Author: Louis Fagliano
Date: 09:09:38 10/19/02
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On October 19, 2002 at 10:47:01, Bob Durrett wrote: >Consider an analogy between an amoeba and Fritz: > >Most people would agree that amoebas are alive. But suppose some very tiny >predator were to take a very tiny bite out of one particular amoeba? Furthur, >suppose that the bite was so tiny that it only removed only one single atom from >the amoeba. Chances are, that bite would not kill that amoeba. But then let >another very tiny predator take another very tiny bite [another atom] out of >that same amoeba. Maybe that bite, too, would not kill the amoeba. But let the >process continue, one bite at a time until that poor amoeba is all eaten up. >Most would agree that life would have left the amoeba after one of those bites. >[Unless one believes in "amoeba ghosts."] > >Most would also agree that the original amoeba consisted of a finite number of >atoms, arranged together in a very special way. But who would seriously assert >that individual atoms are alive? I wouldn't. And yet, the amoeba, consisting >of a finite number of atoms, is alive. Something, life, is added to the >collection of inanimate atoms. How? I don't know. > >Now lets look at Fritz. > >Fritz may be considered to be "merely" a collection of machine instructions, >with the machine instructions arranged in a very special way. A very large >collection, indeed. Just like the amoeba is a very large collection of atoms. > >Most would agree that a single machine instruction is not alive. But what about >the very large collection of machine instructions called Fritz? If a very large >collection of inanimate atoms can have life, why not the same for a very large >collection of inanimate machine instructions? > >It seems that life cannot be ruled out for Fritz! Of course, this by itself >does not prove that Fritz is alive. But it does rule out the possibility that >Fritz could not be alive. > >Life is not created in the image of Man. > >More later. > >Bob D. An atom and a machine instruction are are not even close to being the same. In fact, the only thing they have in common is that they are both nouns. An atom is a type of noun that is a "thing". It has mass and other properties associated with mass. Other types of nouns are, of course, persons (which are a subtype of "things"), places, things, qualities, or acts. Only things and persons are actual physical objects. Places, qualities, and acts, though they are nouns, and can be perceived, are not entities existing in space or time. A law is a noun but is no attributes associated with a thing. Thus, it is meaningless to ask, for example, what is the temperature of the three strikes and you're out law. So I claim that not only is Fritz not alive, it's not even an inanimate object! The inanimate object is the actual computer running Fritz. Fritz exists on level that's removed from even being an inanimate object let alone being alive. It's the set of instructions for inanimate object to perform.
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