How Do We See That Something Is Living? Synthetic Creatures and Phenomenology of Perception*
The creation of synthetic life forms raises the question of what we mean when we say that a synthetic cell is “alive.” This paper analyzes the problem of aliveness both as an epistemological question (how can we know?) and as a phenomenological question (how can we perceive?). It introduces basic co...
| Publié dans: | Worldviews |
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| Auteur principal: | |
| Type de support: | Électronique Article |
| Langue: | Anglais |
| Vérifier la disponibilité: | HBZ Gateway |
| Journals Online & Print: | En cours de chargement...
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| Fernleihe: | Fernleihe für die Fachinformationsdienste |
| Publié: |
Brill
2013
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| Dans: |
Worldviews
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| Sujets non-standardisés: | B
phenomenology in biology
synthetic biology
philosophy of biology
definitions of life
perception of livingness
Husserl
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| Accès en ligne: |
Volltext (Verlag) |
| Résumé: | The creation of synthetic life forms raises the question of what we mean when we say that a synthetic cell is “alive.” This paper analyzes the problem of aliveness both as an epistemological question (how can we know?) and as a phenomenological question (how can we perceive?). It introduces basic concepts that can be used in a phenomenological analysis of the “givenness” of life and argues that aliveness can only be seen with reference to the experiences of the observer as him/herself living. Life is therefore inherently ambiguous. When perceiving other life forms, we are aware of our own life. In order to develop a concept of the “other life” of a synthetic bacterium, we need to be aware of projecting perceptual evidence of our own life onto that of other species. The concept of “other life” can address a very basic layer: seeing another life form’s being-in-the-world as (1) a center of its own spontaneity, (2) a particular way of being in time that can be described as duration, and (3) as a system of processes that contain their own sense as practices. |
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| ISSN: | 1568-5357 |
| Contient: | In: Worldviews
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| Persistent identifiers: | DOI: 10.1163/15685357-01701002 |