From newshub.ccs.yorku.ca!ists!helios.physics.utoronto.ca!news-server.ecf!utgpu!cs.utexas.edu!sun-barr!olivea!uunet!tdatirv!sarima Tue Apr  7 23:22:45 EDT 1992
Article 4769 of comp.ai.philosophy:
Xref: newshub.ccs.yorku.ca comp.ai.philosophy:4769 sci.philosophy.tech:2446
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>From: sarima@tdatirv.UUCP (Stanley Friesen)
Newsgroups: comp.ai.philosophy,sci.philosophy.tech
Subject: Re: Causes and Goals
Message-ID: <489@tdatirv.UUCP>
Date: 27 Mar 92 18:08:20 GMT
References: <1992Mar22.212839.5347@a.cs.okstate.edu> <1992Mar24.150412.11325@neptune.inf.ethz.ch> <1992Mar25.063222.12590@a.cs.okstate.edu> <1992Mar25.162011.26274@neptune.inf.ethz.ch>
Reply-To: sarima@tdatirv.UUCP (Stanley Friesen)
Followup-To: comp.ai.philosophy
Organization: Teradata Corp., Irvine
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In article <1992Mar25.162011.26274@neptune.inf.ethz.ch> santas@inf.ethz.ch (Philip Santas) writes:
|
|Of course not. But if I remember correct you agreed on
|Zeleny's statement that living entities like viruses
|(I still wait for answers why is the virus defined as something alive)
|can be agents, while inorganic elements (like HCl or clouds) are not.

This is indeed an important question, especially since the question of
whether viruses are alive is vexed one to biologists.

It is true that in day-to-day conversation biologists talk as if viruses
are alive, but if pressed to say for certain one way or the other most
will hem and haw and avoid answering.  Viruses have *some*, but not all
of the features of living things.  The same can be said to be true
of other things, including computers.  Computers have the feature of
life called 'irritability' by biologists, that is they can respond to
stimuli in a dynamic way (other than simply physico-chemical reactions).

|On the other hand, I am given no answer on why are the viruses
|the only responsibe for a desease and not, say, the blood cells too.

True enough.  A virus may or may not be alive, but a virus+host complex
certainly is alive.
-- 
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uunet!tdatirv!sarima				(Stanley Friesen)


