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Thank you for your reply!

We have been down this road rather thoroughly on the “Plato” thread with some of the most credentialed Freepers on the forum.

On that thread – in order to investigate the theory of abiogenesis – we were seeking a definition of life v non-life/death in nature. Abiogenesis of course is the theory of life from non-life, so the obvious first step was to determine the two ends so we could investigate the "grey scale" in between.

Artificial intelligence was not part of the investigation because it is intelligently designed, it does not occur in nature. We specifically addressed the von Neumann machine.

But to answer your specific questions directly (please see the Plato thread for more detail):

Would you consider a digital computer that could pass the Turing Test to be alive? No, because it does not occur in nature.

What if it also had the physical capability to make more copies of itself? (by mining minerals, refining them etc etc...) ie Would a Von Neumann machine that could also pass the Turing Test be alive in your opinion? No, because it does not occur in nature.

For each of these questions if not, why not? If so then why? Because such devices do not occur in nature but are the result of intelligent design of living organisms (men) which do occur in nature.

Would it be moral to turn such a machine off once it was running? IMHO, yes, though irrelevant to the discussion of the “will to live”.

Would you be able to make yourself do so if the machine used its output device to beg you to leave it running? Yes, I would.

What if the machine looked just like a human and was largely constructed from organic parts, with just a digital "brain"? Yes, I nevertheless would feel morally justified to turn it off.

Depending on your answers to these questions, where does that leave your "life force"? All of these questions are irrelevant to the “will to live” which occurs in nature.

Before the “fallacy of quantizing the continuum” was raised – which disputes that either life or non-life can be quantized (and thus abiogenesis is impossible by definition) – we had agreed to a definition which separates that which is alive from that which is non-life or previously alive and now dead - in nature:

Information (the reduction of uncertainty in the receiver or molecular machine in going from a before state to an after state – paraphrased as “successful communication”) is that which distinguishes the living from the non-living or dead. An example is a live skin cell v a dead skin cell, e.g. the DNA and chemicals are as good dead as alive.

This is based on the well established Shannon mathematical theory of communication, which is the foundation of all information theory. The theory does not address the value or meaning of the message at all, in this case the DNA/RNA.

There is however always an inception, originating, beginning of each successful communication. We have narrowed down to three types of inception: interrupt (presence of a food source, heat, radiation, etc.) cycle (rhythmic functions) and will. The will is the most interesting because we are able to break it down further into different types of willfulness: involuntary (the will to live) and voluntary (such as deciding to move a finger)

The "will to live" permeates all life - from each cell in an organism, to its functional organization which integrates with other functions to that the organism itself has a will to live. It is present in dormant phases of life cycles, from the smallest life forms to the largest - all of the biosphere (plants, animals, etc. all evidence the will to live).

This phenomenon is alternatively called the fecundity principle, the life principle, the evolution of one.

Is a prion alive?

Is a virus alive?

Comparing the two ends of the continuum is not as important as determining the 'aliveness' of those organisms that are on the cusp or 'decision point' of the gray area when considering abiogenesis.

Unless you are imbuing everything alive with a consciousness or 'will' the 'will to live' is simply a result of the organism's reproduction. One of the standard requirements of living organisms is self replication whether it be by accident or intension. We tend to mistake this for a desire to live, yet in many organisms the obvious pressing need is the reproduction, not the struggle to continue existence. Even when an organism consumes their offspring in times of threat, this enables them to produce offspring at a later and more favourable time.

Some organisms do not have a 'need' to replicate but simply 'do' replicate. It would be very difficult to assign any meaning, let alone the will to live to that organism. This would be the case for both viruses and prions.

The assignation of will to all things alive is simply our bias as thinking conscious beings, not an inherent function within the organism. It certainly can not be used to define an organism's or object's state.

BTW why does something have to be 'in nature' to be considered alive?