Philosophy Stack Exchange
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Questions tagged [life]

153 questions
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Being alive today: the most improbable coincidence?

Think about it; modern humans have been around for at least a couple hundred thousand years. Yet, your mind, your soul, your very awareness, happens to be "alive" today. If time is a flow, moving forward, and there's really only "now", isn't it an…
R_K
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The "point" to an Atheists existence

I've recently become Atheist (I am 45). I've slowly transitioned from my childhood's strong Christian upbringing; through Agnostic; to the point where my rational brain has now extrapolated the ridiculousness of Organized Religion to see all…
Rodney Nim
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Did Charles Darwin say anything on why life was formed in the first place?

To be viewed from the perspective of epistemology and/or the philosophy of science. Preamble: Darwin, like scientists of his day, often spoke of “Laws” that inevitably cycle forth the results implicit in their form. Question: In what ways did…
Jayant
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Can Suicide be Rational?

The concept of rational suicide occasionally occurs in the context of ethical questions, such as whether or not there are any circumstances in which physician-assisted suicide would be morally acceptable. Those who favor physician-assisted suicide…
Jordan S
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Is the SETI project built on false premises?

The SETI project analyzes signals and looks for patterns, some of which include prime number sequences that have an absurdly low improbability of occurring. It does this to detect intelligent life. However, we have no independent evidence of life…
thinkingman
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What are some arguments for why lives are valuable?

In ethics, the idea that lives, in and of themselves, are valuable (with a complete disregard of the consequences that followed from that life) is often used to prove some point, but the claim that lives actually are valuable is seemingly an…
GundoGan
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Which philosophers have posited that our mortality gives meaning to our lives?

Cancer researcher, Doctor John Wynn gave an interesting talk this year. In it he argues, in short, that it is the fact of our mortality that gives our lives meaning. Which philosophers have discussed this notion, and what conclusions have they come…
CouncilScribe
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Is there a philosophical conception of not necessarily biological life?

Biologists usually think of life in terms of the ability of a system to harness energy from the environment to grow and to reproduce. However in Stanislav Lem's book 'Solaris' there is a vivid description of an exoplanetary ocean that doesn't grow…
Sergei
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Is life the root cause of all suffering?

According to Buddhism, "There is suffering in this world; suffering has a cause; and the cause is desire." So, the desire to stay alive, forces us to work which causes suffering in the form of depression. Does this mean that life is the root cause…
Agnibho Dutta
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Scientific stance on 'life from non-life, naturally'?

As far as I'm aware, almost everyone (from Dawkins to Lennox to Hovind) agrees that at some point in the past there was no life in our universe, and currently there is. Therefore life somehow arose in an environment of non-life. What does current…
MarnixKlooster ReinstateMonica
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Comedy we play everyday and pretend everything is fine?

I am sure it has a name or is covered by a movement, and I am sure that many philosophers have already talked about this, but I have this on my mind more and more everyday. It is obvious, but how can we literally ignore the fact that we are in the…
BestAboutMe
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What are the counterarguments against abortions in rape cases to the Thomson paper?

Came here from Christianity StackExchange "A Defense of Abortion" (Thomson): You wake up in the morning and find yourself back to back in bed with an unconscious violinist. A famous unconscious violinist. He has been found to have a fatal…
Red Rackham
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What happens to consciousness after death?

Is it possible that our innate sense of self, our egocentric outlook on the world, could be wrong? After all, our brains are never REALLY connected; so we cannot know for sure that our consciousness is REALLY separated by anything else than space…
Philip
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Is there a formal presentation of Maturana's "Autopoiesis"

I have been reading through "Autopoiesis and Cognition" by Humberto R. Maturana and Francisco J. Varela. One of their goals in defining autopoiesis and the supporting concepts of simple and composite unity, structure, and organization seems to be to…
Artem Kaznatcheev
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Would all anti-entropic forces be considered living?

I don't exactly know how to phrase the question, but it seems like most forces in the universe are governed by physical processes where entropy is constantly increasing. Then you have Earth, where we have living organisms that expend energy to…
Ryan Ward
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