Defining Life

Interesting ideas Wenchilina, but suppose the difference between chaos and order is based merely on our ability to understand a particular system.

A virus may seem ordered and simple to us now, but years ago, that wasn't the case. And likewise, bacteria may just slightly exceed our understanding of complex systems.

If this is the case, the something (anything) might cease to be considered alive, once we completely understood its processes and construction.

Is "life" merely a function of our ability to understand process? Are machines not alive simply because we know how they work? Do they have to exceed our ability to understand their processing before we will consider them alive?

Interesting material to think about though....

Best Regards,

Life is the quality that distinguishes a vital and functional being or organism from a dead body or inanimate matter. I dont beleive a quality other than functioning is needed.
Ordered or chaotic qualities of being describes more functionality with a bit of a twist on vitality perhaps, in my opionon.
However I find your idea of a balance of these points interesting. Humans alone I believe could put this theory to rest though.

Really though...just wanted to say hello and welcome to a2k!

I'm sure there could be some great discussion on this here for you.

Interesting point, sounds like you're trying to find a balance for yourself.

We are mere ants trying to understand the solar system, that's life :wink:

You answered you own question with one word; "self-referential." It's what defines our life. c.i.

Stop trying to balance out life, it's quite disheartening. Insomnia is annoying but ever so clever. Pendulum has a balance, so it makes a little sense as long as you skip the interrogations.

wenchilina

I think you are on the right track. I've had a go at this one and came up with "life is negative entropy" , but as rosborne pointed out "order" and "disorder" are particular to the observer. (This in turn raises the interesting issue of the status of the second law of thermodynamics and possibly the "direction of time ").

You might be interested in Piagetian concepts of equilibrium states which are extended beyond thought processes to general genetic epistemology where "a structure" (organism) is in equilbrium with its "environment".

Re: Defining Life


This is the problem with actually being inside the thing you're trying to describe. You can't see it in it's entirity.
You can postulate external frames of reference but there is no basis in reality for them and they are impossible to use in any meaningful way to help you understand the system you're a part of.

When it comes to describing the universe it's a little easier because there is another reference frame you can use : that of time. But we still don't have an external frame of reference for examination of everything at once. Even when you go right back to the Planck Time when everything descends below the level of quantum foam the only thing you can look at is the foam itself and the mechanism for the appearance of a stable, non-local space within the foam that starts to expand and eventually cools enough so that we can start having a look around it and speculating as to why the hell it's here and how it got here.
Ohh look ! I'm back where I started !

At one time I was developing an essay about "existence" being even more important than "life."

A rock exists -- although it is not alive.


But the difference between "life" and "not-life" -- is not as great, in my opinion, as between "existence" and "not-existence."

Anything come up for anyone???

Instead of those particular words perhaps I could say "self-sustainment" (i.e. biological systems, genetic programming) and the ability (not necessarily always used) to react to one's environment. Included in the second are things such as free will, instinct, etc. and provides the variability when referring to chaos.

Many cognitive scientists think that the yet unanswered questions about what consciousness, sentience, etc. are will be answered when neurons can be analyzed on the quantum level.

Perhaps chaos is that which cannot be defined (along with its "other side", order). What I can say is that I'm not using it as the opposite of what could be seen as the "clockwork of the universe". I don't think there is a clockwork in the universe, inexorably moving everything mechanically towards some end or another.

It doesn't have to be defined in order to be used as a concept. There are concepts such as that, e.g. "society". Society exists, but good luck defining it. Same thing with "species" (biological, not chemical).

Pointing out the quantum world, which can be seen as either perfectly ordered (albeit in a way which we cannot observe), or perfectly chaotic (but most definitely without a clockwork). I'm more of the mind that it is both... the superposition of chaos and order, perhaps just like life itself. Again, an analogy, if you will: on a quantum level, you can look (sort of) and see (well, not really, but you can assume) superpositions of certain binary states (why we assume they are binary is beyond me-- I'm more likely to believe they are infinite)... perhaps life, then, is a superposition of all states. What's meant by "all"? At each "point" in time (which I suppose doesn't exist at the limit), an infinite multiverse is 'created', and the superposition of all these states somehow gives life.

Everything is parenthetical to something else. So in the centre, you could 'see' the perfect order of quarks or whatever the heck is the particle of the hour (let's call it the of time Planck's constant instead hardy har har) [or is that perfect disorder?]... anway, moving outwards then you see molecules in perfect arrays of crystal stucture, but then each chunk being disordered, then the rock could be picked up and smashed.

lol - I've lost it.

Is thought alive?
I'm assuming you're referring to AI(I'm thinkinging I may be off here heh)..Once someone can build an artificial mosquito, I'll be impressed. Even that simple little thing can't be built by us...For that matter, we can't really understand how a virus works...

AI is nowhere near any sort of actual intelligence...the mechanical view has been around for quite some time. It's an easy cognitive handle, makes things simpler. Unfortunately, it's the wrong approach if you want to progress in AI.

Quantum stuff doesn't like Newton. 1 and 0's indeed, but in superpositions. So maybe, maybe not - is a machine a balance of chaos/order?

Frank wrote:





In a dream is a rock alive?

wenchilina wrote:




I would say yes, though we don't know what a thought is.

I just cannot grasp how thought could be anything but alive.

But what does 'alive' mean?

If thought is alive and this existence is a mental construct, a manifestation of mind/consciousness, (essentially an illusion) etc., then there is nothing that is not alive.

Being alive basically means you exist. Everyone, before they were born, didn't exist. In a way, if you think about it...life is the quality of existing, i guess. Life is basically the ability to control what you, as the existing object, can do. a bit hard to explain....

Huh???

truth
Since "life" is a biological concept (I am assuming "biology" existed informally before the formal academic discipline of biology), I take this to be a technical biological question to be answered BY biology--something about respiration, reproduction, metabolism, ingestion/excretion, etc. (I'm sure I've included not enough and too many concepts). Ancient animists thought (or so thought turn of the century anthropologists) that anything that moved was alive: water-was-dead-when-stagnant-and-alive-when- flowing, sort of thing. "Anima" (life) has to do with movement even today, i.e., when we talk of the animation of pictures in cartoons.

I'm afraid this isn't true. Existence is sparate from life.
To determine if something is alive there are several properties that the object you're studying must have :

It must ingest in some way.
It must excrete in some way.
It must reproduce in some way.
It must show resistance to Entropy.
It must respond to stimuli in some manner.

A rock exists but is not alive. It does not ingest, excrete or reproduce for example.
A tree is alive. It ingests, excretes, reproduces, resists Entropy and responds to stimuli.
A human is alive by the same criteria.
A very sick human may not respond to stimuli but it has the capability to.

The great majority of life science researchers and scientists consider reproduction to be the most fundamental of these criteria.

It is possible to write computer programs to simulate life and living objects that conform to all these criteria. In my personal view, they are alive. I don't have any problem with switching the computer off though.

There are other criteria that have ben suggested for inclusion and they are valid, things such as Homeostasis and the capacity to live vicariously.

Bear in mind that this is ONLY defining life. Not sentience.

Good post, Heliotrope.

That was the reason for my original post in this thread.

To me, existence is even more mystifying than life.

If stunningly cold beer on a hot day is part of your life, you eventually stop questioning your existence, I have found.

truth
Yes, Heliotrope, excellent post. Frank, have you looked at Hiedegger's ontological-existential masterpiece, Beilng and Becoming, or Being and Nothingness? I understand it is very difficult--likely to induce a mental hernia in the unprepared--but it might satisfy your fascination for BEING in itself.