Daily Dialectic

In a previous talk, I made much of the need for a non-anthropocentric definition of life, and proposed one such definition. If you remember, this is a radical perspectivalist definition – I’m not even allowed natural kinds! Now, in the biggest jerk move ever, I will extol the virtues of using anthropocentric criteria in the search for life.

I am not being inconsistent or flakey: I am defending a degree of separation between our theoretical definitions of life and how we carry out any search for life. I will give a very brief overview of what definitions of life typically include, and propose a better way to formulate and change the criteria for the search for life.