Define inanimate. What is its essence? — apokrisis
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. — apokrisis
Not animate. Duhhh...Define inanimate. What is its essence? :) — apokrisis
Let me try this logic out. Suppose I try to nail down the essence of 'cute'. I pick an arbitrary way to sort things into two heaps: A thing is cute if it masses more than a KG. So I am cute, but this pebble is not. There is at least one thing in each heap, therefore there must be an essence of cute. Somehow the proof seems invalid. Your 'bald' criteria (admittedly not the actual essence) is more a description of alopecia, not bald.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." — Samuel Lacrampe
That X exists, not that it is known. If it doesn't exist, then there is no definite is-life or not sorting, and your first premise fails. Not talking about our ability to know or not, but an actual indeterminate state of some thing being life or not. Without the essence, there is no fact of the matter, and no contradiction by something being in that questionable state.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.
And we have but one example from all our sense observation. Our implicit knowledge concerns only that one example. Intuitions will not serve us for the general case as we attempt to recognize the second example.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. — Samuel Lacrampe
Read the NASA link that Banno posted. Dr Cleland speaks speaks directly about this. We are unconcerned with the 'definition of life', which would be a description of how the word is used in our language, and by said 10-year-old. What we're seeking in this thread is what she calls a "scientific theory of life" which seeks to define a set of rules for the more general case. Common language usage is of zero importance to what NASA does.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.
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. — apokrisis
I think most biologists would agree that some types of life have no mind (e.g., plants). — Galuchat
Would you categorise a tornado as inanimate and on what grounds precisely? — apokrisis
This consensus by most biologists is most likely real. Still, some burgeoning fields of biology do uphold plants to have intelligence and, therefore, plant-minds. — javra
Is it possible to extrapolate a definition of inorganic mind from what we know about organic minds using functional and/or semiotic terms without resorting to metaphor? — Galuchat
Apparently, trees send within themselves, electrical messages, similar to the nerves of animals but they travel much slower. They are communicate through there roots and networks of mycelium which intertwine with the roots — Metaphysician Undercover
I note that you still seem unable to define what you mean by inanimate. That is pretty telling. — apokrisis
That I couldn't describe the difference between animate and inanimate, in a way which would be acceptable to you, doesn't ,mean that there isn't such a difference. It could mean that I don't know the difference, and it could mean that you are obstinate. — Metaphysician Undercover
Not surprisingly, the major criticism that theoretical biologists would have of autopoiesis is that it undercooks the informational aspect of dissipative structure. It doesn't account for the repair or replication aspect by which an organism is able to maintain its existence [...]. — apokrisis
So a balanced definition of life - such as to be found in the works of Rosen, Pattee and Salthe - stresses the complementary duality of metabolism and replication, or the material processes and the informational constraints. — apokrisis
Accounts such as those of Evan Thompson in the book Mind in Life (2007) have it otherwise. — javra
If you are addressing nucleic acids replication, isn't nucleic acids replication part of metabolism to begin with? Such as in the production of proteins, etc. It is as far as I know.
Makes it sound as though you are addressing reproduction in general. But, then, mules would be non-living organisms by definition--to list just one example. — javra
And you have yet to make the case that life requires something other than metabolism--whatever the metaphysical underpinnings of metabolism might be. — javra
I still find reason to uphold that metabolism is a sufficient definition of life (granted that it includes the self-generation of the metabolizing self which, in part, requires nucleic acid replication, obviously). — javra
And what you were asked for was the essence of inanimate matter. — apokrisis
Does it not have its own form of nous - its reason for being - under Aristotelian hylomorphism? Is it not Platonically necessary as the indeterminate chora to accept the impression of the eternal ideas? — apokrisis
In science, talk about any quality ceases to be metaphor to the degree the quality can be measured or quantified. And my pansemiotic argument is... — Apokrisis
In particular, I refer to those advancements which have created the categories of animate and inanimate things. — Metaphysician Undercover
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