"Skybuck Flying" <IntoTheFuture@hotmail.com> wrote in message 
news:72e8d$4b714bcf$d53371df$28317@cache3.tilbu1.nb.home.nl...

Where do you draw the line then ?

well, my definition is that something which is alive needs to follow the 
typical definitions for being alive.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Life

note the definitions section.


an entity need not be biological (as we understand it), but would need to 
exhibit the same basic properties as life.

this could be accomplished via an entirely artificial organism, but would 
not be the case with conventional machinery (if anything, because current 
machinery is unable to either metabolise base materials or to reproduce 
itself).

we would have a living machine, for example, at the point we could:
plant a seed in the ground;
have the seed grow into a plant-like form and make additional machinery;
have the machine produce more seeds which could in turn be planted 
elsewhere.

OTOH, current machinery is produced on assembly lines, usually via 
specialized machinery often very-much unlike the machines produced, and 
requires the continuous involvement of human workers.

on a large scale, if there were factories which could autonomously build 
more of themselves, this "might" classify (although, it would also be a bit 
of a problem if large areas of land began being overtaken by 
self-replicating fabrication plants...).

Do you consider a human being with a mechanical heart to be alive ?

the human is alive, but the heart is not.

the person could still reproduce, for example, but their offspring would not 
be born with mechanical hearts...

What if his whole body is mechanical except his brain ?

the brain is alive, but the "person as a whole" is probably no longer alive.

What if parts of his brain are mechanical ?

What if his whole brain is mechanical ?

then he is an android...
absent the prior definitions of life, an android is not alive.

I think you are on a slippery road...

In fact the thruth might be that we are all just organic robots.

yes, but as such we still follow the basic definitions...

we will not just all die off just as soon as some external race of 
life-forms stops maintaining us...

if all the humans were to die, all of our machinery would probably fail 
within a matter of days or weeks (cars don't drive, they just sit idle... 
power-lines and generators fail and eventually all the power goes out, any 
still-running computers eventually crash, ...).

current machinery can't "survive" without continuous human involvement.

it is, without life...

I also wonder if our "conciousness" / "humanness" is learned from 
generation to generation and not necessarily inside the human brain/dna. 
Evidence of this is in children who grew up between animals... they 
remained behaving like animals for the rest of their lives... (They lacked 
other "concious" human beings around them to "program" them with 
"conciousness" ;) :))

animals are still alive.
plants are still alive...

even stupid bacteria are still alive...

"consciousness" doesn't make something "alive".


a sentient machine could very well be made to exist, but it itself need not 
be "alive"...

only that, to be conscious in the first place, most likely a sort of 
"faux-life" would be needed at least as far as the "mind" goes (otherwise it 
would simply be a computer running a program), although this need not apply 
to the entire entity as such...