
The idea of extended organism in 20th century thought (2010) - panic
http://www.ut.ee/hortussemioticus/6_2010/rattasepp.html
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westoncb
Questions like this highlight the practical character of the
taxonomies/theories we construct. It seems like a very strange and maybe
stupid question if you are thinking along the lines of, "is society _really_
an organism after all?"—but if instead you just wonder if it would be _useful_
to consider society as an organism, you may find it has enough shared
properties to make the designation appropriate, which in turn allows you to
borrow certain known things about other organisms and apply them to societies.

On this specific question, I think 'organism' comes with too many additional
properties not possessed by societies. But, I would not be surprised to find
that it's useful to class societies as being the same types of things as
minds. For instance, minds and societies both do a kind of decision making
(e.g., electing a president). There's a temptation to say that it was just the
humans doing the decision making—but a more objective view is that decision
making is something that happens in human minds (the human didn't _do_ it—the
neurons did! —no, the molecules did!). Of course all sorts of difficulties may
arise, and we're already bumping up against claims on free will... Seems like
a fruitful thing to think about though.

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mannykannot
The article begins with the observation "living beings extend beyond
themselves into their environments." Whether, or to what extent, that
observation is justified, depends on specific facts of biology. Whether it is
a useful observation to make depends, I think, on whether it helps people
discuss and understand biology, and, in particular, whether it is fruitful in
opening up the way to further insights. If it does prove to be generally
useful, language and its usage will adapt, just as language always does, and
the fact that this has not happened here suggests that it not useful enough as
a distinct concept to lead to a change in language.

I would guess that is because either the phenomena offered in support of the
suggestion are not general enough, or that they are so diverse that they have
little else in common, or that the observation that organisms interact with
their environment is so trivially and generally true that it goes without
saying.

There is no right answer here - the underlying biology is the same regardless
of how you describe it - and one could argue endlessly whether one or the
other is the optimal way of looking at things, but I think actual usage is the
ultimate answer to that question; the wisdom of the crowds (of biologists)
will prevail.

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euparkeria
I like to think that my itens are a extension of my body, my smartphone for
example one way to acess a enourmous neural web.

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amelius
I guess we choose boundaries as we see fit. For example, a mother can be
thought of as extending into her children; however, if we want to describe
evolutionary processes, this is not the proper way of thinking.

