From newshub.ccs.yorku.ca!ists!helios.physics.utoronto.ca!news-server.ecf!utgpu!cs.utexas.edu!uunet!tdatirv!sarima Tue Jan 28 12:18:25 EST 1992
Article 3195 of comp.ai.philosophy:
Path: newshub.ccs.yorku.ca!ists!helios.physics.utoronto.ca!news-server.ecf!utgpu!cs.utexas.edu!uunet!tdatirv!sarima
>From: sarima@tdatirv.UUCP (Stanley Friesen)
Newsgroups: comp.ai.philosophy
Subject: Re: Viruses: alive?
Message-ID: <387@tdatirv.UUCP>
Date: 27 Jan 92 22:35:55 GMT
References: <1992Jan16.054716.14332@oracorp.com> <1992Jan16.145637.26097@news.media.mit.edu> <TODD.92Jan22225612@ai12.elcom.nitech.ac.jp> <63302@netnews.upenn.edu> <TODD.92Jan23223358@ai12.elcom.nitech.ac.jp>
Reply-To: sarima@tdatirv.UUCP (Stanley Friesen)
Organization: Teradata Corp., Irvine
Lines: 29

In article <TODD.92Jan23223358@ai12.elcom.nitech.ac.jp> todd@juno.elcom.nitech.ac.jp writes:
|
|>>Who says that even biological viruses are alive?
|
|My Collins English Dictionary gives the definition of 'organism' as
|follows:
|
|  organism 1. any living animal or plant, including any bacterium
|  ~~~~~~~~ or VIRUS.  2. anything resembling a living creature in
|           structure, behaviour, etc.

The problem here is that Dictionaries are a poor source for technical terms.

And to a biologist the term 'alive' is a technical term.

And furthermore it is (or was) debatable whether viruses are alive in the
biologists' sense.  Thier lack of *any* autonomous metabolism or reproductive
capacity is, at the very least, odd in a living thing.

Of course they are not even close to being 'mineral' (in the 20 questions
sense) - except for crystalization.  So as long as we insist on a simple
living/non-living dichotomy there is a problem with viruses.  Viruses are
best considered as neither living nor dead.  (Of course there are still
difficult cases - entities that have limited metabolism but are otherwise
almost identical to viruses and so forth).
-- 
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uunet!tdatirv!sarima				(Stanley Friesen)



