Oh, yeah... one other thing: A lot of decision making we do is not made consciously, so it is quite often difficult or impossible to know WHY you decided x, y, or z, and sometimes it is difficult to know what your decision actually was. — Bitter Crank

I agree and I’ve read some research on that. This is why it is important to actually be aware of your cognitive biases so that you can be at least a little bit more in the driver’s seat of your own life.

I think you are probably correct that no single field of research (wherever it is done--on campus or off campus) treats "personal decision making" as its territory. Too bad, because that is where most of us make our worst mistakes. — Bitter Crank

I agree, it would be nice if there was a greater focus on the topic in high school at least. In high school, they taught me about cellular reproduction and Punnet Squares for 3 years in Middle School Science and High School Biology and they taught me the 3 types of irony, and how to draw a plot pyramid for like 6 years straight in English class. Yet, they never bothered to teach me about what to consider before marrying someone or what to consider before having children or deciding to buy a house.

I think it’s worth thinking about what ultimate end goal are you trying to achieve with your revenge plan. If you trying to be happy, then revenge is unlikely to make you happy in the end. If you are trying to reduce suffering in your life, then revenge will likely to make you suffer more. If you are trying to make others happy or reduce the suffering of others, then revenge would also make things worse in this regard. If you want to have more meaningful accomplishments in life, revenge is not likely going to be a meaningful accomplishment for you and it will interfere with your ability to attain meaningful accomplishments. If you’re trying to attain knowledge and wisdom, then revenge will not give you either. If you’re trying to prolong your life span, then revenge is a good way to potentially shorten it. If you are trying to insure that you create as many copies of your DNA as possible, then I still don’t see how revenge would be helpful. In the end, it’s not clear to me how taking revenge could fulfill any important end goal in life. Unless you think revenge should be valued as an important end goal for its own sake. Then you have to explain to yourself what would justify pursuing that end goal above all the other potential end goals I listed above.

Quite a few colleges offer students the option of designing their majors. One could, for instance, combine creative writing, physics, chemistry, and art to prepare for a career in science fiction and sci fi film direction. Better educated writers would avoid sci fi errors like "the spider had 6 legs" or "thorax" when they meant human "larynx". Yes I have seen those errors just recently. — Bitter Crank

Well, there seems to be one of 2 ways that these “design your major” programs work. The first way is one that simply allows you to select which classes you would like to take. This doesn’t really give you full freedom to choose what you study. This is because the material you can study is limited by the class selection at your institution and the material selected for each course by the professor and the school as “the most important stuff for you to know”. Whereas, you have a much greater selection of study material online that would allow you to customize your education completely. For example, if you want to study philosophy you can read any article from any philosophy encyclopedia you want. You can also read the source material for the encyclopedias which you can download for free about half the time(of course, you can also choose to buy the resources you need from the authors at a small price.). You can buy or download for free any philosophy ebook that you want to read as well. You can check out any philosophy lecture series on YouTube recorded in actual classrooms often in elite universities. You can also listen to interviews with important thinkers on YouTube(although, it’s kinda hard to find an interview that is highly educational). I personally find it helpful because it makes it easier for you to specialize in what you think is most important knowledge to understand and learn. For example, I’m interested in studying the philosophy of personal decision-making which is a subject matter that very few philosophers study and write about. I don’t think I could find a single good course on this topic in any university. It’s actually even hard to find a lot of helpful material online about this topic. I usually try to focus on studying psychology, personal finance, persuasion skills, value theory, and do research on various important life decisions. Unfortunately, these are just not things they teach you in school. There are some schools that would allow you to completely customize your degree. For example, I once heard of guy who got a degree in stand-up comedy and became a professional stand-up comedian. Of course, he wasn’t actually taking any courses at the institution that awarded him the degree. He earned the degree by writing some essays and then giving an hour long stand-up performance. Basically, he paid an institution to give him a piece of paper which says he’s qualified to do stand-up comedy(even though the institution itself is not qualified to access that). Basically, if you truly want to have educational freedom, then doing your learning online definitely has a huge advantage I think.

Students on scholarship, who have parents pay, or attend in countries with free education do just as well as those footing their own tab. — Hanover

Yes, but that’s because there are consequences to not doing well. If you have bad grades, you might lose your scholarships or your parents might stop paying for your tuition. Whereas, there are no consequences to refusing to self-educate. People are usually more motivated by loss than by gain.

But of course colleges benefit from being competitive. — Hanover

That’s a good point. But, can some of the competitive incentives they provide be dangerous? For example, I have a friend who decided to go to an expensive university because she was given a full scholarship as long as she maintained her GPA. Within 2 semesters, she lost the scholarship because she failed to realize how difficult the school actually was. She decided to remain at the school and pay the full tuition with no scholarship because she wanted to continue her program without transferring. I actually told her back in high school that I thought she would lose the scholarship so it was a real “told ya so” moment for me. She also turned down a free scholarship at a community college which I took advantage of. Although, even I didn’t benefit from my associates degree in Information Technology, to be honest. At least I didn’t pay very much money though(I didn’t even buy textbooks half the time). Overall, I’m concerned about scholarships being used as bait for over-optimistic young people.

TheHedoMinimalist is entertaining the recurrent dream of the self-made man. Maybe 1/2 of 1% of the population (too generous an estimate?) are really able to pull off the job of autodidaction. That's 1,500,000 potential self-educated Americans. Does it seem like there are a million and a half Americans grinding away at collegiate level self education? — Bitter Crank

Are there a lot of intelligent and hardworking people today that choose not to go to college? Could this perhaps contribute to the rarity of the self-made man? Were there not more self-made people in the past before college education was common?

Anything is possible, but it would take someone somewhat exceptional to study with the same rigor without supervision, imposed deadlines, required curriculum, and critical evaluation and grading. — Hanover

It’s true that it’s easier to motivate yourself in college because you are making a sacrifice to attend. Free education is never going to be as effective as education that can put you in massive debt. The same goes with other things like therapy. Free therapy is also not as effective as paid therapy because the patient isn’t as motivated to take it seriously. But, is it perhaps better to learn how to motivate yourself over time? It takes practice and perseverance, but I think it’s an incredibly useful skill to have.

In addition to that, it helps enormously if one is part of a community that cares that you are trying to become a learnéd person. If all the people around you do not give a rat's ass what you are doing, then the task is even more difficult. It helps to have ready access to people who are interested in what you are learning. — Bitter Crank

Well, that depends on your upbringing. My family would disapprove of me getting a philosophy degree due to concerns about debt and few future job prospects but they are perfectly happy about me wanting to educate myself.

One of the services that college provides is a 4 year guided trip through the process. — Bitter Crank

Would it perhaps be better to choose what you study instead of having to be compelled to study the material of the guided trip? Wouldn’t it be more fun to ditch the guide and carve your own educational path?

One hopes that the admissions office is able to decipher the wheat from the chaff. — Hanover

But, do colleges benefit from deciphering the wheat from the chaff?

But we also need educated persons as well, and while indeed there are people whose goal is to be educated, where do they get that, and what group is tasked with providing guidance to achieve that? — tim wood

Is it perhaps possible to effectively educate yourself online and find a community of educated persons there?

And the whole, "meeting intelligent people at college" is a joke, unless you get into somewhere like Stanford, MIT, or Cal Tech, where the average IQ is above the norm, in some cases significantly. — Wallows

Very valid point as well. The IQ of an average uni student is probably only like one standard deviation above the IQ of the workforce. Instead, you are more likely to meet some pretentious intellectual wannabe in uni who fails to recognize his ignorance.

It seems you're searching diligently for a justification to advise others that college is a bad decision, but very rarely is it. You still end up with a better type of job, associate with more intelligent people, make more money, and it will expand your intellectual horizons. Be careful with your loans and what you spend, but it's well worth it. — Hanover

Do you think going to college is good idea for those who end up dropping out and with lots of student loan debt? I’m asking this mainly because you said that college is “very rarely” a bad decision. Yet, dropping out of college happens pretty often and it seems to have a worse outcome than simply choosing not to go to college. I’ll grant you that I might be wrong about it being a bad decision for the average person with an IQ of 100, and average industriousness. My level of confidence on this view is maybe like 20% certainty. But, my level of confidence on it being bad for the average person who drops out is more like 90%.

One thing to remember: All colleges are in the business of getting students to buy their services. It never was in colleges' interests to tell students that college may not pay off financially. — Bitter Crank

This is the smartest thing I’ve heard on this thread so far. I really wish people would understand that about colleges and also high schools. I feel many high schools are trying to convince too many students to go to college. This is because high schools are often evaluated on their SAT or ACT scores and on how many of their students end up going to college. This creates a complete conflict of interest to encourage students to always go to college. This is why you will always see these misleading charts that show how much more college graduates are earning compared to hs graduates without isolating other variables.

I recommend checking out Robert Sopolsky’s lecture series on Human Behavioral Biology. In particular, the 15th lecture on human sexual behavior is where he talks about non-reproductive sex. Here is the video for the 15th lecture:

Anyway, look up the statistics for those interested. There's a direct correlation between level of degree obtained and earning capacity. Staying in school is a no-brainer. — Hanover

I think the statistics can be very misleading though since correlation does not necessarily imply causation. It could be that the reason why people who go to college make more money is because they are more intelligent and industrious on average compared to those who do not. Of course, I don’t think university education is what made them intelligent or industrious in the first place. I think genetics account for most of that. If you take a person who is average in both intelligence and industriousness, then would he necessarily have higher lifetime earning after he pays off his tuition? Of course, we should also consider that an average person is at risk of dropping out of college and end up stuck with the tuition. For example, I bet it’s not fun to be the guy who ends up dropping out of law school with heavy debt.

Anything but philosophy — Wallows

....or psychology, sociology, gender studies, economics, political science, foreign language, English literature, art, music theory, etc. I think it’s probably not worth getting any type of degree in humanities. Although, I do think humanities are valuable to study. I think it’s more enjoyable to study it in your free time and choose exactly what you want to study.

I greatly value my philosophy degree. It was well worth it. An education makes you a better person. — Hanover

But, does one have to go to university in order to be educated? Is it not possible to educate yourself by watching lecture series on YouTube and reading books?

Fair enough, I suppose for some people it’s easier to find friends at university. Although, I actually had an easier time making friends at work than at college myself. It might have been because I went to community college instead of uni where people tend not to be as social with each other. I think it’s partly due to the diversity of people that are present in the workplace and in community colleges compared to the mostly youthful population in universities. I guess most people prefer to spend time with those around their age. I always preferred to befriend people who are much older than me so I tend to make friends more easily at work. I think another reason might be that most people in the workplace already have a family and so they are just not as interested in additional company as a university student might be.

But then, they're not real, and the result in the end is just complete isolation and loneliness. That's what a lot of people are finding out. — Wayfarer

That’s interesting, why do you think that some people cannot always alleviate loneliness with digital media as easily as they could by interacting with people outside of the Internet? I’m asking this question mainly because I rarely interact with people outside of my work and family myself and I usually prefer to spend time online by myself. Yet, I never seem to have any difficulties with this lifestyle. Though, I also don’t remember the last time I felt something I recognized as loneliness. It may be that I just don’t experience loneliness or don’t experience it very often.

Plus also encounter groups, therapists, and so on, dedicated (usually) to 'men's problems', many of which no doubt revolve around loneliness and the inability to realise any real intimacy in a world where intimacy is nowadays stock-in-trade for an entire industry - which you can effortlessly access from the device in your hip pocket. — Wayfarer

So, I’m a little curious. Is there a way that we can distinguish between real intimacy and fake intimacy? Is there a superiority that real intimacy has which we can recognize through raw experience unfiltered by our culture? For example, imagine a person who is completely unfamiliar with the common attitudes expressed by our culture surrounding the nature of true intimacy. How could this person know that the intimacy involved in pornography is not as profound as the intimacy involved in a non-cyber relationship? Would he be able to draw that distinction instinctively or must he live in a society that recognizes the distinction? These are questions that I’ve sort of been grappling with myself. Another interesting question that I thought about involves the following thought experiment; imagine that a baby was left alone in a technological fortress where he had all his needs met by a variety of AI. As the boy grew, the AI instructed the young boy on how he could gratify his social needs by chatting with people online on a platform like Google Hangouts and he could alleviate his sexual needs through pornography and paying a cam model to have an online relationship with him(we can imagine that the AI gave him the money to pay the cam model). Eventually, the boy grows up and is freed from the fortress and gets to meet people outside of the Internet. Do you think that he would wish to spend more time in the outside world or remain online most of the time?

I think that in having previously admitted that all nodes on an evolutionary tree are "alive," where I'm ultimately headed is toward the idea that evolution produces certain kinds of order, and that we may recognize these ordered forms even when they do not reproduce. So we may apply the same principle to your hypothetical Martian bacteria. We could also apply the same principle to a cell of artificial life that was constructed in a laboratory but then just never transported to a nutrient-rich environment in which it could grow and ultimately reproduce. — Theologian

That’s interesting, I never thought of life as operating within an order. I always thought of evolution as being a bit of a chaotic mess. Species constantly are going in and out of existence with no straightforward pattern of progression. Although there was a gradual progression towards greater mental complexity from reptiles to mammals to primates, in the past, there was a higher number of species of humans and today’s chimpanzees can be regarded as our dumber cousin almost. This is due to the fact that chimps are only 2 million years older than the first human species and we had a common ancestor species which is now extinct and was almost like a human and chimp hybrid. It seems that we haven’t got more complex over time but simply split into 2 species oriented towards certain extremes of our ancestor species(we oriented towards intellect and chimps oriented to strength). Another weird thing about our evolutionary history is that there was likely sea monsters swimming in the Earth before we even had trees or life on land. For awhile, it seems almost like we had a cool water planet with large and complex sea creatures and it became a boring land planet until dinosaurs. I suppose that there doesn’t have to be perfect positive linear progress in complexity of life for it to be part of an orderly process. But, what if we have a situation where the climate drove the evolution completely backwards? For example, imagine a planet that in the beginning was so well suited for life that it quickly evolves human level complex life in a matter of 100 million years(which may sound slow but it’s actually incredibly fast for human level life to evolve). Over time, the planet becomes less suited for life and life becomes less complex to adapt to the harsher climate(assuming that simpler life forms are better for the particular harsh climate of that planet). It very quickly evolves to sapient beings but then gradually reduces down to very simple sentient beings and then to merely vegetation and finally to single cell bacteria. Would such descending evolution be representative of life also? Would the single cell bacteria which is the last organism to survive in the end count as life?

It’s all good, I probably will only be able to respond late at night

Sooo... I hope we're in agreement that this is a purely lexical argument. And I wasn't attempting to do lexicography in this instance. In terms of the ordinary sense of the word, I think Cookie Monster did a better job than I did. Which is why I quoted him in the first place! :wink: — Theologian

Sorry it took me a while to respond. I’ve been working too much lately. Well, there is actually a 3rd perspective which I think we should consider and that is the value perspective. We have to ask the question of why exactly we decided to the make the distinction between the living and the non-living in the first place. Here is my hypothesis. Imagine that you are a caveman. From a young age, you likely recognized a drastic difference between self-moving entities like humans and animals and all the other stuff which simply sits there and offers no companionship or threat to you. This discernment was likely the first motivation and need behind the division between the living and the non-living. Living things are almost always thought to fall higher up in the hierarchy of things in the world. I think my classification of living things is useful for resolving many prudential, ethical, and political dilemmas which I think are needlessly encouraged by the scientific classifications of life. For example, many philosophers believe that life is intrinsically valuable for its own sake. They act on that belief morally, prudentially, and politically. I think that there is a very good intention built into the belief but it often leads to highly harmful consequences. For example, if you have an unwanted child who is born and will remain perpetually in a coma, should we treat it like a human being who is capable of experience and autonomy? This could cost close to a million dollars a year as maintaining a comatose patient is very expensive. This money could be used to improve the lives of sentient beings capable of autonomous action. Of course, many secular proponents of the sanctity of life belief would point out that it’s unjustified for us to treat a never-sentient human better than a tree because they are both life forms and it’s simply prejudice to prefer the never-sentient human. The more religious proponents of the sanctity of life belief would sometimes justify this prejudice as we humans are specifically the special beings made in God’s image. Of course, most of these religious sanctity of life believers assume the scientific understanding of what a human life is. I imagine that an earlier religious proponent of the sanctity of life belief like Thomas Aquinas might not think of a child who will never experience anything as being alive. It is likely that the earlier Christians though of life as the opportunity to experience things and act in an autonomous manner. This precisely would seem like the point of God bringing humans into existence in the first place. So, I think valuing life for its own sake only makes sense if you value experience of being human for its own sake. It doesn’t make sense if you value the presence of functioning cells for it own sake. It also doesn’t make sense if you value having a human metabolism for its own sake. In conclusion, I think definitions of words should be both lexically intuitive and serve us to make better decisions. It tend to think that classifying trees and never conscious humans as alive fits neither one of these criteria too well.

Also, in the technical meta-language of linguistics, I think it's clear that the term "life" seems to be polysemous. "Poly" as in many (or at least more than one), "sem" as in semantics. By which I mean it has more than one meaning, and no-one is going to be able to reconcile them all. In fact, polysemous words are really more than one word that just happens to share the same surface form. They sound the same, and we may or may not spell them the same. — Theologian

Although, many words have more than one meaning. This can sometimes cause communication problems and I think it’s useful for us to have a language where there is some consistent and unifying theme that unites all the meanings of a word such that there isn’t too many confusing paradoxes. For example, I find it unhelpful that cooks would classify a cucumber as a vegetable and botanists would classify it as a fruit. It would be good if the committee of botanists and cooks could come together and work this conceptual mess out. This way we know what we are supposed to teach our children about cucumbers lol

My answer may come down to what you mean by a "being." If you mean only that it is sentient, then I think it would be a mistake to automatically equate sentience with biology. I'm not ready to rule out the idea that there may be other ways to achieve sentience — Theologian

What I meant by an immortal being was a being which is both sentient and capable of autonomous action. The whole point of my view on life is to equate biology with sentience and autonomy on the grounds that I find it both lexically intuitive and useful for promoting the good. For example, if there is an eternal God who never replicates himself, I think it would make sense to say that he is a living thing.

I myself want to consider two different approaches to deciding what life is. First of all, life is a natural language word – specifically from the English language. One approach to this question might be a lexical or psycholinguistic one, in which we attempt to find out what native speakers of English have in their heads when they use the word. I think this might offer us a fair idea, naïve though it may seem: — Theologian

I must say that this response is now the most interesting one I’ve gotten. Though, I think my view is quite befitting to the common use of the word “life” in non-scientific context. For example, if I see a tree start moving on it’s own like an animal, then it would make perfect sense to say that the tree came to life. This would, of course, be confusing to the biologist since the tree was always alive. This seems to suggest that we don’t pay much attention to the scientific meaning when we speak the word colloquially. There is one good counterargument that I thought about relating to this though. We sometimes observe that trees die and prepare for them to eventually fall down. This suggests that we do think of a tree as a living thing at least some of time. But, we have to remember that it’s not only living things that can be said to die. For example, one day this thread on which we are posting will die. We can say that the Roman Empire had died in the past. So, it’s possible for trees to die and never be a living thing. Of course, it’s also possible to posit that non-living things can be metaphorically alive. For example, I could posit that I’m surprised that this thread is still alive. I could also utter something like “The American way of life still lives on!”. This seemingly posses a challenge for both of our views on the lexical issue. I think both views have their pros and cons. The pros of the scientific view is that the metaphorical usage of “alive” seems to be based on survival. This thread is alive because it survives and the American way is alive for the same reason. Reproduction can be considered as an extension of survival(ie your DNA can’t survive without reproduction). The scientific meaning of life is therefore better at taking this into account since my view doesn’t prioritize survival much. But, there is also an advantage that my view has with the metaphorical usage of the word life. When we say that this thread is alive, we don’t just mean that it exists somewhere like a rock. There are plenty of threads on this forum which still technically exist but are considered dead because no one posts on them anymore. My thread is still alive because it still has value relevant activity. This thread is still of interest to someone. Once there is no interest in this thread, it will die. So, the question that we might want to ask is what is the fundamental aspect of interest which would create the distinction between living and non-living. I think autonomous action is the best candidate mainly because it seems indicative of mental activity but it’s also often considered interesting for its own sake.

So I am going to suggest that there is one very specific reason why we should combine the two, finding that when we have done so, the whole is indeed greater than the sum of the parts. And that is that when we have something that is both complex and self replicating, evolution happens. Which creates a virtuous circle of ever increasing adaptivity and complexity. — Theologian

I got a question. Would this imply that our current software is alive? Software is both complex and self-replicating. It could also evolve as new versions come out. Later in the post you suggested that only complex computer code should count. But, how complex does it have to be to count as life? If it only needs to be as complex as viruses then it seems we already have software which fit that description.

So to offer a slightly more refined version of my definition, I’d say that once you start with a complex thing that self replicates, evolution is ignited. Once that happens, you generate a tree structure that continues to exists because at least some nodes do self replicate.

Once you have that, each node on that tree – each individual organism – qualifies as alive. Regardless of whether it, as an individual node, self replicates or not. — Theologian

I don’t have a knockout objection to this view but I think it may be incompatible with the common lexical understanding of the word “life”. This is mainly due to the fact that concept of life has been around long before the theory of evolution was accepted by anyone. This evolutionary understanding of life would be alien to anyone living just 200 years ago. This suggests that there is a more primordial understanding of life which should also be considered. I think that primordial understanding relies on the notions of autonomous action and possible mental activity present in living things. So rather than understanding life as nodes in a linear progression, it seems like an alternative view is to view it as a chaotic web of survival of certain beings which act autonomously. An infertile human might not be able to continue this process after his death but he can continue it in himself so long as he is alive. We could also consider the interesting case of immortality. If there was just one alien being on a distant plant that can live forever, would he need to reproduce to be considered alive? What if there was just one bacteria cell on Mars which almost replicated but got killed by an unlikely natural disaster the moment before successfully doing so? Would it be less alive despite almost reproducing? Even though evolution is never ignited in these cases, it’s nonetheless intuitive to think of both the immortal being and the Mars cell as being alive(of course, by my definition, the Mars cell isn’t alive). Despite my objections, I must say that I’m impressed with your ability to philosophize. You are definitely the most impressive person who has responded to me thus far.

yes, but should we judge whether or not something is alive based on what group they belong to or should we judge it on an individual level. I think it makes sense to judge it on an individual level because whether or not a particular being belongs to a particular species may be based on arbitrary factors.

well, it appears as though infertile humans wouldn’t qualify as life by the 4 requirements you have listed

Nope. It simply builds from (processed) materials a machine. No sex involved. — ssu

Well, there doesn’t have to be sex involved. Organisms sometimes reproduce asexually. Reproduction is generally defined as the ability to produce offsprings. The mother robot is producing something I would consider an offspring.

Actually not. An electric motor or whatever motor or battery there is to give energy to the machine isn't what you call a metabolism: the chemical processes that occur within a living organism in order to maintain life. We are not there yet. — ssu

Well, there is chemical processes which occur inside of a robot which regenerates the robot. They are just different chemical processes than the ones found in normal organisms.

Well, it is.

To give a counterexample which is close to your examples, assume that we find from Mars under the sand an extremely old remnant of something that isn't just rocks or sand. Now to find out if it would be a extraterrestial fossil or an extraterrestial robot and we would be exactly looking at these kinds of clues. And if we assume that it indeed would be an Alien "robot", but these Aliens have far advanced technology, so that their robots operate like an living organism, we likely would be fooled to think that it's a fossil. To argue that it's an advanced planetary lander of a third party would feel highly unlikely, when it looks like the remains of a plant or an animal. — ssu

I don’t think we would be fooled. If the fossils look more like a machine that an organism, then it is likely an advanced civilization of robots. It’s likely that perhaps those robots were created by animals at some point in time. Of course, I also wouldn’t dismiss the possibility of life existing which is neither composed of cells nor a robot. There could possibly be thousands of different matter arrangements which could produce the first type of thing which will eventually evolve into something animated and alive. It’s also possible that organisms can be designed by other organisms rather than from evolution and reproduction. For example, it’s imaginable that a mad scientist could possibly create something resembling chimeras which do not reproduce but are nonetheless composed of cells. I think if those cases came to fruition then it would truly undermine the scientific notion of life.

Why to insist on redefining life and not simply making the juxtaposition with having capacity for autonomous action and being incapable of it? Why life and living organisms would have to be fixed with this new far more narrow and a bit equivocal definition? — ssu

Well, it’s not clear to me if I am redefining the meaning of the word “life” at all. There’s a double meaning in our usage of the word to begin with. Sometimes when we speak of life, we speak of the scientific definition of life aka organisms. But there is also a more colloquial meaning of the term that often comes into conflict with the scientific meaning. This colloquial meaning refers to life as the process of being alive or animated. Here are 2 thought experiments that you can think about to see the distinction:
1. Imagine that you have a potted plant in your house. You would likely treat the plant like you would any other object in your house. The plant would seem to you almost like a statue that requires occasional watering but one day something extraordinarily happens. The branches of the plant start moving on their own and suddenly the plant pulls itself out of the pot and starts walking on its roots. At this point, you are likely freaked out because the plant had just came to life. But, wait a minute? Wasn’t it alive before that freaky event? What makes it seem like it is more alive now? It seems like the added capacity for autonomous action is what would make one think that the plant had come to life.

2. Imagine a robot that was designed to do just 2 things. The first thing the robot is designed to do is to create other daughter robots which will grow over time and share some inherited characteristics of the mother robot. The mother robot creates these robots in a relatively uninteresting and non-autonomous manner. A human presses a button and the mother robot builds the daughter robot in a passive manner like a 3D printer. The second function of this mother robot is to repair itself with materials from the environment which is sort of like a robot metabolism. It also does this only after the human presses the button and puts the materials from the environment into the robot’s built in vacuum. This mother robot now fulfills 2 of the 3 requirements for life by the scientific definition:
1. It reproduces
2. It has a metabolism
3. It doesn’t have cells
But, it’s not clear why the 3rd requirement is all that important. If you could build a highly autonomous robot which doesn’t have cells, would this really make the robot less of a living thing? In addition, we can challenge the other 2 requirements as well. Would the robot that I have described above be more similar to a living thing than a more complex and autonomous robot which does not reproduce or have a metabolism? It just seems like a more autonomous robot would be more similar to us than the reproducing robot or a tree for that matter. If such robots are not possible then we should limit the definition of life to animals.

There’s an interesting book called ‘The Hidden Life of Trees’ by Peter Wohlleben that offers a different perspective on the capacity of plants and fungi to experience and their capacity for ‘autonomous action’. I also wonder if you’ve considered chemotaxis in bacteria as evidence of experience. I understand your qualification of ‘externally observable’ indicators, but do you really mean observable to the naked human eye? — Possibility

I will have to do more research on that. While it might be possible that plants, fungi, and bacteria have experiences, I think the probability of that is lower than the probability of any animal having experiences. There is 2 reasons for why I think this is the case:

1. I hypothesize that the capacity for mental activity requires a sufficient amount of bodily energy. What we typically believe to be the complexity of a species mind tends to correlate with the amount of energy consumed by their nervous system. For example, we believe humans have more complex mental activity than chimpanzees or rabbits. Chimpanzees spend a lot of their bodily energy on making their muscles big and strong rather than use that energy on the brain like humans do(this explains why they are stronger and we are smarter). Rabbits, on the other hand, are a bit too small to have the bodily energy needed to have a human level mind. This problem is bigger for plants and fungi it seems. Although I am not a botanist and I acknowledge my ignorance about plants and fungi, I believe they lack the energy needed for mental activity to occur. I also don’t think it’s clear which area of a plant or fungi would store the energy needed for mental activity(assuming that there needs to be something resembling a nervous system in plants and fungi). Of course, the energy problem seems even greater for bacteria which has microscopic amounts of energy. Unless mental activity requires little to no energy, it seems unlikely that bacteria has significant mental lives.

2. I would also hypothesize that mental activity is an adaptation which helped organisms search for food and escape predators. It may be the case that the complex decision making required to accomplish those tasks requires the presence of mental activity to physically work. This could offer a potential explanation for the presence of mental activity in animals. Of course, plants and fungi have no need for such a mechanism for complex decision making it seems. This is due to the fact that they are usually stationary with some minor autonomous movements like the blooming of a flower as an example. For the most part, they seem to make their own food and have no need to search for it. In addition, they cannot really do anything to escape predators because they are stationary. Some plants and fungi have mechanisms for protecting themselves. Plants may have thorns and mushrooms may contain poisons. This deters predators from eating them. But, it seems that those bodily functions could be performed without a mind much like we do not really have to have a mind to breathe or urinate. Bacteria, on the other hand, does seem to be capable of motion. I think it sometimes needs to search for food and to avoid predators which are usually viruses. The energy problem is my main concern regarding the possibility of bacterial mental life. Nonetheless, I will need to read the book you have recommended and do research on chemotaxis.

Personally, I question this focus on ‘autonomy’ as a value, given how dependent humans are on the rest of the universe (particularly plants, bacteria and fungi) in order to achieve life, let alone anything else. What you refer to as ‘autonomous action’ is highly debatable as such - particularly if you take into account microscopic activity. — Possibility

I agree that perhaps I need to refine my views further. Rather than autonomy, perhaps we should focus on the 2 requirements which I hypothesize are necessary for mental activity. The first one is the ability and need to make complex decisions to achieve a particular goal and the second is having a sufficient amount of energy stored in something resembling a nervous system to produce mental activity. I think your comment has helped me clarify that a little better. Of course, I could be wrong about both of those hypotheses but I will have to do more research on that. At the very least, meeting those requirements seems to increase the probability that a particular type of thing is likely to have mental activity. I would still put animals above other organisms in the capacity for value hierarchy since it seems that they are more likely to experience suffering and joy.

Yep, I would say you got it right for the most part. I actually tend to think that the most important aspect of our lives is the ability to experience positive and negative mental states but we cannot determine precisely which things are capable of such mental states. So, I think the best externally observable indicator of the capacity to experience seems to be the capacity for autonomous action. Also, aside from my views on value, I also think it’s quite intuitive to think of living things as animated. Animation can be defined as having a capacity to experience or the capacity for autonomous action. Human, animals, and future robots are the only things we know of with such capacities.

If we don't draw that line so, just where do we then draw the line? — ssu

I agree that biologists should continue to study the organic matter which they are currently studying but perhaps call themselves organicists rather than biologists. I am not against the studying of plants, bacteria, and fungi. To answer your question, I think we should draw the line between living and non-living on the capacity for autonomous action. Hence, humans, non-human animals, and perhaps future robots should be the only things regarded as living.

Ok, so to make sure that I’m understanding you correctly. Are you suggesting that if I pick up a baseball bat, then that bat would be part of me and therefore alive?

On the side, you should consider the consequences of autonomous motion as extensions of the autonomous; — Shamshir

What do you mean by the phrase “extensions of the autonomous”?

Well, I would limit the definition of life to autonomous things which move on their own. For example, imagine that you’re walking down the street and you see a human corpse then suddenly someone throws it across the street and another person yells “It’s a alive!”. You would probably be confused as fuck. Not only because you just saw someone throwing a corpse for no reason but also because the other person yelled “it’s alive!” for some reason. This seems like an inappropriate thing to yell at that moment. Whereas, you can imagine a different scenario. Imagine that your walking down the street and you see another corpse but this time the corpse suddenly stands up on its own and starts walking. Then someone yells “It’s alive!”. In the later scenario, screaming “it’s alive!” makes more sense than in the former scenario. This suggests that autonomous motion is necessary for us to normally think of something as being alive.

I think there obviously needs to be a distinction made between "life" and "something that is conscious". Most agree that there will be life that isn't conscious, at least to a level where it's clearly distinguishable from non-conscious matter. Considering that all life basically came from self-replicating molecules with a capacity to imperfectly replicate occasionally (mutation), the least arbitrary definition of "life" I can think of is just a set of molecules with the capacity to self-replicate. — tom111

I must say that this is the most thoughtful response I have gotten on my thread thus far. I will try my best to give a detailed response because you brought up a lot of very valid points. To start with the 1st sentence of the post. It seems rather tricky to distinguish between what is alive and what is considered conscious. This is because as you have stated later in the post, it’s impossible to show whether or not a particular type of thing is conscious. Rather, when we hypothesize that a being appears conscious, it is due to the observation of the ability of the being to display autonomous behavior and decision-making capabilities. The types of things that we believe to be conscious tend to be the types of beings that display what is sometimes regarded as autonomy. So, perhaps it would be better to distinguish between living things and autonomous things rather than distinguishing between living things and conscious things. While this may be an acceptable path, I think there is a case to be made for bridging the divide between the 2 categories of things of interest to us.
What I think gives us a potential invitation to do this is the double meaning of the word “life”. We tend to use the word scientifically to refer to any organism. But in everyday life, we only treat animals as living and perhaps we shall treat AI as such in the future. For example, imagine that you have a plant in a pot in your house. The plant likely seems like any other object in the house to you. It’s just like a decorative statue that you have to water every once in a while. But imagine that one day, you saw the plant branches moving on their own and suddenly the plant pulls itself out of the pot and starts walking on its roots. It would makes sense to say that the plant had just came to life, even though it was classified as a living thing prior to that event. Of course, I am using 2 different senses of the word “life” here. Nonetheless, I tend to think that if there are 2 distinct definitions of a particular word, then we should either select one understanding of the term over the other or take an either/or approach . The either/or approach would be to define living things as either those things which appear to be alive or those things which replicate themselves and have a metabolism.
I find this approach somewhat problematic though. It seems that many robots could still qualify as life by the scientific definition for relatively arbitrary reasons. Hypothetically, there could be a robot whose only 2 functions are to build other “daughter robots” which share some inherited characteristics with the “mother robot” and to repair itself with materials found in the environment(aka “robot metabolism”). Imagine that they built those daughter robots without appearing alive but rather almost like a boring stationary 3D printer. There could be an eventual evolution of these robots through this process over the course of millions of years. Eventually, these robots might be more complex than humans in their behavior patterns. These robots would appear to fulfill all the requirements for the scientific definition of life except they are not composed of cells. But, this seems like a rather unnecessary requirement. If we were composed of something other than cells, we would probably not make cellular composition one of the requirements for life. But we can also challenge more of the scientific requirements of life. For example, should a self-replicating and self-repairing non-autonomous AI which performs its reproductive and metabolic functions like a plant be considered closer to a living thing than a non-replicating and non-metabolic autonomous AI which behaves like an animal? I tend to think that the latter type of robot appears to be more of a living thing.

As a side note I think there are some interesting ethical implications to your question, if we were truly to come up with a way of determining whether something is alive or not, does that mean certain things will have different levels of 'aliveness' than others? What impact will this have on animal rights? Are they conscious enough so that the killing of them for food is morally wrong? What cutoff point do we set ourselves? Is it only ethically sound to kill something with 0 consciousness or do we set some arbitrary threshold level on the scale of consciousness to decide what's moral to kill and what's not? What about a foetus, is that conscious? What will that mean for abortion law? The possibilities are endless. — tom111

I do think that this question poses some serious ethical implications. But, our current scientific definition of life seems to also be ignored in many of these dilemmas though. When some social conservatives speak of the sanctity of life and the need to protect the lives of fetuses and comatose patients, they are sometimes not being consistent with either of the definitions of life that we are discussing. With the scientific definition of life, some of these social conservatives are being needlessly exclusive with the types of things they categorize as moral patients. They consider fetuses and comatose patients as living things which are sacred yet exclude all the other types of living things which are not human. I simply find this to be unjustly prejudice towards members of your particular group. If such prejudice is justified when it’s not clear why racism is not. Though, as a counterargument, you could perhaps justify the prejudice for fetuses over non-human animals. This is because most fetuses have the potential to become a human being with greater complexity than an animal. Though, it’s hard to see how we would justify spending a millions of dollars of taxpayer money to cover the medical costs of a single comatose patient who has no loved ones and is extremely unlikely to ever be conscious of autonomous especially since we could use that money to improve the welfare of other beings which can likely experience things and have autonomy. If we were to accept my definition of life alongside the belief in the sanctity of life though, then we could exclude both never-conscious humans and plants as moral patience(unless we have some other reason to include them). On the other hand, we might have to include some robots in the future as moral patients. By my definition, only humans and non-human animals can possibly be regarded as moral patients to date. If we reject the sanctity of life beliefs, then we could evaluate moral patience on the basis of other properties. Philosophers like Peter Singer and Shelly Kagan, who reject sanctity of life arguments, generally conceptualize moral patience hierarchies on 2 qualities which I have claimed are indicative of being alive. These 2 qualities are, of course, consciousness and autonomy. I think my definition of life helps bridge together the sanctity of life belief with what is regarded as the most value relevant properties of life by the rejectors of the sanctity of life claims. Of course, I cannot answer whether or not eating meat, abortion, or the mistreatment of future robots is morally permissible without writing you another essay about those topics. I will say that the debate seems to revolve around whether the interests of sufficiently mature humans can override the interests of less complex beings that are believed to have some amount of moral patience. This question is quite complicated.

Of course you might then respond ‘how do you define “being”? ‘ - but that is the precise meaning of the term ‘ontology’, and it’s a very difficult subject. Consideration of the nature of being is central to philosophy, but hardly considered by science. Think about why that is the case: science is objective, it is the method par excellence for the disclosure of facts about objective phenomena. But ‘being’ or ‘beings’ are not simply objects - they’re subjects of experience. And what is it that makes them subjects of experience? That is the question, and it might not even be resolvable in strictly objective terms. — Wayfarer

It’s actually hard for me to understand what exactly is the distinction between “objective” and “subjective”. Many cognitive scientists and psychologists do try to study subjective experiences like suffering, anxiety, nostalgia, joy, despair, and so on. I think they have had some success. It seems that the distinction between objectivity and subjectivity perhaps rests on the supposed distinction between primary and secondary qualities of objects. Primary qualities like solidity, size, weight, and shape are thought as being more objective than secondary qualities like taste, sound, color, and emotion. It’s not clear to me if there is any meaningful distinction between primary and secondary qualities though. Is weight an actual property of an object or is it just sensations of heaviness? It’s not clear to me if the heaviness of my bed is an objective property of my bed or just a feeling of heaviness if I attempt to lift it up. Similarly, it seems to me that only mental states can have undeniable observed properties. For example, if I cut my arm and cause myself pain, then the painful mental state seems to have an undeniable property of badness. This property of badness would likely be labeled as subjective but if I could transfer the exact same painful mental state to any other subject, I think it would be impossible to have a different attitude towards that mental state as I would have in the moment that the mental state occurs. This is because the attitude about the mental state(if there is an attitudinal judgement made in the same moment as the mental state) seems to be part of the mental state itself. If the mental state can be said to be existent, then it seems that it is an undeniable part of reality itself.
I suppose I would conceptualize a “being” as a “container of experience”. It is to be the one who has to endure one’s future negative experiences and the one who has the opportunity to enjoy his future positive experiences. The problem is that we do not know if anyone other than our current self contains experiences. If my 2 year old self had suffered on a particular day, I cannot know if I was the container of experience who had to endure that suffering. This is because I lack the memory of my 2 year old life. It’s almost as if the 2 year old me never really existed in my mind(or perhaps it was a different container of experience). Similarly, if I get dementia as I age, would I still be a container of experience? I think the answer is probably yes. I imagine that I will still be the stakeholder of the future suffering of my demented self. As for the question about whether computers could have experiences, there seems to be good evidence that mental activity came about as an adaptation which allowed for us to have greater control and agency over our body and environment. If robots can be capable of such agency, I would hypothesize that such complex agency would be impossible without positive and negative experiences.

Hardcore materialists such as Daniel Dennett deny that there is any fundamental distinction between beings and computers. But they are obliged to deny it, because in their view there’s only one real substance, and that’s matter (or matter~energy). So if you argue that ‘being’ is not something that can be understood In terms of matter~energy, then you’re essentially assuming some type of dualism (or pluralism). In other words, you admit defeat for materialism — Wayfarer

My understanding of dualism is that it is a belief that a mind could exist independent of any body. I do not hold such view myself. It seems that the existence and quality of mental states is dependent on the functioning of the nervous system and various sensory organs. If I gouge out my eyes, then I could not have sight sensation anymore. If I receive severe brain damage, then it seems that I could lose my memories, personality, self awareness, and even my ability to experience anything at all. If there is this dependence on the functioning of the body in order to have a mental life, then it seems that the mind is coexistent with the body. This is what makes me doubt that there is an afterlife. Of course, I do not think the activity of the mind is necessarily perfectly projected onto the body. This is why we might have difficulty of studying mental activity by looking at the brain. I cannot speak for Daniel Dennett due to the fact that I’m relatively unfamiliar with his work but from the several talks I heard from him, he didn’t seem to deny that consciousness existed. He seemed to have a different idea of what it was from my understanding but it’s been awhile since I watched one of his videos.

You're setting apart a different set of things, overlapping somewhat between the living and unliving. That's a fine analysis, albeit that it's also fuzzy. But I just see no need to redefine words to draw the distinction. — Relativist

I think this redefinition of words can be relevant to issues concerning value and ethics. For example, if everyone had agreed with my distinction between living and non-living things rather than the traditional conception, then this might have some implications for issues like abortion and the ethical treatment of conscious robots. This is because we tend give greater priority to living things over non-living things. Now, of course, there is a seeming explanation for why we think of living things as more important than non-living things and it has to do with 2 main factors:

1. The Presence of Mental Activity

2. The Presence of Complex Behavior Patterns

Of course, not all organisms have these important characteristics and some non-organisms have those characteristics. I think it would be helpful to reunite what we think is valuable about life as the definition of life itself. For example, if it is more probable that certain AI Programs are capable of mental activity than fetuses, then this would give me more reason to be concerned with the welfare of AI Programs than of fetuses. Although, I don’t think either one of those things have mental activity yet, the presence of complex behavior patterns in AI seems to be at least one indicator of potential mental activity. This is because there is a plausible belief that mental activity came about through evolution in order to enable greater agency. Without mental activity, complex behavior patterns might be an impossibility. Thus my redefining of what it means to be a living thing seems to help shift the discussion of these topics in the right direction and it would help direct the “Sanctity of Life” arguments against abortion to non-human animals and perhaps the futuristic conscious AI Programs. This is because fetuses do not qualify as life in my definition of life while non-animals and some AI perhaps would.

If words didn't have some degree of objectivity then we would always be talking past each other. We would never communicate at all. How could we lie to each other if the meaning of my words in my mind didn't mean the same thing in your mind? We would create our own arbitrary categories of our individual perceptions and never be able to communicate them to others. How would you expect me to understand the scribbles you put up on a screen if we didn't have some shared understanding of what those scribbles mean? Who would you be "talking to"? It seems that we would all be only talking ourselves. So, why didn't you just say your post to yourself in your mind? Why did you type it out and submit it on a philosophy forum? Isn't it because you wanted to share your idea with others who have a shared understanding of the meaning of the scribbles that you put on the screen? The scribbles mean your ideas and your intent to communicate them. — Harry Hindu

There is a difference between objectivity and near-universal acceptance of a particular meaning of a word. I don’t deny that you should use the conventional meaning of the word “life” if you are having a discussion with your friend about bacteria. For better or worse, sometimes you have to use the meaning that is accepted by most. But that doesn’t mean that the classification for what is alive cannot possibly change. For example, in the past, Pluto used to be considered a planet. Now, it is no longer considered a planet. This is simply because the scientific community decided to change their classification for what is a planet. If the scientific community were to decide to agree with my classification of living things tomorrow, then it’s somewhat likely that the public will change its use of the word as well(just as they did with Pluto). But sometimes there is a conflict between the scientific definition of a word and it’s conventional usage. For example, cucumbers are classified as both fruits and vegetables by scientists(fruits are considered to be any seed bearing structure in a flowering plant which a subcategory of vegetables which seems to refer to any sort of edible vegetation). But we don’t think of a cucumber as a fruit and we don’t think of fruits as subcategories of vegetables. The question then becomes, which conceptual structure should we adopt? It might be argued that we should just adopt both but this might actually make communication more confusing. Imagine that I’m a botanist asking about what is the favorite fruit of my botanist coworker. He might legitimately be confused about what I’m referring to by fruit. So, I actually think it would be beneficial if we could encourage a more consistent use of language for communication. In addition, the way we organize our categorical structures could a massive impact on how we think about certain ethical dilemmas. For example, if fetuses are not only non-persons but also non-living, then this would probably shift our opinion on abortion. Of course, it could still be argued that the potential for life is enough reason to protect the fetus by law, but this would perhaps imply that sperm and ovaries should have some moral importance as well(which seems rather implausible). It could also have implications about how we should treat robots of sufficient complexity.