THE SEMANTIC STRUCTURE OF EVOLUTIONARY BIOLOGY AS AN ARGUMENT AGAINST INTELLIGENT DESIGN

Abstract. This paper examines the impact of two formalizations of evolutionary biology on the antiselectionist critiques of the Intelligent Design (ID) movement. It looks first at attempts to apply the syntactic framework of the physical sciences to biology in the twentieth century, and to their effect upon the ID movement. It then examines the more heuristic account of biological‐theory structure, namely, the semantic model. Finally, it concludes by advocating the semantic conception and emphasizing the problems that the semantic model creates for ID's negative and positive theses.     

The View from Way Below: Inter‐Species Encounter,Membranes, and the Reality of Christ

Viewing modern life from the perspective and world of those whose lives are treated as expendable commodities in our current economic systems—humans and creatures of every other species—creates, Bonhoeffer asserts, the most reliable hermeneutical standpoint for seeing and living in reality. This essay attempts to fashion in broad strokes a Christian theology of creaturely re‐engagement: learning to live again “way below,” in literal and metaphoric touch with reality. I assert that Bonhoeffer's theology of I/Thou encounter as the means of humans’ ethical formation has the potential to ground a broader theology of inter‐species encounter as well.     

Robust Virtue Epistemology As Anti‐Luck Epistemology: A New Solution

Robust Virtue Epistemology (RVE) maintains that knowledge is achieved just when an agent gets to the truth through, or because of, the manifestation of intellectual virtue or ability. A notorious objection to the view is that the satisfaction of the virtue condition will be insufficient to ensure the safety of the target belief; that is, RVE is no anti‐luck epistemology. Some of the most promising recent attempts to get around this problem are considered and shown to ultimately fail. Finally, a new proposal for defending RVE as a kind of anti‐luck epistemology is defended. The view developed here turns importantly on the idea that knowledge depends on ability and luck in a way that is gradient, not rigid, and that we know just when our cognitive success depends on ability not rather, but more so, than luck.     

Democracy as a Way to Social Compromise

In modern society, democracy as a symbol of social civilization and progress is cherished. Any government or organization, whether truly democratic or not, will claim that it is democratic while its opponents are not. However, as a historical notion, democracy does not possess the quality of absoluteness. In my view, democracy, in its original meaning, should be understood as a way to social compromise, whose aim is to guarantee a relatively fair political life. Translated from New Eyesight, 2004(3) by Dong Lihe     

Categories of Life: The Status of the Camp in Derrida and Agamben

This essay is an exploration of the relationship between Agamben's 1995 text, Homo Sacer, and Derrida's 1992 “Force of Law” essay. Agamben attempts to show that the camp, as the topological space of the state of exception, has become the biopolitical paradigm for modernity. He draws this conclusion on the basis of a distinction, which he finds in an essay by Walter Benjamin, between categories of life, with the “pro‐tagonist” of the work being what he calls homo sacer, or bare life—life that is stripped of its humanity and value. Five years earlier, in 1990, Derrida had given a lecture at UCLA (later published in its entirety as “The Force of Law”) in which he had analyzed the very same essay by Benjamin and had highlighted the distinction between “base life” and “just life.” The implications of his analysis show a discomforting prox‐imity between Benjaminian messianism and the Nazi “final solution,” a conclusion that Agamben dismisses entirely. In this paper, however, I demonstrate that the structures of the two works are quite similar in many important ways. I argue that, though the broad scope of Agamben's work is original in many respects, and I would not wish to reduce Agamben's work to Derridean repetitions, he nevertheless utilizes much more of Derrida's analysis, specifically with respect to the categori‐zation of life, than he would like the reader to believe.     

IV. Logic and truth‐finding in society and sociology

The question of sociological truth‐finding is posed in the light of the view that logical formalizations, along with other arguments, only acquire relevance in illocutionary contexts, where it is not so much the abstract correctness of a sentence as the stating of it that counts. In order to become a counterfactual an argument requires its antecedent to be recognized as being contrary to the ‘facts’. To this extent there is a clear link with ‘reality’ or with a view of the world that is taken as factually given. Social science develops on the basis not only of generalizations but also of historical facts and political requirements. The question arises: in terms of what world‐view or purpose can we unambiguously declare a conditional to be a counterfactual ‐ and a significant or non‐trivial one at that? Further, can Elster's clarifications help identify political agents and the proper entities within and through which political action is performed? Finally, the problem‐solving capacity of the concept of closeness of one possible world to another or to the actual world, especially with regard to counterfactuals and causality, is questioned.     

Identity narratives of Muslim foreign workers in Japan

This article examines the identity and acculturation experience of Muslim foreign workers in Japan. The psychological impact of prolonged stay in a foreign country was studied by eliciting narratives of experiences of 24 male foreign workers from Bangladesh, Pakistan, and Iran who had been in Japan more than 5 years. By analysing the narratives they produced, three different styles of stories emerged which explained their experiences and their attempts to maintain or construct a sense of identity. Accepting the dominant narrative of Japanese society and describing oneself as ‘almost like Japanese’ was one way. Another strategy stressed the rejection of the dominant narrative as well as attempts to maintain the original narrative of the self as educated and active young men. The third narrative showed how individuals re‐defined themselves as Muslim by incorporating religious identity into a central part of their self‐concepts, and asserting its pervasive effect on all aspects of life. This study provides a perspective for acculturation research focused on social elements of identity, and derived from experiences in a relatively mono‐cultural society recently opening to immigration and in which there is a prevailing ideology of assimilation. Copyright © 2003 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Philosophy and the analysis of language

Elster's understanding of Marx is reviewed in three areas: the theory of value, the theory of history, and dialectics. In each area Elster goes astray in quite superficial ways, not instructive ones. There is a simple underlying reason in almost every case, viz. that Elster fails to confront the distinction in the philosophy of science between the methods of atomism and essentialism. Since Marx was an essentialist, Elster's attempt to assimilate Marx to the atomist tradition has as much serious interest as attempts to show that Kant was a utilitarian, Hegel a classical empiricist, or whales fishes. The conclusions are that the book is an unsympathetic treatment of Marx, that it is lacking in scholarship and balance, and that the standard of argument is unusually poor.     

A Formal Recognition of Social Attachments: Expanding Axel Honneth's Theory of Recognition

Axel Honneth draws a distinction between three types of recognition: (1) love, (2) respect and (3) social esteem. In his The Struggle for Recognition, the recognition of cultural particularity is situated in the third sphere. It will here be argued that the logic of recognition of cultural identity also demands a non‐evaluative recognition, namely a respect for difference. Difference‐respect is formal because it is a recognition of the value of a particular culture not “for society” or “as such”, but for the social group involved. Yet, although it is formal, difference‐respect cannot be reduced to respect for personal autonomy and its preconditions, as Honneth wrongly suggests in Redistribution or Recognition? It is argued here that difference‐respect is oriented towards another dimension of the person, namely social attachments. This kind of respect entails a separate register of formal recognition with a corresponding concept of personal identity and a parallel category of social disrespect. What morally justifies difference‐respect from a recognition‐theoretic approach is the practical relation‐to‐self that thus becomes possible, namely self‐respect as a sense of belonging. The formal conception of the good life that Honneth articulates should include the insight that this sense of belonging is as much a necessary condition for the good life as is personal autonomy.     

What is wrong with incest?

Incest taboos should be seen as involving non‐sexual objections to sexual relations, that is, objections based on who people are in relation to each other, rather than their activities. What is at stake is brought out by considering certain objections to father‐daughter incest and certain features of taboos. The objections that matter do not depend on social ties and distinctions having a biological basis, but there is nonetheless a biological element in incest taboos. To see it, one must look to the nature of the Oedipus complex, and to the conditions for the development of the individual and of society. There may be prohibitions which are necessary (to morality, to society, to humanity) even though they may not be justifiable within a narrower conception (e.g. utilitarian) of morality and justification. And so taboos which are universal (occur, in one form or another, in every society), and absolute (allow no questioning), and impose strict liability (allow no excuse), may not be irrational: they may mark the boundaries that shape a way of life.     

Naturalizing Subjective Character

When I have a conscious experience of the sky, there is a bluish way it is like for me to have that experience. We may distinguish two aspects of this “bluish way it is like for me”: (i) the bluish aspect and (ii) the for‐me aspect. Let us call the bluish aspect of the experience its qualitative character and the for‐me aspect its subjective character. What is this elusive for‐me‐ness, or subjective character, of conscious experience? In this paper, I examine six different attempts to account for subjective character in terms of the functional and representational properties of conscious experiences. After arguing against the first five, I defend the sixth.     

Mary Astell on Bad Custom and Epistemic Injustice

Mary Astell is a fascinating seventeenth‐century figure whose work admits of many interpretations. One feature of her work that has received little attention is her focus on bad custom. This is surprising; Astell clearly regards bad custom as exerting a kind of epistemic power over agents, particularly women, in a way that limits their intellectual capacities. This article aims to link two contemporary sociopolitical/social‐epistemological projects by showing how a seventeenth‐century thinker anticipated these projects. Astell's account of bad custom shows that she was attuned to the kinds of institutional or structural explanations theorized by Sally Haslanger, and that she acknowledges that bad custom—as an institutional or structural explanation—is intimately linked with epistemic injustice, albeit a kind not yet captured by contemporary social epistemologists. I call this form of epistemic injustice found in Astell epistemic internalization injustice. I argue that the epistemic significance of Astell's notion of bad custom is that it enables us to understand how bad custom conditions human relations in such a way as to result in epistemic injustice. Through coming to understand her notion of bad custom, we can expand our understanding of social epistemic phenomena like epistemic injustice.     

Suicidal Behaviors in Surviving Monozygotic and Dizygotic Co‐Twins: Is the Nature of the Co‐Twin's Cause of Death a Factor?

Genetically informative samples can address hereditary and experiential influences on suicide‐related behaviors. The frequency of suicide‐related behaviors was compared in twins from two survivor groups: (1) those whose co‐twins' deaths were suicides (monozygotic [MZ]: n = 47; dizygotic [DZ]: n = 31), and (2) those whose co‐twins' deaths were nonsuicides (MZ: n = 347; DZ: n = 170). The frequency of suicide attempts among suicide survivors was significantly higher in MZ than DZ twins, while the frequency of suicide attempts among nonsuicide twin survivors did not differ between MZ and DZ twins. Twin concordance for suicide attempts more likely reflects a genetic predisposition than a behavioral reaction to the loss.     

Rawls and the Problem of Honour

In this paper, I consider the difficult relationship between Rawls, religion and the values that religious believers might consider important in order to lead the good life. Contrary to many of Rawls’ defenders, I argue that at least some of the values that religious citizens are likely to hold cannot be accounted for under Rawls’ theory or under his conception of the good life. I argue that the model of goods which Rawls takes to be part of a thin theory of the good is tied to his belief that under the Original Position justice can be derived from calculations of self-interest alone. To perform my critique, I consider the paradigmatic case of honour in so-called traditional societies. I argue that the way Rawls thematizes primary goods in A Theory of Justice, including concepts like esteem, cannot account for the way honour manifests itself inside traditional communities. I conclude the paper by considering how Rawls might be able to defend his theory against my objection, by considering the relationship between Rawls’ theory, and the rationalization and secularization of society.     

What are the Categories in Sein und Zeit? Brandom on Heidegger on Zuhandenheit

In his essay, ‘Heidegger's Categories in Sein und Zeit’, Robert Brandom argues that Heidegger, particularly in the notion of Zuhandenheit, anticipates his own normatively pragmatist conception of intentionality. He attempts to demonstrate this by marshalling short passages from right across the relevant sections of Sein und Zeit in such a way that they do seem to say what Brandom claims. But does one reach the same conclusion when one examines, more or less in sentence‐by‐sentence fashion, the large slab of text in which Heidegger introduces the notion of Zuhandenheit? I believe not. First, however, let us look at how Brandom reads Heidegger, in particular, how he interprets the notion of Zuhandenheit, which, in contrast both to Macquarrie and Robinson and to Brandom, I shall translate as ready‐to‐handedness. ^{1 1}This translation is preferable because it emphasises the character of the ready‐to‐hand as what is and will appear as relevant to ongoing practical activity in a genuinely occasional sense. Macquarrie and Robinson translate Zuhandenheit as readiness‐to‐hand, but this is something an entity possesses when it is ready‐for‐such‐and‐such should an appropriate kind of subject be there to make use of it. The term is in fact more accurately translated as ready‐to‐handedness, i.e. something an entity possesses when it is in a position to help a subject which is actually there to be helped by it. Obviously, the Zuhandenheit of an entity entails its readiness‐to‐hand, but not conversely.
     

Suicidality,Self‐Harm,and Body Dissatisfaction in Transgender Adolescents and Emerging Adults with Gender Dysphoria

Prevalence of suicide attempts, self‐injurious behaviors, and associated psychosocial factors were examined in a clinical sample of transgender (TG) adolescents and emerging adults (n = 96). Twenty‐seven (30.3%) TG youth reported a history of at least one suicide attempt and 40 (41.8%) reported a history of self‐injurious behaviors. There was a higher frequency of suicide attempts in TG youth with a desire for weight change, and more female‐to‐male youth reported a history of suicide attempts and self‐harm behaviors than male‐to‐female youth. Findings indicate that this population is at a high risk for psychiatric comorbidities and life‐threatening behaviors.     

WHAT ARE DESIRES GOOD FOR? TOWARDS A COHERENT ENDORSEMENT THEORY

Desire‐based theories of well‐being are often said to accept (G), x is good for a person just in case he wants it, and (B), x is better for a person than y just in case he prefers x to y. I shall argue that (G) and (B) are inconsistent, and this inconsistency resists any plausible refinement of these principles. The inconsistency is brought out by cases in which our wants and preferences for certain life‐options are contingent on which life‐option we realize. My argument can be generalized to endorsement theories that define a person’s good as the right combination of some kind of objective desirability and subjective endorsement, and allow preferences to be tie‐breakers when the compared objects are equally desirable (or incommensurable). My conclusions will not just be negative. I shall argue that if the choice is between (G) and (B), the most attractive option is to keep (G), slightly refined, and drop (B). 1