What is death?

JL, I was chuckling because of your confusion. As a matter of fact, I've been at sea through this entire thread.

Well, in my opinion, whether somebody alive or not is something very real and tangible (albeit, 't is best to let some time pass first, you know know when a clinically dead person might come back to life . Wether being dead is possible because it's 'impossible to have properties whilst dead' is a matter of semantics in my opinion. It doesn't change the fact that the organism no longer functions and decays.

Not having something also means having the opposite. Something can easily posses the quality of not possing a certain quality.

I think the reason Zen doesn't use words is because of this sort of semantics. If you agree with the statement: "He is not alive." You do so because you agree with the statement "He does not posses the properties needed to be alive". This means "He is dead". That's just how we use language. It's a grammatical issue imo.

O.K., Rex, but I still insist that it is no a mere semantic quibble to say that a being cannot be in a state of death and still be a being (subject) with reference to the predicate of being dead. After dying, there is no longer a person to be dead. You can talk as if you mean something clear by the statement, "He is not alive" or "He is dead", but your statement would be meaningless, strictly speaking. Frankly, such confused statements reflect confused thoughts, and I share that confusion.
We share a belief that when we talk like that we are saying something meaningful. This is meaning by consensus. A form of collective delusion.