That is, a reductively materialistic view of human nature excludes the sort of openness to the meaning of the universe that is associated with spirituality. Or it replaces true spirituality with a debased, consumerist version thereof: I will create a meaning of my life for myself while you create a meaning for yourself. The latter involves no communion with something greater than ourselves. No reverence. Only self-worship. To seek a meaning that others can also discover, a meaning that is not your own private little creation, is to rely on something godlike in yourself that is capable of reaching beyond the here and now: it is to reject the more reductive of materialism.
How about defining it as an instance of functional complexity? And treating the list of properties as following necessarily from this definition? Okay, this is very diamond-in-the-rough (or perhaps zirconium...) but here goes my thoughts on the matter: (Complexity) Many diverse parts (functional) acting for the sake of the whole I think I need to add something like "not as the instrument of another" or something like that. Given that they act together as one whole and given entropy, etc., the organism will need to posses more order than its surroundings (homeostasis). It will therefore need to take in energy (nutrition), which it will use to sustain its readiness to interact with its environment so as to preserve its own being (homeostasis again?), but which will eventually break down (death), so that in order for that life form to continue it will need to duplicate itself (reproduction), which, upon occurring, will involve both development (growth) to maturity and...
Comments