What is the folk concept of life?

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 (Unpublished).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.

Official URL: https://xphiprague.eu/

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:

09 Jul 2024 09:55

URI:

https://boris.unibe.ch/id/eprint/168596

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