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Member (Idle past 2907 days) Posts: 564 From: The city of God Joined: |
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Author | Topic: Life - an Unequivicol Definition | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
ringo Member (Idle past 443 days) Posts: 20940 From: frozen wasteland Joined: |
AlphaOmegakid writes:
The nature of knowledge is that everything builds on something else. There is no ultimate foundation. You need a complex network of definitions.
All of these words carry ambiguous definitions themselves, and hence the current definitions of life are ambiguous and equivocal.
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ringo Member (Idle past 443 days) Posts: 20940 From: frozen wasteland Joined: |
AlphOmegakid writes:
It's the way science works. All of the assumptions in an experiment are confirmed as conclusions in other experiments. ringo writes:
That's quite a philosophical statement. The nature of knowledge is that everything builds on something else. There is no ultimate foundation. There is no definitive "beginning" of knowledge. You can jump in anywhere.
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ringo Member (Idle past 443 days) Posts: 20940 From: frozen wasteland Joined: |
AlphaOmegakid writes:
A good definition, like a good theory, should be able to accommodate new information. A good definition of life should predict what we "might" find on other planets, not just what we have already found in our own back yard.
Do you see any difference in "supposing an imaginary" observation, and real observations?
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ringo Member (Idle past 443 days) Posts: 20940 From: frozen wasteland Joined:
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AlphaOmegakid writes:
The point is that the definition ought to be able to accommodate new observations. If you define an animal as having pointed ears, what do you do when you observe one with round ears? Say it's not an animal? No. Instead, you should be leaving ear-shape out of your definition.
But the observations come first before the modifications. AlphaOmegakid writes:
Panspermia hypotheses are not the be-all and end-all. Science needs to consider the possibility of other forms of "life". What has already been observed is only a starting point.
All panspermia hypotheses predict life on other planets as being similar to ours.
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ringo Member (Idle past 443 days) Posts: 20940 From: frozen wasteland Joined: |
AlphaOmegakid writes:
Your definition of life continues to shoot itself in the foot.
... God is living, but not biotic.
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ringo Member (Idle past 443 days) Posts: 20940 From: frozen wasteland Joined: |
AlphaOmegakid writes:
This forum is not the place for philosophical thoughts or opinions. "God is alive" belongs in the religious section.
I guess you cannot understand the difference between science and philosophical thoughts and opinions.
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ringo Member (Idle past 443 days) Posts: 20940 From: frozen wasteland Joined:
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AlphOmegakid writes:
The ends of the scale are not arbitrary. It's picking a point between the ends that's arbitrary. That is what I am elucidating to you and others that the boundary is not arbitrary nor arbitrarily chosen no matter how many times you say it. Zero is not arbitrary and 100% is not arbitrary. Picking 55% as a passing grade is arbitrary.
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ringo Member (Idle past 443 days) Posts: 20940 From: frozen wasteland Joined: |
AlphaOmegakid writes:
Zero and 100% are not arbitrary. They are the ends of the scale, like black and white.
Was it randomly chosen? Then it was arbitrary. AlphaOmegakid writes:
Arbitrary doesn't mean there's no reason. Some will chose 50% as a passing grade, some will chose 60%, some will chose 70%. All have their reasons for making their choice. It's an arbitrary point because there is no single reason for choosing one or another.
Was there a specific reason 55% was chosen?
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ringo Member (Idle past 443 days) Posts: 20940 From: frozen wasteland Joined:
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AlphaOmegakid writes:
Since nobody agrees with you, you don't seem to have "shown" anything. When you're right and everybody else is wrong, it may be time to try a different approach in your explanation.
Of course I put them together specifically to show you that your prior arguments were nonsensical.
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ringo Member (Idle past 443 days) Posts: 20940 From: frozen wasteland Joined:
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quote:You quoted it but you don't seem to understand it: Black and white are distinct but gray and gray are not perceptibly different. Imagine a room with one wall painted black and one wall painted white. Black is different from gray because you've hit he wall. White is different from gray because you've hit the wall. Everything else in the room is gray.
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ringo Member (Idle past 443 days) Posts: 20940 From: frozen wasteland Joined: |
Alphaomegakid writes:
No, you've misunderstood the analogy. By your definition, there is nothing between life and non-life - i.e. there is no room, just one wall touching the other; there is no gray, only black and white. That's not a continuum.
Now apply this to the analogy. Life is one wall. Chemicals the other wall. The gray in between. Fine. So all the things in the grey are not white or are not life. Yes, I understand this exactly like you do.
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ringo Member (Idle past 443 days) Posts: 20940 From: frozen wasteland Joined:
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AlphaOmegakid writes:
No. Every shade of gray is a colour. At the very least, we have dark gray, medium gray and light gray. Those are three "separate" colours even if they can't be defined unequivocally.
How many non-distinct colors do we have?....One (gray, the transition between which has many shades)....Agree? AlphaOmegakid writes:
Yes, it's a continuum because it goes from one extreme to another without distinct "shades of gray".
This is a valid, logical continuum......Agree? AlphaOmegakid writes:
This is what everybody has been trying to tell you: there is a continuum from non-life to life and some of the things "between" life and non-life can not be unequivocally defined as either life or non-life. With any unequivocal definition, there can be no shades of gray. An unequivocal definition of an equivocal situation has no value.
And what is between in the gray?....(Virions, Viruses, Self-replicating molecules, fire, crystals, etc.)....Agree? All of this, I agree makes perfect sense as a continuum. Do you agree? All I need is your agreement or disagreement. I claim that this continuum fairly represents the transition from chemicals to life with a grey fuzzy area of things that are in between chemicals and life. Do you agree also?
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ringo Member (Idle past 443 days) Posts: 20940 From: frozen wasteland Joined: |
AlphaOmegakid writes:
I know you've argued that. You're wrong. The only way to argue away a fuzzy line between life and non-life is by defining it away, like you do. You're arbitrarily defining some gray as black and some gray as white. The problem is that that isn't a useful definition. If it was, scientists would have thought of it before you did.
I have argued that there is a valid continuum on this subject, but at the same time I have argued that there is no continuum at all that can be created between non-life and life.
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ringo Member (Idle past 443 days) Posts: 20940 From: frozen wasteland Joined: |
AlphaOmegakid writes:
Of course it can. That's what people have been telling you for hundreds of posts.
How can anything possibly be in between "life" and "non-life"? It can't"Is this thing alive?" "I dunno." AlphaOmegakid writes:
That's a false dichotomy.
From non-life to life you have nothing but a dichotomy and no continuum. AlphaOmegakid writes:
Done.
Forget my definition.
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ringo Member (Idle past 443 days) Posts: 20940 From: frozen wasteland Joined: |
AlphaOmegakid writes:
DNA exists only in relation to living things, so it is definitely "closer to life" than lead. If DNA (or RNA or some other analog) did arise spontaneously from chemicals, then in doing so it became "closer to life". ... you cannot say that DNA is any more closer to life than lead, because they are equally non-life. Since you love analogies so much, here's another: Alsace-Lorraine is closer to France than it is to China. It is also closer to Germany than it is to China. However, sometimes in history it has been part of France and sometimes it has been part of Germany. The only way to define it unequivocally is to pick an arbitrary point in time.
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