There is 'being alive' and there is 'living'. It is unfortunate you have not seen the difference yet. If you keep digging down you may, perhaps, come to understand things differently. — I like sushi
does a species of animal(s) that has the ability to conceptually "know" that it exists, entail anything further, in any axiological way? — schopenhauer1
Well, it entails a life. Any living organism is aware of its environment, which includes the organism. It is causally self-reflexive in the sense that it responds to its environment, and the fact that there is an environment causes its response. — jkop
I get it, but one might want to consider the fact that even bacteria are aware of their existence. How else could they discriminate between cell population densities, good and bad environments, or how to protect themselves against antibiotics etc. Awareness of existence seems pretty ubiquitous among organisms, not only fashionable primates who can talk. — jkop
amoeba aren’t aware that they’re aware. The burden of self awareness only begins to appear with much more highly developed organisms. — Wayfarer
Does having the capacity for existential self-awareness imply anything further than this fact? — schopenhauer1
You can almost claim self-awareness and values are one and the same because selfhood means holding values. Because abundant energetic activity, thoroughly and precisely executed in persistence over significant time, marshals resources to achieve the far from equilibrium state of a living organism,
the biological process presents as a synonym for values. The process of creating life is exquisitely value-centered. Slight deviations from these precisely calibrated values precludes the appearance of living organisms. — ucarr
But these values I would say have implications that are nearing "necessity" when one takes into account self-awareness OF EXISTENCE itself. So do the values lead to conclusions, or is it always open-ended? — schopenhauer1
I wonder. i'm thinking some degree of intelligence is necessary for both of these things. But I wonder if the two things come with different degrees of intelligence. Can an individual be existentially self-aware, yet never consider the idea of personal death? Children learn about it at some point. But do they learn it without conversations about it, ultimately revealing the fact to them? Is it possible for entire species to be intelligent enough to be existentially self-aware without any member ever coming up with the concept of mortality? Are chimps self-aware, yet blissfully ignorant of mortality? Will evolution one day grant them a little more intelligence, and drop this metaphorical piano on their head? What about dogs? Mice?What does existential self-awareness actually consist of? Does a recognition of mortality accompany it? — Tom Storm
This seems like a mental or emotional health issue. There are people who aren't concerned with dying, but apparently because they simply never think about it.When I first came to this realisation as a child my primary reaction was, why did I have to be born? In reversing the usual cliché about such matters, I often thought to myself that it might be bad luck to be born - to have to go through the laborious process of learning, growing, belonging (to a culture you dislike), experiencing loss, decline and ultimately death. It's not easy to identify an inherent benefit attached to any of this. But there's a lot of noise called philosophy and religion which seeks to help us to manage our situation. — Tom Storm
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