Philosophy Now Forum

Metazoan The manner in which you use the word [life] must be consistent with the idea to which it is attached. OK, but life is a transcendental concept that can apply to anything we want it to. Life can be everything (as the animist would claim), or nothing, or some things and not others (as you sug...

Hi metazoan, Dregs kindly drew attention to the post where I outlined the problem with evolution applying to everything, but I can reiterate. We have no way of distinguishing between life and non-life (the bulk of the thread has focussed on this point). We therefore cannot empirically refute the pos...

Dregs, Reguarding life and non-life... its pretty clear to common sense where the line is drawn, and so the theory of evolution doesn't need to delve into it. Yes, evolution has the same kind of common sense appeal that the Creator God had before it. But common sense offeres a far from reliable test...

Metazoan The only challenge I see is the attempt to attach some credability to ID and I presume that this is the motive behind this question so I will address that. Both Evolution and ID require a clear and definite delineation between life and non-life which is why I considered this thread to be a ...

Mark, Perhaps part of the problem with the NE argument is that an NE system also cannot be distinguished from its energetic context without the usual conventional and arbitrary boundaries. Negentropy therefore becomes a synonym for life, rather than a defining feature of it. And NE/Life is just an e...

Mark, The association between life and negentropy (NE) is yet another of the circular arguments that are so characterictic of science. It would be easy to call lots of phenomena in nature as utilising NE, the only reason we don't do so is because these phenomena happen not to be conventional example...

Mick, There's no obvious boundary that we might all agree on separating 'hot' from 'cold', but the distinction between a hot bath and a cold one is not arbitrary. If you were to create binary categories of bath: hot and cold (as with life/not-life), then the distinction would be an arbitrary one as ...

Mark as if such a fine distinction as the definition of life from non-life would pose a problem for a theory that has such enormous explanatory potential in so many fields. I'm not arguing about where the distinction between life and non-life should lie but rather whether they can be any distinction...

Mark, I think you do know your stuff - I always find you incredibly well-informed and you seem to know your facts. Your weakness, and I do think it a conspicuous weakness, is that you seem to devoid of the critical faculty required to evaluate your ideas. Your views on science, the nature of scienti...

Thank you very much Jack

Mark, I am sorry, but i am home with my ten-day old baby and can only write when time allows. I shall put baby in a drawer and devote myself to you! Negative entropy, DNA based reproduction/evolution, and biological intelligence apply to lifeforms, and do not apply to energy. Entropy is not a thing ...

Rortabend Can I just point out that I am not from the Intelligent Design camp either -as the title of this thread suggests. This is a philosophical argument targeted at the notion of life, as opposed to non-life. Both evolution and intelligent life depend heavily on a clear distinction between the t...

Mark Life spends energy to maintain a state of negative entropy. I'm sure you can see the tacit vitalism in this statement. What is this 'life'that is drawing in the energy from around it? What is this difference between 'life' and the energy it uses to fuel itself. Using entropy as a definition of ...

Hi Mark, I couldn't disagree more - a) that there's any difficulty telling the animate from the inanimate, If it seems easy to tell them apart, it is still the same nature of judgement as distinguishing a good from an evil act, or a beautiful from an ugly object. And just as an unreflective person m...

Mick I diisagree. Provided one believes that it is possible to know about reality (itself a big and troublesome assumption) I don't think there's any special difficulty with the concept of 'life' that undermines the theory of evolution. Ok, then what is the difference? What happens when something li...