Doesn't sound like a conclusive argument to me. A parasite in my gut doesn't change when I die - does that mean it isn't alive either?
as an aside - I think the forensic use of DNA is a somewhat dangerous proposition. First - the 'probablities' of identifications I hear are logically just pure garbage - sometimes it is said in court 'the DNA found at the crime scene identifies this individual to 1 in a couple of billion' (which is inherently silly if you know how few chunks of the entire DNA are used to reach such conclusions and the background of why those specific chunks were chosen as 'relevant' or 'identifying' ) But it also means they can statistically prove from the DNA that the suspect has no twin. Further, DNA does change during life - whether or not in response to some outside influence not yet clear. So who's to claim that particular chunk did not 'mutate' ??? but i digress on a pet peeve.
The conjecture is that DNA is not itself what codes for life, but rather may be the master "decryption key" that accesses whatever it is that does code for life, transcribing it in ways relevant to the particular organism.
My conjecture, which I have been ruminating upon for the last 20 years off and on is that genomes of DNA and neurons of our 'brains' are both data and process. (this is an unfortunate side effect of Shannon's work that we believe that data and process must be functonally independant - something which is not necessarily true and probably severely limits our chance to comprehend existing 'informing mechanisms' let alone our ability to potentially create better electronic mousetraps). IOW - DNA can be BOTH the 'plan' and the 'means to effect the plan.' Indeed, that happens to more easily explain how so very much 'information' is encoded in DNA - especially when much of it was, until very recently, considered 'junk' DNA. It turns out those 'junk' sequences are not junk after all.
DNA really does process itself in the manner it 'creates' enzymes.
Moreover, your argument that DNA doesn't change when it's organism dies and therefore cannot itself be 'alive' seems to me like saying Souls do not exist of more prosaicly, since a hive can be destroyed it proves that the individual bees or ants are not alive.
re your bringing up one of my favorite conundrums - the two slit experiment - you remind me that perhaps one of my postulates that physical interactions do not 'occur' over time except through 'consciousness' could be a corollary of the 'organic' photon concept. It turns out sending individual photons through the two slits, one photon at a time with as long an interlude as desired between photons, such that individual photons can be 'counted' as they arrive at specific locations on the screen on the far side, still eventually results in the familiar 'interference' pattern. However, I'm still not prepared to say photons are 'organic.' I think rather that the phenomenon is more likely explained that we are intepreting non-time 'cognizant' bosons from our 'chrono-chauvinistic' perspective. i.e. it only appears to be 'miraculous' that a photon 'knows' whether there are two slits or one because we have such difficulty conceiving what the world is like for bosons - for which the two slit experiment is not the least paradoxical. But it does make me think that our inability to 'conjoin' conceptually the wave/particle duality of photons may well be a derivative of our 'chrono-chauvinistic' perspective. Thank you for that interesting line of inquiry.
No, dougd, it's alive -- for a while. With its host dead, that won't be long. And then its DNA will still be there, too.
You wrote: "an unfortunate side effect of Shannon's work [is] that we believe that data and process must be functonally independant - something which is not necessarily true...." On the other hand, the functional independence of data and process permits Shannon information theory to have universal application to all fields where information processing is relevant. It is "cross-disciplinary" and "content neutral." It works as well in cancer research as it does in information technology.
Then there is this: "Moreover, your argument that DNA doesn't change when it's organism dies and therefore cannot itself be 'alive' seems to me like saying Souls do not exist of more prosaicly, since a hive can be destroyed it proves that the individual bees or ants are not alive."
I just think that's a bad analogy, FWIW. Go see for yourself whether you think this might be the case. In the first place, "soul" is not a term that has application in science. But if we want to go with the body/soul analogy, bees and ants are not the "souls" of the hive that houses them. If there is a "soul" here, it is in the swarm, or colony, not in the structure that houses it. And if we want to use the analogy anyway, for bees and ants, that "soul" might well be the collective organizational intelligence of the swarm.
Or so it seems to me, dougd. These are fascinating things to think about, and discuss. I'm not saying all my answers are "right." But these are the answers I have -- so far. And Life's for learning....