The living and the dead

“The air is made up of gases.  It is not ‘living’.  It supports life but it is not in itself alive.”  So is one to conclude from that that the air is therefore dead?  ‘Inanimate’?  Is there a term for what supports life but is not itself living?  “Water is not in itself living.”  So - since I regularly fill myself with water, in some form, and fill myself with air too - breathe in the air and breathe it out again - is this act of filling and emptying to do with dead matter?    Am I like some sort of plaster image, solid and largely unliving, and conscious but except somehow not, insensate, feeling only in the nerve ends so that further in … nothing, cold, black, empty elsewhere - ?   Are only parts of me living?  If so, which parts?  My eyes but not my hair?  My fingers but not my bowels?  My finger tips but not my nails?  Do I live ’subdermally’?  Is it the raw skin that is alive and not the outer ‘dead’ surface?  How should the living be divided from the dead?  Can one speak of scientific discovery in these terms?  Suppose science were to discover that ‘categorically speaking’ “Nothing is really alive”?  “All is really dead” - ?

Tags: Metaphysics