http://gspotblogspotblogspotblogspotblogspot.blogspot.com/2011/01/on-computers.html
I'm taking the very great liberty of focusing this blog post on Aristotle**'s opinion on the philosophical question of whether computers are alive or not rather than the mechanisms by which vapors cause three of the four elements to form different sorts of plants and computers in differing climates. Although, before that I will state that I did find Aristotle**'s scientific assumptions very interesting. I always did like a little history.
I want to note that I've never put very much stock into that sort of question. When asking "Is a computer alive?" I'm almost certainly not going to learn any new, relevant information about what a computer is or to what role in the world the computer belongs. Rather, all the participants are going to understand with a reasonably high degree of accuracy exactly what a computer is going into the discussion, and spend a non-trivial amount of time and energy debating the semantics of "life". Not a particularly useful topic as it isn't generally going to lead to greater clarity of communication in the future.
The definition of life Aristotle** uses in On Plants, however, is somewhat different than our modern one and more interesting to write about, certainly. Apparently, plants can't be completely alive because they lack locomotion, although they must be at least partially alive since they take in both moist and solid food, among other factors. Not breathing and not sleeping are strikes against them, although there appears to be some confusion as to whether the plants posses sexes. At any rate, we certainly are led by Aristotle** to the conclusion that plants are partially alive. I feel that most computers would fall into that category as well, at least if one were convinced electricity was analogous to food.
Someone could probably fill all the criteria listed (frustratingly, I am missing a page early). It would be possible, I'm sure to design a computer that ran on something that clearly qualified as "food", could move, respire, and have inactive periods during recharge cycles. Since strong vs weak AI type distinctions don't seem to be relevant here, the focus being entirely on what a thing does to determine what it is, rather than trying to derive the latter directly, if it acts alive it is likely alive in the opinion of Aristotle**.
Pictured: Alive.
Source: Wikipedia.
Note: The notation ** follows that of the book, and accordingly Aristotle** is the author of the piece, even though we all know he wasn't Aristotle.
Interesting that you mention that Aristotle would only consider the actions of a certain entity to determine whether or not something is "alive." Because the term computers contain such a wide variety of devices (like PCs, Roombas, smartphones, etc.,) I personally don't think Aristotle would have been able to classify computers into a certain state. In a certain way, you could even argue that with all the variations present in a "computer's" behavior, it might make more sense to have computers be a sort of artificial parallel to the natural order here on Earth. Using such a paradigm, only basic devices like sensors and word processors could be considered plants, and more advanced devices like rescue robots could be analogous to humans or animals.
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