3 ms·
If I can't interact with it, whether I think it is alive or not is moot, and it might make sense to capture that fact in the definition.
by jjoonathan 10y ago
If I can't interact with it, whether I think it is alive or not is moot, and it might make sense to capture that fact in the definition.
- zardo 10y agoIn the definition of life? I'm not sure... It seems like a very anthropocentric definition. Isn't it enough to observe it interacting with the things it can interact with, and base the level of aliveness on that?
- jjoonathan 10y agoDefinitions exist to serve us, not the other way around, so anthropocentricity isn't exactly a sin. If we base our definition of life on observed interactions, we reacquire the same problems we had before, where we have difficulty deciding whether or not deceased ancestors / fictional characters / miscellaneous accidental Turing machines are alive. To be sure, a restricted subset of observed interactions are good proxies for determining life: if I see a bird interacting with a worm outside the window, it's a good bet that I could get up and scare it off / put out birdseed / etc, but I'd argue that if you tease out the restrictions required to define the subset of observed interactions that constitute life you're liable to find yourself right back at the interaction definition.