Transfiguration Question

[Catlady (Rita Prince Winston)]

No: HPFGUIDX 59082

--- In HPforGrownups at yahoogroups.com, "maidne" <maidne at y...> wrote:

> What's disturbing to me about this whole idea is this: what happens 
> to something or someone turned into an inanimate object?  In the 
> books we see beetles turned into a coat buttons and turtles into  
> teapots.  Would the brain/consciousness just completely go away?  

Is transfiguring a living critter into an inanimate object killing 
it?

In that case, when an inanimate object is transfigured into a living 
critter (rock --> dog in the recent example, teacup --> rats in 
Petunia's comment about Lily), where does the life come from? In the 
utterly secular view in which life, consciousness, personality, 
decisions, are just results of physical/biochemical/neuroelectric 
physiological processes (consciousness, personality, decisions mostly 
in the brain), there can be no survival without a body, therefore no 
ghosts, there, that view is not the truth in the wizarding world. (I 
don't exactly like it in RL either!)  

My friend suggested that it has no life in it, is just a meat robot 
with a kind of AI program, and therefore can neither create nor 
procreate. Unless the wizard who transfigured it from inanimate to 
animate put some of his own life in it, in which case it's a real 
living thing. But there are kinds of programs now (so so much 
AI as neural network) that are creative, in terms of designing 
gadgets innovative enough and useful enough and non-obvious enough 
to fully deserve being patented...

> Then what happens if/when it is transfigured back into itself, does 
> everything come back?  

Is there a difference between transfiguring it back into itself 
versus removing the original transfiguration spell that was on it?

Anyway, if one or both turns it back into itself, is it a live self, 
a dead self, or a meat robot imitation self as above? (That's close 
to your question 'does everything come back?') So where was 
'everything' during the transfiguration: stuck in the inanimate 
object watching what was going on around it, unconscious, out 
being a ghost ...