[Piers]

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First, see my book recommendation in a previous post above. Second, arbitrary gut feelings lead to confusion - In fact, much more confusion than the employment of the scientific method I would submit. The last 400 years of the history of science has proven that. But many people find this easy to dismiss. This is not surprising but it is unfortunate.

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Well all else equal you are correct. The difference however between “gut feeling” and a standardised definition is in expectations.

If I use a “gut” masseurs I am fully aware it’s a fairly arbitrary subjective measure which can freely change with context. Which means I wont give my definition any more weight than it deserves.

A standardised definition of life will typically be raised to higher standard, while its still basically arbitrary many people will treat it as if it is not. Leading to lots of pointless definition fights.

Standardising the definition of life might be useful for calibrating scientific progress, although I would prefer to qualify the term life. (self aware life, conscious life, aware life, organic life, computerised life, artificial life, naturally evolved life, viral life, sub viral life etc. etc.) For my own thought processes I personally don’t like to do this, I found a more flexible context dependent usage less confusing; maybe I am just weird.