Newsgroups: comp.ai.alife
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From: nickb@harlequin.co.uk (Nick Barnes)
Subject: Re: "What is Life?"
In-Reply-To: sa209@utb.shv.hb.se's message of Thu, 16 Feb 1995 23:31:29 GMT
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References: <3hb65f$cf5@engnews2.Eng.Sun.COM> <3hc724$6ic@scapa.cs.ualberta.ca>
	<Pine.SUN.3.91.950209194448.6718I-100000@sun1>
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Date: Mon, 20 Feb 1995 12:52:33 GMT
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holtz@netcord.Eng.Sun.COM (Brian Holtz) wrote:
> >In article <Pine.SUN.3.91.950209194448.6718I-100000@sun1>,
> >Eugen Leitl  <ui22204@sunmail.lrz-muenchen.de> wrote:
> >
> >>The point is: the character sequence "life" is a label
> >>assigned to a discernable group of space-time patterns
> >>on personal whim. Everybody harbours his own opinion
> >
> >And yet, virtually everyone has the same "personal whim" to exclude
> >fires/tornados and include viruses/Data.  Coincidence?  Or is "life"
> >more definable than so many whiners on this newsgroup would like to
> >pretend it is? :-)

Who are you including in your 'virtually everyone'? Twenty years ago
there were still many text books which asserted that viruses were not
truly 'alive' (because they do not exhibit the 6 (or 8 or ...)
characteristics of life; irrritability etc). Now, most text books take
the opposite line, but prions are still not 'alive'. The change has
been a cultural one, not a change in the data about viruses; the old
text books are not wrong (*), they just have a different point of
view. 'Life' is thus a culturally defined concept, not some absolute
predicate. History shows that people are very slow to include other
entities in some category with themselves ('human', 'intelligent',
'one of us', 'entitled to ethical consideration', 'alive').

There are many eminent people (**) who would deny that 'Data' is a
possible construct, so discussing whether he is 'alive' or not is
about as useful as discussing the diameter of a transporter beam, or
how many colours tribbles come in.

(*) about this particular thing; they were undoubtedly wrong about
many others.

(**) I myself believe that these people (from John Searle to Roger
Penrose) are falling into the same old parochial trap which lead to
this whole nonsensical vitalist debate. I think that in twenty years
people will be wondering what the big fussss about 'consciousness'
was, just as many people today think there's nothing magic about
'life'.

Nick Barnes, speaking for himself.
