Intrinsitivity

Classic ontological struggles, often employed in fiction, can be most generally epitomized as Man v. Man and Man v. Nature. As subcategories, Man v. Man can include Man v. Self, while Man v. Nature can include Man v. God.

As a thought experiment, consider that Man v. Nature is not a figure/ground relationship in which nonliving environments act, for better or worse, on helpless sentient beings. Erasing this distinction has the interesting consequence of erasing the distinction thought to cohere between the living and the nonliving.

Furthermore, consider that members of the world act by the interaction of their individual respective biological configurations with those of other lifeforms. Consider, in addition, that lifeforms also act within themselves by the interaction of interior parts, making the figure/ground relationship symbiotically symmetric.

It may be objected that what permanently separates the living from the nonliving and what, therefore, maintains the figure/ground relationship is free will. The basic argument is that the living choose their own actions, while the nonliving do not and that this difference irreconcilably separates the two.

This view is mistaken, however, in that the living, it will be agreed by all opponents, do not act outside the limitations of their respective configurations. This is no different from what happens in the case of the nonliving. The human is simply a more complex entity than the rock and the difference in level of complexity is so different that it begs us to conceptualize an impassible division between what chooses and what does not.

Yet, the truth is that choice is an emergent perceptual byproduct of complexity and not a permanent divider between what lives and what does not. Our refusal to accept that a rock could one day become a human is a limitation imposed on us by survival instinct.