It's... ALIVE!!

[vajradhara]

That's begging the question.
What is life? Well, it's biological. What is biological? Well, it's things that are alive

sorry mate, that's the definition of the term.

regardless i'm asking what your basic definition of "alive" is. if it is "biological organisms" that's a perfectly acceptable answer.

metta,

~v

 

[vajradhara]

Not to be nitpicking, but that "biological life forms" appears to be a tautology ("bios" is greek for "life").

that was to confine our discussion so we aren't incluing crystal lattices and software programs.

if you feel like you'd perfer to expand the scope of the conversation, i'd welcome it.

metta,

~v

 

[quatona]

that was to confine our discussion so we aren't incluing crystal lattices and software programs.

Why do you want to exclude them?

if you feel like you'd perfer to expand the scope of the conversation, i'd welcome it.

I´d love to contribute something more productive, but as I already said


- it simply works the way you have shown above: we include that which we to want include, and exclude that which we want to exclude
- this again depends on for what purpose we are going to define the word. (The keyquestion when defining a term is "as opposed to what?", for me). If I want to distinguish an alive human body from a dead human body it is sufficient to check whether their hearts beat. If I want to discuss whether a body can be considered "having a life", I will probably find myself concerned with the question what makes something an individual life. Etc.

Like, I would have no problem accepting the definition "everything that changes is a form of life". However, it might turn out that the person asking wants to base on this definition the topic of a discussion for which I find this definition utterly inappropriate.

Thus, I feel I first have to know the purpose for which we define a term.

 

[The Nihilist]

sorry mate, that's the definition of the term.

regardless i'm asking what your basic definition of "alive" is. if it is "biological organisms" that's a perfectly acceptable answer.

metta,

~v

I think this only illustrates what I've been saying. There's not anything but a conventional distinction between living and nonliving things. Ultimately, the term is meaningless.

 

[Eudaimonist]

fire seems to replicate itself, seems to require fuel to sustain an internal reaction and seems to adapt itself to it's conditions.

(Note: I would NOT include replication or adaption as essential aspects of what it means to say that something is alive.)

My problem with your example is that fire is not self-generated, by which I mean it has no internal function or structure to maintain itself. It is not "organized". A lifeform is organized to maintain its dynamic existence, which is the maintainance and development of the organization itself. Life is an anti-entropic process.

For this reason I would not include fire among living entities. Except through overstretched analogies, fire does not have a metabolism, does not mature, does not aim at potentials -- it is entirely reactive (literally, a reaction), instead of proactive (a baby does not accidentally grow up to have an adult body). Fire is an entropic process.


eudaimonia,

Mark

 

[vajradhara]

Thus, I feel I first have to know the purpose for which we define a term.

pretend your a scientist on an intergalatic space vessel and you encouter an uncharted world. consider that your particular sort of interstellar civilisation enjoys finding new life and seeks to make contact with it.

what would be the minium characteristics that any object would need to possess for you to determine they are alive?

metta,

~v

 

[vajradhara]

Namaste Mark,

thank you for the post.

(Note: I would NOT include replication or adaption as essential aspects of what it means to say that something is alive.)

then please tell me what you would view as essential for something to be alive.

My problem with your example is that fire is not self-generated, by which I mean it has no internal function or structure to maintain itself.

my example was bacteria, fire is what led me to think about the question.

it seems that fire has a definite chemical structure and requires fuel to sustain itself.. not unlike a bacteria or a human. i'm not sure what you mean by structure... something like internal organs or something?

It is not "organized". A lifeform is organized to maintain its dynamic existence, which is the maintainance and development of the organization itself. Life is an anti-entropic process.

so this would be one of your essentials to consider something alive?

For this reason I would not include fire among living entities. Except through overstretched analogies, fire does not have a metabolism, does not mature, does not aim at potentials -- it is entirely reactive (literally, a reaction), instead of proactive (a baby does not accidentally grow up to have an adult body). Fire is an entropic process.

would those also be aspects which you'd consider essential for life?

metta,

~v

 

[quatona]

pretend your a scientist on an intergalatic space vessel and you encouter an uncharted world. consider that your particular sort of interstellar civilisation enjoys finding new life and seeks to make contact with it.

If I hadn´t defined "life" before, I wouldn´t even know what I were interested in finding.
If I were looking for something to make contact with, I guess the predominant properties I would be looking for would be sentience, intelligence and the ability to communicate.

what would be the minium characteristics that any object would need to possess for you to determine they are alive?

Being this alien looking for contact?
The things said above. I am not sure how to discern them, though. I guess I would be trying to find out if there is some sort of feedback when trying to communicate, and if these objects are able to adjust their behaviour to changing circumstances.

 

[ArnautDaniel]

A living thing is able to export (excrete) most of the entropy it generates into its environment so as to maintain a controlled low-entropy interior.

 

[Eudaimonist]

then please tell me what you would view as essential for something to be alive.

If its existence is as a self-generated, self-sustaining activity, then it is a lifeform. "Self" refers to a dynamic organized and organizing process that is anti-entropic.

i'm not sure what you mean by structure... something like internal organs or something?

That's a valid example.

so this would be one of your essentials to consider something alive?

Yes.

would those also be aspects which you'd consider essential for life?

All of those things are merely examples -- signs -- of organization, as I mean the term. I suppose the only non-optional one is the lack of accidental development, what I called proactivity, or aiming at potentials.


eudaimonia,

Mark

 

[vajradhara]

Namaste Mark,

interesting.

are humans self generated?

metta,

~v

 

[Eudaimonist]

are humans self generated?

Of course.

Consider how a baby grew up to be you (by "you" I mean the arising entity pondering my post). A portion of the causes for your current existence as a unique adult are activities involving everything "internal" to your organization as a lifeform from your DNA to your study of Buddhism. You have grown both physically and psychologically because you have (or, rather, are) a self-assembling biological organization that (in part) made such potentials possible. Your body had the power -- the ability or natural function -- to actualize such potentials.

I am not ignoring the issue of beneficial conditions that have contributed to your survival and development. Without food, that baby would have died. Without Buddhism, you would have a different worldview today. Whatever "powers" we have, they are always powers that act within, exist in relation to, and depend on a larger environment. Our lives are self-generated, but are not independent of everything else. I am not implying any sort of atomism.

And I'm not suggesting an eternal "essence" either. We are dynamic processes. You are not the "same" entity as the baby that causally preceded you, in the same sense that Heraclitus meant that you can't bathe in the same river twice. Life involves change and growth (and decay!)

Perhaps you could meditate on human growth -- visualize years passing by for someone in your mind -- to grok (to borrow a word from Heinlein) what I am getting at. I've spoken enough with you about Buddhist metaphysics to be confident that I'm not violating the Buddhist idea that no one has an eternal, independent soul or "essence", and that we arise from causes and conditions.


eudaimonia,

Mark

 

[vajradhara]

Namaste Mark,

thank you for the post.

Of course.

are you certain of this?

as a being that accepts the modern synthesis i would have thought your view would be somewhat different than this.

humans arose from something that was not, itself, human and thus did not self generate in that sense.

though, in truth, i was curious if you meant self generation in a parthenogensis sense or as an act of will.

i think that we share a fairly common understanding regarding selves and all of that

metta,

~v

 

[Eudaimonist]

humans arose from something that was not, itself, human and thus did not self generate in that sense.

That is not the sense I mean. I'm not talking about evolution, but about the activity of life.

Of course, our life activities are uninterrupted (even through sperm and egg) from our ultimate ancestor, which may have been a cell-like lifeform several billion years ago, but this goes far beyond the scope of my intended meaning. Whatever our ultimate ancestor was, the transition from non-living to living was the acquisition of the power of self-generated assembly, which has been passed on to us through a combination of DNA and continuing cellular organization. Reproduction is not an act of abiogenesis, but the continuance of life activities. It's amazing, when one stops to think of it, that this activity has gone on uninterrupted for billions of years.

But to reiterate, I'm really thinking of self-generated activities within what one might somewhat inaccurately call one's "lifetime", starting perhaps from the synthesis of DNA from one's mother and father, creating a new pattern of self-generated assembly.

though, in truth, i was curious if you meant self generation in a parthenogensis sense or as an act of will.

That is also not the sense I mean. That would be a truly bizarre position to hold.

We are not self-generating in the absolute sense of bootstrapping ourselves into existence. We are self-generating in the sense that, given conditions beneficial to our survival as living human entities, we are capable of continued development of our biological organizations, within certain limits. Think "growth".


eudaimonia,

Mark

 

[brightlights]

A complete definition of a concept like life is ultimately impossible because it is an idea and ideas can never really be defined. That being said, there are helpful scientific observations that all life holds in common. If something does not hold these it's probably not alive:

Made of cells
Gas exchange
Reproduces
Uses energy/takes in nutrients
Has DNA

There might be a few others.

 

[brightlights]

in my mind i'm thinking of bacteria and its fuctions.. i'd think we'd all agree that bacteria are alive but does the attributes of a bacteria constitute a viable definition of alive?

Yes. Bacteria may not be conscious, but it's certainly alive.

 

[brightlights]

That's just it, I don't think the category "alive" is one that can be used to describe new things. I think that, at best, the category is a matter of convention, rather a term that can be used for classification or real description

What's a new thing?

 

[brightlights]

This definition is slightly problematic because due to #3, it is conceivable of having intelligence without having life. But if #3 was reformulated to cover that possibility, software that exists today fit the definition yet noone really considers these algorithms to be alive. I see no way out of that problem.

Software is not made of cells and does not have DNA, so I don't see a problem here.

 

[brightlights]

I'm pretty sure these are all wrong.
The reason I think so is that to say something is alive probably comes from an older, more metaphysical sort of understanding about the world. It's probably tied up with some kind of concept of a soul, maybe in the way the Greeks imagined it. Thousands of years of linguistic habit have maintained this artifact in our thinking, and 500 years of modernity has effectively stripped this concept of its attributes. So we come up with all these new attributes that are completely unrelated to the original concept, and the whole thing is silly. It is probably more accurate to say that instead of being dead, a person is broken, and instead of being alive, a person still functions.

You are maybe using the concepts "human" and "person" interchangably and they are not the same. There are humans who are not persons and who have never been persons. When a human is dead a person does not even exist for it to be broken. Also, being dead or alive does not have anything to do with personhood. There may be a human that is certainly 'alive' in every sense of the word yet has no person.

 

[brightlights]

Namaste all,

ok.. so two of the respondents think the question is baseless, fair enough.

by and large the rest of the respondents agree that replication and consumption of resources would be basic attributes of life.

perhaps we should narrow the discussion to confine it to biological.. well... life forms.

why i am curious about this is due to my consideration of fire. fire seems to replicate itself, seems to require fuel to sustain an internal reaction and seems to adapt itself to it's conditions.. heck, fire can even burn underwater.. which is just amazingly cool in and of itself.

in my basic criteria it would seem that fire would be alive and, from some of the others, fire would have some characteristics which would be indicative of life though we would not normally consider fire "alive" in the same sense as a biological organism.

metta,

~v

Fire doesn't have DNA and isn't made of cells.