“You knit me together in my mother’s womb”: a theology of creation and divine action in light of intersex

ABSTRACT

Some Christian theologians and intersex Christians maintain that intersex is part of God’s good and intended creation, in contrast to those who view intersex as a pathological result of fallen nature. The former claim that intersex bodies “are how God made them” and that “God does not make mistakes;” however, these statements risk implying a belief in special creation or divine intervention, two theological positions which have been challenged by evolutionary theory and contemporary natural sciences. This paper provides a more nuanced theology of creation and divine action as a foundation for a positive theology of intersex. Drawing from the work of Thomas Aquinas on primary and secondary causality, the author argues that God, as primary cause, creates the intersex person through the free interplay of secondary causes, in the same way and to the same extent that God acts in the creation of every other person.     

Defeasibility and Gettierization: A Reminder

For some of us, the defeasibility theory of knowledge remains the most plausible approach to the Gettier Problem. Epistemological fashion and faded memories notwithstanding, persuasive objections to the theory are very hard to find. The most impressive of those objections to the theory that have hitherto gone unanswered are examined and rejected here. These are objections put forward by Richard Feldman, Richard Foley, and John Turri. While these are all interesting, the objection recently put forward by Turri is, we think, by far, the most serious threat to the theory that we have seen in a long time. A successful reply to it requires a surprising amount of care, as it turns out. If tenable, Turri's objection deals a devastating blow to the theory developed by Roderick Chisholm, Keith Lehrer, Peter Klein, Marshall Swain, Risto Hilpinen, John Pollock, and Paul Moser, among others. Under scrutiny, however, the threat proves illusory. It results from inattention to a crucial, but relatively subtle, aspect of the theory. Interestingly, there is only one source in the defeasibilist literature for a precise account of this crucial feature of the theory: one of the most neglected passages in Peter Klein's work on the issue. That crucial feature is put under the spotlight here. Our response to three major objections to the defeasibility theory requires a brief introduction to the theory as an anti-Gettier weapon, an introduction aimed at countering the numbing simplicity that characterizes most introductions to the topic. Following this brief introduction, those three objections are tackled. We conclude, on that basis, that anybody who fails to notice how resilient the defeasibility theory has proven to be for the last fifty years has a seriously deficient understanding of the current state of play in the debate over the Gettier Problem.     

The differential effect of three auditory stimuli on the frequency of stuttering behaviors

In view of the frequent clinical use of external auditory stimuli in fluency building programs, the purpose of the present experiment was to compare the effects of rhythmic pacing, delayed auditory feedback, and high intensity masking noise on the frequency of stuttering by dysfluency type. Twelve normal hearing young adult stutterers completed an oral reading (approximately 250 syllables) and conversational speech task (3 min) while listening to the three auditory stimuli and during a control condition presented in random order. The results demonstrated that during oral reading all three auditory stimuli were associated with significant reductions in stuttering frequency. However, during conversational speech, only the metronome produced a significant reduction in total stuttering frequency. Individual dysfluency types were not differentially affected by the three auditory stimuli.     

Reliability of electrodermal habituation measures under two conditions of stimulus intensity

The present study investigated test-retest reliability of habituation of the evoked skin conductance response. Subjects received 20 presentations of a 1000-Hz, 3-sec tone at the same time of day on two separate occasions, separated by an interval of 97–160 days. Thirteen subjects received stimuli of 90 dB, while for 24 subjects, stimulus intensity was 70 dB. Interstimulus interval was 21 sec for both groups. Both absolute rate of habituation and trials to criterion displayed moderate reliability, and the relationships between habituation measures and other aspects of electrodermal activity were in agreement with previous findings.     

Crossed aphasia in an illiterate dextral

An 83 year old illiterate, right-handed woman developed a persistent nonfluent aphasia following a right cerebral infarction (crossed aphasia). Computerized axial tomography localized the lesion to the right posterior frontal lobe.It is suggested that the neural mechanisms involved in learning to read and write may be critical for the complete establishment and maintenance of language dominance in the left hemisphere, and that, in this case, the patient's failure to acquire reading and writing skills altered the normal evolution of language lateralization and resulted in the right hemisphere assuming the dominant role.