[MD] Animate vs inanimate

[david buchanan]

David M said to dmb:
So would we have any use/need for an animate/inanimate distinction in the 
MOQ? Is SQ repetitive and inanimate? Is DQ innovative and animate? Therefore 
is biological SQ a form of inanimate life?

dmb replies:
You're going to hate me for this, if you don't already, but I really think 
you have to learn to communicate in a less ambiguous way. I can only guess 
because you have not provided any indication of the meaning and context of 
the two key terms. Going back a couple dozen centuries, for example, we see 
this distinction in Plato, where it marks the difference between rocks and 
bunnies, between inorganic things and living things or between dead things 
and living things. Jump forward to Sartre and he uses the same terms to 
describe the distinction between human consciousness and the objective 
world. I suspect you are thinking of the latter because of the way you've 
introduced DQ into it. It seems you want existential choice to be connected 
to DQ, but I don't think that works very well at all insofar as he was 
operating with the assumptions of SOM.

In any case, by the time you get to the end of your comments you are asking 
if biological forms are "a form of inanimate life. This is pure nonsense. 
Inanimate life is a contradiction in terms. If it is inanimate, it is either 
dead or it was never alive in the first place. And we can't rightly speak of 
SQ as being inanimate or animate without indicating what kind of sq we are 
talking about.

So this whole thing is so ambiguous that its impossible to tell what the 
topic is. Are you referring to Socrates or a post-WW2 French intellectual? 
I'm sure they weren't the only ones to use these terms. Are you talking 
about life forms, existential essences or something else altogether? As is 
usually the case, one can only guess what you're talking about. Its not that 
I disagree with what you're saying. I simply have no idea what you're 
saying. And I don't see how anybody else could either. Until you can clarify 
the context and meaning of the terms, I can't even be sure what the topic 
is.

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