Alexander Pruss's Blog

Van Inwagen thinks that a plurality of x s composes something if and only if either there is only one thing among the x s or the x s have a ...

The view that all objects are either living or simple appears to be a consequence of van Inwagen’s answer to the special composition questio...

The standard trolley case is where a trolley is heading to a track with five people, and you can redirect it to a track with one person. It ...

An amoeba is alive but an accurate simulation of an amoeba wouldn’t be alive. If (1), then an accurate simulation of a human wouldn’t be a...

In my previous post , I glibly talked of the infinite value of persons. I forgot that such talk was discredited by this argument . Instead, ...

I think a really interesting philosophical question is the definition of life. Standard biological accounts fail to work for God and angels....

Peter van Inwagen distinguishes the General Composition Question (GCQ), which is to give necessary and sufficient conditions for the claim t...

Van Inwagen’s account of composition is that the x s compose a whole if and only if their activity constitutes a life. Here is a possibl...

Van Inwagen holds that: All and only things whose activity constitutes a life (properly) compose a whole. Whether a plurality of things c...

Some things, such as human life, love, the arts and humor, are very valuable. An interesting question to ask is why they are so valuable? ...

Here’s another try at an account of life. Maybe: x is alive if and only if x has a non-derivative self-representation. Consider: Anyth...

Here’s yet another variant on a life-based argument against machine consciousness. All of these arguments depend on related intuitions about...

I have an empirical hypothesis that one of the main reasons why a lot of ordinary people think a machine can’t be conscious is that they thi...

We can imagine what it is like for a living to have a spatially disconnected body. First, if we are made of point particles, we all are spa...

Assume a particle-based fundamental physics. Then the non-living things in the universe outnumber the living by many orders of magnitude. Bu...

God is alive, angels are alive, people are alive, dogs are alive, worms are alive and trees are alive. What is it that makes them all be ali...

Accounts of biological life characterize it by lists of features such as “reproduction, metabolism, functional organization, growth, respons...

I've been thinking that in a nutshell one could put much of the distinctiveness of Aristotelian philosophy as follows: life science is a...

Every known cause of a living thing includes a living thing. Therefore, probably, every cause of a living thing includes a li...

Many religions that disagree on many other things treat marriage as something sacred, not just a contract. Moreover, many non-rel...