Spirits (was RE: [extropy-chat] Qualia Bet.)

[gts]

On Tue, 29 Nov 2005 01:45:06 -0500, The Avantguardian  
<avantguardian2020 at yahoo.com> wrote:

> BTW on the question of spirit . . . what is it that
> makes, in nearly all cases of identical twins that I
> am aware of that live together and share an identical
> environment, one twin dominant over the other? If it
> is neither nature nor nurture, than what is it?

I wonder why you seem to think this is not an example of nature or  
nurture. Humans tend to organize into hierarchies probably to avoid the  
"too many chiefs, not enough indians" syndrome.

Also I wonder why you are defending elan vital. The pan-vitalism you  
described to me in the qualia thread is not elan vital. In fact I wonder  
why you consider it vitalism. You described a theory of life's origins  
entirely consistent with ordinary science, but in which biological life  
must have originated elsewhere at an earlier time. I don't see that you  
need anything like elan vital to defend your theory.

-gts