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From: viren@world2u.com (Viren Jain)
Subject: Re: ---<Definitions of consiousness>---
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I am currently IN high school biology, and they do not give a clear,
concise defintion of life as should be, but rather define life by it's
characteristic, which is often contradictory and not really helpful.
Some of the characteristics they list are:
 - take in and convert materials and energy from the enviornment; give
off by products or wastes.
 - have a high degree of molecular orginization that is responsible
for their appearance and activities
 - have complex structural organization that is reesponsible for their
appearance and activities
 - contain coded instructions for maintaing their organization and
activities
 - sense and react to changes in their enviornment
 - grow and develop during some part of their lives
 - reproduce others like themselves
 - communicate with other organisms
 - move under their own ability

In response to a question 'what makes living things different from
nonliving things', their answer basically is "consider not only what
something does but also how it does it. Clouds move because they are
carried by an external energy source - the wind. Clouds do not move on
their own. Living things move by obtaining energy and transforming it
into motion. 

>(From high school biology, so bear with me!)
>As best I recall, when I was told the definition of "life"
>it had been narrowed down quite cleanly to a handful of
>observable systems.  I know I can't remember them all,
>but I can remember enough (that are easily discernable
>from rocks, rain, ice crystals, etc.)
>-Sexual or Asexual reproduction-
>-Growth-
>-Aerobic or Anerobic respiration-
>-Movement-
>(and, if memory serves, there is an odd
>category that sounds like transportation,
>but it was drummed into our heads time and
>again that it was *not* transportation!
>Don't ask me what it *was*)
>-Transport-
>
>Plants fall under all of those categories.  Rocks, perhaps
>one or two at best.  Plant movement is a direct reaction to
>sunlight.  But then, our movement is a direct reaction to
>this thing called a central nervous system.  Again, we are
>not defining intelligence or consciousness (at least *I* am
>not), but life.
>
>Are we together still?  Do you remember Biology?
>
>-Bear

 -Viren Jain-
 -"The Robot Gods Are Coming This Way, and I want to Go With Them"-
 -viren@world2u.com
