What is the folk concept of life?

• Autores: Claus Beisbart, Kevin Reuter
• Localización: Actas del X Congreso de la Sociedad de Lógica, Metodología y Filosofía de la Ciencia en España: Salamanca, 16-19 de noviembre de 2021 / Sociedad de Lógica, Metodología y Filosofía de la Ciencia en España (aut.), Ana Cuevas Badallo (dir. congr.), Obdulia M. Torres González (dir. congr.), Víctor Aranda (dir. congr.), Andrei Moldovan (dir. congr.), 2021, ISBN 978-84-09-35510-5, págs. 273-277
• Idioma: inglés
• Enlaces
  • Texto Completo Libro (pdf)
• Resumen

  • This paper details the content and structure of the folk concept of life and discusses its relevance for scientific definitions of life. In two empirical stud- ies, we investigate which features of life are considered salient, on the one hand, and universal, on the other. Functionings, such as nutrition and re- production, but not material composition, turn out to be salient features commonly associated with living beings (Study 1). By contrast, being made of cells is considered a universal feature of living species (Study 2), and, hence, our best candidate for being necessary for life. These results are best explained by the hypothesis that people take life to be a natural kind subject to scientific scrutiny