Beisbart, Claus; Reuter, Kevin (18 June 2021). What is the folk concept of life? (Unpublished). In: 1st European Experimental Philosophy Conference. Prague/online. 17.-19.6.2021.
The old question “What is life?” has recently drawn intensified attention. If an answer to the question is to move beyond mere stipulation, it has to keep some similarity to the folk concept of life. In this talk, we present results from experiments on the folk concept of life. Using a semantic feature task (Study 1), we show that people associate macroscopic functionings such as growth, breath or nutrition with living beings. If asked for universal features of life (Study 2), however, participants most often name cells and organic matter. We use the contrast between the salient and the universal features of life to argue that life is a natural kind concept.
Item Type: |
Conference or Workshop Item (Speech) |
|---|---|
Division/Institute: |
06 Faculty of Humanities > Department of Art and Cultural Studies > Institute of Philosophy 06 Faculty of Humanities > Department of Art and Cultural Studies > Institute of Philosophy > Theoretical Philosophy |
UniBE Contributor: |
Beisbart, Claus, Reuter, Kevin |
Subjects: |
100 Philosophy 100 Philosophy > 120 Epistemology |
Language: |
English |
Submitter: |
Claus Beisbart |
Date Deposited: |
22 Apr 2022 10:19 |
Last Modified: |
05 Dec 2022 16:18 |
URI: |
https://boris.unibe.ch/id/eprint/168596 |
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