Posted on 11/30/2004 6:21:11 PM PST by betty boop
Uh ... I've seen one or two threads which have lots of vigorous debate over whether any life is natural. The assertion is that it's a design of some kind.
So would there be a difference between a natural and artificial structure if they were indistinguishable in structure?
I'm still trying to get my mind around how you can have a meaningful abstract definition that can't be applied in the abstract.
What does "artificial" mean in the absence of an object's history?
I wish that you would do more than simply assert. The assertion has its logical consequences, the most problematic is that it renders naive experience illusory. Another problem is that it devolves into epistemological skepticism. Another problem is the loss of clarity as to a difference between life and non-life vs. living and non-living matter: is the organism derivative or additive attribute of matter? But perhaps I presume to much and now consider whether your assertion also implies that an organism is also non-existent.
The term "natural systems" means systems which occur in nature. It doesn't speak to design one way or the other.
js1138's question is like a challenge.
If the structure is the same, the difference between natural and artificial can be discerned from origin if that can be determined by the observer. I'm thinking of sci-fi human-looking artificial lifeforms, laboratory "life" in a test tube, etc.
For instance: Did it originate involuntarily (nature) or voluntarily? And if voluntarily, by replication (nature) or by creation? And if by creation, by intelligence of another lifeform (artificial) or by God (nature)?
Obviously, js1138. I agree with you: There is no difference between living and non-living matter qua matter. The point is everything that exists is made out of just one thing, matter -- which is uniform, ubiquitous, and (I would argue) drastically limited in its ability to articulate form -- either living or non-living -- from its own "internal resources." Plato inferred that matter -- chora -- was inherently "lazy." For it to do anything at all, it must be "told what to do," so to speak. That being the case, it seems to me that one must look further than matter per se in order to account for and qualify the astonishing variety of forms living and non-living that we see all around us.
I'm sorry you found my "list" abstract. But definitions that seek to qualify universal conditions are always abstractions. And unavoidably so, it seems.
Indeed, and as your above reference to Romans attests, and which believers assert, that "life" is spiritual. I don't see how you are going to be able to discuss it here
Oooopps! So very sorry to misunderstand you, A-G. But you know, I think this "fallacy of quantizing the continuum" is totally bogus anyway.
Anyhoot, I guess the point is I'm always glad to follow any proposal of yours. So let's keep the "evolution within the evolution" problem here where it presently lies, and hopefully "export" this "fallacy of quantizing the continuum" elsewhere. :^)
But not before I put in my two-cents worth on that question here. If we can "quantize space" (which seems to be what Planck had in mind, and all of quantum theory besides) then assuredly we can "quantize time" (as Planck recognized -- for we have both "Planck length" and "Planck time"). If what recent evidence proposes can be validated, then space and time are indeed "Lorentz transformable." We know that light can be imagined as both a particle and a wave; and also the same obtains with regard to particulate matter, whose "energy translation" is a waveform. The point is whether one chooses to consider any essential entity in terms of its particulate or of its waveform expression -- a mutually exclusive process -- and this decision ultimately depends on the practical requirements of the intended experiment. The experimenter -- "observer" -- decides which best answers to the requirements of the experimental problem he envisions.
So where's the "fallacy" when time can be viewed as "particulate" (as in Zeno's famous paradox), or as "waveform" in character? If the former, Achilles never beats the turtle. If the latter case, Achilles probably wins every time....
There's no problem in nature, so much as a "problem" pertaining to the observer, his position, and needs implied here. (Or so it seems to me. But then, maybe I'm just crazy.)
Talk about basic "asymmetry!" Yet it seems all "complementarities" (in the Bohr and Lorentz sense) can devolve into "ambiguous" or "paradoxical" situations like this. But isn't that what Heisenberg's indeterminacy principle is all about?
One does wonder. Still, a case can be made that the physical laws themselves are "spiritual entities" in the sense that they are not concrete existents themselves, but have governance over all concrete existences.
I ain't gonna pray to the speed of light.
Well then we will be sounding like Hindus. I believe that spiritual laws supercede physical, even in the realm of metaphysics. "Karma" for example, is a physical law. Grace is the spiritual law
I am detecting more than a whiff of vitalism on this thread. When I say there is no difference between living and dead matter I am asserting that it is the structure or assembly that governs behavior.
The whole debate hinges on weather self assembly takes place or not. A person who believes in abiogenesis would assert that self-assembly will occur under conditions that could plausibly have existed on the early earth. Obviously one would assume that this would happen in stages, and that each stage modifies the environment and makes the next stage more probable.
Some (AC?) have asserted that there is no realistic probability that proteins could self-assemble. That is a question that could be settled by research. We obviously don't know how it could happen, but that is different from saying it can't happen.
In any case, if we can find conditions under which self-assembly happens it will support the assertion that it did happen in our history.
Perhaps we can agree on something like "insight" being an aspect of intelligent life. Just as a mathematician experiences those moments of clarity and might wonder whether the source of them is internal or external, he knows that they are real and can lead to Truth. Surely we can agree that such awareness is not ordinary and we commonly call it a gift. So too do we experience spiritual insights with the gift of the Holy Spirit. Maybe this gives us some commonality -- experiencing the here and now on a completely different level than just existing.
I don't object to abstraction unless you assign false attributes to the abstraction. Yous source has made a list of attributes that define "being alive". When the list is applied to man-made objects with a positive result, you add another qualification: For something to be alive it has to meet all the listed criteria, plus it has to be alive.
This business of equating life to non-life because they are both made of matter was taken to the extreme by Physicist and by me - post 715.
IOW, why stop with matter? Whittle to subatomic particles. Forget that, go to fields. Why stop, go to the geometry. At which point all one can conclude is that reality is an illusion (Einstein) and there are plenty of "continuums" along the way to obfuscate anything you wish.
In sum, appealing downwards accomplishes nothing useful; if we have any hope of discussing issues we must find a level and stay there (at least for a while LOL!)
The term a-bio-genesis is perhaps in your favor if it should mean that a structure's governing principle is emergent rather than original. But such a principle (whether or not we discover a point in time when all matter was dead) has traditionally been called life.
I do hope you don't object to the science of biology. : )
I definitely believe that assemblies have properties that cannot be seen or predicted from the properties of their constituents. Call them emergent properties or whatever.
This is one of the reasons I find it silly to have arbitrarily limited expectation of what is possible with "matter", or to divide existence into matter and spirit. I can't prove this dichotomy isn't real and true, but I haven't seen the need for it.
"Call them emergent properties " stresses the point you wish because the other view considers a complex or duality: put all the pieces together and you still don't have life because nothing new comes into existence when you do that--you need a governing principle which is immaterial and that principle would continue to exist after the dissolution of the constituent material parts.
But the distinction between life and non-life pertains to both views.
If there are emergent properties then you have something new.
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