I think the distinction has always been between "alive" and "conscious", not between "alive" and "dead". A rabbit is more self-aware than a carrot, we think (because it has a central nervous system).

If you dig deep enough, the frontier between alive and death is actually blurry. Things like viruses challenge the intuitive understanding of what alive means.

The water cycle makes it so that any water that you consume today will probably have been part of some other alive being at some point in the past.