What is life?
The cuts
Life is matter that maintains order by feeding on negative entropy.
A physicist's definition precise enough to predict the gene before DNA was found.
What Is Life? The Physical Aspect of the Living Cell1944
Life is a gradient of problem-solving competence — every living thing has a cognitive light cone, a horizon of goals it can pursue.
Turned the organism/machine boundary from a definition into a research program.
The Computational Boundary of a "Self": Developmental Bioelectricity Drives Multicellularity and Scale-Free Cognition2019
Life and mind are continuous — the same self-producing organization that keeps a cell alive is the root of cognition.
If mind grows out of being alive, a thing that was never alive may be the wrong place to look for one.
Mind in Life: Biology, Phenomenology, and the Sciences of Mind2007The tensions
A physicist’s question about biology: how does order persist against entropy? Schrödinger’s 1944 cut — life feeds on negative entropy — was precise enough to predict the structure of the gene a decade before DNA was decoded.
Levin reopens the question from the other side. If life is a gradient of problem-solving competence rather than a substance, then the boundary between organism and machine is not a line to defend but a spectrum to measure.
Thompson raises the stake for AI directly: if mind is continuous with life — if cognition is what self-producing, self-maintaining organisms do — then a system that was never alive might be looking for a mind in the wrong material.
