Philosophy Now Forum

Morpheus, This sentence of yours is key: In all instances, something that once animated the living thing, the life-force, is no longer there. But since we can't determine where it's gone and have no idea what it looks like even when it's still in residence, we can only conclude that the life-force i...

Hi Duncan, Thanks for you long post which was full of intersting observations. the trouble is you said early on: We are all pretty much in agreement about what is living and what is dead My wholep point is that this agreement is conventional only. Philosophically or even scientifically we have no gr...

To illustrate how I think we conventionally view life I'd like to use the analogy of the element carbon. Carbon is always floating around in our atmosphere and it generally isn't seen. But occasionally there arises a phenomenon called smoke. Smoke is just the same as the carbon that is floating arou...

Mick, Nikolai - a serious of questions is not a line or reasoning. I think you are trying to take a rhetorical short cut across some very dodgy ground here. No matter - I think we both agree that evolution is obviously senseles unless there is a distinction between biological life, and the non-livin...

Hi all, Psychonaut said: Evolutionary theory need not apply just to life. That which can reproduce itself in the next moment will exist in the next moment; a monkey is simply a higher-order reproducing pattern than a rock (that is to say, the monkey pattern is sustained by a great deal more variabil...

Mick Being able to reproduce is not an adequate definition of life. My gran can't reproduce but she is alive (mostly). I'm sure you're going to say somethign like: she might not be able to reproduce but others like her can. But in doing that you would be placing her into a taxonomical grouping based...

Dregs, DNA is one of the non-living components of 'Life' I was referring to. It is a complex of pyrimidal base sugars - a product of life but not life itself. I think you are slightly off with your baldness analogy. Why do we call some things life and not others. Is a field living, or a forest, or a...

Dear all, I think we are all agreed that life is impossible to define, yet for Darwinism to work it is crucial that there is a difference between living and non-living. In nature no difference can be perceived betwen them, it is effectively a line drawn arbitrarily in the sand - then we go onto to s...

Mick, When I was talking about life I meant a living thing as opposed to a non-living thing. For example, any living organism is composed of materials that, taken alone, are viewed by convention as non-living. The point at which the non-living suddenly becomes the living is therefore entirely arbitr...

Both these theories purport to explain the development of life over time, and apply themselves to all forms of life - from the virus to the higher mammals. Yet both are beset by a central weakness: they are unable to define what life is. I would argue that Life is not something that can be empirical...

I absolutely LOVE Thomas Hardy - my favourite novel is The Return of the Native although it is devastatingly upsetting. Yes, Schop was a massive influence. I also live where Hardy lives and Jude the Obscure worked as a mason in my home town - Salisbury. His poetry is his real strength in my opinion ...

And I'm sorry for ridiculing your writing style. But I'm with Koy when I say that its nice to hear you speaking as yourself once in a while - and I'm sure you've got a great deal to contribute

Interesting that the whole raison d'etre of the forum is met by a quizzical 'why?'. Do you suffer from agarophobia - are you afraid to venture outside of your thread? There is ample material of mine which is available and open to criticism - please, be my guest. If you don't want to then I'll write ...

Inflation is a short period of very rapid expansion just after the Big Bang

This is science, not philosophy of science. The philosopher should be above all this

Who here writes on just one subject? I know you probably think you do, but the content on your post is nothing more than a motley collection of vacuous word spewings consistent only by being, without exception, expressed in utter and unadulterated gibberish. As for my own opinions, just click on my ...