Abstract
I will be discussing the plausibility of Mark Bedau’s supple adaptation view of life. After presenting the essential aspects of the view, I introduce a hypothetical system of romance novels and romance novel authors, which captures those aspects of a system which are necessary for life under Bedau’s view. Using this romance novel system as a starting point, I discuss other intuitively non-living systems, like economies and scientific literature, which would be considered alive by Bedau’s standards. Finally, I present one objection to Bedau’s view and suggest how his view might change in order to become more widely accepted.
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Domjan, P. (1999). Are Romance Novels Really Alive? A Discussion of the Supple Adaptation View of Life. In: Floreano, D., Nicoud, JD., Mondada, F. (eds) Advances in Artificial Life. ECAL 1999. Lecture Notes in Computer Science(), vol 1674. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/3-540-48304-7_6
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/3-540-48304-7_6
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