REDUCTIONISM AND HOLISM,CHANCE AND SELECTION,MECHANISM AND MIND

Abstract. Despite its rich and deepening panoply of empirical support, evolutionary theory continues to generate widespread concern. Some of this concern can be attributed to misunderstandings of the original concept, some to unfamiliarity with its current trajectories, and some to strongly held fears that it strips the human of cherished attributes. In this essay I seek to deconstruct such misunderstandings, lift up current concepts of what evolution entails, and address some of the existential issues it generates.     

PSYCHOANALYSIS AND INFERTILITY MYTHS AND REALITIES

Psychoanalysis, long interested in infertility, and a valuable treatment for men and women suffering with this affliction, has also helped to create and support a myth of psychogenic infertility. Multiple causes of infertility exist across the physiological - psychological spectrum. There is no simple psychodynamic causality. Advances in assisted reproductive technologies provide treatments that create emotional stress and outpace psychological preparedness of patients and analysts. This paper is based on the experience of a unique study group in Boston. An analytic case illustrates some of the ways analysis can be a treatment of choice for people using assisted reproduction. In fact, analysis offers a unique opportunity to elaborate fully the complex realities and dilemmas faced by people and their therapists throughout the infertility experience. More generally, this study of the concept of psychogenic infertility explores a valuable role for psychoanalysis in the treatment of medical conditions.     

FAITH AND DOUBT IN SCIENCE AND RELIGION

Abstract One of the contexts in which religion and science come into conflict is with regard to faith and doubt. Generally speaking, we associate faith with religion, which is opposed to doubt, and doubt with science, which is opposed to faith. Some critics of science have argued that science is also based on faith; others have shown that there is doubt in the religious context also. In this essay I clarify these positions by defining different types of faith and different types of doubt.     

NARRATIVE AND MEANING IN SCIENCE AND RELIGION

Differences of understanding in science and in religion can be explored via the distinction between paradigmatic and narrative modes of explanation. Although science is inclusive of the paradigmatic, I propose that in explaining the behavior of complex adaptive systems, and in the human sciences in particular, narratives may well constitute the best scientific explanations. Causal relationships may be embedded within, and expressions of higher-order constraints provided by, complex system dynamics, best understood via the temporal organization of intentionalities that constitute narrative. Complex adaptive systems, out of which intentions emerge, have behavioral trajectories that are in principle unique, contingent, and nondeterministic even in stable states and unpredictable across phase transitions. Given such unpredictability, the only explanation can be an interpretive story that retrospectively retraces the actual changes in dynamics. Without narrative, personality traits and human actions are incomprehensible. Such phenomena do not permit a reduction of purposive acts to nonpurposive elements or of reasons to the causes they constrain. Causality does not exhaust meaning. Given the role of narratives in human lives, religion and mythology provide larger stories within which individual stories make sense. Differences between narrative and historical truth suggest how we can be constituted by what we imagine ourselves to be.     

古米廖夫与亨廷顿:进路与术语

20世纪90年代,我着手写一篇论文“13至19世纪高加索西北地区各民族之间的关系”。从这个项目一开始,我就遇到了两个困难:采取哪个进路,使用哪个术语。当时,俄罗斯刚刚开始出版列夫·古米廖夫的文集,他是列宁格勒大学教授,曾在劳改集中营服刑。他所应用的术语从推导上讲结构似乎     

DOING AND ALLOWING, THREATS AND SEQUENCES

Abstract:  The distinction between doing and allowing appears to have moral significance, but the very nature of the distinction is as yet unclear. Philippa Foot's 'pre-existing threats' account of the doing/allowing distinction is highly influential. According to the best version of Foot's account an agent brings about an outcome if and only if his behaviour is part of the sequence leading to that outcome. When understood in this way, Foot's account escapes objections by Warren Quinn and Jonathan Bennett. However, more analysis is required to show what makes a relevant condition part of a sequence. Foot's account is promising, but incomplete.