Posted: Apr 13, 2012 12:59 pm
by Cito di Pense
OlivierK wrote:I'm not sure it's particularly human - it seems common to most life.


Few would try to say that individuals in a species that has gone extinct simply lost their 'will to live'. This points out that 'will to live' is a tautology within the scope of natural selection with variation. The only point (for 'most life', put so glibly, but we mean 'all') is to survive long enough to reproduce. If it doesn't, it doesn't. Some people conclude a 'will to live' from the fact that many organisms do not die from spawning, as some salmon do. 'Will to live' looks to me like a metaphysical construction left over from vitalism.

This is philosophy's will-to-live in an environment in which it is bound to go extinct. It may take human extinction to accomplish that.