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I find that these conversations are almost always backwards, as "is X alive" actually handled as "should we consider X as alive". That is we are not trying to
by afiori 3y ago
I find that these conversations are almost always backwards, as "is X alive" actually handled as "should we consider X as alive".
That is we are not trying to discover whether a thing is alive or not, we are trying to decide what Alive means.
This confusion creates the illusion that terms like Life, consciousness, emotions, reflexes, etc. are well defined while they in practice are not.
- mseepgood 3y agoThere is no such thing as alive, the word is a human invention. We can decide what the word means.
- afiori 3y agoThat was my the point, these conversations are linguistically phrased as trying to estabilish if something is alive but are actually structured as a debate on what "alive" means