The Animals That Exist Between Life and Death
nautil.us
nautil.us
If you mean "life" or "death" are merely mental categories that don't have existence in reality, then saying "this is alive" or "this is dead", or "this is close to life" or "this is close to death", would all be meaningless. We can't predicate a purely mental category of something and then claim that the statement has a meaning outside our minds. Nor can we say our mental categories are approximations of anything real unless we categorize based on something that really exists in the first place.
I was going to write the same thing. Life, Death, Alive, Dead - these are all terms created by humans to make sense out of the world. In reality it's about more life-like and less life-like.
"Hume, with his criticism of the concept of causality, awakened him from his dogmatic slumbers--so at least he says, but the awakening was only temporary, and he soon invented a soporific which enabled him to sleep again."
Seeds also do not change or exhibit life, and can remain in that state for years, even centuries. But then, with water, they start to grow.
Could it not be considered the same mechanism, except that as these organisms are simpler than seeds and retain their shape (ie do not grow and change) and it is possible for these microscopic creatures to revert to the initial 'seed state' then animated life repeatedly?
I've always found it fascinating that I could plant many spice seeds (e.g. mustard) as long as their container said "not irradiated", and they would sprout and grow just fine, several years after buying them. I.e. they are still technically alive, and can stay as such for many years, which is just amazing life resilience.
That said,
> ...except that as these organisms are simpler than seeds...
I wouldn't say any animal that can move around to be simpler than seeds. IMHO by any definition animals are a big jump up in complexity over plants.
Down at the viral level, if they crystallise, they're stable. If they managed to get into rock in a crystallised state, how long would they remain stable? Do we define viruses as "not alive" now? or prions? or mitochondria?
Though they are close.
Or actually, life is a bunch of different processes. It's possible for some to stop while others continue. Some, if stopped, can be restarted again, others can't. It all depends on whether the systems supporting those processes survive is a useable state. Often they deteriorate without the metabolical processes, but some systems are stable enough to survive a long time without the processes that maintain them so the processes can be restarted.
So are you dead when the processes stop, or when the system has deteriorated to the point they can't be restarted?
Death isn’t a state of being. It is the absence of being. When something dies, it ceases to be. It loses its identity as the thing it was. That’s why, strictly speaking, when something dies, what we are left with is not a body, as only a living thing is or has a body, but the remains of what was once alive. So, in the case of rotifers, if they are alive, either they are hibernating or suspended, or reanimation really is the instantiation of a new rotifer. I am curious what kind of metaphysics these philosophers are leaning into, or why “living thing” entails the actual function of respiration, metabolism, etc. and not just the potential for these things, for example. A rock has no potential for these, but a desiccated rotifer does. (Modern philosophy has a problem dealing with potentiality, so this is not necessarily surprising.)
“At the time, fear of excommunication or condemnation by the Roman Catholic Church for publishing scientific observations that challenged Church doctrine impacted communication about new scientific findings.”
The perennial boogeyman of the Enlightenment. Publishing scientific findings did not get you excommunicated. Indeed, fundamental to Catholicism is the recognition that reason and faith cannot contradict. If a scientific finding could or would authentically contradict Catholic doctrine, then Catholicism would be undermined and there would be no meaning to excommunication. (Some will point to the punishment of Giordano Bruno, but he wasn’t charged for his scientific findings —— he was a crackpot —— but for his heretical theology. Others will bring up Galileo, but again, he wasn’t excommunicated and the whole affair concerned a decades-long conflict of a personal or political nature that Galileo himself enjoyed provoking and which ended with a cozy house arrest in his old age at a time when Protestants were burning witches in Northern Europe.) A tiresome cliche. Frankly, I’m not sure how rehydrated rotifers and tardigrades are supposed to threaten Catholic doctrine. Because someone used the word “resurrection”? So what? Sloppy thinking.
It is not a new rotifer. Firstly, any life is a continuation of a previous life. Tree grows from a seed, and the seed was grown on a tree. There is one likely exception of abiogenesis a few billions of years ago, but I think it will be hard to claim that roftier's reanimation is a case of abiogenesis.
Secondly, it is the same rotifer, made of the very same molecules roughly in the same places of its body. Some molecules were damaged and they are repaired, but it is the inherent property of life is the striving for homeostasis, life always do that. Cells spend ~30% of their metabolism budget on ion transport through their membranes to keep required differences in concentrations of ions between inside and outside.
How does that fit with clinical death followed by resuscitation in humans? At what point in time does a human cease to exist?
What you have in mind is not so much a philosophical problem per se, but a medical or even a biological problem, i.e., at which point is resuscitation no longer possible even in principle? When is there no longer the potential to resuscitate? That would be the point at which the existence of something has ended.
Yeah. He though the earth revolved around the sun. Crazy, right?
I believe it is how a person construct their beliefs and how they defend it. I don't know enough about Giordano Bruno to claim that he was a crackpot though. All I want to say is that if Giordano Bruno shared some good ideas including some novel and good ideas of the time, it doesn't mean he was not a crackpot.
> And, is it ok to be a crackpot?
No, from the point of view of a Catholic Church of the time, it was not. And Giordano Bruno should have known that. I'm not trying to whitewash Catholic Church, just that Giordano Bruno could have predict what was coming to him and ignored it, while having some really weird ideas. I have a very little knowledge of him, but I heard of some of his ideas and I tend to think that he was a crackpot.
[0] https://www.newadvent.org/cathen/03016a.htm
[1] https://www.catholic.com/magazine/print-edition/how-fact-bec...
Huh? What about things that were never alive? They never existed?
> strictly speaking, when something dies, what we are left with is not a body, as only a living thing is or has a body, but the remains of what was once alive
Strictly speaking, you're confidently guessing at something you don't know and have no way of knowing.
That said, thank you for introducing me to Giordano Bruno, his ideas seems very interesting and worth thinking about
> Huh? What about things that were never alive? They never existed
No, he means that when something dies, it ceases to be what it was. When a dog dies, it's no longer a dog, but a corpse, and pretty soon will be earth. Same with a person (assuming no afterlife). He doesn't mean that a dead thing is nothing at all, only that a onetime-living thing ceases to be what it was when it dies.
>> strictly speaking, when something dies, what we are left with is not a body, as only a living thing is or has a body, but the remains of what was once alive
> Strictly speaking, you're confidently guessing at something you don't know and have no way of knowing.
Everything we observe about the difference between living animals and corpses tells us that the living body ceases to exist at death. It's a very basic observation. More systematic observation of the onetime-organism's biology or biochemistry will reveal the same thing, in more detail.
Correct. They don't think, therefore they ain't ;)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Affirming_the_consequent https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Denying_the_antecedent
(ノಠ益ಠ)ノ 彡 ┻━┻