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    A capacity that is never actualized and is causally inert... — Carmelics
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    Challenges→Being alive consists in having the capacity to engage in vital activities, not in actually engaging in them.

    A capacity that is never actualized and is causally inert from the organism's perspective is indistinguishable, functionally, from no capacity at all for sustaining life.

    ?Rate how convincing each reason is below to see the overall strength.
    1 reason for
    1 reason against

    Reasons For

    1 perspective
    Reason for
    ?
    • 1.Functional equivalence is determined by causal effects within a system, not by theoretical possibility or latent structure.
      ?

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    • 2.An organism cannot benefit from or depend upon capacities it never exercises, making them pragmatically irrelevant to survival.
      ?

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    • 3.If two states produce identical observable outcomes across all possible conditions, ontological distinction between them is superfluous.
      ?

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    Reasons Against

    1 perspective
    Reason against
    ?
    • 1.Unrealized capacities can provide resilience and adaptive potential that matters even if never actualized in current environments.
      ?

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    • 2.Functional equivalence requires comparison across all possible contexts, not just actual ones; unrealized capacities differ in counterfactual conditions.
      ?

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    • 3.The distinction between dormant capacity and absence explains structural differences that enable future actualization when conditions change.
      ?

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    Connections

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    Afterlife & Death1 linked

    Related

    An organism cannot benefit from or depend upon capacities it never exercises, ma...Being alive consists in having the capacity to engage in vital activities, not i...Functional equivalence is determined by causal effects within a system, not by t...Functional equivalence requires comparison across all possible contexts, not jus...
    +3 moreShow less
    If two states produce identical observable outcomes across all possible conditio...The distinction between dormant capacity and absence explains structural differe...Unrealized capacities can provide resilience and adaptive potential that matters...

    Details

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    claim
    Perspectives
    2 (1 for, 1 against)
    Edits
    1 edit