15 replies to this topic

[anwiii]

from now on, when you mention my name, you are inviting me.....ok?

but i don't see how philosophy relates to organisms and science....psychology relates to philosophy....not science

Baniboy, on Dec 16 2009, 01:44 PM, said:

@anwiii:
Your post is useless(sorry dude). I wasn't inviting you to the conversation by mentioning your name. All I was simply telling was how I got the idea of making such a thread, just popped in my mind when talking to you and Nameless_. I was interested in knowing how other people recognize living things from non-living things and their definitions for them. I couldn't care less of you spamming here about how you don't care about science and definitions(and everyone uses definitions, even you). And FYI, this wasn't about science, just didn't find a sub-forum for philosophy and stuff.

[truefusion]

Baniboy, on Dec 16 2009, 02:44 PM, said:

I smell BBQ yeah, sarcasm.
So as you would describe it, reacting to damage. Good enough, now I get what you mean(as I have not yet found any organisms that don't respond to damage. Single celled organisms have their own ways of detecting future "extreme discomfort"). Feeling extreme discomfort... wouldn't it mean the virus is already dead? Anyway, I don't know the reasons why you don't accept stimuli but extreme discomfort (although I could have a guess).

Are you saying that a virus doesn't feel anything or that it is incapable of feeling or responding to pain? But as already mentioned, stimuli implies things that i would find counter-intuitive. That is, from stimuli alone you wouldn't be able to declare a robot as not an organism.

Baniboy, on Dec 16 2009, 02:44 PM, said:

No. The DNA is already within the cell, all it has to do is to reproduce more of it. And it would contain the information required to reproduce more. What I meant was, would the program be able to write a copy of its own source down to a for example c document and then compile it. And every time this happens, some damage would be inflicted on the source (kind of like adding random strings here and there, or deleting some). Through regeneration, it would create a better program (suiting to its environment). This would fill the adaptation one in the list.

That was my point: the DNA would have had to come first. But damage inflicting? Here are the general steps to compiling: Preprocessor: this goes through the source code replacing the includes (e.g. #include "file.h") with the actual contents of those files, does the macros, et cetera. This generates code from your code for the compiler. Compiler: the compiler then turns that code into object files. Linker: the linker brings together all those object files and checks out the libraries it is dependent on and creates an executable or library from them. The internals of these object files and libraries can differ from compiler to compiler. So, yes, "random" things are generated. The program, if any, that is generated cannot generally work (or "live") without the same environment since programs are generally dynamically linked. So in order for you to get them to work, you have to distribute that same environment along with your program.

Baniboy, on Dec 16 2009, 02:44 PM, said:

I totally crashed while reading the first sentence , you had me lolling for some time. I'm very disappointed. Water can have chemical compounds dissolved in it. Duh, plants under water for example? And considering many underwater volcanoes, carbon dioxide, sodium and sulfur components, small amounts of oxygen, etc were dissolved in the water. So it's safe to say that the first organisms on earth used these nutrients directly and then evolved into ones that could produce the oxygen by themselves through some kind of early chloroplast(I don't know if you know how photosynthesis works). It's again easy to speculate that the population of cells which could produce oxygen and support their own metabolism that way would rule the cells that had to live using the small amounts of oxygen available in the water. So these cells could've produced more and more oxygen and replacing carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. Oxygen-rich atmosphere would stop more UV radiation, which was the main reason why the lifespan was so short and it wasn't possible for other kinds of organisms to live there. And then it was possible for other organisms to feed on the ones that bind sun's energy into their cells. Doing this they would've released more carbon dioxide completing the ecosystem. The only part of the ecosystem that's not self-sustainable are the chemicals that aren't reboundable, like sulfur oxides and of course, the sun(because sun isn't a self-sustaining energy source, nothing is).

I'm not sure what areas under the water you are talking about, but sunlight doesn't reach all areas under the water. But that is irrelevant since it is not safe to assume a fully-formed, complex organism such as a plant as one of the first life forms to enter existence, at least from an evolutionary viewpoint. And i wouldn't consider it safe to say that the first organisms used whatever was available under the sea at that time, as it is uncertain what these first organisms are, unless you have something else to say about that. I would, however, consider it obvious that if these organisms lived in the water, that oxygen was not something that they were or would be dependent on. And if they were, i wouldn't expect them to rely on what little traces of oxygen pockets there would be under water. Rather, i would expect their system to have a mechanism that can separate oxygen from H₂O. But this may in turn be asking for too much from something so simple.

Natural selection isn't something that cares about the individual organism or of the other (potential) organisms in existence. Therefore the need for oxygen-producing organisms is non-existent. It can only be argued that pure chance, to which i would expect to be incredibly low, is the only way such an evolution can occur on its own without it being guided. For i cannot logically assume that the chances of an organism evolving into something that would eventually help out other things that can enter existence, coming into existence—where natural selection can also yield undesirable consequences to where it can kill off the organism—are high. All we can do is speculate on how things came to be from such an astounding, random process to the way it is today.

I should also note, though, that since sunlight cannot reach all areas under the sea, i wouldn't say that it would be safe to assume that there was any land above the waters at this time, let alone near the surface of the water where sunlight can reach it.

Baniboy, on Dec 16 2009, 02:44 PM, said:

Well, instead of trying to debate these(actually you sound more like you're trying to discredit than debate), I would like to know your definitions. The whole thread was about telling about your own definitions, which you haven't yet done. So, could you please do that, too, and of course continue the conversation we have here if you have more to talk about.

This contradicts what you first said in this post of yours. That is, i thought you understood my definition as "reacting to damage (or extreme discomfort or pain)." (Note: debates involve discrediting others' statements, or at the very least stating something contradictive.) Should i assume that your "crash" or "lolling" made you forget about what you said?

[eGsistance]

For me, an organism is defined by anything that has a nuclei in which DNA is embedded. But most people generally refer to multicellular organisms like humans as an organism in itself. But take the virus. That too is an organism that has a different way of copying itself as of compared to an animal cell. But yes, An organism for me is anything that has a way of replicating itself.

[Semsem]

Anything that has a means to replicate itself. If we look at viruses...hard to say by the ways scientists define it...but, it can replicate and has RNA, thus an organism. And, if it has a way to replicate itself, than any alien life forms can be considered organisms, regardless of whether they have DNA or whatnot.

[rvalkass]

Semsem, on 09 June 2010 - 11:23 PM, said:

Anything that has a means to replicate itself.

So what about an automaton? Create a robot that can build a copy of itself. That satisfies the requirement for something that has the means to replicate itself, so would that robot be classed as an organism?

[Rael IAK]

I didn't see this one mentioned.

Viruses are not considered forms of life because they don't metabolize anything. They can't "eat" anything in their environment, convert it into some more useful form and then rid rid of what's left over (what they don't need). Viruses can't do this. They have to get everything they need ready made from the host they are infecting.

And ....
I think the "Responds to stimuli" is a sort of silly condition just as it is. It's true alright. All forms of life respond to stimuli. So does everything else. If you kick a pebble, it moves. It's responding to a stimulus. If you say "A response caused by the application of energy generated by the organism", that would make more sense to me.

I don't see what the origin of life has to do with a definition of it. Whatever characteristics we decide "life" has it either has them or it doesn't. It doesn't really matter how it got that way.