Thanks Horse, I wasn't being contentious - the universe is big (in time and space) so no reason to exclude any forms of life beyond our myopic ken, in a truly metaphysical view - Not just organic in the well known carbon-based / DNA-based sense , but organic as in like a (living) "organism". (Obviously in current human dictionaries - the definitions of organic are recursive on what makes life organic - hence good and useful - if they weren't you'd need to be a metaphysical philosopher to understand their bootstrapping.)
Life - defined something like (Andre?) is suggesting - about self-perpetuating replication, over enough cycles for evolutionary speciation opportunities perhaps, etc (*). (Whatever the physical informational medium.) In the same way as AI is real when the A becomes (empirical) reality. A-Life is real when the A becomes reality. But virtual or artificial now, easily conceivable, predictable, etc. (*) And whatever "life" definition we choose, the boundaries will be blurred around self-sustaining, when we have co-evolved species like viruses - which maybe can't survive without their co-evolved host, or computer generated artefacts when the power is switched-off, etc ... but if it quacks like a duck ... etc. [Viruses are alive because of their extended phenotype, etc. We need to careful not to limit ourselves to simple patterns in a single medium, but level-crossing-patterns in level-crossing-patterns, etc. - a flock of starlings is alive, because each individual starling is, even though the relative position of two starlings is a displacement in physical (ie dead) space - no two flock formations literally recur, but their quality, their nature does.] Ian On Sun, Feb 2, 2014 at 11:39 AM, Horse <[email protected]> wrote: > Hi Dave > > At the risk of misinterpreting what Ian's saying, I think what he means is > that, as a generalisation, 'life' is the next step up from 'matter'! > What we know as life is based around the double helix and involves DNA, > genes, proteins etc. but this is only one possible way that life may have > emerged. > It's a big universe and we only have a sample of one at the present time so > to say that life = DNA is a big step in the wrong direction cos we just > don't know about other ways in which life may come about. > The MoQ makes a huge (and IMO correct) generalisation that > organic/biological patterns follow on from inorganic patterns. Terrestrial > life is a specific instance of biological patterns of value - there may be > other specific instances in other parts of the universe. What those > instances should follow though, if the MoQ is correct, is that they share > the same patterns of reproduction, feeding etc. that Pirsig points out in > his work. > Closer to home, it may be that at some point there will be other forms of > life that exist but that their environment and context will be different. > Artificial (or virtual) realities could well contain life (and may already) > - it just depends on how you want to define and identify it. > A metaphysics needs to be a generalisation that can be applied to all > situations and contexts regardless of specifics - the specifics should > conform to the general theory of what constitutes what is and isn't 'real'. > > Cheers > > Horse > > > > On 01/02/2014 23:50, david wrote: >> >> >> Ian said: >> The distinction between levels 1 and 2 is "life" - not necessarily organic >> life, or DNA-based organic life, that just happens to be the most-obvious >> form in the circumstances of human history. >> >> >> >> Andre replied: >> Can you enlighten us with your knowledge of life that is not 'necessarily >> organic life' i.e. DNA 'based' life? Just interested in the non-obvious. >> >> >> >> dmb says: >> I was wondering about Ian's strange claim too. Since "organic" means "of >> life, related to life, derived from living matter", it's hard to imagine >> what non-organic life would mean. DNA-based life isn't just the most obvious >> kind, I think, but rather the only kind we know of. Isn't that why a virus >> is considered a borderline case, because it only "lives" by highjacking the >> DNA of more proper organisms? >> In any case, I can only wonder what Ian is referring to. >> >> >> >> Moq_Discuss mailing list >> Listinfo, Unsubscribing etc. >> http://lists.moqtalk.org/listinfo.cgi/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org >> Archives: >> http://lists.moqtalk.org/pipermail/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org/ >> http://moq.org/md/archives.html >> > > -- > > "Without music to decorate it, time is just a bunch of boring production > deadlines or dates by which bills must be paid." > -- Frank Zappa > > > --- > This email is free from viruses and malware because avast! Antivirus > protection is active. > http://www.avast.com > > > Moq_Discuss mailing list > Listinfo, Unsubscribing etc. > http://lists.moqtalk.org/listinfo.cgi/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org > Archives: > http://lists.moqtalk.org/pipermail/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org/ > http://moq.org/md/archives.html Moq_Discuss mailing list Listinfo, Unsubscribing etc. http://lists.moqtalk.org/listinfo.cgi/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org Archives: http://lists.moqtalk.org/pipermail/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org/ http://moq.org/md/archives.html
