On the side, you should consider the consequences of autonomous motion as extensions of the autonomous; — Shamshir
Those things are important.Biologists define living things as organisms and emphasize their ability to maintain homeostasis and replicate its genetic information. But, are those things actually important? Should we really think of living things as just a collection of cells which replicate themselves? I think of life as the process of being alive and as a state of animation. I do not understand why we consider trees and fungi to be alive. — TheHedoMinimalist
If we don't draw that line so, just where do we then draw the line? — ssu
Yes, you would vivify the bat by extension; the bat will live through and as you.Are you suggesting that if I pick up a baseball bat, then that bat would be part of me and therefore alive? — TheHedoMinimalist
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
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
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?, I think we should draw the line between living and non-living on the capacity for autonomous action. — TheHedoMinimalist
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
Living organisms can also die, so the dead/alive dichotomy is quite understandable. Again why life has a lot to do with living 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. — TheHedoMinimalist
No. As you mention later, I would have to take care of it that it stays alive. With a plastic contraption that is designed to fool people that it is a plant, I wouldn't have to worry so much.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. — TheHedoMinimalist
Or it would see to be behaving more like an animal? And we do have moving plants like tumbleweeds.But, wait a minute? Wasn’t it alive before that freaky event? What makes it seem like it is more alive now? — TheHedoMinimalist
Nope. It simply builds from (processed) materials a machine. No sex involved.This mother robot now fulfills 2 of the 3 requirements for life by the scientific definition:
1. It reproduces — TheHedoMinimalist
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.2. It has a metabolism — TheHedoMinimalist
Well, it is.3. It doesn’t have cells
But, it’s not clear why the 3rd requirement is all that important. — TheHedoMinimalist
It's a question of classification, yes, and I think TheHedoMinimalist has another idea than just classification at mind here.Maybe we need a precise definition of life, so that we can easily and conveniently classify things as alive or not. Or maybe there's another reason? Is there?:chin: — Pattern-chaser
Perhaps when you are talking in the future to an AI that is fully conscious, aware and independent, you might have an interesting discussion with it about the subject. Would it consider itself alive or dead? It may perhaps see itself as conscious, but not as a living being and it might consider itself hence dead. The dead interacting with the living might sound awesome to it, who knows? — ssu
Yet there is the possibility of the AI being... something resembling a Trump-voter... — ssu
Yet knowing all the Worlds telephone books inside and out doesn't make you super-intelligent. — ssu
Nope. It simply builds from (processed) materials a machine. No sex involved. — ssu
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, 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
An entity must exist that is capable of replication and the resources necessary for such replication should be available. — Stephen Cook
it appears as though infertile humans wouldn’t qualify as life by the ... requirements you have listed — TheHedoMinimalist
I can't rid myself of the oft-quoted motto "if it walks like a duck, and quacks like a dick, it's probably a duck" — Pattern-chaser
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
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
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
Get involved in philosophical discussions about knowledge, truth, language, consciousness, science, politics, religion, logic and mathematics, art, history, and lots more. No ads, no clutter, and very little agreement — just fascinating conversations.