Artificial life: Synthetic versus virtual
(1993)
| Abstract | Artificial life can take two forms: synthetic and virtual. In principle, the materials and properties of synthetic living systems could differ radically from those of natural living systems yet still resemble them enough to be really alive if they are grounded in the relevant causal interactions with the real world. Virtual (purely computational) "living" systems, in contrast, are just ungrounded symbol systems that are systematically interpretable as if they were alive; in reality they are no more alive than a virtual furnace is hot. Virtual systems are better viewed as "symbolic oracles" that can be used (interpreted) to predict and explain real systems, but not to instantiate them. The vitalistic overinterpretation of virtual life is related to the animistic overinterpretation of virtual minds and is probably based on an implicit (and possibly erroneous) intuition that living things have actual or potential mental lives. | |||||||||
| Keywords | No keywords specified (fix it) | |||||||||
| Categories | ||||||||||
| Options |
|
|||||||||
Download options| PhilPapers Archive |
Upload a copy of this paper Check publisher's policy on self-archival Papers currently archived: 5,705 |
| External links |
  Try with proxy. Try with proxy. Try with proxy. |
| Through your library | Configure |
Similar books and articlesPhilip Brey (1999). The Ethics of Representation and Action in Virtual Reality. Ethics and Information Technology 1 (1):5-14.
Gordana Dodig-Crnkovic (forthcoming). Cognitive Revolution, Virtuality and Good Life. AI and Society.
Robert Scott Stewart & Roderick Nicholls (2002). Virtual Worlds, Travel, and the Picturesque Garden. Philosophy and Geography 5 (1):83 – 99.
Patrick Hayes, Stevan Harnad, Donald R. Perlis & Ned Block (1992). Virtual Symposium on Virtual Mind. 2 (3):217-238.
Stevan Harnad (1994). Levels of Functional Equivalence in Reverse Bioengineering: The Darwinian Turing Test for Artificial Life. Artificial Life 1 (3):93-301.
Barbro Fröding & Martin Peterson (2012). Why Virtual Friendship is No Genuine Friendship. Ethics and Information Technology 14 (3):201-207.
Analytics
Monthly downloads |
Added to index2009-01-28Total downloads28 ( #44,147 of 549,224 )Recent downloads (6 months)4 ( #19,303 of 549,224 )How can I increase my downloads? |
My notes
Discussion
