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Questions tagged [life]

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29 votes
15 answers
19k views

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 ...
R_K's user avatar
  • 407
22 votes
17 answers
7k views

The "point" to an Atheists existence [closed]

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 ...
Rodney Nim's user avatar
11 votes
4 answers
7k views

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. ...
user avatar
11 votes
4 answers
3k views

Did Charles Darwin say anything on why life was formed in the first place? [closed]

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 ...
Jayant's user avatar
  • 137
11 votes
4 answers
2k views

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 ...
Jordan S's user avatar
  • 1,921
10 votes
6 answers
4k views

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 ...
GundoGan's user avatar
  • 101
10 votes
3 answers
5k views

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 ...
CouncilScribe's user avatar
9 votes
7 answers
5k views

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 ...
user avatar
9 votes
5 answers
373 views

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 ...
Sergei's user avatar
  • 191
8 votes
7 answers
4k views

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 ...
MarnixKlooster ReinstateMonica's user avatar
8 votes
4 answers
2k views

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 ...
BestAboutMe's user avatar
8 votes
1 answer
288 views

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 ...
Red Rackham's user avatar
7 votes
3 answers
330 views

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 ...
Artem Kaznatcheev's user avatar
7 votes
5 answers
848 views

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 ...
Philip's user avatar
  • 87
6 votes
6 answers
4k views

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 ...
Ryan David Ward's user avatar

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