From: Owleye 

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My general concerns are about reductionist
arguments, particularly as they go against the common use of terms.  I concede that
living organisms do not defy the laws of the physical universe, just because in
isolation they seem to exhibit behavior that overcomes the second law of
thermodynamics.  This doesn't mean that living organism are not something "special."
Your use of stability (dynamic equilibrium) has some significance to this.  If it is
reasonable to assume that there is a dynamic equilibrium of sorts that exists, one may
suppose that there is a reason for its stability.  This reason may be reduced to
explanations of entities that in themselves don't exhibit the behavior of the emergent
entity and/or they may be coupled with taking into consideration a larger context, but
this doesn't justify making the claim that the entity is nothing but those reducible
entities.  To me, this is the reductionist bias.  The further problem I have with many
of the arguments about humans is that I think it reasonable to suggest that the human
entity is not a particularly stable one (though for the purposes of argument I'll
concede to this).  To get an idea of what I'm talking about, I don't believe we can
make a case similar to other living things that humans occupy a niche.  Moreover, it
is so "adaptive" that it can no longer speciate.  Indeed, natural selection may be
coming to an end.  Of course, my protagonist is arguing that humans are different
because of our "holistic rationality."  I don't know how this feature could have
arisen, since from his perspective it goes against the grain of natural selection.
Perhaps he thinks humans did not evolve by being naturally selected.

owleye