All this is nothing more than baseless assertion. How do you know that the so-called laws of nature do not reflect any reality beyond that which you purport to be merely constructed or inferred by humans?

I've described what the laws are, inductive conclusions, which are used as tools, by human beings in their activities. Whether or not some of these laws might reflect reality is irrelevant, because even if they did this would not imply that reality follows the laws. The reality does not follow the reflection. That's the point, we cannot say that the reality follows the laws, because it does not, even if the laws reflect the reality. So to say things like reality is constrained by these laws, is pure nonsense.

OK, fixed. :)

Law of non-contradiction does not hold without a hard definition of the essence, so invoking the law presupposes the conclusion that there is such an essence. Dr Cleland brings the subject up using 'bald' as the example. — noAxioms

I honestly find it hard to believe that the law of non-contradiction, typically seen as the first principal in metaphysics, is itself dependant on the existence of essence of things. In fact, the strength (or weakness depending on the case) of pure logic is that it contains no substance, only variables (A, B, X, Y, ...). Furthermore, it seems like an easy cop out for someone to dismiss a logical argument simply on the grounds that he does not believe in the essence of the terms used. Could you unpack this 'bald' example if possible?

Yes, one could arbitrarily make up such a rule, and then be able to classify anything as life or not-life, but what has that proven? That is not the essence of life, it is just an arbitrary rule that sorts things into two buckets. It does not prove the existence of an essence. — noAxioms

I think it still does due to premise 2. Here is an analogy: We know country X exists because we know someone from country X. We also know country Y exists because we know someone from country Y. This is enough to deduce that a separation or border exists between countries X and Y.

Furthermore, it seems like an easy cop out for someone to dismiss a logical argument simply on the grounds that he does not believe in the essence of the terms used. — Samuel Lacrampe

If there is no solid truth value to some proposition, it is not a logical (boolean) argument, but rather a fuzzy one. "I am bald" and "I am not bald" can both be true since there is no agreed upon theory of bald.

I think it still does due to premise 2. Here is an analogy: We know country X exists because we know someone from country X. We also know country Y exists because we know someone from country Y. This is enough to deduce that a separation or border exists between countries X and Y. — Samuel Lacrampe

What's this got to do with it? For one, the existence of a person who is "from" (born in? Raised? Citizen?) country X is not proof of the continued existence of X. Furthermore, the logic made no statement that all countries occupy disjoint geographical regions (and there are indeed counter examples), so no conclusion about their separation can be drawn at all.

My example was for one hard or fuzzy fact, like a person is from X, or a person is not from X. The law of contradiction can only be applied if there is an absolute (hard) criteria to determine "is from X", whether or not you want to invoke the word 'essence' in all that. If no absolute criteria is known (fuzzy fact), then you can't invoke the law of contradiction to prove that there is in fact an absolute criteria.

Why is it important? You've never answered that. Suppose we find something that most people agree is life. What then? Does it require a plaque? Does it become a crime to wipe it out (genocide), or interfere with it (prime directive)? There are no such obligations right now, so it isn't important, at least not yet.

- There exists an instance where a being is clearly labelled as living and another instance where a being is clearly labelled non-living: e.g. a dog and a rock. — Samuel Lacrampe

About this one: No 'essence' (in quotes because I dislike applying the term here) has been established, so the example is not a clear one. There are those that have argued on these forums that rocks are an example of life, or that dogs are not. I may not agree with these positions, but I have no rule which I can apply to prove either of them wrong.

"I am bald" and "I am not bald" can both be true since there is no agreed upon theory of bald. — noAxioms

I disagree. The only criteria is consistency in A and consistency in B in the law of non-contradiction. You don't need to find the real essence of "bald" but merely need a consistent definition, such as "no hair anywhere on the head". In this case, "I am bald" and "I am not bald" are mutually exclusive. Therefore only consistency and not the essence in the terms is needed to apply the law of non-contradiction.

the logic made no statement that all countries occupy disjoint geographical regions (and there are indeed counter examples), so no conclusion about their separation can be drawn at all. — noAxioms

I used the word 'separation' loosely. The separation can be disjoint and yet still a separation.

If no absolute criteria is known (fuzzy fact), then you can't invoke the law of contradiction to prove that there is in fact an absolute criteria. — noAxioms

Your statement is circular.

Why is it important? — noAxioms

Are you asking why finding the essence of life is important? I personally find the topic interesting; that is why I am here. Why are you here if you don't find the topic important?

So the observer is included within the very epistemology of science - as the viewpoint which is to be constrained in some pragmatic/semiotic fashion. — apokrisis

Well, it is now, because of developments such as semiotics in biology (and also developments in physics). But if you suggested to many typical scientists that 'the observer is included' they would look sideways at you, to put it mildly. 'Scientific realism' is the view that what the scientist sees is 'observer -independent' - that is what 'objectivity' is thought to consist of. So you're seeing that, but thousands wouldn't.

So you are criticising that science does not explain mind. But science exists to shape the mind. It is the reasoning mind in action with the benefit of a sharper method of practice. You want mind incorporated as a scientific output, when it is instead incorporated as the input - a way to refine the modelling that minds are there for. — apokrisis

I don't believe that science exists to 'shape the mind' - unless you're talking about psychology and psychiatry (and even then...) Certainly the kinds of neural network approach, and indeed the whole discipline of biosemiotics, emulates important aspects of the mind - it was the failures of earlier models that lead to such developments as you say. But an emulation or simulation is still that, it's not the reality.

In my opinion, the best neuroscience model of the mind is Karl Friston's Bayesian Brain approach. And that does describe it as a semiotic dissipative structure - http://www.fil.ion.ucl.ac.uk/~karl/The%20free-energy%20principle%20-%20a%20rough%20guide%20to%20the%20brain.pdf

The mind as informational mechanism is all about reducing the uncertainty that a physical/material world has for an organism. So it is all about modelling that is intimately tied to physical regulation. And that is why a lack of such a tie makes artificial intelligence so impoverished - unless it is, as I argue, tied back into human entropic activities as yet a further level of semiosis. — apokrisis

What do you mean by intimately tied to physical regulation (in ways that ANN's cannot be)?. Sensory input is used and encoded by existing ANN's to construct predictive models easily describable as information networks that reduce Frinston's free-energy, they just aren't sophisticated or robust enough to be handed the real-time wheel of their own destiny. Frinston is attempting to gain insight into the nature of how data-networks carrying out semiotic exchanges encode and learn in the first place. That they learn and communicate intelligently is itself the mystery he seems to be investigating, which applies to learning ANN's somewhat equally.

The human mind as a dissipative structure resisting uncertainty in statistical modelling is quite different from biological organisms as dissipative systems resisting thermodynamic equilibrium. The power to resist the second law (steady-state) in the latter is analogous to the power to resist surprise in the former. The power to resist surprise is what the genetic mind, the human mind, and an artificial mind all have directly in common. Resisting surprise from a statistical modeling perspective is fundamental to intelligently sequestering and exploiting engines of dissipation to resist thermodynamic entropy in the first place.

It is accepting formal and final cause as real at the cosmological level. Even if that is just the general desire for entropification served by the form of dissipative structure. And that does account for life and (actual) mind as biology is ultimately explained as dissipative structure.

So as I said about a tornado, it seems rather lifelike as it rages about a landscape. But it is being sustained by boundary conditions, not by any internal model that makes it a self with some degree of autonomy.


Any description of mind which uses psychological terms only as metaphor (e.g., accept, desire, rage, self, autonomy, as above) is inadequate, leading to confusion rather than clarity.

An accurate description of the human mind can be constructed using both physical and non-metaphorical psychological terms. I am not aware of any such description of an inorganic mind. Can you elaborate upon your general definition of mind to provide one?

That's what I think, to say that a tornado rages across the land with the desire to destroy is simply metaphoric. And to do honest metaphysics by assigning the attributes of living things, such as intention and habit, to inorganic systems is a mistake which will only lead to confusion. Anaximander's "Nous" was long ago dismissed because it was inadequate as a metaphysical principle.

Any description of mind which uses psychological terms only as metaphor (e.g., accept, desire, rage, self, autonomy, as above) is inadequate, leading to confusion rather than clarity. — Galuchat

I said it seems like it rages ... and then specified why that could only be anthropomorphic projection because there is no internal semiotic model in play.

Anaximander's "Nous" — Metaphysician Undercover

Hu?

Not familiar with "Nous"? How could that be the case when, from your writing, it appears to be your first principle of metaphysics?

You mean Apeiron, or even apokrisis? Or are you mixing up your Anaximanders and Aristotles? Easily done.

Sorry, my mistake, it's Anaxagoras who assumed Nous. The Nous is the mind which orders all the parts of the cosmos to behave in an orderly fashion. That's what you describe when you say that the universe follows final cause (the intent of a mind), and inanimate things behave according to habits (actions resulting from a mind).

I disagree. The only criteria is consistency in A and consistency in B in the law of non-contradiction. You don't need to find the real essence of "bald" but merely need a consistent definition, such as "no hair anywhere on the head". In this case, "I am bald" and "I am not bald" are mutually exclusive. Therefore only consistency and not the essence in the terms is needed to apply the law of non-contradiction. — Samuel Lacrampe

OK, you've selected that arbitrary criteria of which I spoke (not exactly since we've not defined where 'the head' stops, but let's define that as the smallest cross section of the neck, which works for humans at least). How does this arbitrary selection provide evidence that there is an actual essence of 'bald'? Never mind the fact that the criteria sorts all of humanity into the not-bald side, so the distinction must be pretty meaningless.

If no absolute criteria is known (fuzzy fact), then you can't invoke the law of contradiction to prove that there is in fact an absolute criteria.
— noAxioms
Your statement is circular.

How so?

Are you asking why finding the essence of life is important? I personally find the topic interesting; that is why I am here. Why are you here if you don't find the topic important?

Interesting yes, but the topic can be discussed without needing to know that there is or is not an actual 'essence'.

The realization of life can only be understood if one understands death. For that is the only sense of messurement. So to say one can fully understand life he must indeed understand death in its fullest.

The Nous is the mind which orders all the parts of the cosmos to behave in an orderly fashion. That's what you describe when you say that the universe follows final cause (the intent of a mind), and inanimate things behave according to habits (actions resulting from a mind). — Metaphysician Undercover

Correct. So my use of "mind" is clearly deflationary. Especially as I am explicitly generalising it to semiosis, or sign rather than mind. Semiosis is mind-like - in being the mechanism or process by which formal/final cause are understood as immanent in nature. So the Cosmos is thermodynamic. It is ruled by emergent self-organisation. And thus it has a teleology - the desire to maximise entropy. All material existence - including living and mindful creatures - are entrained to that universal purpose.

But immanent constraints are looser than transcendent laws. They only limit freedoms to the degree that any differences make a difference. And so the Cosmic level purpose - of achieving entropification - is highly attenuated, especially on very short spatiotemporal scales at which humans engage with the world. It is only in the long-run that human intelligence must be found to have accelerated the cosmos's grand entropification project.

Now the point in contention here was the difference between biosemiosis and pansemiosis. And a critical difference is one of scale. Physics would say the critical scale for semiosis - as in the collapse of the wavefunction, the symmetry-breaking represented by the Big Bang - would be Planck scale or the scale of the fundamental quantum action. However biophysics has recently found that for life and mind - biological processes - the relevant symmetry breaking scale is instead much greater. It is the nanometre scale of the quasiclassical. The tipping point where sign relations can kick in is the poised point, the zone of critical instability, that lies energetically between the quantum and classical scale.

Oh, this thermal region also has to be in a body of water. You also need the right chemistry - water being a solvent of complex molecules and so providing the material base of some actual instability. Things are actually building up and breaking down within a complex medium.

So life and mind are different in that they rely on there being these further "accidents" of nature not foreseen by a purely physical level of semiosis.

Once the Universe, in its Bang state of being a bath of radiation, cooled/expanded enough to undergo a succession of phase transitions, it had the crud of massive atoms with their classically described motions condensing out and starting to do their own semiotic thing, with their own new laws. And after stars made heavy elements, you had the production of watery planets, you finally arrive at the rather accidental looking conditions for organic chemistry, and so organic life and mind as the highly complex avatars of the Second Law.

So while in a general sense, there is one principle to rule them all - pansemiosis in the general thermodynamic sense of a dissipative structure - it is also clear that biosemiosis is a whole other story in that it requires its own quite different quasiclassical scale of critical instability, and that in turn is quite narrowly defined in terms of its material conditions.

However this is like nous in granting mind - the power of self-organising purpose - to the cosmos. And it is kind of dualistic in granting fundamental reality to a realm of sign or symbol, as well as matter or physics. But - as I understand it anyway - it is critical that nous is immanent and not transcendent. It is not about some spirit or external hand acting on an inanimate and purposeless world. Instead, pansemiosis is a theory of immanent self-organisation - the taking of habits that forms a cosmos obeying its own accumulated laws.

I will now add an old post from PF that explains the recent biophysics that now directly supports the biosemiotic side of this argument....

Biophysics finds a new substance

This looks like a game-changer for our notions of “materiality”. Biophysics has discovered a special zone of convergence at the nanoscale – the region poised between quantum and classical action. And crucially for theories about life and mind, it is also the zone where semiotics emerges. It is the scale where the entropic matter~symbol distinction gets born. So it explains the nanoscale as literally a new kind of stuff, a physical state poised at “the edge of chaos”, or at criticality, that is a mix of its material and formal causes.

The key finding:
In brief, as outlined in this paper - http://www.rpgroup.caltech.edu/publications/Phillips2006.pdf - and in this book - http://lifesratchet.com/ - the nanoscale turns out to a convergence zone where all the key structure-creating forces of nature become equal in size, and coincide with the thermal properties/temperature scale of liquid water.

So at a scale of 10^-9 metres (the average distance of energetic interactions between molecules) and 10^-20 joules (the average background energy due to the “warmth” of water), all the many different kinds of energy become effectively the same. Elastic energy, electrostatic energy, chemical bond energy, thermal energy – every kind of action is suddenly equivalent in strength. And thus easily interconvertible. There is no real cost, no energetic barrier, to turning one kind of action into another kind of action. And so also – from a semiotic or informational viewpoint – no real problem getting in there and regulating the action. It is like a railway system where you can switch trains on to other tracks at virtually zero cost. The mystery of how “immaterial” information can control material processes disappears because the conversion of one kind of action into a different kind of action has been made cost-free in energetic terms. Matter is already acting symbolically in this regard.

This cross-over zone had to happen due to the fact that there is a transistion from quantum to classical behaviour in the material world. As the micro-scale, the physics of objects is ruled by surface area effects. Molecular structures have a lot of surface area and very little volume, so the geometry dominates when it comes to the substantial properties being exhibited. The shapes are what matter more than what the shapes are made of. But then at the macro-scale, it is the collective bulk effects that take over. The nature of a substance is determined now by the kinds of atoms present, the types of bonds, the ratios of the elements.

The actual crossing over in terms of the forces involved is between the steadily waning strength of electromagnetic binding energy – the attraction between positive and negative charges weakens proportionately with distance – and the steadily increasing strength of bulk properties such as the stability of chemical, elastic, and other kinds of mechanical or structural bonds. Get enough atoms together and they start to reinforce each others behaviour.

So you have quantum scale substance where the emergent character is based on geometric properties, and classical scale substance where it is based on bulk properties. And this is even when still talking about the same apparent “stuff”. If you probe a film of water perhaps five or six molecules thick with a super-fine needle, you can start to feel the bumps of extra resistance as you push through each layer. But at a larger scale of interaction, water just has its generalised bulk identity – the one that conforms to our folk intuitions about liquidity.

So the big finding is the way that constrasting forces of nature suddenly find themselves in vanilla harmony at a certain critical scale of being. It is kind of like the unification scale for fundamental physics, but this is the fundamental scale of nature for biology – and also mind, given that both life and mind are dependent on the emergence of semiotic machinery.

The other key finding: The nanoscale convergence zone has only really been discovered over the past decade. And alongside that is the discovery that this is also the realm of molecular machines.
In the past, cells where thought of as pretty much bags of chemicals doing chemical things. The genes tossed enzymes into the mix to speed reactions up or slow processes down. But that was mostly it so far as the regulation went. In fact, the nanoscale internals of a cell are incredibly organised by pumps, switches, tracks, transporters, and every kind of mechanical device.

A great example are the motor proteins – the kinesin, myosin and dynein families of molecules. These are proteins that literally have a pair of legs which they can use to walk along various kinds of structural filaments – microtubules and actin fibres – while dragging a bag of some cellular product somewhere else in a cell. So stuff doesn’t float to where in needs to go. There is a transport network of lines criss-crossing a cell with these little guys dragging loads.

It is pretty fantastic and quite unexpected. You’ve got to see this youtube animation to see how crazy this is – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y-uuk4Pr2i8 . And these motor proteins are just one example of the range of molecular machines which organise the fundamental workings of a cell.

A third key point: So at the nanoscale, there is this convergence of energy levels that makes it possible for regulation by information to be added at “no cost”. Basically, the chemistry of a cell is permanently at its equilibrium point between breaking up and making up. All the molecular structures – like the actin filaments, the vesicle membranes, the motor proteins – are as likely to be falling apart as they are to reform. So just the smallest nudge from some source of information, a memory as encoded in DNA in particular, is enough to promote either activity. The metaphorical waft of a butterfly wing can tip the balance in the desired direction.

This is the remarkable reason why the human body operates on an energy input of about 100 watts – what it takes to run a light bulb. By being able to harness the nanoscale using a vanishingly light touch, it costs almost next to nothing to run our bodies and minds. The power density of our nano-machinery is such that a teaspoon full would produce 130 horsepower. In other words, the actual macro-scale machinery we make is quite grotesquely inefficient by comparison. All effort for small result because cars and food mixers work far away from the zone of poised criticality – the realm of fundamental biological substance where the dynamics of material processes and the regulation of informational constraints can interact on a common scale of being.

The metaphysical implications: The problem with most metaphysical discussions of reality is that they rely on “commonsense” notions about the nature of substance. Reality is composed of “stuff with properties”. The form or organisation of that stuff is accidental. What matters is the enduring underlying material which has a character that can be logically predicated or enumerated. Sure there is a bit of emergence going on – the liquidity of H2O molecules in contrast to gaseousness or crystallinity of … well, water at other temperatures. But essentially, we are meant to look through organisational differences to see the true material stuff, the atomistic foundations.

But here we have a phase of substance, a realm of material being, where all the actual many different kinds of energetic interaction are zeroed to have the same effective strength. A strong identity (as quantum or classical, geometric or bulk) has been lost. Stuff is equally balanced in all its directions. It is as much organised by its collective structure as its localised electromagnetic attractions. Effectively, it is at its biological or semiotic Planck scale. And I say semiotic because regulation by symbols also costs nothing much at this scale of material being. This is where such an effect – a downward control – can be first clearly exerted. A tiny bit of machinery can harness a vast amount of material action with incredible efficiency.

It is another emergent phase of matter – one where the transition to classicality can be regulated and exploited by the classical physics of machines. The world the quantum creates turns out to contain autopoietic possibility. There is this new kind of stuff with semiosis embedded in its very fabric as an emergent potential.

So contra coventional notions of stuff – which are based on matter gone cold, hard and dead – this shows us a view of substance where it is clear that the two sources of substantial actuality are the interaction between material action and formal organisation. You have a poised state where a substance is expressing both these directions in its character – both have the same scale. And this nanoscale stuff is also just as much symbol as matter. It is readily mechanisable at effectively zero cost. It is not a big deal for there to be semiotic organisation of “its world”.

As I say, it is only over the last decade that biophysics has had the tools to probe this realm and so the metaphysical import of the discovery is frontier stuff.

And indeed, there is a very similar research-led revolution of understanding going on in neuroscience where you can now probe the collective behaviour of cultures of neurons. The zone of interaction between material processes and informational regulation can be directly analysed, answering the crucial questions about how “minds interact with bodies”. And again, it is about the nanoscale of biological organisation and the unsuspected “processing power” that becomes available at the “edge of chaos” when biological stuff is poised at criticality.

So my use of "mind" is clearly deflationary. Especially as I am explicitly generalising it to semiosis, or sign rather than mind. Semiosis is mind-like - in being the mechanism or process by which formal/final cause are understood as immanent in nature. — apokrisis

The problem I see, is that you are attributing life-like features, terms used to describe the characteristics of living beings, properties which are only known to exist as attributes of living beings, to the inanimate "Cosmos". Do you not see that this is unreasonable? Or do you apprehend "The Cosmos" as a living being?

But - as I understand it anyway - it is critical that nous is immanent and not transcendent. It is not about some spirit or external hand acting on an inanimate and purposeless world. Instead, pansemiosis is a theory of immanent self-organisation - the taking of habits that forms a cosmos obeying its own accumulated laws. — apokrisis

I conclude that your metaphysics is essentially pantheistic. The Cosmos is a living god. Do you agree with this assessment?

Do you not see that this is unreasonable? — Metaphysician Undercover

Of course not. It makes a change from calling life and mind a physical machinery.

I thought you were the one who believed in all the spooky transcendent shit - God, freewill, prime movers. My way of speaking is faithful to the immanence that is the founding presumption of the natural philosopher.

I conclude that your metaphysics is essentially pantheistic. The Cosmos is a living god. Do you agree with this assessment? — Metaphysician Undercover

As I say, it is essentially pansemiotic rather than pantheistic or even panpsychic. So no, this ain't about gods or minds or anything that requires hard dualism. Semiosis is how physicalism can enjoy all the benefits of dualism without any of its mystic-mongering and question-begging.

As I have been arguing, existence is the product of the dynamic duo of matter and sign (or matter and symbol). And part of the big shift in the physicalist mindset needed to understand this pansemiotic metaphysics is that matter can't be regarded as inert or passive. This deal only works if matter has critical instability ... and relies on semiosis or habit-taking to grant it the stability of informational constraint.

The fact that pansemiosis is the case is pretty much proven by the thermodynamic/information theoretic turn that modern physics has had to take. The same general theory - of information entropy - now describes both sides in the one coin of measurement. We can measurably talk about the same thing when talking about physical uncertainty and mental (or rather message) uncertainty. That is Gibbs vs Shannon entropy.

So pansemiosis is the completely scientific resolution of the ancient dilemma. Yes, the Cosmos has a Mind. And if that sounds whacky, well sorry but this is what we actually mean in terms of modern physical models based on the interchangability of H and S measures of information entropy. We can now talk about particles and brains in the same essential language.

So no, this ain't about gods or minds or anything that requires hard dualism. Semiosis is how physicalism can enjoy all the benefits of dualism without any of its mystic-mongering and question-begging. — apokrisis

But you attribute to the inanimate universe, properties which only living beings are known to have, things like mind, intention, and habits. I'd call this a category error. We have a well structured division between living and non-living which is completely respected within the scientific disciplines. You don't hear physicists talking about particles behaving as they do because they have habits, or engineers referring to the second law of thermodynamics as the intention of the Mind of the Cosmos

Yes, the Cosmos has a Mind. And if that sounds whacky, well sorry but this is what we actually mean in terms of modern physical models based on the interchangability of H and S measures of information entropy. We can now talk about particles and brains in the same essential language. — apokrisis

Yes that does sound a bit whacky. You have taken metaphysics back to its primitive beginnings, to pre-Socratic times, prior to two and a half thousand years ago. It's a good idea to study these ideas for background information, but to adhere to these severely underdeveloped principles, well that's a serious regression. Have you no respect for the advancements made by metaphysicians between then and now? In particular, I refer to those advancements which have created the categories of animate and inanimate things.

How does this arbitrary selection provide evidence that there is an actual essence of 'bald'? — noAxioms

It doesn't in any direct way. We got side tracked by you claiming that the essence of A and B must exist for the law of non-contradiction to be applicable. I refute this by claiming that we only need consistency and not essence for it. If we agree to this, then my first premise in the argument to prove that essences exist stands: "Either a being is a living being or a non-living being. It cannot be both."

How so? — noAxioms

Maybe "circular" was the wrong word; my bad. Nevertheless, it sounds like you demand to know X in order to prove X using the law of non-contradiction. But if X is known, then it must have already been proven. A valid proof implies a logical proof. A logical proof implies that is passes the law of non-contradiction.

There are those that have argued on these forums that rocks are an example of life, or that dogs are not. — noAxioms

I am amazed. Only philosophers could come up with such conclusions.

I may not agree with these positions, but I have no rule which I can apply to prove either of them wrong. — noAxioms

A fair point. It is tough to explain but here goes. I invoke Aristotle's theory of abstraction: We all have in ourselves the implicit knowledge of terms such as 'living' and 'non-living'. This is so by our years of sense observation of the world. This implicit knowledge is what enables us to use the terms correctly in everyday language, even if we don't have the explicit definition of all the terms used. Thus a 10-year old can have a meaningful conversation without ever having read a dictionary. Finding the essence of terms is simply acquiring explicit knowledge based on our implicit knowledge. I think our implicit knowledge that a dog is living and a rock is non-living is pretty grounded.

Semiosis is how physicalism can enjoy all the benefits of dualism without any of its mystic-mongering and question-begging. — apokrisis

Or, by straining out all the mystical-sounding bits, and replacing with the newly-devised scientific-sounding bits, which serve the same purpose, but come without the encumbrances and baggage of old-fashioned metaphysics (of the kind that good ol' Uncle Charlie was fond of when he'd had a few too many ;-) ).

Have you no respect for the advancements made by metaphysicians between then and now? In particular, I refer to those advancements which have created the categories of animate and inanimate things. — Metaphysician Undercover

Define inanimate. What is its essence? :)

I don't think 'inanimate' is or has 'essence' as it's simply an adjective for non-living matter. (Interesting that Aristotle's work on the soul was called De Anima. But then, I suppose that is also the root of 'animal', isn't it?) ...quick google,..from 'anima' breath, i.e. 'breath of life'.)

Wanted to throw this out there:

First, there’s a distinction between a) physical life and b) a set of non-physical, mystico-poetic concepts of life—such as “I only feel alive when […]”, “they’re dead inside”, or things like “the hills are alive with music”. Not that the second concept of life doesn’t have value to the human condition—and I believe it is itself worthy of contemplation and debate—but it doesn’t correlate well with the reality of life as it pertains to the physical world.

Secondly, an idea that seems to me both commonsensical and indisputable: Physical life can be defined by the ‘essence’ of metabolism. Metabolism always minimally consists of respiration, which can be either aerobic or anaerobic. Respiration always entails the conversion of nutrients or, in the case of anaerobic respiration, inorganic matter into cellular energy. Metabolism is a vital principle to everything known to be negentropic and is absent in everything known to be entropic. The breathing of multicellular organisms via lungs is for respiration at a cellular level, though other multicellular organisms, such as plants, respire in the absence of lungs. That stated, the multicellular organism engages in its own metabolism and the individual cells of its body engage in their own cellular metabolism.

One can then bring this hypothesis of life being defined by metabolism back into the realms of mystico-poetic ancient concepts: ancient concepts of soul—such as anima and psyche—are almost always founded on the process of breath. Breath is what we do to engage in metabolism, this so as to sustain our negentropy. This process of respiration now better known to us via science can readily translate into what was once termed soul—again, such as in anima or psyche ... from which we also now have the terms animate and inanimate. To be clearer, in this interpretation the soul is not the breath that occurs but that intangible holistic aspect of being which produces the occurring breath. When that which produces the occurring breath is no longer present, the being is no longer living but dead—and its physical matter changes from being negentropic to being entropic. (Though, granted, this interpretation likely won’t make much sense to at least those who interpret soul through an Abrahamic lens, be they theists or not.)

Once one gets into notions such as that of the anima mundi, or more modern variants of it, one again slips into obfuscation between metaphysics and metaphor: the world, for example, doesn’t engage in the process of breathing so as to sustain its own negentropy. That stated, I don’t believe concepts such as the anima mundi—or some of its modern variants—are necessarily false; but, for example, the anima which would be addressed is clearly something different than the anima which pertains to animate beings.

The tangential about the soul aside, as concerns the hypothesis that the essence of physical life is defined by metabolism—something that dogs do and rocks don’t—it’s an opinion I currently fail to find any fault with.

A biologist would stress that what is definitional is replication and metabolism. Respiration releases energy, but life also requires the ability to direct some of that into work - the work that rebuilds the body doing the respiring. So somewhere life must have an idea of the material structure it desires to build or maintain. Which is where the imateriality enters the picture.