[JoshTriplett]

You've equated biological definitions of "life" with other definitions, and then attempted to preemptively dismiss all possible disagreement with your preferred definition. Philosophical disagreement absolutely exists on these points, whether you acknowledge it or not.

Biological definitions of life are not the only interesting definitions. From the point of view of conscious beings, a functioning conscious mind comes a lot closer to our practical boundary between "alive" and "dead"; it seems completely reasonable to consider a mind "alive" even in the absence of all else. A body without a mind is much less interesting, even if by some biological definition it's still "alive". (Conversely, we'd call a person dead even if some individual component cells in their body were still alive.)

Your automatic assumption that life requires a physical body seems entirely unsupported. And regarding reproduction, there's a trivial counterexample: a person who has lost the ability to reproduce is still alive.

And even biological definitions can vary; I certainly don't see any obvious reason why a biological definition of life needs to include an end. Death is not inherent, and hopefully it's a bug we can fix.

[eric_h]

> Conversely, we'd call a person dead even if some individual component cells in their body were still alive.

I would imagine that we call a person dead long before the majority of their individual cells are dead.

It's just when they stop working together.

(This is admittedly an un-researched, intuitive opinion, but I can't see why it would be wrong, please correct me if it is).

[cLeEOGPw]

> it seems completely reasonable to consider a mind "alive" even in the absence of all else.

So AI is alive too if you program it to understand it's AI? Such arbitrary definitions of "life" is not interesting. What if I define life as "abstract existence in anyone's mind" - that way a person, for example, would be considered "alive" as long as he is "alive" in our memory.

Also counterexample for life with only consciousness - let's imagine that we advanced technology to be able to replace neurons with analogous mechanisms that perform same function. Now imagine your cells are slowly, gradually being replaced with these mechanisms, all while your consciousness is full intact. That means that this imaginary technology replaces your live cells with machine cells without you losing consciousness, and at the end you are entirely machine. Are you alive? I say no. If you say yes, we disagree.

Thing is, consciousness and mind is nothing but a continuity of electrical signals. No magic here. While life is entirely different concept. They are tangential. Neither of them require one another.

> a person who has lost the ability to reproduce is still alive.

I am talking about multi generational life. If I remove your brain, thus mind and consciousness, you are alive too for some time.

> I certainly don't see any obvious reason why a biological definition of life needs to include an end.

It doesn't. But an organism that doesn't die cannot adapt to environment through DNA shuffling. But there are organisms that are considered immortal, not nearly as complicated as humans though.

[JoshTriplett]

> Also counterexample for life with only consciousness - let's imagine that we advanced technology to be able to replace neurons with analogous mechanisms that perform same function. Now imagine your cells are slowly, gradually being replaced with these mechanisms, all while your consciousness is full intact. That means that this imaginary technology replaces your live cells with machine cells without you losing consciousness, and at the end you are entirely machine. Are you alive?

I would definitely call that "alive" (and I hope we can perfect a process very much like that).

> Thing is, consciousness and mind is nothing but a continuity of electrical signals. No magic here.

On that point we agree completely.

> While life is entirely different concept. They are tangential. Neither of them require one another.

It seems like we may just disagree on terminology, then. There's a biological definition of life that you might use to distinguish an amoeba from a rock, or a live amoeba from a dead amoeba. There's also a definition of life more appropriate for sentient beings specifically, which I would argue just includes the conscious mind; for that, "brain dead" is "dead" for all practical purposes.

> But an organism that doesn't die cannot adapt to environment through DNA shuffling.

Neither can an organism unwilling to let others die or fail to reproduce due to "lack of fitness" or similar properties. I can live with that; evolution is a remarkable but inefficient process for improvement.

[cLeEOGPw]

> There's also a definition of life more appropriate for sentient beings specifically, which I would argue just includes the conscious mind; for that, "brain dead" is "dead" for all practical purposes.

Inanimate objects, also rocks, can also have their life, but that's just a play of words. Also what you call "life" is more accurately described as simply "experience". It's confusing to use term "life" in this context while having two unrelated concepts in mind. A mind is experiencing world, it doesn't mean it's actually alive in a sense it's life processes are working.

What you call "life" for mind and consciousness is a metaphor that you are taking too literally.

Life - working biological processes. People abstract it out to just "working processes". Consciousness is a working process, therefore by applying abstract meaning of "life" you call it alive.

So as you see there's no argument whether mind is a process or not. There is also no argument that mind has to be made of working biological system. So your whole comment is just a confusion of two different processes both of which you call life.