How to know what life is?

Question

What we call ‘our life’ is about a period of time from birth to death. During that period, some might like to devote themselves to certain virtues, some to the religions-promised afterlife, some to an ideology like communism or nazism.

But there are also others who believe such things to be anti-life. Instead, they take life to be about concrete everyday things, such as eating good food, having relationship, to love and being loved, etc.

What is life? How to understand it? I would like to know the views of fellow philosophers.

Answer 1

Life is experiences. Experiences as in feelings.

As long as one has ability to feel he is alive. If something cannot feel he is not alive.

Note that its about ability to feel. One is still alive when unconscious. Its because he is not dead, he didn't loose the ability to feel.

Can a dead body feel anything? Our observations show it don't. Pin it, punch it, burn it, no reaction. Ofcourse we are limited to our observations and to whats told to us if whats told is indeed right.

Muslims are told that though once we are dead we dont feel this worldly things we do feel other things. Pleasures and pains that depends only on our deeds and on God's mercy. The grave part of Life After Death that happens to everybody even if they dont get a physical grave.

Is a stone alive? None of our observations show it is. If your religion says it is only then you will believe it is alive.

In every day speak we say a person is lively if that person is having a lot of experiences in his life. An olympics player, a world traveller, a rock-climber is considered more lively than a regular person.

We say someone's eyes are lively when they show lots of emotions. We "see" a lot going on in that person through his eyes.

Kids are considered more lively than their grandfathers. Kids shows more actions and more emotions. Kids cry, laugh and love without filters.

Answer 2

This is a question that everyone is concerned about but destined not to have a standard answer.

In my opinion, as a story animal, the initial human nature of humans actually comes from the division of story characters. When you play a character for a long time, you naturally have a specific human nature to play that character. Human nature has never been standard, but is shaped by countless human characters in the entire world.

So even robots, when they are seriously playing a role, should be considered a real person.

Answer 3

Life (a meme I found, floating around in cyberspace)

1. Birth
2. WTF!?
3. Death

🙂

Well, here's how I feel about life. We're supposed to get from point A (birth) to point B (death). It's a vast ocean and you can either skim on the surface and do it, like a (normal) ship or you can go submarine, dive, deep as possible, and check what's under the hood in a manner of speaking. The choice ... is yours mon ami! You can even fly from A to B if you so desire. A metaphor, I hope a good metaphor.