Newsgroups: comp.ai.alife
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From: sa209@utb.shv.hb.se (Claes Andersson)
Subject: Re: Thought Question and What is life
Message-ID: <1995Feb9.192734.14055@gdunix.gd.chalmers.se>
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References: <1995Feb2.164010.16596@news.media.mit.edu> <3gu0bd$q6g@scapa.cs.ualberta.ca> <3h1b4p$511@gap.cco.caltech.edu> <3h5utf$s9f@scapa.cs.ualberta.ca>
Date: Fri, 10 Feb 1995 01:46:53 GMT
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vanbelle@cs.ualberta.ca (Terry Van Belle) wrote:
>brown@altair.krl.caltech.edu (C. Titus Brown) writes:
>>In article <3gu0bd$q6g@scapa.cs.ualberta.ca>,
>>Terry Van Belle <vanbelle@cs.ualberta.ca> wrote:
>>>With all due respect, there is nothing preventing you from placing the
>>>"What is Life" subject in a kill file.  I've only been on this group
>>>long enough to see the thread come around twice;  Both times I have
>>>posted a definition I was interested in, both times I received
>>>insightful criticism of the definition, and both times I have seen
>>>gently patronizing comments dismissing the whole affair out of hand.
>>>I have also seen allusions to a mysterious ftp site which apparently
>>>contains archives of every possible viewpoint on the subject, closing
>>>the book forever on this line of thought.  Unfortunately, I have yet
>>>to get an address.
>
>>Yes, I know, I haven't replied to you yet :).  As I said before, in the
>>post you replied to, the entire previous thread of this subject is available
>>upon request to me.  I don't have it available for general FTP at the moment,
>>and since I've only gotten one request for it I figure people aren't interested
>>in going through and reading what others have said before.
>
>>This group hasn't been around long enough for this thread to hit it more than
>>once before; I'm sure that this will die down eventually, to.
>
>Sorry I got snappish there.  Obviously I have no right to demand that
>my favourite articles be compiled together and handed on a silver
>platter, especially since I haven't volunteered to do it myself (no
>time, no space, account won't last long enough).
>
>On the other hand, it does no good to exhort people to RTFM if there's
>no manual to read.  So I challenge those who argue that as far as the
>definition of life is concerned, it's all been hashed over before, to
>compile a list of the canonical arguments and what is wrong with them,
>or supply a list of references to books which review the debate.  Then
>we life-definition-attempters will be without excuse when we clutter
>up this newsgroup with our arguments.
>
>I think the attempt to define life is well within the purvue of this
>group.  ALifers tend to assert that what they produce in silico is as
>alive as anything that crawled from the primoridal slime, or at least
>is a qualitative step above Lotus 1-2-3.  The responsibility to provide
>a meaningful and useful definition of life which encompasses their work
>rests squarely on their shoulders.  Until this happens, can we really
>expect conventional biologists to take such claims seriously?
>

 Eventually they will, at least if they don't want to use unscientifical
reasoning like: "It's just not the same thing" or something. They will
in that case have to point at a fundamental difference. A difference
that I don't see exist. Of course, ALife isn't alive in our reality. They
are alive in their own context, the artificial universe they exist in.

Claes Andersson. University of Bors. Sweden

