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In a paper Pragmatism and Umwelt-theory the author begins by contrasting pragmatism with scientific realism. He writes something very intriguing at a certain point. That from pragmatic perspective "Death is viewed as optional; it results from a failure of an organism to solve its living problem." There is no reference given, so I was wondering if someone could suggest literature that touches on this subject or venture a guess why pragmatism would hold such a strong view.

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That hardly sounds like a strong view; it sounds like a simple statement of fact. Is there any indication of why this is not also a "scientific realist" perspective? Of course, once one realizes that death is optional, one should also notice that staying alive forever is absurdly hard, so reproduction starts to look like the best alternative. And one might also note that the universe appears to be destined for eventual heat death (if dark energy doesn't hyperexpand us to zero density first), so maybe death is not optional on cosmological timescales. – Rex Kerr Dec 23 '12 at 19:27
@Rex Kerr: I'd strongly disagree with you on that. It isn't clear to me (without further elaboration, at least) that death per se is an intrinsic phenomenon of an organism. Indeed, it may be that death is an infliction of outside processes (e.g. an organism viewed as an ensemble of microscopic particles never dies, due to conservation of energy, death being only a change in macroscopic properties of this system, which comes from interaction with the rest of the universe). Indeed, an organism is not physically isolated from the universe. – William Dec 24 '12 at 7:42
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@William - On what, precisely, are you disagreeing? That saying alive forever is absurdly hard? I never said that death was an intrinsic phenomenon. (However, it is true that death is often a regulated process; at the cellular level there are cascades of cell-death proteins that conduct death in an orderly fashion, and there are obvious examples like spiders and octopi where the life-cycle includes planned death at a very specific time.) – Rex Kerr Dec 24 '12 at 12:31
I disagree with this: "..it sounds like a simple statement of fact." I am a scientific realist, and it is not my perspective. In general I'd be very careful with the word fact. – William Dec 24 '12 at 12:51
once one realizes that death is optional, one should also notice that **staying alive forever is absurdly hard**, so reproduction starts to look like the best alternative. THIS. – c69 Feb 4 at 22:36

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