Your thoughts on my definition of "life"?

[source]

Yeah, we are trying to find the correct definition now though.

Then we are done. Ayn Rand's definition is good.

[Michael Hopcroft]

Would a machien that is capable of original, rational thought and independnet action be alive even though it is not biological in origin?

Many science fiction authors have been dealing with this question, in one form or another, for over sixty years. And the concept of "man-made" life goes even father back, to Mary Shelley and to the legends surrounding golems.

[TomL]

Would a machien that is capable of original, rational thought and independnet action be alive even though it is not biological in origin?

Many science fiction authors have been dealing with this question, in one form or another, for over sixty years. And the concept of "man-made" life goes even father back, to Mary Shelley and to the legends surrounding golems.

I think that once it is conscious then it should be given autonomy, yes.

An even better question is: is man capable of building a machine capable of original, rational thought? There's no way to know, with our current context of knowledge, if its even possible -- so to posulate the status of such a device as "alive" is rather arbitrary. Let's see how wide the river is before we start planning the bridge, eh?

[JMeganSnow]

Actually, when you see a definition such as "man is a rational animal," you don't know anything about man, except that he is rational. The definition subsumes nothing. What you have to do after you've read a definition is - look at reality, and determine - of all the animals, which ones are rational? Within the current scope of knowledge available to man, the only rational animal is man (hence the definition, of course). When looking at REALITY (NOT the definition), you will find that that animal happens to be a biped, it's got a head, two arms, a belly-button, two eyes which vary in color from individual to individual, etc. The definition omits these, because having eyes or a head does not differentiate man from everything else.

Also, there is a definition of man which says that man is an animal that laughs. This, although a characteristic that can differentiate man from other animals, is a non-essential characteristic of man, therefore, this definition should be rejected.

You form your own internal definition of a concept after you form the concept, you don't go out and read the definition and then form the concept. Higher-level concepts are almost always formed in terms of concepts other concepts. Internally, definition comes after conceptualization.

[JMeganSnow]

I think that once it is conscious then it should be given autonomy, yes.

An even better question is: is man capable of building a machine capable of original, rational thought?  There's no way to know, with our current context of knowledge, if its even possible -- so to posulate the status of such a device as "alive" is rather arbitrary.  Let's see how wide the river is before we start planning the bridge, eh?

I thought this was commonly referenced as "sex" and "pregnancy". I guess men can't do the second one, so no.

[Michael Hopcroft]

I think that once it is conscious then it should be given autonomy, yes.

An even better question is: is man capable of building a machine capable of original, rational thought?  There's no way to know, with our current context of knowledge, if its even possible -- so to posulate the status of such a device as "alive" is rather arbitrary.  Let's see how wide the river is before we start planning the bridge, eh?

Even if we do not yet have that capacity (mainly because our understanding of the process that we call thought is still extremely limited), it is still fair to ask the question because fifty, a hundred or two hundred years from now the capacity might well exist.

When it does, we will have the prospect of a set of artifically-generated minds interacting with naturally-created human minds. Many science fiction writers (who are, in a sense, writing more about tehoetical philosphy than about science) have postulated concepts like "downloading" a mind from a biological from (a human brain) into a computer or computer network, transferring an intact human or other mind from one body to another, etc. An entire genre called "transhumanism" has emerged that deals with these issues, which is seen in RPGs like Transhuman Space and Ex Machina and in films like Ghost in the Shell and its sequels GITS 2: innocence and the Tv series GITS: Stand Alone Complex. Stories like this frequently find themsevles dealing with what the ability to transfer, preserve, and erase consciousness means to the concepts of life, idendity, and gender. (How does it change a mind to go from a male body to a female or neuter body?)

So even though we do not yet have that capacity, there is a lot of literature on the social and ethical implications that capacity would generate once it exists. It's just like FTl and time travel; they don't exist now, and the science we understand now indicates they never will, but there is a lot of speculations on what those technologies would mean to the humans and others that use them.

[TomL]

I thought this was commonly referenced as "sex" and "pregnancy".  I guess men can't do the second one, so no. 

If you want to define a man as a "machine", then you're right. I thought about this definition while writing my reply and wondered if anyone else would think of it, too

But to rebutt: a woman can't exactly get pregnant without a man, now - can she?

[Michael Hopcroft]

If you want to define a man as a "machine", then you're right.  I thought about this definition while writing my reply and wondered if anyone else would think of it, too

But to rebutt: a woman can't exactly get pregnant without a man, now - can she?

Sort of. She can use artificial insemination to become pregannt without direct contact with a man. A man is still needed to supply the sperm, however.

if human cloning ever becomes reliable it opens up the possibility of completely asexual reporduction of the human species. And if ti becomes common or a norm, the role of the male in the world could be greatly reduced or even eliminated. (And, since clones are almost always female, the proportion of males in the population could also decline.)

[EC]

Sort of. She can use artificial insemination to become pregannt without direct contact with a man. A man is still needed to supply the sperm, however.

if human cloning ever becomes reliable it opens up the possibility of completely asexual reporduction of the human species. And if ti becomes common or a norm, the role of the male in the world could be greatly reduced or even eliminated. (And, since clones are almost always female, the proportion of males in the population could also decline.)

What are you smoking? You keep make all these arbitrary assertions and then argue for them as if they are fact.

[Michael Hopcroft]

What are you smoking?    You keep make all these arbitrary assertions and then argue for them as if they are fact.

Where am I making that assertion? Much of what we think about the social effects of things like human cloning and artifical minds are inherently speculative. I am merely basiing my speculations on two things: the currently knwon science as I understand it and the speculations of the writers and artists with whose work I am familiar. I am certainly open to an alternative explanation, but it would be nice if you could actually offer one rather than simply shooting down this one.

I merely mention ideas. Do with them what you will.

[source]

You form your own internal definition of a concept after you form the concept, you don't go out and read the definition and then form the concept.  Higher-level concepts are almost always formed in terms of concepts other concepts.  Internally, definition comes after conceptualization.

That is true, but what I said was in the context of someone who just read the definition, without prior knowledge of what man is. Therefore (in this context), if you read a definition, you don't know what it is that it defines. Then you read it and within the scope of your knowledge you can see what it is. If you don't you can look at reality to see what it is.

Say you are familiar with what the genus of that definition is (you know exactly what it refers to), but you know nothing about the concept that is being defined. Then, according to what the definition says, you can observe which objects within the specified genus differentiate from other objects in the same genus in the way that the definition describes.

[source]

Non-sense.

So in your view, stars act to sustain themselves?

[One Prime Mover]

I'm going to suggest "irreducibly goal-directed, self-sustaining, self-generated action" as the definition of life. This eliminates such things as stars, while preserving all forms of biological life (including viruses and cells).

I would argue that this definition also eliminates computer programs and robots, since their actions are not irreducibly goal-directed; their 'goal-directed action' is simply our perception of the result of a long list of goal-independent instructions, simple coding and the like none of which are specifically goal-directed in themselves. Take a robot whose 'goal' is to keep a house clean. On casual inspection, we can see its action as goal-directed. Looking at its code, though, there is no 'keep house clean' action: There's a long list of constituent actions, all intermixed, things like "turn left," "drive forward until you hit a wall," "deploy cleaning device," etc, all of which can themselves be reduced to the fundamental ones-and-zeroes of data transmission and processing. When the reason behind any of these constituent ones-and-zeroes actions is investigated, we do not find a goal -- we find "because the programming said to do it."

Thus, the definition of life is a matter of context, as is all knowledge. What we identify as 'goal-directed action' is, itself, contextual on our understanding of the nature of that action. To provide another example, if we were able to examine in detail the 'programming' of a lower-level life form such as a virus, we could likely reduce a virus' goal-directed action down to a list of constituent actions, none of which are, by themselves, specifically goal-directed (as with the cleaning robot above). In this sense, we have taken a higher-level perspective of goal-directed action and reduced it to a large list of goal-independent actions: Via a change in the context of our knowledge, we have reduced a living virus to a computer program.

Our context changed, our understanding of goal-directed action changed, and so our understanding of a virus as a 'life form' would also change.

In other words, something is alive as long as its actions are goal-directed. If we can reduce these goal-directed actions to a list of determined instructions that are no longer goal-directed actions, then, within the context of our knowledge, we have 'reduced' this thing such that it no longer satisfies the conditions for 'life.'

Clearly, we all have an intuitive grasp of what 'life' is, and I think the above describes it most succinctly. Imagine our perspective of a cockroach now; we see it as 'alive.' But if we were able to print out the programming of its consciousness and see that it really only followed a long, long list of determined, goal-independent actions, that it was a glorified robot in a biological shell, I think a lot of us would intuitively reject applying the definition of 'life' to it: The mystery is gone, the magic has left it; all silly intuitive constructs behind which exists a rational truth -- our definition of life is dependent on our identification of a life form's actions as irreducibly goal-directed.

Is this an accurate definition of life? I don't know; but I think it's the definition we all implicity hold to when we claim that viruses, cockroaches and humans are alive, but computers, stars and robots are not: The actions of the former are irreducibly goal-directed, within the context of our knowledge.

[source]

I'm going to suggest "irreducibly goal-directed, self-sustaining, self-generated action" as the definition of life. This eliminates such things as stars, while preserving all forms of biological life (including viruses and cells).

Prime, "irreducibly goal-directed" is a redundancy. It is not necessary to say that, because it is already said with "self-sustaining," i.e. the goal is sustaining the self.

Contrary to what has been said, stars do not perform any self-generated action required by their "survival." While fusion and fission are self-sustaining (for a while), they are not self-generated. To be self-generated means to be its own cause, and that is what these processes are not. Note the difference between self-sustaining and self-generated.

Furthermore, these processes are natural processes which occur in (today more or less) predictable patterns and their goal is not self-sustaining - there is no possibility of a goal, because the term itself relies on concepts such as consciousness and intelligence.

Note that these in turn rely on the concept of life, thus introducing the concept "goal" into the definition of "life" generates a loophole, as you are using a higher-level concept to descibe a lower-level one.

As for artificial life (AI and similar), it must be said that, contrary to what many of you think, they don't really execute commands. Their circuitry is simply put together in such a way as to react differently (yet in the way we originally wanted them to) to different stimulus. This stimulus is a change in voltage (normally zero and 5 volts). Depending on which circuit is "stimulated" you will get a different result. Computers or robots are no more alive or conscious than light-bulbs.

[EC]

So in your view, stars act to sustain themselves?

Not in any conscious way if that's what you mean. But they do continually convert H into He and so on releasing great amounts of energy that try to blow the star apart while being balanced by the force of gravity. It does this this entire life, it is self-sustaining.

[Nxixcxk]

My post is directed at Trendy and source.

Sorry for the late response, my pathetic internet connection isn’t working, so I have to use the schools.

My definition of “life” was meant in relation to humans, no other life forms—and I can’t believe I didn’t say that as I know it is causing much unneeded confusion.

The genus of your definition of life would be 'relationship;' life, by your definition, is a type of relationship.

Thanks for the clarification there, I totally missed this.

I don't know whether "experiental" is mistyped

Yes, it was a mistype. It was suppose to be experiential.

I must ask you first what does it mean for something to be "profoundly experiential?" How does adjective "profoundly" differentiate the phrase "profoundly experiential" from simply "experiential?"

The difference b/t “profoundly experiential” and simply “experiential” is this: If I were being chased by a bear in a wilderness and had to use my mind to its fullest extent in order to survive being eaten, I would call that a profound experience. Whereas if I was simply sauntering around the sidewalks, I’d categorize that as simply experience, or mundane experience.

So, there’s something about those two experiences that I am differentiating. In the former, I was thinking, making important decisions, and was active. In the latter, I’m not doing much other than wandering around aimlessly.

Existence presupposes reality, therefore it is sufficient to say "between man and his existence."

This I thought about before making my definition. If I left it as simply man and his existence, it didn’t make sense to me; after all, what is his existence?

The above definition is incorrect. It is not true that all man does in his life is gather experience. What about his biological necessities, the products of his mind, etc.?

I was assuming that biological necessities would be subsumed under experience, but now I realize that it’s undeniably not. Thanks for pointing that out.

How does man's life differentiate from the life say of a dog; or a monkey?

Noted. J I think when I was forming this definition I was making way too many assumptions L

To make a definition, always answer the following questions:

1. What am I defining?

The answer could be "this" (pointing at a table), or something else.

This will be the defining object.

2. What am I differentiating it from?

Answering this will give you the genus.

3. How is it different from other similar objects?

In the case of a specific table, you must know how it is different from other tables. What is the most important thing that makes it different? You must, in fact, know what the purpose of this definition is; you can make a thousand definitions and forget them in an hour because they are pointless.

Answering this, and this is the hardest part, will give you the differentia.

When you answer the above questions, it's all downhill. Just put everything together and you're done

Okay great, thanks for the suggestion. When I have time, I will sit down and follow this format and see if I can come up with a definition for ordinary objects.

Also, there is a definition of man which says that man is an animal that laughs. This, although a characteristic that can differentiate man from other animals, is a non-essential characteristic of man, therefore, this definition should be rejected.

What do you mean by non-essential? Non-essential in relation to what?

[source]

Not in any conscious way if that's what you mean. But they do continually convert H into He and so on releasing great amounts of energy that try to blow the star apart while being balanced by the force of gravity. It does this this entire life, it is self-sustaining.

Self-sustaining yes, but NOT self-generated. Read my above post for clarification (if you haven't).

[EC]

Self-sustaining yes, but NOT self-generated. Read my above post for clarification (if you haven't).

What generated it then? I suppose you could ultimately say gravity, but actually it was gravity in respect to the star's huge mass. So in a sense, it is also self-generated.

[JMeganSnow]

What generated it then? I suppose you could ultimately say gravity, but actually it was gravity in respect to the star's huge mass. So in a sense, it is also self-generated.

You're ignoring the meaning of action in this context, I think. Action can mean a number of things, but the real meaning of it in the context of defining life is that of a deed or accomplishment, not a simple physical motion.

[source]

What generated it then? I suppose you could ultimately say gravity, but actually it was gravity in respect to the star's huge mass. So in a sense, it is also self-generated.

So a star's gravity generated the star itself? This is a rather paradoxical statement, don't you think?

Anyway, self-generated does not mean self-created. Besides, we are not talking about the self-generation of life but of self-generated action because while life IS action, it is a specific kind of action - that which sustains itself, meaning all past action causes and makes possible future actions, and that which generates itself, meaning the same action (which leads to self-preservation) generates more and more of such action.

Life has a "defense" against death, which means the end of self-generated and self-sustained action, therefore this action can continue far longer than is the life of a single individual. This "defense" is reproduction. Life generates more life - another living entity. You don't see stars breed. They have no mating periods. Once they die, they stay dead and they have no descendants. It is the end of the self-sustaining action that was taking place on them, and there was nothing to stand in that place.

Moreover, a star never acts to get more hidrogen.

[source]

This I thought about before making my definition.  If I left it as simply man and his existence, it didn’t make sense to me; after all, what is his existence?

Existence is identity. To exist means to be part of reality. That need not be defined.

What do you mean by non-essential?  Non-essential in relation to what?

Non-essential in relation to what you are defining. Laughter is hardly the characteristic of man which is important to his existence.

[EC]

So a star's gravity generated the star itself? This is a rather paradoxical statement, don't you think?

Anyway, self-generated does not mean self-created. Besides, we are not talking about the self-generation of life but of self-generated action because while life IS action, it is a specific kind of action - that which sustains itself, meaning all past action causes and makes possible future actions, and that which generates itself, meaning the same action (which leads to self-preservation) generates more and more of such action.

Life has a "defense" against death, which means the end of self-generated and self-sustained action, therefore this action can continue far longer than is the life of a single individual. This "defense" is reproduction. Life generates more life - another living entity. You don't see stars breed. They have no mating periods. Once they die, they stay dead and they have no descendants. It is the end of the self-sustaining action that was taking place on them, and there was nothing to stand in that place.

Moreover, a star never acts to get more hidrogen.

You are right that a star doesn't "act" to get more H, but if a cloud of it were to pass by, it would absorb it. A plant doesn't act to gather light from the sun, but it does aquire it.

When a large star dies and goes supernova, it "seeds" the surrounding areas with more complex chemicals, and this lead to new, usually smaller stars being formed, just like the Sun itself is one of these second or maybe even third generations stars. It also produces the raw materials for things like planets and people. We are all stardust! So in a very real sense stars do reproduce.

It is not paradoxical at all that the gravity of a star takes part in its creation. A hydrogen cloud gathers and over a period of millions of years condenses under the force of gravity until the pressures and heat are high enough to generate fusion and therefore a star.

I don't see how this "action" somehow negates the concept of "life" for a star or why it seems people here are opposed to it. There is simply a diffence between "life" and "biological life" with the latter having the additional attribute of being goal oriented.

[Michael Hopcroft]

Prime, "irreducibly goal-directed" is a redundancy. It is not necessary to say that, because it is already said with "self-sustaining," i.e. the goal is sustaining the self.

Contrary to what has been said, stars do not perform any self-generated action required by their "survival." While fusion and fission are self-sustaining (for a while), they are not self-generated. To be self-generated means to be its own cause, and that is what these processes are not. Note the difference between self-sustaining and self-generated.

Furthermore, these processes are natural processes which occur in (today more or less) predictable patterns and their goal is not self-sustaining - there is no possibility of a goal, because the term itself relies on concepts such as consciousness and intelligence.

Note that these in turn rely on the concept of life, thus introducing the concept "goal" into the definition of "life" generates a loophole, as you are using a higher-level concept to descibe a lower-level one.

As for artificial life (AI and similar), it must be said that, contrary to what many of you think, they don't really execute commands. Their circuitry is simply put together in such a way as to react differently (yet in the way we originally wanted them to) to different stimulus. This stimulus is a change in voltage (normally zero and 5 volts). Depending on which circuit is "stimulated" you will get a different result. Computers or robots are no more alive or conscious than light-bulbs.

I do not agree with the assertion that the physical nature of an AI preculdes it from being either intelligent or alive. After all, our brains work through electric and chemical reactions, and yet they still produce independnet thought. If a machine does, in fact, become capable of true intelligence and indpendent thought, there is no reason to believe it should not be granted the rights and responsibiltiies of any sentient being.

My intial thesis has not been disproven, and probably cannot be totally disporved until someone actually attempts to create a true artificial intelligence.

[One Prime Mover]

I think more attention needs to be given to my suggestion of adding the word 'irreducible' to the definition of life -- I do not agree that this term is redundant, and believe such an identification is due to a lack of understanding of what I mean when I use it.

To be self-generated means to be its own cause, and that is what these processes are not. Note the difference between self-sustaining and self-generated.

You and I are, I believe, saying the same thing. You identify 'irreducible' as redundant because you think the point I'm making is included in the term 'self-generated.' I disagree, which is why I consider the further stipulation of 'irreducibly goal-directed' to be necessary. A star's internal fusion is self-generated; every cause of that fusion can be traced back to the identity of the star; there is nothing else that is generating the fusion. To get to the realisation that it is not the 'star' that is doing it requires a process of reduction down to the fundamentals of physics. With the added stipulation that a living organism's actions must be irreducibly goal-directed, this process of reduction is enough to identify the existent as not alive.

Let's compare a chipmunk foraging for food to an automated, programmed robot who digs for his own fuel to process.

Given the context of our knowledge and our ability to observe these two existents, most of us would identify the former as alive and the latter as not alive. Why? Both of them satisfy the definition of 'goal-directed, self-generated, self-sustaining action;' there are no grounds within the current definition to distinguish between those two existents.

There are two possibilities here. Either we accept that the robot is alive, or we redefine 'life' such that our identification of the abovementioned robot as 'not alive' is satisfactorily explained. The former is a trivial solution, so I'll run with the latter -- I'm not supporting one possibility over the other, though. I'm just showing how a redefinition of life might work.

What is the difference between these two existents? The only one I am able to identify is that we are able to reduce the actions of the robot down to a computer program. We can explain the observed goal-directed action in terms of the program behind it; the goal-directed action of the robot is not a contextual primary. With the robot, the contextual primary is the component actions of its computer program -- none of those are, by themselves, goal-directed. Thus, the robot differs from the chipmunk in that we can reduce the observed goal-directed actions of the former to the list of goal-indifferent actions comprising its computer program.

It is this knowledge that the apparently goal-directed actions of the robot are actually determined, programmed instructions that gives us this intuitive sense that the robot is not alive: That is the difference between the robot and the chipmunk.

This distinction, then, is entirely contextual -- it is based entirely on our ability to reduce the goal-directed actions of an existent down to goal-indifferent actions. If we can, the existent is not alive. If we cannot, then it is. Relating this distinction to the definition, an existent is alive if its self-generated, self-sustaining actions are irreducibly goal-directed.

With stars, when asked, "why does a star burn fuel?" we can answer: "Because the pressures at the heart of the star force the fusion of hydrogen, causing light and heat." When we ask, "why do the pressures...," we reach a fundamental primary of physics, utterly unrelated to the goals of the star. Thus, the star is not alive.

With robots, when asked, "why does the robot search for fuel?" we can refer to the procedure in its programmed code that governs its fuel-finding actions. When we ask why those programmed instructions are there, we reach the fundamental primary of a human programmer who listed those instructions. This programmer does not defer to the goals of the robot (which are none, once we reduce the robot's "goal-directed action" to programmed code). Thus, the robot is not alive.

With plants, when asked, "why did the plant turn its leaves to the sun?" we can answer: "It senses the warmth of the sun's light and moves towards it." Following this line of reductionism with "why does the plant move towards warmth?" we are forced to answer, "because it requires the sun's light to live, and acts to gain it." We cannot move any further; the goal cannot be reduced away, and so the plant is alive. If we were, one day, able to complete this reduction (by, say, unlocking the plant's DNA and establishing the equivalent of a programmed list of goal-indifferent instructions governing all of its actions), then we would have to afford the plant the same status as a robot -- ie. unliving.

The alternative is to keep our definition of life as it is, and identify robots and stars as alive.

Edited March 7, 2005 by One Prime Mover

[source]

You are right that a star doesn't "act" to get more H, but if a cloud of it were to pass by, it would absorb it. A plant doesn't act to gather light from the sun, but it does aquire it.

On the contrary. Plants turn their leaves so that most of the sunlight shines directly onto their surface. They even grow roots towards places underground which contain most moisture (water). A star, on the other hand, with all the gravity at its disposal, does not direct it anywhere and it doesn't matter to it whether a hidrogen cloud just passed beyond it's gravity's reach, and even if this cloud would be orbiting the sun, it would do nothing to attract it closer.

When a large star dies and goes supernova, it "seeds" the surrounding areas with more complex chemicals, and this lead to new, usually smaller stars being formed, just like the Sun itself is one of these second or maybe even third generations stars. It also produces the raw materials for things like planets and people. We are all stardust! So in a very real sense stars do reproduce.

Just like when you die, you are placed underground and you become humus for plants which someone might eat to survive - the point being - you are going to enormous lengths to justify an invalid point.