ABSTRACT
Camels and palm trees are alive; mountains and lakes are not. At least, this seems obvious to us. Yet, in some cultures, lakes would be alive, which indicates that our certainty of knowing what life is might not be completely or unanimously justified. Generally, life is ascribed on the basis of some appearance of spontaneous motion. Lakes move, but because of the wind; camels and palm trees seem to move, first, when they grow, and then through space, concerning the camel. A kind of motion is supposed to characterize life, and, for us, the lake is not alive because motion comes from the outside. Hence, inner motion, it seems, provides us with a first clue to justify our immediate feeling that some things are alive. But then, what is this “inner”-ity, how to distinguish it from other motions? We just face the same problem, one step later: capturing what exactly makes something such that we undoubtedly say it is alive, what properly constitutes its “vital motion …”
