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It's not that life wants to continue existing, it's that life is what continues existing. That's not a moral standard, but a matter of causality, that life that
by shikon7 8mo ago
It's not that life wants to continue existing, it's that life is what continues existing. That's not a moral standard, but a matter of causality, that life that lacks in "want" to continue existing mostly stops existing.
- owenpalmer 8mo agoThe moral standard isn't trying to explain why life wants to exist. That's what evolution explains. Rather, the moral standard is making a judgement about how we should respond to life's already evolved desire to exist.
- mannanj 8mo agoDo you think conscious beings actually experience wanting to continue existing, or is even that subjective feeling just a story we tell about mechanical processes?
- pineaux 8mo agoI disagree, this we don't know. You treat life as if persistence is it's overarching quality, but rocks also persist and a rock that keeps persisting through time has nothing that resembles wanting. I could be a bit pedantic and say that life doesnt want to keep existing but genes do. But what I really want to say is that wanting to live is a prerequisite to the evolutionary proces where not wanting to live is a self filtering causality. When we have this discussion the word wanting should be correctly defined or else we risk sitting on our own islands.