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But qualifying any particular moment as "death" already implies that we've granted the thing in question the quality of being alive at some point, so it's not a
by fluoridation 3y ago
But qualifying any particular moment as "death" already implies that we've granted the thing in question the quality of being alive at some point, so it's not a useful way to distinguish living from non-living.
- marginalia_nu 3y agoBut that is how we talk about living things. A man is alive, has a fatal heart attack, then he is not alive. I don't think anyone would argue he was never alive, or is still alive after having gone cold. Studying this transition from life to non-life, or vice versa should be most informative in distinguishing the two states.
- fluoridation 3y agoSure, but the question is not about distinguishing living from dead things, but about distinguishing currently and formerly living things from things that were never alive. More specifically, about distinguishing them structurally, not comparatively. If "death" is the point where the decay into entropy of something greatly accelerates then hypothetically we could say a rock "dies" when it's melted, or alternatively we could say that it doesn't "die" because it was never alive. The distinction does not lie on the thing itself, but on which things we assign the property of being able to "die".
- marginalia_nu 3y agoThe argument has never been that this is a sufficient criterion for life, but rather that it is necessary and not merely accidental the same way you can be alive and not have legs. There does not to my knowledge exist things that are considered living that don't have this property of locally decreasing entropy.
- fluoridation 3y agoFair enough. It is indeed true that living things seek to maintain their entropy low.