If you can kill a process, or a proposal I don't see why you shouldn't be able to kill a virus -- alive or not!

For that matter, you can kill a vibe or a conversation.

Process reproduce (through forking) metabolize (stdin->stdout) and maintain homeostasis (garbage collection). How could they not be alive?

None of those things are necessary to consider something a process.

Then you must know the purpose of our lives. Enlighten me.

The purpose of a virus is to replicate.

The purpose of a bacteria is to replicate. They just do it the complicated way.

That goes up all the way to modern humans; on a ground level, life is about replicating your genetic information. What you do beyond that is on you.

what’s the purpose of an amoeba? or a mosquito? or a duck? or a chimpanzee?

Would you not say they each have more purpose than a virus?

Definitely not. Viruses perform key roles in ecosystems, particularly in ocean ecosystems. Their infection and subsequent killing of organisms provides a vital mechanism for cycling nutrients. They also help keep algal blooms in check. Viruses kill 20% of bacteria in the oceans everyday.

Viruses also provide a mechanism for horizontal gene transfer. A protein that is critical to the formation of the human placenta has a viral origin.

Viruses have a massive impact on life, but we're just now starting to realize it.

Granted, but to me those seem like side effects.

The virus has no intentionality in doing them. They're a consequence of replication.

In contrast, I think a much stronger case could be made for a chimpanzee, duck, mosquito, or even amoeba evaluating multiple options, choose one to the exclusion of others, and pursueing it.

You're begging the question here; you need to establish they have any purpose before you can ask if one has more than the other.

No. I'm pointing to the relativity of the term.

Anything can be said to have, or not have a purpose, depending on how broadly or narrowly you scope the definition.

For use in this conversation, I think it's self evident that the level of purpose exhibited by higher-complexity organisms is several orders of magnitude different than that of basic organisms.

Wasn't sure if original poster would agree / disagree.

See, I think this is exactly why you are begging the question.

The word purpose has lots of usages, but the one that seems to be discussed here is some intrinsic purpose that an object or creature has for existing.

I can perform an action with a purpose, which is different to my (personal) purpose for being alive, which is different again for some intrinsic purpose for why I am here in the first place.

It's this last purpose that daseiner1 was referring to when they asked "what’s the purpose of an amoeba? or a mosquito? or a duck? or a chimpanzee?"

They are questioning if that kind of purpose even exists.

Your argument is:

Some things have more purpose than others.

Therefore purpose exists.

In this next response you get closer to defining what purpose is - "level of purpose exhibited by higher-complexity organisms" - but we haven't really established what that purpose is or what it means to have more purpose. At best you seem to be equating complexity of behaviour to level of purpose, but I see no reason why complex behaviour should imbue some kind of purpose; all usages of the word purpose imply intent of some kind, and there are many complex processes that have no intent.

I will say that complex animals seem to be more purposeful than simple creatures, but that just means that they perform actions with more intent than simpler creatures, not that they have some intrinsic purpose themselves.

I agree there's no universal definition of purpose in this context.

I was using purpose in my sense. Daseiner1 may use the same definition, or they may be using another. As with you.

It's useless to debate anything else until we figure that out.

---

My definition is contained in my original statement "reproduction without purpose is not life." I do not consider reproduction a purposeful action, as I define it.

It's hard to be intentional about something that forms the minimum bar of existence (immortal organisms aside).

You seem to have defined (very narrowly) what life is not.

It’s also not clear if you are discussing “why I do something” (purpose of an action) or “why am I?” (purpose of me).

What's your definition?

I would argue that's a false dichotomy. In your terms, there can be no purpose of me without purpose of action. And purpose of action requires selection from multiple viable options.

Those two usages are not mutually exclusive, I just don't know which one you are using (or if it is some other usage).

I'm not sure that there is any intrinsic purpose to anything, only ever purpose imbued.

I understand the word gets used that way, to describe some intrinsic meaning to a life, but the word being used that way doesn't mean the thing it describes exists.

To try and be a bit clearer let me write out the three usages I am aware of and you can say which you are talking about.

1. I picked up the apple with the purpose of eating it.

2. My purpose in life is to enjoy it and leave the world a better place than when I found it.

3. The purpose of humans is to colonise the universe.

1 is purpose of an action (the action is done for a reason), 2 is purpose I give myself (I choose what gives me meaning), 3 is intrinsic purpose (regardless of what anyone wants or thinks).

It is 3 which I think we have no evidence for.

Processes also have a zombie state, where they are neither living nor dead.

It reminds me of something I read in response to that question (I can’t remember where): People love to place things in tidy categories; nature doesn’t.

Every second, we are constantly and automatically distilling insane quantities of internal and external stimuli into much simpler -- but still incredibly complex -- webs of categories, associations, and relationships. Each moment of awareness is composed entirely from these mental constructions.

We also analyze and modify our representations in various ways, both consciously and unconsciously. Science is one of the more explicit processes for doing so.

Of course, much of reality is lost and distorted in the process. But we do the best we can :) I like to think we make better maps of reality now and then.

I suppose, at the very least, some of the maps we currently possess can be used to enact more dramatic change in the world around us than ever before, which must say something about their truthiness.

All taxonomies, but especially those concerning objects not made by man, are obviously subject to epistemic anthropocentrism.

I prefer the names "memetics" to talk about the field of infectious ideas and "memetic agents" when talking about single instances. A "memetic agent" is something like a virus, just replicating in minds instead of meatspace.

The SCP wiki started these terms to refer to objects which present anomalous properties when you're exposed to them, such as what the foundation regularly employs to protect articles; "memetic kill agents", basically information that kills if you consume it.

You can kill it in the sense that you stop it being a mutating replicator. That is pretty much the bare bones of life, an abstraction you can't get away from in defining life, but also one that encompasses things that aren't "life". It also applies to things like memes (both the original form from Dawkins and the internet form).

A virus is not a replicator. It is information and a transport system. The machinery of a living cell is the replicator.

It seems pretty simple to me: viruses are not living. They are able to co-opt living systems into making more of themselves.

A virus may gain life while it is inside of a cell, but why is that any different than the organic molecules which gain life when assembled into a cell? We don't say carbon is alive.

For something to be a replicator, what does that mean? Surely just that it somehow causes more of itself to be made, and has enough variability to change its descendants. A particular organic molecule like say a simple sugar doesn't fit this, because its structure is always the same. But a DNA strand can actually be any of many similar structures.

I think the distinction between what is doing the replication is spurious. The fact is even living replicators need some sort of base resource to exploit to pull off the feat. I could say that animals aren't replicators, because they inherently require other living creatures to be eaten in order to replicate.

To me, for some thing to be a replicator, that thing must include the machinery for replication. Viruses do not include that machinery. Cellular life does not include the food required to replicate, but it has the information, the machinery, and the mechanisms to gather the required resources. It is, I think, somewhat arbitrary where you draw the distinction, but it seems useful to divide replicators which do not include machinery from those that do. There are probably things which sit on this divide and make it hard to draw a distinction. That's life. It's not required to fit into our mental and linguistic bins I suppose.

So they're a parasite. There are insects that can only reproduce by laying eggs inside of another insect. They don't physically carry their own. Does that mean they're not alive?

You're describing an organism. What about its cells?

Cells divide on their own, but they often rely on other cells to supply them with the nutrients they need to divide.

...cells are definitely alive

That is not dead which can eternal lie, And in strange eons even RNA may die!

You can certainly deactivate things that aren't alive, though.

My instructor was Mr. Langley... and he taught me to sing a song. If you'd like to hear it I can sing it for you.

I'm not sure if I understand the reference, if there is one.

It's a reference to Stanley Kubrick's film "2001, A Space Odyssey". After the astronaut began disassembling HAL, HAL became child-like.

And singing the first song ever sung by a computer - Daisy Bell.

Oh, of course it is. Should've caught it!

Is a virus active?

It can be considered a toxin that a cell reacts to by creating more of the toxin.

Is a dog active?

It can be considered a collection of atoms that modifies its surroundings in a way to create similar collections of atoms.

I kind of see the point of not calling a virus a living thing. But if viruses aren't even "active" I don't really know why a cell (or even a dog) would be "active".

Maybe a better term is denature, like with enzymes?

I might call it more of a reified meme.

Recursive toxin

It's easy if we say viruses and crystals are both alive.