A practical approach in the inquiry of life is to contrast living beings with nonliving ones from different perspectives and extract the distinctive features of living beings. We can identify features and mechanisms that truthfully account for the differences between living and nonliving beings by making rigorous logic-based inferences. The set of these differences constitutes the traits or characteristics of life. When the living beings are carefully examined, the apparent characteristics of life are ascertained to be existence, subjectivity, agency, purposiveness and mission orientation, primacy and supremacy, naturality, field phenomenon, locality, transience, transcendence, simplicity, unicity, initiation, information processing, traits, code of conduct, hierarchy and nesting, and the aptitude to vanish. Each feature is described, justified, and explained in detail in this observation-based philosophical article. Among them, an agency with purpose, knowledge, and power is the key feature of life without which the behavior of living beings cannot be explained. These eighteen characteristics constitute a reasonably comprehensive set of features to distinguish living beings from nonliving ones. However, the enigma of life remains.
Keywords: Agency of life; Animate beings; Characteristics of life; Features of life; Life; Nature of life; Ontology of life; Traits of life.
© 2023 The Author.