Expert: Clint - 10/10/2009

Question
QUESTION: Sir,
   Why there are two kind of things in this world -living things and non-living things. When everything is matter and energy, why living things are different from non living things? Living things move, eat, think and act on thier own while non living thing are without consciousness. Why dont non living things evolve? Why dont they gain consciousness? Living things protect themselves when something tries to harm them because they have to protect their bodies for the survival? Why doesnt a stone try to save itself when it is crushed?

ANSWER: Sorry to take so long to answer, busy.
Your generalizing the whole issue by dividing everything into 2 groups when it's much more complicated than that. The problem with theist is that they would rather invoke a magician who just poofed everything into existance rather than admit they don't know and start working at the answer from a point of reality. The bible for instance gives us a lot of good advice and a lot of good quotes and one liners, mixed with a lot of death and destruction, but it doesn't have any answers. It's a story, that's all. We don't know why or how matter became alive but we can speculate ideas based on observations and then test or measure them to create usable theories. We have turned non-living matter into building blocks of living matter so I think it's only a matter of time before we know for sure where that switch is at and what controls it, rather than who. And as for consciousness, it's a matter of level. A single cell can be alive but it only reacts to stimuli, comsuming something and giving off something in return. We can call this consciousness but I doubt it cares. Our level of response is more caring because we have evolved to respond to multiple stimuli at once and that's all life really is, humans have just developed the ability to make thoughtful decisions about stimuli and response. In the same sense metal rusts under the right conditions because it is responding to stimuli, but it's not alive, or is it? Given a few billion years it might even start caring.

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QUESTION: you mean to say that metal's developing rust is a kind of consciousness

Answer
The corrosion or rusting of aluminium is extremely slow because the resulting aluminium oxide forms a conformal coating, which protects the remaining aluminium. Some would say that the aluminium is protecting itself and they would be right. But the aluminium doesn't "know" it is protecting itself nor does it know it is "dying", it is simply reacting. But because this reaction serves as a function of intent, to survive, is it not conscious to some degree? At least enough to know what materials are threatening and how to react appropriately. We too are nothing more than a huge collection of reactive material working in perfect synchronization as a whole. We think that consciousness is some sort of special human trait that could only have occurred with a spark of magic from something powerful but everything can be deduced down to it's simplest parts. Your thought process for example is only a reaction of the brain cells to outwardly observed stimulus. That "reaction" is what you think of as life and we have millions of them every second making up our more advanced consciousness. We can look back at ourselves in the mirror and give thought to our existence but alas it is just a reaction of the mind to what the eyes have reported.