Yes those necessarily can only follow the path of least action so are inanimate.Radiation, chemical reactions — Outlander
Yes those necessarily can only follow the path of least action so are inanimate, Even though they are produced as a byproduct of, and/or connected to a, living organism.nails, or hair (whether attached to a living person or not) — Outlander
Flesh does not follow the path of least action which would be to simply to disintegrate, And to maintain its structure and processes it requires continuous input of energy And it directs its kinetic energy to obtain more potential energy. Thus flesh is certainly a living being.flesh — Outlander
Yes while I do understand that line of thinking I don't believe it applies here. For one thing, the aging process is a programmed cell death process. All living organisms initially have a period of net anabolic growth (no aging), except for accumulating Random metabolic induced structural damage that are continuously repaired until the DNA itself is too damaged. This is just the struggle of a living process against entropy. All the repair mechanisms in living organisms down to the DNA repair level are exactly the opposite of taking the path of least action (as my definition points out), which would path would otherwise be simply to allow the second law to let entropy destroy it.Also, living organisms have or can have will or intent to avoid taking the least amount of action, but our bodies are still inevitably doing so... the aging process, etc. — Outlander
Please note that the my definition does not say that living beings defy the second law of thermal dynamics, just that they can create Personal/local regions that That at least for some period of time Have free will to shift entropy to the environment.Or is this not relevant? — Outlander
Your definition is circular because it uses the word "Not dead". Moreover, 'accumulate knowledge' Is likewise circular because knowledge is always defined in terms of some kind of meaning which requires a living organism to create the meaning and use it as knowledge. Another problem with your definition, I believe, is that it would predict that a virus is inanimate, not living, because it does not accumulate knowledge, where is my definition, as I pointed out, would conclude a virus is certainly a living being.I'd have said anything that is an 'organism' that's not dead or 'accumulates knowledge' or rather is capable of possessing it is sufficient enough — Outlander
I forgot to answer this part of your replies. That is a very interesting point, which I was not considering so far. I may need to refine my definition to exclude such anomalies. However, my immediate thinking is that my current definition excludes current advanced AI systems because they do not direct their (or other's) kinetic energy to net increase their potential energy. A computer system that they operate within are purely second law Entropy degenerating Systems that purely burn energy, and do not self acquire or create any physical potential energy within their physical system. So, I think my current definition wording is sufficient to exclude current advanced AI systems. I'd be curious if anyone can make a good argument otherwise.What of advanced AI? — Outlander
Thanks for your comment; however, I have to respectfully disagree. Consciousness is a logically separate aspect and capability beyond what is the minimum required for life. For example, as I mentioned before, my definition concludes that a virus is certainly a living being. So, I think you would have to argue that a virus is certainly not alive Or shoot down The part of my definition that says it is, Without the use of consciousness as your argument. Because the virus has no consciousness in any reasonable or useful meaning of the word. And, don't go down the panpsychism Rabbit hole which would conclude that all inanimate matter is alive as well, hence the whole thing would a completely useless (non-Scientific, religion-like) Line of inquiry.it appears to me that the underlying question is what is the source of the spark of consciousness? — Jack Cummins
Living organisms bear the unique hallmark ability of modifying themselves in a manner to redirect and/or create kinetic energy to systematically increase their potential energy greater than any kinetic energy expended in their metabolic process. — Sir Philo Sophia
I don't think you understand the path of least action because it occurs at every point in the path of action, it is not some net entropy concept. For example, if you are standing in place at any given moment On planet Earth your path of least action is to fall dead to the ground. This has nothing to do with creating maximum entropy or whatever they are talking about.Life remains still tied to the least action principle. — apokrisis
So it is not that life veers off from least action paths. Instead, it exists because it constructs new ones. It burrows through barriers that were preventing the inorganic from doing a better job on releasing its potential energy. — apokrisis
A tornado is a dissipative structure doing the Second Law's will. But it is fragile - conjured up by chance circumstance. — apokrisis
And then a coding machinery to stabilise this path - this dissipative structure - is also definitional. — apokrisis
I don't think Exploiting and entropic gradients Is the key principle In defining life, because nature itself is all about neutralizing all in tropic gradients so there is no need for life in that sense that is just the second law, like osmosis, at work. No entropic gradient means no work can be done at all. The fact that living creatures like everything in the universe Must find and exploit entropic variance to exist does not help define them Apart from inanimate matter, IMHO. For example, You might say a crystal Is alive because it is exploiting entropic Gradients in its environment to create its negentropic, Highly organized lower entropy, structure and replicates itself. So, apparently, you, Swenson, Schneider and Kay Would say a crystal Growing And replicating itself is alive? in their context how would you say if crystal is not alive?Swenson, Schneider and Kay, Lineweaver, Salthe and many more have hammered out the basics of how life and mind arise as dissipative structures with the intelligence to exploit entropic gradients. — apokrisis
In particular, which path(s) out of all available paths will a system take to minimize potentials or maximize the entropy? The answer (the law of
maximum entropy production) is the path or assembly of paths that minimizes the
potential (maximizes the entropy) at the fastest rate given the constraints. — Swenson
Again I don't think you understand the path of least action in physics — Sir Philo Sophia
I don't think anyone is saying a tornado is alive? — Sir Philo Sophia
For example, a virus exist just fine without any coding machinery to stabilize its path or repair — Sir Philo Sophia
So, apparently, you, Swenson, Schneider and Kay Would say a crystal Growing And replicating itself is alive? — Sir Philo Sophia
So this says that the least action path does win. — apokrisis
I don't think you understanding my point Which I made before and repeat above. Please specifically answer to my point above and where you think I am wrong about it.This may make your own contribution rather redundant. It has all been worked out with clarity already. — apokrisis
And Darwinian evolution is a way of exploring the space of possible paths. — apokrisis
Whereas living organisms have the option to do inefficient work — Sir Philo Sophia
Another way to put it, is that I'm saying natural inanimate processes must always do locally optimized work, Whereas living beings can hop over Potential gradient barriers Achieve globally optimized work. This has nothing to do with negentropy concepts. Get it now? — Sir Philo Sophia
Thus not Being constructive Towards moving forward in this regard. — Sir Philo Sophia
Terribly sorry not to be furthering your own entropy-creating enterprise here. :lol:
Is it really such a shock that science has already worked all this out for itself? — apokrisis
If you are not able or willing to do that here then you are not Being constructive Towards moving forward in this regard, and most likely do not have/know of one. — Sir Philo Sophia
Swenson, Schneider and Kay, Lineweaver, Salthe and many more have hammered out the basics of how life and mind arise as dissipative structures with the intelligence to exploit entropic gradients. — apokrisis
I can point you on your path, but I can't walk if for you. — apokrisis
So, maybe science has not clearly defined it? — Sir Philo Sophia
no. the 'competition' (if you must) is for the most complete, accurate, and concise definition. So, if your proposed one does not hold up against all counter-examples it would not be complete or accurate, and, thus, being concise would be irrelevant.If the competition here is for the most concise definition, — apokrisis
"Rate-independent symbols regulating rate-dependent dynamics" — apokrisis
So, for example, what exactly does that say about whether a virus is alive or inanimate? — Sir Philo Sophia
I'll leave you to scratch your head on that with this as an aid - — apokrisis
dynamical language abstracts away the subject side of the epistemic cut. The necessary separation of laws and initial conditions is an explicit principle in physics and has become the basis (and bias) of objectivity in all the sciences. The ideal of physics is to eliminate the subjective observer completely. It turned out that at the quantum level this is a fundamental impossibility, but that has not changed the ideal. — Howard Pattee
I don't believe you are interpreting Pattee correctly. If you are a follower of his theories then you have to conclude that a virus is always Inanimate and dead. I cite some passages below to support that conclusion. The main passage is where he says the epistemic cut Happens only at protein folding. Sense of virus itself absolutely never engages in protein folding then according to Pattie it is never life. Moreover, Patty says that you have to consider the organism as a whole and that no part stand alone a considering if it is alive or not. Moreover, he says that the DNA is certainly not alive, Antivirus is nothing more than glorified DNA wrapped in her lipo-protein sheath. If you Believe otherwise based on Pattie then we await your detailed counter arguments along with Supporting citations.It is alive when it is in the middle of hijacking some host cell's metabolic machinery. That fits the definition. — apokrisis
This type of argument is among the weakest and what is commonly employed by creationists to "prove" that the universe and life had to have been produced by God's intelligent design Because such "a chance event beating the entropic odds by any number of lifetimes of a universe". So, your Reasoning is in very poor company in that regard.If a viral particle were found as some molecular arrangement in the inanimate world, it would count as an extraordinarily negentropic event - a chance event beating the entropic odds by any number of lifetimes of a universe. — apokrisis
By way of additional example of how flawed your reasoning is on that, a virus that is exposed Outside of its host environment Quickly degrades and becomes unviable to infect living cells (Such is COVID19 "Dies" After being in the air for four hours), yet the molecular difference between its viable state of matter and its inviable state of matter is very small with respect to entropy differences. So, your line of statistical impossibility reasoning would still call the degraded inviable virus as living because it still "would count as an extraordinarily negentropic event - a chance event beating the entropic odds by any number of lifetimes of a universe". Hence, that line of reasoning is completely fallacious And not Constructive towards a scientific definition of living versus inanimate matter.So by implication, the dormant virus is still part of the animate world rather than the inanimate one. Chance couldn't produce it. — apokrisis
Viruses do not have any epistemic cut So according to Patty no Darwinian mechanism could involve them. Besides, I do not see any clear path of how they would've evolved from scratch. So, since you claim it is so easy to produce a virus under Darwinian mechanisms then What would you Propose is a plausible Darwinian mechanism that could have produced a virus from scratch? And, please do start from "first life was some kind of proton gradient, autocatalytic, dissipative cycle that emerged in the very particular environment of a warm, acidic, ocean floor thermal vent ". I, and the whole scientific community, eagerly await for your answer on that.But Darwinian mechanism could produce it easily.
I would go with Howard Pattee's epistemic cut.
"Rate-independent symbols regulating rate-dependent dynamics" — apokrisis
It is alive when it is in the middle of hijacking some host cell's metabolic machinery. That fits the definition. — apokrisis
I do like your general direction as well, however, your particular definition Suffers from including Crystal growth As a living being, because Crystal growth uses a flow of energy to do productive work upon itself (Build its more ordered lower entropy structure) So it does reduce its own internal entropy And transfers the entropy difference as he to the environment.With that established, I then define "life" as "self-productive machinery": a physical system that uses a flow of energy to do productive work upon itself, which is to say, to reduce its own internal entropy (necessarily at the expense of increasing the overall entropy of the environment it is a part of). — Pfhorrest
The universal increase of entropy dictated by the second law of thermodynamics is the essence of death and decay, and life in short is anything that fights against that. — Pfhorrest
.. For example, using your line of reasoning you would have to conclude that the planet Earth is alive because for all The molecules that make up the earth and its atmosphere to be exactly configured the way they are and to move with the dynamics exactly the way they do would be "a chance event beating the entropic odds by any number of lifetimes of a universe". However not even your proposed definition of life would consider the earth as Alive, so nor should it consider a virus being alive based on such very weak statistical arguments. — Sir Philo Sophia
I generally have a disdain for any arguments that rely on statistics to come to any conclusion. — Sir Philo Sophia
Propose is a plausible Darwinian mechanism that could have produced a virus from scratch? — Sir Philo Sophia
And, please do start from "first life was some kind of proton gradient, autocatalytic, dissipative cycle that emerged in the very particular environment of a warm, acidic, ocean floor thermal vent ". — Sir Philo Sophia
However, a prion lacks a Separate genotype (no symbols encoding in its Hyper complex functional shape) and phenotype in one. I think Pattee's definition of life which you are quoting would have to conclude that prions are dead. — Sir Philo Sophia
Prions Seem to be more at the border of alive/Inanimate than even viruses in my estimation. So I figure they are a much better test of definitions. — Sir Philo Sophia
So, For at least the above reasons, your Definition is not a practical definition for Properly classifying all matter in the universe and establishing a metric for the earliest stage where inanimate matter transitions to living matter. — Sir Philo Sophia
The Principle of least action (Which all of physics including quantum QED and My proposed definition are based on) Focus on the global action that matter/energy takes throughout its path through a field — Sir Philo Sophia
I look forward to your feedback and may be an improved definition that does not suffer from all the problems I have pointed out. I will soon be giving you feedback on your entropic Based counterpoints after I read those papers. However, I'm still pretty sure they will suffer from serious problems along the lines as I pointed out in a prior post. — Sir Philo Sophia
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