On Monday, 25th February, Alan Taylor introduced a topic

that initially struck me as being rather odd: "Are Computer

Viruses a Form of Life?" I guess it also struck quite a few

other people as odd, because the turnout was relatively

low, at 14. I agreed to the topic because I'm a firm

believer that *any* topic can in principle be

philosophical; what matters is not so much what is

discussed, but how it is discussed. And on this occasion we

were not disappointed: those who skipped this meeting

missed a very stimulating philosophical discussion--a nice

contrast to our previous disappointment in trying to

discuss "nothing".

Alan provided us with clear and concise definitions

of “computer virus”, “biological virus” and “life”. In

discussing the former pair, he argued that identifying any

essential differences between these two is much harder than

might at first appear. In discussing the latter, he pointed

out that, ever since “vitalism” (the view that life

consists of some extra-physical substance or principle that

lies beyond the grasp of science) has become unfashionable,

biologists have been surprisingly non-committal when it

comes to giving alternative explanations for what makes

life life. Instead of giving a clear definition, they tend

to list the various *functions* that are typically

associated with life. The question at hand can hardly be

answered without first deciding on a definition for life,

so Alan recommended that we focus on this task in our

discussion. He suggested that any suitable definition must

satisfy three criteria: (1) it must apply positively to all

living things; (2) it must successfully exclude all non-

living things; (3) it must provide us with a way of testing

new things to determine which category they properly fall

under.

During the initial question time, Alan shared some examples

of the types of functions biologists often claim life-forms

must have (e.g., a metabolism, an ability to replicate, a

tendency to evolve) and pointed out that computer viruses

meet all these functional criteria. It was suggested that

many machines would have to be regarded as being alive on

these grounds, and that perhaps “self-determination” should

be added to the list of essential criteria. The idea here

seemed to be that biological viruses are, but computer

viruses are not, self-determining: the latter are created

intentionally by human beings and quite a lot is known

about them, whereas the former arise on their own and are

still not very well understood by scientists. In any case,

Alan emphasized that the most significant philosophical

problem raised by this topic is that it reveals how little

we know about what life actually is. Life seems to be

essentially mysterious.

Before dividing us up into two groups, I suggested that the

groups focus on one or both of two basic issues: attempting

to define more clearly what life is; and attempting to

decide whether the term “virus” when applied to “computer

viruses” is just an analogy or whether computer and

biological viruses are literally two types of the same

thing (so that if biological viruses are alive, so are

their computerized cousins). As it turned out, one group

focused on the first issue, and the other group on the

second issue. I was in the latter group, so I’ll report

here a few of our most interesting insights. Members of

this small group pointed out that viruses are essentially

non-cellular templates for carrying information; these

templates then “graft” themselves onto cells and transfer

the information to those cells, thus changing the way they

function. This seems to hold true equally well for both

types of viruses. The only difference is in the nature of

the cells that are “infected” by this process. For

biological viruses, the cells must have DNA or RNA in order

to be invaded; for computer viruses, the hardware must be

programmed with some type of software. Probably the most

significant insight came right at the end of our

discussion: that in both these cases one key element is

needed that is actually neither hardware nor software: in

computers this element is *electricity*; in cell-based

matter this energy is itself the very thing we call “life”.

That is, the cells must be *alive* in order for a virus to

have any effect. Thus, surprisingly, it seems that the

source of “life” is equally elusive in both cases, not

being traceable to either the “software” or to

the “hardware”.

When we reconvened, the other group shared that they spend

most of the time discussing why defining life is so

notoriously difficult. We simply do not know what

this “thing” is that we call “life”. Is this because

vitalism (despite being so out of fashion nowadays) is

true, or is it simply because our concept is vague? Some of

them felt that computers could quite properly be regarded

as “artificial life”, with emphasis on the

term “artificial”. In response to their suggestions, we

discussed other possible options as to what might

constitute the essence of life, such as the ability to grow

without changing its basic shape. In this case, however,

all that would be needed would be for a computer to be made

with this function in order for us to be required to regard

it as being alive. Alan closed the meeting with the ominous

news that researchers are now toying with the idea of

actually using DNA taken from living tissue as the material

for the next generation of computers.