Posted: Jul 13, 2018 9:00 am
juju7 wrote:There remains a question, a very old one. If life were to emerge with very different chemistry, would we be able to recognise it as life.
If it's old, that means it's philosophical. What we 'recognise' is a function of the definition we are using. Any attempt to keep the definition vague is a function of some other priority than a scientific one. Like, e.g., a philosophical one.
What I mean is this: Why would very different chemistry defeat a recognition as long as we didn't get caught up in the definition of life as having a specific chemistry? We could instead focus on (self)-replication and being subject to natural selection in the reproductive sense. Do you think there might be something else to being 'alive'? If so, add your criteria, explicitly. Please try to avoid arguments that invoke vitalism, which is all about being spooked, as usual.
Macdoc wrote:Well we seem to have problem even now with viruses and even prions...and other odd wee ?
That's a result of keeping the definition vague. Or maybe, dependent on whether we think something else feels alive. Oh, those fee-fees. But it's philosophical, because we need telepathy or hermeneutics to know about somebody else's fee-fees.