One smart guy already said more than 150 years ago something to the effect that “life” (as we know it) is the (admittedly complicated, highly organized, and still evolving) process and a mechanism by which protein molecules make it possible - with increasing efficiency - for themselves to ensure their persistent existence on our planet. As far as a definition goes, I find this satisfactory.
Why Life Does Not Really Exist (2013)
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Re: Why Life Does Not Really Exist (2013)
#12Young philosopher: “master, how do I know that I exist?”
Master: “whom, may I ask, is asking?”
Re: Why Life Does Not Really Exist (2013)
#13I don't agree with the article. DNA and RNA are life. Viruses are only alive when they are inside the cells of other beings. Computer simulations are analogies and not life itself.
Re: Why Life Does Not Really Exist (2013)
#14Reheated pure materialism. Not terribly interesting, and the only thing removing category distinctions here will do for you is give license to treat any organism however you wish - you have removed any semblance of moral consideration from the equation. And that, I think, few will accept: the experience each person has of living testifies against such a view. There is more to life, and to /our/ lives, than mere engin…
I also struggled to find an interesting new thought in the article. It was a bit nihilistic to just say that there is no dividing line and leave it at that. Great... there is no clear-cut line, so what? Categorization is a tool for scientists to use for comparison. It's kind of like k-nearest neighbors learning. We have to draw the line for categories somewhere initially, then we adjust where that line is over time a…
At the same time with taxonomy, we're basically lossy encoding the information and so data is lost or glossed over. IE, white walls aren't exactly white, there's other color information there but it's easier for our brains to encode. Creating lines, borders and categories is a lossy function and if objective truth is to be obtained, it's important to retain as much of it as possible while we can also be intellectually honest about our needs for such distinctions.
Re: Why Life Does Not Really Exist (2013)
#15Ludwig Wittgenstein, in his philosophical discussions about language, argued that the concept of a "game" cannot be defined by a single set of characteristics. He suggested that games share a "family resemblance" rather than a strict definition, meaning they have overlapping features but no single feature is common to all.
Re: Why Life Does Not Really Exist (2013)
#16Reheated pure materialism. Not terribly interesting, and the only thing removing category distinctions here will do for you is give license to treat any organism however you wish - you have removed any semblance of moral consideration from the equation. And that, I think, few will accept: the experience each person has of living testifies against such a view. There is more to life, and to /our/ lives, than mere engin…
> There is more to life, and to /our/ lives, than mere engineered material.
Is there? Because we experience things that feel more profound?
Re: Why Life Does Not Really Exist (2013)
#17Young philosopher: “master, how do I know that I exist?” Master: “whom, may I ask, is asking?”
s/whom/who/
Re: Why Life Does Not Really Exist (2013)
#18I think this is all another way to say life is emergent. It can’t be found by zooming in, but rather only by zooming out. And of course when you zoom out you lose your ability to be very precise about definitions and constituents.
I had a related thought which is that there's some bistability involved maybe. That is, even if there's not hard boundaries and exceptions can be found to any rule, in aggregate systems tend to behave as one or the other roughly speaking.
Another problem is our sample size is relatively small — it seems difficult to come to a definition of life when we don't know if it exists elsewhere in the universe, and if so, what that looks like. In some ways asking "how would we know we've found life elsewhere" might be the most useful approach. But we have no way to confirm or confirm our expectations at this point.
Re: Why Life Does Not Really Exist (2013)
#19Reheated pure materialism. Not terribly interesting, and the only thing removing category distinctions here will do for you is give license to treat any organism however you wish - you have removed any semblance of moral consideration from the equation. And that, I think, few will accept: the experience each person has of living testifies against such a view. There is more to life, and to /our/ lives, than mere engin…
>Not terribly interesting
>you have removed any semblance of moral consideration from the equation. And that, I think, few will accept
>what benefit is this article if it is simply one machine communicating to another
Are these arguments? What point are you making here?
>the experience each person has of living testifies against such a view. There is more to life, and to /our/ lives, than mere engineered material.
Why can't whatever experience of living you have be confined strictly within the bounds of materialism?
Re: Why Life Does Not Really Exist (2013)
#20Reheated pure materialism. Not terribly interesting, and the only thing removing category distinctions here will do for you is give license to treat any organism however you wish - you have removed any semblance of moral consideration from the equation. And that, I think, few will accept: the experience each person has of living testifies against such a view. There is more to life, and to /our/ lives, than mere engin…
> the only thing removing category distinctions here will do for you is give license to treat any organism however you wish
This is only true if what stops you from treating certain organisms in a certain way are these objective category distinctions (rather than the approximate ones your brain makes), but I don't think that's generally how it works. People who wish to harm others will harm others regardless, the only thing that will stop them is consequences. On the other hand, people who don't wish harm to others will not harm others regardless of whether they believe objective categories or objective morality exists.