I don't object to abstraction unless you assign false attributes to the abstraction. Yous source has made a list of attributes that define "being alive". When the list is applied to man-made objects with a positive result, you add another qualification: For something to be alive it has to meet all the listed criteria, plus it has to be alive.
Hello js1138! I have doubts the list is applicable to man-made objects. Such are made and receive their instructions from outside of themselves. I know there are sophisticated programs that can provide machines with a facsimile of self-organizing capabilities, a type of sensitive response, etc. But this seems a form of "mimicry" of living systems, and the reason man-made objects can "mimic" at all is because their intelligent builders know how to effect that quality in physical/mechanical systems. The object itself is seemingly incapable of doing that for itself.
Also, I doubt that man-made objects are able to modify their own internal boundary conditions, unless they are programmed to do so from outside. Thus this would not be a self-initiating process in the strict sense. Plus I do not see man-made objects as displaying any behavior that suggests they actively work against the setting in of thermodynamic equilibrium. Left to themselves, eventually they will rust, degrade, decompose, or whatever phenomenon best describes what happens to their constituent materials when entropy increases and spreads.
If an "intelligent machine" like a robot were to fall down, it wouldn't be able to get up unless it had been programmed with the information that would enable it to "perceive" it had fallen down, and that the correct response to this condition is to "get up," with full specification of the physical/mechanical means required to do this. And if it did get up, it wouldn't know, for instance, the basis of the physical/mechanical laws that apply to the procedure of its "getting up" -- unless this information had been pre-programmed in, provided for it by its builder.
In a similar situation, a "fallen down" human being would just get up, and would do it without receiving instructions for the procedure from outside or knowing the basis of the physical laws applicable to the procedure -- which he could discover for himself if he wanted to, with a self-initiated and sustained effort on his part.
You wrote, my "source has made a list of attributes that define 'being alive'." The "definition" isn't in any one of the listed items, of course, but in the ensemble; and the ultimate source of life is not listed. [We are still looking for that.] These "attributes" rather than "define" more broadly deal with descriptions of certain qualities of living systems that have been observed regularly to occur together. When you see that configuration of attributes, chances are what you are looking at is a living system, not an inanimate, man-built machine. The fact that it is possible to build a machine that can mimic these qualities goes to the credit of machine's builder, not to the machine itself. Or so it seems to me. FWIW