Maybe redefine life against a continuum of how unlikely, complex the necessary environmental conditions are that sustain it?

Yes, sorry, that's another thing I missed off the write-up. Rather than "life" being a binary "you're either a living organism or you are not", it might be better looked at as a scale. One possible measure being the range of environments in which you are a viable searcher; another being the percentage you control of the parts of the environment that are relevant to your replication.

The alternative viewpoint suggested was rather than asking how alive a single organism is, ask what is the required organism+(other organisms or part of the environment) that should be considered to have the necessary attributes to count (collectively) as alive.