Global Progress I: Empirical Evidence for ongoing Increase in Quality-of-life

This paper argues that both the relativist and the pessimist critiques of the idea of progress are inadequate. Progress is defined as increase in global quality of life (QOL). Such QOL is intrinsically subjective, but not relative. It can be reliably measured through life satisfaction-type questions. The World Database of Happiness provides extensive data on social, economic and psychological factors that correlate with overall QOL. They include wealth, health, security, knowledge, freedom and equality. Various statistical data suggest that all these QOL indicators have undergone significant improvements during the last half century, in most of the world. This gives strong support to the thesis that progress objectively occurs.     

HUMAN LIFE AND CULTURE: DYNAMIC COMPONENTS OF ECOSYSTEMS

Abstract. Contemporary humanity—especially urban-industrial civilization with its domination of nature—is disturbing complex, integrated, self-regulating systems that have evolved over long periods of time. We are threatening not only biological ecosystems but also human self-regulating capabilities at both the biological and the social-systems levels. This paper presents examples of such disturbance both in the organism—respiratory-cardiovascular problems related to environmental pollution-and at the population level—rates of infant mortality and relations between fertility and mortality in light of economic and emotional factors. Prospects for our future survival and flourishing are thus linked less to technical know-how than to ecological understanding.     

ON MARTIN EGER'S "A TALE OF TWO CONTROVERSIES"

Abstract. Criticisms are presented against Eger's challenge to the demarcation between the natural sciences and ethics. Arguments are given both against his endorsement of the "new" philosophy of science and against his rejection of the fact-value dichotomy. However, his educational recommendations are reinforced rather than weakened by these criticisms     

ON "HUXLEYS EVOLUTION AND ETHICS IN SOCIOBIOLOGICAL PERSPECTIVE" BY GEORGE C. WILLIAMS

Abstract. I concur with Williams that improving human ethics requires full consideration of the biogenetic facts; but I argue that the understanding of biogenetic facts, and of ethics also, can be improved by a fuller view of nature's mechanism for selecting what is fit, a view recently generated by physical scientists. For me ethics necessarily must fit the evolved genotype, but ethics does not emerge until the rise of cultural evolution, where nature selects a culturetype symbiotic with the genotype. I outline my integrated dynamics of the relation of culturetypes to genotypes and to the laws governing physical systems. The biologist's finding that a living organism is of transient significance compared with its lines of heritage and their consequences, I argue, is constructively important for ethical and theological understanding.     

Against Anthropocentrism: A Jobian Appeal to Science on Theology's Behalf

Abstract : The author asks how science can affect the work of the theologian and uses the experience of Job in the “wild” as pointing toward a new seeing. From science's study of temporality the theologian may learn (1) that humans belong with the (other) creatures, against anthropocentrism, (2) that the traditional distinction between creation and preservation inadequately recognizes God's continuing creative work, and (3) that Christian soteriology needs to address the “groaning” (Romans 8) of the whole creation. While science may help the theologian see thus newly, theology needs to retain its own integrity, as represented by the distinction between creation and fall.     

Conceptual Structure and the Emergence of the Language Faculty: Much Ado about Knotting

Abstract

One perspective in contemporary linguistic theory defends the idea that the language faculty may result from the combinations of diverse systems and principles. As a case study, I critique a recent proposal by Juan Uriagereka and colleagues according to which the evolutionary emergence of the language faculty can be identified through studying the computational structure of knots as present within the fossil record. I here argue that the ability to conceptualize and, thereby, create knots is not parasitic on the ability to conceptualize and create language. On the contrary, these two domains are entirely distinct, unrelatable in terms of their computational complexity, expressive power or, most importantly, in terms of their requisite mental operations and principles. The overall approach defended here can profitably be employed in the study of the relationship between language and thought, as I briefly discuss in the case of the role of language in spatial reorientation.     

Human dignity and technology: A study and commentary∗

Several contradictory definitions were provided for evolution. It was viewed as progress or as local adaptation, as widening or as exploiting of transformation perspectives, as emergence of non‐historical patterns or as history of Life.

The conflicting views of evolution can be reconciled by taking the rival terms as different moments, or phases, of a single process. The first phase is form creation, the second is form selection. Progress and adaptation, widening and reduction of perspectives, emergence and history orderly mark the two successive phases.

Dynamic Structuralism and Darwinism differ in the preferential emphasis they put, respectively, in the first or in the second phase. According to structuralists, mere history does not depict a process: nothing can happen outside a frame, without a grid of meanings. A chance event, a non‐intelligible event is not a fact. A set of generative principles, of rules of form, is required both to produce evolution and to make it understandable.

By entrusting innovation to chance the Darwinian historical view is essentially pessimistic. Any small step forward can only be achieved at a price of innumerable sacrifices, and only the very few survive. In the dynamic structuralist view, forms (e.g. the mild “splash” by D'Arcy Thompson) emerge spontaneously and immediately, with no need of countless failures. They express concealed potentialities, explore the varied inventory of Nature, and do not result from the meaningless trouble of history.     

The choreography of everyday life—a missing brick in the general evolution theory

The “choreography of everyday life refers to the existence of rules of daily life, correspondingly to those of dances: the rules impose order upon individual behavior beyond the level of pure improvisation. The fact that acts of everyday life repeat themselves supports the idea that there exist some mechanisms generating order to daily practices. The replicative model of evolution is a candidate to explain this process of routinization. At the beginning of a replicative cycle behavioral patterns might change radically. In the course of time integrative and competitive selective forces start working. Finally some established rules, choreography, determining daily practices will emerge. In this mature phase identical replication takes place.