Being alive: how biology, agency and naturalness predict English speakers' understanding of life.
Rissman Lilia·Acta psychologica
Animacy is an essential construct in cognitive science, distinguishing animate entities like a gorilla from inanimate entities like a shovel. Animacy is often investigated by observing how people interpret the meaning of the word alive. While aliveness is conventionally understood to be a dichotomy-something is either…