventually she could no longer walk independently. She did not complain about weakness in her arms. There were no sensory complaints. During the past months, her voice had changed. Especially if she was tired, she would speak ‘like a drunk’. There were no complaints about double vision, drooping eyelids, or swallowing. There were no clear symptoms of autonomic dysfunction. She did not drink alcohol but had smoked at least a pack of cigarettes per day for over 10 years.

Viability is a capacity an organism’s constituents have – the ability to engage in various such as nutrition in an integrated way. It is what makes things compose an organism and what makes an organism alive. To die is to lose that capacity. So things come alive by coming to be organisms, and they die when they cease to be organisms. But in theory an object that dies while it is an organism might later be brought back to life. Since dying is the loss of viability, and nothing is viable while nonexistent, any object that ceases to exist while it is alive dies. Nor may anything be a corpse while it is still an organism. Yet objects that die while they are organisms may continue to exist – they may become corpses. So the dead may exist. Personhood is a phase objects go through while they are organisms that can think. When you and I use the term “I,” we refer to an object that is currently both an organism and a person, but the property of being a person is contingent to organisms, and the property of being an organism is contingent to us.