If you begin with materialistic[0] premises, it's little wonder that life becomes elusive. Indeed, life becomes meaningless as the concept cannot be accounted f

If you begin with materialistic[0] premises, it's little wonder that life becomes elusive. Indeed, life becomes meaningless as the concept cannot be accounted for within materialism. Now, if you begin with the common sense view that a rock is not alive, but a cat is, and then switch to a materialistic mode of explanation to try to find the reason why one is alive and the other isn't, you won't get anywhere in answering that question. Methodologically speaking, it should lead you to at least suspect your materialistic premises. I would say that physical living things will need to have morphologies that serve the functions they possess. This much is obvious: I cannot see without the right morphological features to enable sight. But there is no morphological difference between a living eye and a dead eye, so to speak. A dead eye isn't even an eye, because to be an eye is to function as an eye. So morphology is insufficient. The language of materialism is simply too poor to talk about such things. It is too poor for morphology itself. [0] Before anyone responds with indignation, please understand that "materialism" has a technical meaning in philosophical and metaphysical contexts. It doesn't follow that non-materialists are people who believe in ectoplasm or believe life requires ghosts. In short, materialism is the position that all that exists is res extensa. Given the Cartesian view of the world, subtract res cogitans and you have materialism. No one lives completely as if this were true, but if some measure of intellectual assent is given to it, it can lead to very stupid conclusions.