Came across some interesting blog posts and articles on the nature of life and consciousness in the last month or so.

John Wilkins provides a great summary of various attempts at providing a definition of life. The thermodynamics view views life as using free energy and reducing entropy. Chemistry has shown that organic compounds can be synthesized through inorganic processes. The information theoretic view is that life is a process of information production.

An older article by Susan Blackmore questions the reality of identity. Using a fascinating experiment, she goes on to state that the idea of self is an illusion. Human beings pass around ideas and concepts (which she calls memes) from generation to generation and the idea of self is a trick being played by memes. She makes the interesting observation that meditation is a meme clearing meme, it prevents other memes from creating and maintaining a false sense of identity.

Finally, this post by Nova Spivack asks the question whether it is possible for artificially constructed machines to possess consciousness. Nova postulates that it will never be possible for a machine to be conscious. Consciousness and awareness are fundamental properties of the Universe and only awareness can be aware of itself, nothing that is not aware to begin with can become aware.

Science has begun to ask fundamental questions that philosophers have been asking for centuries. There is a long history of such reasoning in India beginning with the ancient Vedas and Upanishads. Even in the twentieth century, there have been philosophers like Nisargadatta Maharaj expounding on these topics.