dvunkannon
Posts: 1377
Joined: June 2008
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| Quote (Quack @ Aug. 07 2012,08:28) | | Quote (Robin @ Aug. 06 2012,15:32) | | Quote (midwifetoad @ Aug. 06 2012,15:06) | | Quote | | Suppose we go to another planet and find one being there, looking exactly like a human being. Everything we can measure about this being confirms that it is just as much alive as you and me. It eats, moves, heals, replenishes, communicates, feels, defecates. Learning more about this being, though, we find that it has no ancestors, and that it does not age. It does not reproduce, and it is the only such being on the planet. Thus, there is no lineage of descent and no population that can evolve. So this being is then not alive? Of course it is. This definition does not work. |
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What is the point of this argument?
If we saw living things poofed into existence on a regular basis, then magic would be real, and science would have to deal with it. |
It is a rather interesting mental exercise to go through, and rather quickly points to some problems to me. If it does not age, why does it eat, heal, respire, or defecate? What does it "replenish"? How can it possibly be said to be "alive" if it is apparently not "living" (since it is not aging or dying).
That's the problem with making up such hypothetical scenarios without a real understanding of what the terms in the scenario mean. It's clear that the writer doesn't understand why biological organisms eat and defecate, to say nothing of what "alive" really entails. While I'll agree to some extent that reproduction is not in and of itself a necessary parameter for defining "living" things, it is a necessary indirect characteristic if the concept of "living" is to have any meaning.
ETA: Bjorn offers a preliminary rejection of the type of rebuttal I've offered. To wit:
| Quote | | For those of you who would object that this example is irrelevant, because no such being that is alive but does not evolve has ever been found: definitions must encompass such thought experiments, or they are useless. |
Incorrect Bjorn. Definitions must encompass all possible hypothesis-meeting-concepts of life given the rules of chemistry and physics. There's no need for definitions to meet hypothetical situations that defy chemistry outright. Agelessness is circumspect at best and begs the question of even the loosest notion of life, but agelessness coupled with actions like defecation and eating makes no sense whatsoever. |
As close a definition of animal life as I can think of, is that it basically is like a double walled tube, open at both ends. The inner tube, nutrition in at one end, waste out the other.
If there is no flow through that channel the thing is dead, or will soon be. |
I think that lots of primitive animals are only open at one end. Food comes in and waste goes out through the same orifice. Think sponge, jellyfish, etc.
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Im referring to evolution, not changes in allele frequencies. - Cornelius Hunter
Im not an evolutionist, Im a change in allele frequentist! - Nakashima
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