5 ms·
This is what comes of trying to define binary, all-or-nothing categories in a world of continuous variation. Any sharp boundary you try to draw between "life" a
by pdonis 2y ago
This is what comes of trying to define binary, all-or-nothing categories in a world of continuous variation. Any sharp boundary you try to draw between "life" and "death" is going to have exceptions. Making heavy weather out of this, instead of recognizing "life" and "death" as approximate categories that are useful for many purposes but can break down at the edges, is just muddled thinking.
- justonceokay 2y agoSounds like most of philosophy
- pdonis 2y agoI agree. I think it's telling that Bertrand Russell's History of Western Philosophy is basically entirely about how all those philosophers peddled nonsense masquerading as deep thinking. For example, here's his money quote about Kant: "Hume, with his criticism of the concept of causality, awakened him from his dogmatic slumbers--so at least he says, but the awakening was only temporary, and he soon invented a soporific which enabled him to sleep again."
- mathattack 2y agoThis! I was going to write the same thing. Life, Death, Alive, Dead - these are all terms created by humans to make sense out of the world. In reality it's about more life-like and less life-like.
- kjkjadksj 2y agoAt the end of the day it is just self sustaining chemistry. Everything else is abstraction that muddies waters and invites semantical exercises.
- ordu 2y agoI believe that all categories are like that, not just binary ones. All models are wrong, it is their bug and their feature.
- taneq 2y agoExactly. A map that is 100% accurate is useless, because you might just as well use the real thing.
- Ferret7446 2y agoDefine "wrong". Models exist because they're useful. If they're useful, are they not right? Alternatively, does it matter if they're all wrong if they're useful?
- geye1234 2y agoIf you mean "sometimes a particular animal can be on the cusp between life and death and it's therefore hard to tell which term applies", you may have a point, although for most animals (including people) observation tells us the cusp is very small. If you mean "life" or "death" are merely mental categories that don't have existence in reality, then saying "this is alive" or "this is dead", or "this is close to life" or "this is close to death", would all be meaningless. We can't predicate a purely mental category of something and then claim that the statement has a meaning outside our minds. Nor can we say our mental categories are approximations of anything real unless we categorize based on something that really exists in the first place.