On 21 Aug 2011, at 14:43, Craig Weinberg wrote:
On Aug 21, 4:57 am, Bruno Marchal <[email protected]> wrote:
Hmm... This is a point where I disagree with you Brent. Life is a
fake
concept, I agree.
It's only 3-p fake. If it were truly fake we could not even have the
concept that there were anything at all like 'life' or 'living' to
consider fake or not. The concept that life is a fake concept is a
fake concept.
Its definition can only be conventional, at least
for a mechanist. It is 3-p reproduction, basically. I consider
cigarettes to be alive, with a very complex reproduction cycle
including transformation of the human brain.
That's why the mechanist position is critically flawed as a
cosmological-ontological TOE. It amputates the 1p definition of life -
which only marginally has to do with reproduction (I don't have kids,
so I'm disqualified from being 3-p 'alive'.) Life is about feeling
like you want to avoid dying, and that feeling is SIGNIFICANT.
This means only that you put consciousness or 1-p in life.
That is just a matter of definition.
I would not have consecrated my life to the study or consciousness if
it was to amputate the notion of first person, which, on the contrary,
I extend to number relations and program executions.
It's
also about flourishing in whatever way you can - to feel like you are
thriving. I would go so far as to say that all organisms experience
this and that no inorganic materials experience this.
No materials at all experience things. Only persons, in a large sense
(not just humans, but animals, and angels, perhaps the plants, on some
scale).
That's not to say that inorganic materials experience nothing,
Which makes everything alive/conscious.
I know you do that. It is your panpsychism. I don't buy it.
I would
hazard to guess that there is a bit of a blurred line with things like
crystal growth and virus transmission where the degree of
sensorimotive articulation approaches that of organic life - but my
sense is that it is likely more sterile and mathematical. More of a
monotonous drive in the sense of playing Solitaire or a turn based
computer game or weaving an endless patterned rug.
What you say informs me on Craig's first person, not on what is
matter, and what is consciousness.
Bruno
http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/
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