there's a big difference between life and the chemicals life utilizes
synthesizing amino acids is in the same catagory as synthesizing urea
Life from non-life?
- Thread starter shichimenshyo
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synthesizing amino acids is in the same catagory as synthesizing urea
Carcano
Valued Senior Member
Sure, but we are isolated from the rest of the universe by a vast empty space in which nothing can live.
The vastness is rendered less potent when you consider that only a narrow spectrum of temperature is required, and that the number of elements involved in life is actually quite tiny.
Even so, the universe is still incredibly very very gigantic and huge and I don't have enough good adjectives to properly convey just how big I'm talking. Less potent? Sure. Still pretty potent though? I think so.
But they are parts of what makes up life itself, and what about those creatures with no brains?
You don't need a brain or nervous system to be alive. Every time we think the brain does something we find out a few months or years later that we were completely wrong and the brain does not even perform the tasks that many people think that it does. I've been studying the brain and its systems for quite sometime now and the more I study it the more that old philisophical belief pops up in my mind. We are made up of atoms which are made up of energy and empty space. So aren't we all just energy?
Thats exactly my point.
much like filaments are parts of illuminating light bulbs
still unclear what you are talking about here
Think of the age as well as the size of the universe.
You are assuming the universe has always been vast. Not so. But your point is irrelevant anyway. Buy or borrow a relevant science book and you may change your mind.
No. How dou you define energy ? How do you define matter ?
Very astute point!
Fraggle Rocker
Staff member
Indeed, that is the only hypothesis that is viable here since this is a place of science. The foundation of science is the premise that the natural universe is a closed system whose behavior can be understood, and then predicted, by deriving theories logically from empirical observation or evidence of its past and present behavior. All other theories violate the scientific method in one or more ways. Most of them postulate a supernatural universe that cannot be observed and some are simply illogical.
Not only is abiogenesis (which is what this hypothesis is called, from Greek roots meaning "creation without life") the only hypothesis we currently have, but it is also supported by evidence. Everything that we have learned about the universe so far consistently indicates that at a moment many billions of years ago it was so hot that there was no matter at all in it, much less living matter. Yet today we have abundant evidence that at least one planet is teeming with life. Therefore the logical deduction is simple: the first living tissue arose in an environment that was devoid of living tissue.
We'll all feel a lot more comfortable when scientists finally discover the process by which this occurred so that we can have actual observations for evidence, or at least some nice formulas in a textbook. Unfortunately we have no idea how long this will take, or whether it will be one of the secrets of the universe that we won't be able to figure out before our species (or the universe itself) dies off.
But in the meantime, it is a solid enough hypothesis that places the burden of substantiation on anyone who offers a competing hypothesis.
Whoa dude. You've committed a huge error by equating life with consciousness. Most of the life right here on our own planet, whether measured by weight or number of individual units, has no consciousness. Plants, for instance.
This is merely a manifestation of the human trait of innumeracy, writ large. People don't have an intuitive grasp of the mathematics of extremely large numbers. When you apply the laws of probability to a timespan measured in billions of years, the words "random" and "complexity" are not mutually exclusive.
Perhaps it's "far from" it, but it's a step in the right direction. Molecular biology only became a rigorous science in my lifetime. An incredible amount of progress has been made since then. Don't fault scientists because they haven't managed to do more yet.
You're making a lot of mistakes with the concept of consciousness. For starters, there's no really good, rigorous, scientific definition of what consciousness even is. It could just be something we experience subjectively, and so, because we are the animal with the technology of language that gives us the ability to name things, we give it a name. But at the very least, even in our vague consensus on the meaning of the word, consciousness is an upper brain function. The rest of the brain, and surely the entire brain in the lowest animals that have one, is all autonomic, reflex and other genetic programming. Which of course brings us back to the question: Is what we call "consciousness" merely a very complex bit of "other genetic programming"? When computers finally develop consciousness it will be merely a very complex bit of their programming.
The brain can and does "do anything" without consciousness. People who have been knocked out by a blow to the head don't stop breathing.
A Note on Consciousness
Susan Greenfield. Professor of Pharmacology at Oxford University and Professor of Physics at Gresham College, London ,has written books and lectured on the brain. In a recent edition of New Scientist she said words to the effect that
There is no, accepted definition of consciousness.
We are not sure what questions to ask
We do not know what would constitute a satisfactory answer.
She suggests that in about fifty years' time we may have a clearer idea of what it is we are talking about when we refer to consciousness.
I have given the gist of what she said but the whole piece is worth reading. Unfortunately, I cannot remember when I read the article. I believe it was in the last three or four months . It should be in New Scientist Archive.
Susan Greenfield. Professor of Pharmacology at Oxford University and Professor of Physics at Gresham College, London ,has written books and lectured on the brain. In a recent edition of New Scientist she said words to the effect that
There is no, accepted definition of consciousness.
We are not sure what questions to ask
We do not know what would constitute a satisfactory answer.
She suggests that in about fifty years' time we may have a clearer idea of what it is we are talking about when we refer to consciousness.
I have given the gist of what she said but the whole piece is worth reading. Unfortunately, I cannot remember when I read the article. I believe it was in the last three or four months . It should be in New Scientist Archive.
Fraggle Rocker
plants aren't conscious?
no coincidence, since empirical definitions require a materially reducible answer.
There are no good, rigorous, scientific definition of anything that falls under the banner of soft science
Basically anything that gives expression to a will or a state of self has consciousness.
To say "conscious life" is kind of like saying "burning fire" (in the sense that a fire by default is always burning much life by default is always conscious)
There are also other significant uses of the word in different contexts (philosophy for eg)
plants aren't conscious?
no coincidence, since empirical definitions require a materially reducible answer.
There are no good, rigorous, scientific definition of anything that falls under the banner of soft science
not sure what you are working with for a sense of consciousness.
Basically anything that gives expression to a will or a state of self has consciousness.
To say "conscious life" is kind of like saying "burning fire" (in the sense that a fire by default is always burning much life by default is always conscious)
Of course there is a medical sense to consciousness ("regained consciousness")
There are also other significant uses of the word in different contexts (philosophy for eg)
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Indeed. 
Yet again, with his wonderful analogies, he fails to take into account decay of biological matter in the absence of certain things - i.e. the brain decays as soon as you "switch it off" rendering it unable to be restarted. The light bulb does not decay.
And he uses this difference to try to persuade us that it is consciousness preventing the switching on again within a brain.
Now, if lightbulbs, once switched on for the first time, started to decay as soon as they were switched off again, the analogy might be better - but then of course the conclusions able to be drawn would be very different. So no wonder he doesn't use more accurate analogies.
Marvellous.
Yet again, with his wonderful analogies, he fails to take into account decay of biological matter in the absence of certain things - i.e. the brain decays as soon as you "switch it off" rendering it unable to be restarted. The light bulb does not decay.
And he uses this difference to try to persuade us that it is consciousness preventing the switching on again within a brain.
Now, if lightbulbs, once switched on for the first time, started to decay as soon as they were switched off again, the analogy might be better - but then of course the conclusions able to be drawn would be very different. So no wonder he doesn't use more accurate analogies.
Marvellous.
Enmos
Valued Senior Member
Indeed.
Yet again, with his wonderful analogies, he fails to take into account decay of biological matter in the absence of certain things - i.e. the brain decays as soon as you "switch it off" rendering it unable to be restarted. The light bulb does not decay.
And he uses this difference to try to persuade us that it is consciousness preventing the switching on again within a brain.
Now, if lightbulbs, once switched on for the first time, started to decay as soon as they were switched off again, the analogy might be better - but then of course the conclusions able to be drawn would be very different. So no wonder he doesn't use more accurate analogies.
Marvellous.
This discussion has come up before and he refused to define anything properly.
Take a peek at what's coming: http://www.sciforums.com/showthread.php?t=76386&page=6
Jagadish Chandra Bose pioneered the field with plants.
I guess it depends in what ways the word "consciousness" is used.
If we cannot even properly define how we ourselves are conscious certainly we will have problems in figuring out how other things are conscious.
It's not clear why you insist contingency is not a valid explanation
(I mean aside from your values on the subject of course)
eg
from our previous discussion of consciousness, it appears that you are more into discuss issues of similarity of processes of intelligence (as opposed to issues of dissimilarity) - like a machine that can fool a person into thinking it is a person has the nous (if you could indicate a machine that could understand how something is not conscious or pretending to be conscious perhaps you would have hit a mark closer to home)