So one biopolymer that is expelled from an organism is alive (hair) but another isn’t (silk). Seems like a strange system to me.
It’s not alive upon being expelled, you little knit picker you.
Hair is expelled from the follicle in the same way silk is from the gland.
Cool
What core sentence have we arrived at now?
life is death vamoosh lol jk this earth is birth of the dirt that flirts with the air that cares for the trees that leave your final breath to recieve. we call this life but this is really death. lol rap
Why did you program me to feel pain?
I think we may be overlooking that “life” is a very broad abstraction, it doesn’t point to one, measurable property of ‘reality’. In other words, I think we need to be looking more toward a synergy of processes than any one, single characteristic. My initial definition isn’t perfect, but I think it does a better job of tying “life” together with physiology. Here is a slightly modified version…
“An organic condition which necessitates the development and employment of self-sustaining behavior[s].”
[Note: I include persistence - as through reproduction, assimilation, etc. - in what is “self-sustaining”.]
By this definition MEART isn’t alive - he is a half biological puppet of sorts. A cyborg with human hair wouldn’t be alive as his behaviors are all formulated and developed for him, and his condition is inorganic. Hair and silk are not alive insofar as they do not endeavor sustenance […I can only assume] – they are organic but not self interested.