I don't know of any definition of "alive" that can survive application of a reductive understanding of biology that doesn't either count viruses as being "alive

I don't know of any definition of "alive" that can survive application of a reductive understanding of biology that doesn't either count viruses as being "alive," or decide that nothing is alive. The uncertainty, I understood, was whether to classify them as distinct organisms the way we classify other species, as they are intrinsically parasitic for their replicative capability.