If a car's parts were somehow capable of replacing some of themselves with fresh parts without outside assistance, so that the activities of its current parts were responsible for its future composition, that would make it quite lifelike.
metaphysics(Hartshorne's naturalistic redefinition of metaphysics)
On Hartshorne's view, the study not of realities beyond the physical, but of features of reality that are ubiquitous or that would exist in any possible world.
The answer seems to be that, normally, a live object has a distinctive sort of control over whether things come to be, or cease to be, part of it. The control in question is made possible by activities its constituents themselves are capable of. Contrast objects that are not alive, say automobiles. What an ordinary car is composed of is settled for the car by the mechanics who repair it (detaching some parts and affixing others), by whether it is involved in an accident and loses some parts, and so forth. Imagine a car that is not passive in this way. Imagine that its parts were somehow capabl...