I think that the real cosmic answer to “Why (have life at all)?” is more along the lines of “Why not?”
Once we have life, I think it is pretty clear why life does what it does.
Well, “meaningful” occurs entirely in the nervous system and is certainly “entertainment.” The nervous system is looking for input and getting some. Not much different than seeking out things that are “beautiful” (i.e., “entertaining.”) If you want to think it is something more than that – well, that’s “entertainment” – just like your participation here.
How do you find stuff that is “meaningful”? Well, you go around talking to your friends and stuff until somebody says “Aha, that’s meaningful!” That’s clearly entertainment.
Like the atoms surrounding a recently split DNA molecule, really. DNA doesn’t seek to continue its own existence, it just does what it does, just as computer (or even human) memory does what it does. Those memes or genes are only the product of the meme-holders’ (computers/human brains) actions or gene holders’ (physical bodies) actions.
Indeed, one could call religion an evolutionarily successful meme itself.
I don’t get that part.
Where there is enough DNA to reproduce itself, it continues its own existence.
Does a meme have any actual substance at all? If something doesn’t have any substance, how can it do anything?
A DNA sequence effectively is a set of instructions. When it splits, it commences a simple chemical process acting on the surrounding atoms and molecules which ultimately ends up with there being two DNA molecules, ie. two bunches of atoms having a particular configuration. This is not really so different from a computer virus causing two computers to attain the same configuration.
Agreed, but I suggest that the using the word “seeks” rather anthropomorphises a simple molecule.
As a physicalist I say yes, the substance of the meme is the configuration of the (silicon or biological) computer, just as the DNA molecule is the configuration of the proteins in the helix.
Incidentally, wolfman, I have already agreed that cognitive outputs can generally be called “entertainment”. I’m just pointing out that your rather broad definition of what constitutes “life” ultimately incorporates religion itself.
I think it is. For one thing, the computer virus has absolutely no capability to do that on its own without outside help.
I don’t think the word anthropormophizes anything. Things can “seek” something without being human. But, if you have a better word that means substantially the same thing – indicating a positive action by the being – I am all ears.
I don’t think that shows any substance. The computer virus is really just a collection of entirely independent single magnetic signals until something else puts them together.
Thanks.
If you mean “incorporates religion” as something other than “entertainment” I would like to see a further explanation. I will grant you that the entire explanation I have offered will have some influence on religious beliefs, if the explanation is accepted by someone.
If I wrote you a letter, would the letter be alive? Sounds to me like that definition would logically conclude that letters are alive because they have the same sort of “substance”. That is, they are a disconnected set of marks on paper until someone comes along and reads them and discerns the meaning,
If computer viruses and memes are alive, why wouldn’t a letter be alive?
So computer viruses can only “live” in specific environments, ie. computers. So can DNA, as can be observed by its failure to replicate in absence of those surrounding atoms and molecules.
Well, I personally prefer narrower definitions for life, such as those is the Wikiarticle you linked to. You asked for critiques of yours. I think it’s too broad and anthropomorhic.
But computers can and do work on their own: that humans built that “virtual” environment while evolution built the “real” environment in which DNA exists does not impugn the premise that computer viruses still “seek to continue their own existence”.
No, I meant that forms of entertainment (including religion) are life if they “seek to continue their own existence”. I wouldn’t call religion “alive” myself, but that is one of the consequences of your definition.
I don’t call memes or computer viruses “alive” myself, given that I prefer Varela’s definition. You appear to prefer an extremely broad definition (the Wikiarticle labels it “Schaffer’s”, but I suspect this is mere Wiki-attention-seeking since I’ve never heard of it, or him) which does admit life in such things as computer viruses and letters, and so you are really asking that question of yourself.
Your statement presupposes that they “live”, rather than “exist”. The fact that something is there doesn’t mean it is “living”.
Failure to replicate doesn’t prove anything under the definition. Lots of people fail to replicate. That doesn’t mean they are not “alive”.
I don’t view most of those definitions as being definitions at all. More like a laundry list of things that might indicate life – some of which wouldn’t necessarily be required.
As for the “anthropormorphic” part. that seems to hinge on your interpretation of the word “seek”. “Seeking” is something that can be done by a wide range of living things that are not human. Plants “seek” the sun, for example. That doesn’t make them human, or anything like it.
No, they really don’t. (I make my living on them, so I am certain of that.) But computers were not the question, anyway. The question was the set of instructions recorded in them.
No, they don’t. If you think so, then you would have to argue that a chain letter – the direct non-electronic equivalent of a computer virus – is also alive. The only difference between the two is the medium on which the instructions are recorded. Do you want to argue that chain letters are “alive”?
So how can “religion” or any other thought do anything on its own (like resist entropy) if it has no actual substance?
No, not really. The idea occurred to me some time back in another discussion, primarily because I wasn’t satisfied with the idea that a chain letter could be classified as “alive”. Any definition of “life” that would include chain letters has some massive problems. The fact that people ddn’t recognize that computer viruses are really nothing more than electronic chain letters (and chain letters clearly are not alive) showed me that there was a good deal of confusion.
The definition there is my own and I didn’t post it lightly. Actually, I have discussed this issue with a number of biologists and other similar folk over the years. So far, all of them have agreed that my definition is superior to the others. So far, that is. That’s why I brought the question here.
As for the attention-seeking, I get enough attention to satisfy me without haviing to post anywhere, thanks. You can watch me on national TV from time to time, if you like. My posting of the issue there and here is simply because I find it an interesting topic, with a lot of apparent misunderstanding and wrong guesses, even among the better educated people on the subject.
I agree, but then again, I prefer Varela’s far narrower definition.
Again, agreed, but both DNA and computer viruses seek to continue their own existence by replication. That there are some environments in which they cannot is not relevant.
I meant in the sense of “when I am out of the room” - they continue to replicate those configurations of logic gates called “viruses” just as DNA replication continues without human involvement.
But I don’t think that life is satisfied merely by “seeking to continue existence”. You do. I do consider that letters and computer viruses do such “seeking” as much as a DNA molecule does (and, like I say, “seeking” is overly anthropomorphic a word for me).
I argue that it does have substance in the configuration of a physical substrate, just as DNA is the configuration of proteins in a physical helix.
Well, you could simply choose a definition for life which required, say, apoeosis in a water based envelope or some such. This sdefinition puts letters and computer viruses outside the set of living things. Your definition, on the other hand, arguably incorporates them (or at least, requires additional “laundy-list”-like appendices such as that their environment cannot be man-made).
You asked for critiques of your definition, I supplied them. I prefer Varela to this “Schaffer” fellow who Wikigraffiti’s perfectly good articles, whoever he is. Your argument is with him, not me.
Suppose something came along that moved, and ate but didn’t reproduce? Wouldn’t that be alive but not under Valera’s definition?
No, viruses don’t do anything at all on their own.
That isn’t “on their own”. They are only continuing the set of instructions that you left them when you were there. Your argument is a bit like arguing that a car is alive because you left the motor running when you got out.
I write the letter A on a piece of paper with a pencil. You are arguing that the letter A is “seeking” something? I don’t think I can buy that.
I would suggest checking the definition. Heat-seeking missiles “seek”. No one assumes they are alive or anything like humans. There are lots of other examples.
OK, where would I go to locate the physical substrate of religion? Can I pluck it out of there and take it somewhere else?
No, I think you have it wrong. My definition specifically excludes things like computer viruses (whether they have water in them or not) because they don’t do anything of their own.
The reason I wrote the definition in the first place was because I found major holes in the other definitions, Varela’s included. Let’s suppose that we found some creature that had all of his listed qualities but one (pick whichever requirement suits you). Does that mean that the thing would not be living – even though it met all the other requirements?
wolfman, I clearly don’t find this discussion as interesting as important as you, so I will politely take my leave. You set forth a definition of “life” and ask for people to “dent” it. It is not a theory or an explanation, just an arbitrating criterion, a rule by which we can sort entities into sets of “alive” and “non-alive”. I pointed out that memes and viruses (computer or biological) arguably “seek” in their man-made environments every bit as much as DNA molecule “seek” in theirs. You provided further appendices to your definition in order to arbitrarily exclude memes and computer viruses while keeping molecular viruses in the set. So be it.
I really do not care whether or not memes, or letters, or computer viruses, or fire, or chaps having one less bollock than Hitler, are “alive”. The word itself is merely an arbitrary taxon by which we sort our sensory input - if such semantic roundabouts float your boat, go right ahead. If push came to shove I’d choose Varela’s out of all the alternatives (including yours), but they’re not really important. What is important is the explanatory mechanisms they describe, and whether they are sufficient to explain the observed phenomena (which, incidentally, they will not fully explain until biology has no more research left to do!).
Pardon me for saying so, but that sounds like the dictionary definition of “definition”.
No, you are mistaken. There weren’t any further appendices. Just explanations of the basic definition. The fact that it must do something (specifically, in a scientific sense – “resist entropy”) separates your examples from the get-go.
No, it isn’t an arbitrary taxon. There are whole branches of science devoted to the subject – particularly how to identify it on other planets. I know, I talked to a few of those scientists. So it isn’t just some idle, useless argument.
Which brings us to my definition which, I think, is sufficient. At least, no one has offered a really good argument why it isn’t yet.
SentientMeat is making the same points I was going to argue, so I think I might pop back into the discussion for a moment.
What exactly is the distinction between a computer virus and a biological virus in terms of which one is alive? Sure, a computer virus doesn’t replicate without a computer which it uses to execute it’s commands, but that’s not very different from a real virus, which cannot reproduce itself without commandeering a cell.
A virus, either biological or computer, doesn’t really do anything on it’s own. Both kinds merely execute a series of commands stored within them using machinery that is not their own. I don’t see how one being made of particles and the other being made of magnetic signals makes any sort of substantial difference. I could say the same of the difference between one having evolved naturally and the other being the product of a designer.
I would also say that the word seek implies some sort of intentionality, something that I tried to point out in my first post, and as such is anthropomorphic in a sense. The example of a heat-seeking missile doesn’t make your case–an artifact such as that does have a sort of intentionality, though it is derived entirely from it’s makers and users.
I do believe that we are rather close to making robots that can do something like this. Would such a thing be alive?
I disagree, memes and computer viruses certainly do resist entrophy. The passing of ideas from one mind to another (or from one mind to some storage medium, or one medium to another) is an act that resists entropy. Computer viruses do the same by moving between many machines. Why are they not considered alive? Well, I’m not sure they have any properties that could be called metabolism, or internal motion (if we’re working with the old definition). We’re probably also uneasy about calling something life when it can so easily change the medium in which it exists, something that memes are quite good at doing.
Does the computer virus replicate itself or is the new virus just a result of a process akin to a photocopier?
Does the host cell instruct the virus to replicate itself? Does the cell make the copy, as the computer does? Or does the virus actually do that on its own, once it gets to the proper environment?
Yes, the virus does act on its own.
The computer virus really has no “within”, for one thing. For another, the computer does the execution of the instruction, where the cell does not.
I can see lots of differences – one of which being that the set of magnetic signals has no meaning at all until it is organized by something else. Do you think a chain letter is alive?
I don’t get that at all.
Are people the only things with intent? Let me introduce you to my dog at dinner time.
The point is that there are lots of things that are said to “seek” and most of them are not human.
If it seeks to continue its own existence.
So then you would agree, by the same argument, that chain letters are alive and resist entropy. Correct?
We need “whys” as much as we need “whens” and “wheres.”
Why must we eat, why must we obey the law, every small child learns to drive their parents crazy with “why this, why that.”
If life has no reason “why” it has no reason at all.
To pursue what we value.
From the old Peanuts comic strip by Charles M. Schulz:
Good greif, because I read the TITLE OF THE OP.
Just to help put the whole thing in perspective:
I remember an episode of The Prisoner where Number Six, meeting the challenge of an arrogant bureaucrat and his team of computer scientists, crashes a supposedly omniscient computer by asking it “The one question to which no man or machine knows the answer: W-H-Y-question mark!.” “Why?” One of those easy plot devices that sounds oh so clever.
But (I am indebted to Bertrand Russell for this very simple insight) whenever we ask “Why?” we must remind ourselves that any question with “why” in it sounds slightly more profound and mysterious than it is, because the word, in English, conflates two distinct and slightly simpler concepts/questions:
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Resulting from what cause?
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For what purpose?*
In terms of the first question, “Why are we here?” can be answered, if at all, in terms of cosmology, physics, chemistry, and biology – and possibly theology. The second question is essentially teleological and much more challenging. The answers to the two questions might have nothing whatsoever to do with each other. Or, then again, they might.
*Try out the above on your kid next time he/she persists in asking “Why?” It might not turn the kid into a philosopher, but it might send him/her away puzzled and quiet for just a little while.