Volume 2, Issue 2 
2nd Quarter, 2007


Hybriduality and Geoethics

Martine Rothblatt, Ph.D.

Page 4 of 7

When those very first amino acids felt complete, electrically, from a particular configuration (but not from other configurations), pleasure entered our corner of the universe.  A world with hellish environmental conditions, but some electrically satisfied amino acid chains, was a more pleasurable world than one in which just hellish conditions prevailed.   And pleasure continued to mount exponentially as the amino acid chains replicated themselves many times over, and satisfied themselves with ever more complex biochemical structures.

Life is in many ways an “n steps forward, n-1 steps back” process (pessimists assign n a large number, like 100, while optimists assign n a smaller number, like 2), but that is still a process that gradually forges more and more order out of disorder; that creates more fairness and less injustice[8].  Even though most living things have been wiped out repeatedly throughout the earth’s history (at least every hundred million years or so), there are more living things in existence today than ever before.  N steps forward, n-1 steps backward.  And, amazingly enough, there is now technology at hand, born of information-induced order, that could save the earth from the species-devastating effects of the random earth-crossing asteroids of the past (space-searching radar systems, ultra-fast information processing capability, nuclear missiles).

Cellular organisms have done a fantastic job of remaking the environment into a more livable world.  But it is not the cellular structure of the organisms that make them alive; it is their ability to make the world a better place.  Cellular structure proved to be an excellent tool for safeguarding valuable information, coded in DNA, as to how to build increasingly capable organisms – organisms that could make increasingly more order out of a largely, but not entirely, disordered universe.  But, a priori, we cannot say that such structures are the only way to create an entity that makes the world a better place.   Consequently, organic cellular chemistry is biology, and biology can become life through the force of evolution and natural selection.  But life is not necessarily biology, because biology is not the only way to create (and does not necessarily create) a more ordered, fairer, more just universe.  There is, for example, circuitry, as one finds in chip-based computers and machines.

Any non-biased, i.e., non-cellcentric, definition of life will include many entities that biologists do not currently consider to be alive.   Logically, this does not mean that such entities are inanimate (they may or may not be).  It only means that such entities lack organic cellular characteristics.  The reason for this is that biologists require an entity to have an organic cellular structure in order to be considered ‘alive.’  Yet, there is no reason to suppose that having a organic cellular structure is a necessary (although not sufficient) condition for being alive.

Consider, for example, biology’s dogma that living things (i) are organized, (ii) take materials and energy from the environment, (iii) respond to stimuli, (iv) reproduce, (v) develop, and (vi) adapt to the environment.  These conditions are certainly satisfied by bacteria, plants and mammals.  But are they necessary conditions for an entity that serves the purpose of life, to make the universe a more ordered, less random, place?   Is it necessary, for example, for each member of a species to reproduce; indeed, most members of many species do not.  On the other hand, as noted earlier, the criteria are so general that they can be satisfied even by stars in space, unless one starts getting cell-centric in the definition of “organized.” 

Now, it is possible to have a definition of life that is more elegant, more precise and more useful. Here it is:  life is an entity that autonomously processes, cooperatively shares and transcendentally extends information. These criteria may be formalized as saying that an entity is alive if it demonstrates (i) Autonomy, (ii) Coopetency, and (iii) Transcendence (“ACT”). In shorthand, it can be said that to be alive, something must satisfy the ACT criteria.  Rephrased in common language, logically structured, life is something that (i) processes its own information (which means Autonomy), (ii) shares its information consensually (which means Coopetency and requires Autonomy), and (iii) operates beyond its information to achieve the purpose of life (which means Transcendence and requires Coopetency).   

The new word “coopetency” is used instead of “cooperativeness” because the new word encompasses cooperation via competition as well as via teamwork[9].  Lifeforms share information through both teamwork and competition since each form of cooperation (or, more properly, coopetition) has its time and place advantages[10].   “Autonomy” is a classic term meaning on one’s own.  It is a needed component of a definition of life to separate out what is alive, sub-alive and macro-alive.  We want to think of a person as alive, not a muscle cell in the person, or the city in which the person lives.  Finally “transcendence,” which means going beyond one’s programming, is an essential definition of life because ultimately it will separate out the inanimate from the animate.

Now, are non-brained entities alive?  They are if they process information (as even a bacterium does by executing its genetic code), share information (as bacteria do via plasmid exchange), and extend information (as bacteria do by carrying out activities, such as colonization, that are beyond what is written in their genetic code).


Image  9 - Bacteria

Now, suppose a cybernetic being with adequate memory, software and power satisfied the ACT definition.  Is s/he or “heesh” alive?  Yes, because it (or heesh) is like us in an important way, namely in the way of working together to make the world a more satisfying place. 


Image 10 - Cybernetic Upgrade

This cybernetic being, like us, could be an example of transcendental biology, if it was constructed based upon cellular organic chemistry, or an example of non-biological transcendence, if it was constructed using inorganic molecules.  Hence, the beauty of the ACT definition of life is that it includes all that biologists deem to include in life, and it also includes non-organic phenomena that “quacks like life and waddles like life.” On the other hand, the ACT definition of life clearly excludes phenomena, such as a rock or the sun, that either fail to demonstrate autonomy (a rock or a sun does not process information because nothing proceeds pursuant to any kind of an uncertainty-reducing code), or fail to demonstrate coopetency or transcendence (a rock or a sun does not operate consensually or enhance order in the universe).

The fact of the matter is that biologists have been mis-defining life for a long time.  Life is not equivalent to a growing, reproducing, reacting entity with a cellular structure.  Such entities are simply cellular organisms.  They constitute a particular, and fantastically diverse, form of self-replicating matter.  But life is something different altogether.  Something is alive if it is (1) an autonomous entity that (2) builds information sharing relationships with other living entities for (3) the purpose of creating for themselves a “happier” (as they would define it) world.  All biological organisms meet this definition, which is why they seem to us to be alive (those that don’t, like viruses, don’t process their own information).

Something is alive if it is (1) an autonomous entity that (2) builds information sharing relationships with other living entities for (3) the purpose of creating for themselves a “happier” (as they would define it) world. Biological organisms seem to exhibit Autonomy by processing information, they seem exhibit Coopetency by sharing information, and they seem to exhibit Transcendence by extending their behavior beyond its stored information. 
These three characteristics make them alive, not the arrangement of their molecules.

Vitology Is Life

To avoid confusion we need a new, more appropriate term for the study of life than biology – which is now more properly understood as the study of life built from organic cellular chemistry.  A better term for the study of life is vitology, which includes biological life as well as cybernetic life, while excluding non-teleological biology (such as organelles within a cell) as well as non-teleological non-biological entities (such as a memory chip).  The science of vitology includes the study of all entities that demonstrate Autonomy, Coopetency, and Transcendence (ACT) – things that are alive.

Divisions of vitology could include biovitology (entities like homo sapiens which demonstrate ACT and are organized according to organic cellular chemistry), cybervitology (entities like intelligent computers or futuristic robots which demonstrate ACT and are organized according to inorganic circuit chemistry) and infovitology (entities like “virtual personalities” which demonstrate ACT and are organized according to software logic).


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Footnotes

[8] The back-and-forth nature of human progress results in the fact that “out of the crooked timber of humanity, no straight thing was ever made.”  I. Berlin (1969), Four Essays on Liberty, Oxford University Press: Oxford, p. 170.  The most important point, though, is that many things have been made, albeit they are not straight.  Consequently, antipodal philosophers such as Nietzsche and Rousseau both miss the point.  They each see the back-steps of civilization and pine for either forward-motion at goose-step rate under a strongman (Nietzsche) or no back-steps in an idyllic natural world (Rousseau).   Yet the goose-step approach inevitably takes one right off a cliff, while the anti-civilization approach leads one to slow decay.  There appears to be no good substitute for careful trial-and-error progress, with reliance on free discussion and collective decision-making to keep the ratio of n:n-1 as high as possible.

[9] Brandenburger, A. & Nalebuff, B. (1996), Co-opetition, Doubleday: London

[10] Ridley, M. (1997), The Origins of Virtue, Penguin: London.

 

 

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