Is there any difference between an inanimate object and a dead object?

Answer 1

In some ways this is a trick question as many dead objects, such as road kill, are themselves full of bacteria and viruses and larvae, so the are far from dead. In this circumstance we use the term dead to indicate the loss of a certain level of consciousness through the death of a multicellular creatures coordination system.

Living and dead is a concept, not a scientifically or logically provable state. The concept is that living objects are composed of nonliving matter and an organised living component. Dead objects are either past living objects or never have been alive, either way they are somehow missing the living component.

The simplest component is a nonliving, or never have lived, item such as a hydrogen atom. This is a theoretical object, as we can not presently measure or even observe the difference between this item in a living and nonliving state.

At present it has been measured that living complex microscopic structures utilize energy in a manner that can not be explained using the quantum or billiard ball style of physics modeling. The observed and measured energy production process within the mitochondria of all living cells is explicable only if we consider energy transfer as a wave or field.

It is therefore proposed that we presently place the division between living and nonliving objects as "living objects utilize energy as a field to power their coordinated chemical and electrical activities". Nonliving objects or components can be brought into this field or taken out. If this was the model adopted one can quickly see that we are starting to consider the 'object' as a nonliving component under the control of a field. This is also unlikely as modern physics considers atoms to be part of (entangled with) this field.

So we go full circle and perhaps have to conclude there is no such separation. That all things are, and always will be alive, but that the field is just more obviously, visually and energetically active in objects or structure we consider living.

Answer 2

An object classified as "dead" is implied to have been "alive" at some point of its existance. Therefore dead objects are objects that have previously been alive and now aren't. A withered tree stump and a corpse are dead objects.

An object that is "inanimate" is simply defined as "non moving" or, more precisely, "non capable of autonomous movement/existance".

An inanimate object not only isn't alive at the moment (as a dead body), but has never been alive at all. A rock or a steel pipe are inanimate objects.