
The essay takes a critical stance towards the widespread thesis that life is computable oreven reproducible on a medium other than a biological body. The insights of some opponents of thatthesis were somehow anticipated by Whitehead in his metaphysical works, and the essay is intended tostress the relevance of Whitehead’s processual ontology to the debate on artificial life. Some ofWhitehead’s notions, such as the mental pole and the living person, help significantly to account forthe divide between organisms and machines. Two distinctive characteristics of organisms areespecially analyzed by the essay: their ontogenetic development and their mental faculties.
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