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• 
  Weydon
  November 24, 2009
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  lol

  Well in that case, "Alive" means "Anything which exists", including once living creatures which are now dead.
  
  Benjamin Grimm reigns supreme!
• 
  Xelgaroth
  November 24, 2009
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  Merely because the rock "might" be alive is hardly reason to say "yes" to the question. There is hardly any evidence to suggest that they are indeed alive. In any case, simply because something lives IN the rock hardly means that the rock ITSELF is alive, any more than the houses and streets of a town are alive because people live in them. Because "we can't tell the rock isn't already used in some super-macroscopic biological system" does not prove the rock is alive; that is an ad ignorantium fallacy, like "well, you can't PROVE that færies DON'T exist, so that means they are real!"
• • 
    Molzahn
    November 25, 2009
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    "well, you can't PROVE that færies DON'T exist, so that means they are real!"
    
    It would be more like saying "well, you can't PROVE that færies DON'T exist, so that means you can't say they don't exist."
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  NoeL-
  November 24, 2009
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  "Supposing the rock is broken down and utilized by a biological system. So how can we tell whether the rock isn't already used in some super-macroscopic biological system?"
  
  This is wrong.
  
  I am alive.
  My cells are alive.
  The protoplasm in my cells is not alive.
  
  Don't make the mistake of saying that because a house is built of bricks a brick is therefore a house.
• • 
    Molzahn
    November 25, 2009
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    "I am alive.
    My cells are alive.
    The protoplasm in my cells is not alive."
    
    If we were to reverse engineer that thought. Is a group of people alive? Or only the individuals within that group?
    
    What constitutes a biological unit?
  • • 
      NoeL-
      November 25, 2009
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      "Is a group of people alive? Or only the individuals within that group?"
      
      It depends. If the group AS A WHOLE undergoes metabolism, maintains homeostasis, possesses a capacity to grow, responds to stimuli, and reproduces, then the group of people is "alive" by definition.
      
      
      Let's put it to the test, shall we?
      
      1) Undergoes metabolism?
      
      Yes. Groups of people consume food and produce waste.
      
      2) Maintains homeostasis?
      
      Hmm....... I have to say no for this one. Groups don't inherently seek to maintain homeostasis.
      
      3) Possesses a capacity to grow?
      
      Hmm... I flip-flopped on this a little bit too, but in the end I would say yes - a group can grow.
      
      4) Respond to stimuli?
      
      Yes.
      
      5) Reproduce?
      
      Yes. A part of a group can break off to form a new group.
      
      
      
      
      So, while a group of people shares many characteristics with living organisms, because it doesn't maintain homeostasis it cannot be considered alive.
    • • 
        Molzahn
        November 26, 2009
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        "Hmm....... I have to say no for this one. Groups don't inherently seek to maintain homeostasis."
        
        So individuals in a group don't look after eachother? Cities don't exist, and there is no significant sociological or anthropological data that traces to our existence at all? American politicians never complain about socialism? Social Contract theory was made-up by some guy on a high.
        
        
        "5) Reproduce?"
        
        That's a tricky one to try to access. You could have a sterile organism, and we wouldn't say that it isn't alive. Maybe this quality is only what we interpret to be the intention in design to procreate. But what if we don't recognize a reproducing system because it doesn't match our expectations?
        
        
        "4) Respond to stimuli?"
        
        Again, that's a tricky one to try to test. What if an organism exists on some other plane of existence (like some sort of overlapping dark matter realm). It may not interact with what we consider stimulus, but may indeed interact with different kind of stimulation that we are not cognisant of.
  • 
    Molzahn
    November 25, 2009
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    Let me rephrase.
    
    If you consider a single organelle of a single celled organism, is it alive? No.
    
    If you consider a network of individual organelles, are they alive? Yes.
    
    Depending on how you compound the information, your identification of what you are analyzing will differ.
• 
  Oblivions Touch
  November 25, 2009
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  Atoms are not alive, so since our cells are made up of atoms, how can we be classified as living things?
  
  The correct question I suppose may be "What does it mean to be alive?" because society's definition of alive (which is that you perform functions such as respiration, movement, growth, reproduction, etc) is quite ambiguous.
• • 
    NoeL-
    November 25, 2009
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    "Atoms are not alive, so since our cells are made up of atoms, how can we be classified as living things?"
    
    Because we "undergo metabolism, maintain homeostasis, possess a capacity to grow, respond to stimuli, reproduce and, through natural selection, adapt to [our] environment in successive generations". Our atoms do not. Neither do rocks.
    
    
    
    "The correct question I suppose may be "What does it mean to be alive?""
    
    Better question.
    
    "because society's definition of alive (which is that you perform functions such as respiration, movement, growth, reproduction, etc) is quite ambiguous."
    
    Yeah, at times it is. That just means that there's no clear distinction between "alive" and "inanimate", which isn't a huge problem since there are very few things in nature that have clear-cut distinctions. Things like viruses act like living organisms in a lot of ways, but since they are unable to metabolise we don't consider them "alive".

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