The focus of this study was to analyze the content, distribution, and comparative genome relationships of 996 chromosome bin-mapped expressed sequence tags accounting for 2266 restriction fragments on the homoeologous group 3 chromosomes of hexaploid wheat. Of these loci, 634, 884, and 748 were mapped on chromosomes 3A, 3B, and 3D, respectively. The individual chromosome bin maps revealed bins with a high density of mapped ESTs in the distal region and bins of low density in the proximal region of the (...) chromosome arms, with the exception of 3DS and 3DL. These distributions were more localized on the higher-resolution group 3 consensus map with intermediate regions of high-mapped-EST density on both chromosome arms. Gene ontology classification of mapped ESTs was not significantly different for homoeologous group 3 chromosomes compared to the other groups. A combined analysis of the individual bin maps using 537 of the mapped ESTs revealed rearrangements between the group 3 chromosomes. Approximately 232 of the consensus mapped ESTs matched sequences on rice chromosome 1 and revealed large- and small-scale differences in gene order. Of the group 3 mapped EST unigenes ∼21 and 32% matched the Arabidopsis coding regions and proteins, respectively, but no chromosome-level gene order conservation was detected. (shrink)

This report describes the rationale, approaches, organization, and resource development leading to a large-scale deletion bin map of the hexaploid wheat genome. Accompanying reports in this issue detail results from chromosome bin-mapping of expressed sequence tags representing genes onto the seven homoeologous chromosome groups and a global analysis of the entire mapped wheat EST data set. Among the resources developed were the first extensive public wheat EST collection. Described are protocols for sequencing, sequence processing, EST nomenclature, and the assembly of (...) ESTs into contigs. These contigs plus singletons were used for selection of distinct sequence motif unigenes. Selected ESTs were rearrayed, validated by 5′ and 3′ sequencing, and amplified for probing a series of wheat aneuploid and deletion stocks. Images and data for all Southern hybridizations were deposited in databases and were used by the coordinators for each of the seven homoeologous chromosome groups to validate the mapping results. Results from this project have established the foundation for future developments in wheat genomics. (shrink)

The history of comparative psychology is replete with proclamations of human uniqueness. Locke and Morgan denied animals relational thought; Darwin opened the door to that possibility. Penn et al. may be too quick to dismiss the cognitive competences of animals. The developmental precursors to relational thought in humans are not yet known; providing animals those prerequisite experiences may promote more advanced relational thought.

This was abstracted from a lengthier article titled "A Genuine Monotheism for Christians, Muslims, Jews, and All" originally published in the JOURNAL OF ECUMENICAL STUDIES, 52:575-586. Thanks to Paul Chase at Penn Press Journals for permission to use it here. This article proposes an understanding of the identity of God and Jesus that might be attractive and even plausible to persons of all monotheistic faiths. The basic thesis is that Jesus (as both "fully God and fully human") is best (...) understood to mean that Jesus fully identified with God experientially, psychologically, evaluationally, morally, and spiritually; and God fully identified with Jesus in similar ways. Read the article to get the full explanation of this. Might the founders and saints of non-Christian religions also have also thus identified with God, and God with them? (shrink)

The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy is an open access, dynamic reference work designed to organize professional philosophers so that they can write, edit, and maintain a reference work in philosophy that is responsive to new research. From its inception, the SEP was designed so that each entry is maintained and kept up to date by an expert or group of experts in the field. All entries and substantive updates are refereed by the members of a distinguished Editorial Board before they (...) are made public. (shrink)

National Book Award Finalist. How did humanity originate and why does a species like ours exist on this planet? Do we have a special place, even a destiny in the universe? Where are we going, and perhaps, the most difficult question of all, "Why?" In The Meaning of Human Existence, his most philosophical work to date, Pulitzer Prize–winning biologist Edward O. Wilson grapples with these and other existential questions, examining what makes human beings supremely different from all other species. Searching (...) for meaning in what Nietzsche once called "the rainbow colors" around the outer edges of knowledge and imagination, Wilson takes his readers on a journey, in the process bridging science and philosophy to create a twenty-first-century treatise on human existence—from our earliest inception to a provocative look at what the future of mankind portends. Continuing his groundbreaking examination of our "Anthropocene Epoch," which he began with The Social Conquest of Earth, described by the New York Times as "a sweeping account of the human rise to domination of the biosphere," here Wilson posits that we, as a species, now know enough about the universe and ourselves that we can begin to approach questions about our place in the cosmos and the meaning of intelligent life in a systematic, indeed, in a testable way. Once criticized for a purely mechanistic view of human life and an overreliance on genetic predetermination, Wilson presents in The Meaning of Human Existence his most expansive and advanced theories on the sovereignty of human life, recognizing that, even though the human and the spider evolved similarly, the poet's sonnet is wholly different from the spider's web. Whether attempting to explicate "The Riddle of the Human Species," "Free Will," or "Religion"; warning of "The Collapse of Biodiversity"; or even creating a plausible "Portrait of E.T.," Wilson does indeed believe that humanity holds a special position in the known universe. The human epoch that began in biological evolution and passed into pre-, then recorded, history is now more than ever before in our hands. Yet alarmed that we are about to abandon natural selection by redesigning biology and human nature as we wish them, Wilson soberly concludes that advances in science and technology bring us our greatest moral dilemma since God stayed the hand of Abraham. (shrink)

Empathy is the ability to infer and share the feelings, intentions, and goals of other persons.1 It provides the basis for our extraordinary capacity to help others, including strangers we may never meet, without interest in personal benefit. Its extent has been controversial, but recent studies in neuroscience, empirical psychology, and primatology support a highly empathic understanding of human nature. This view overturns the so-called “Darwinian” paradigm prevalent both in popular imagination and academic disciplines.2 The “Darwinian” account—in quotes because distant (...) from Darwin’s own express views3—holds that “man is a wolf to man” (homo homini lupus); that individuals are self-maximizing and manipulative .. (shrink)

Science provides us with representations of atoms, elementary particles, polymers, populations, genetic trees, economies, rational decisions, aeroplanes, earthquakes, forest fires, irrigation systems, and the world’s climate. It's through these representations that we learn about the world. This entry explores various different accounts of scientific representation, with a particular focus on how scientific models represent their target systems. As philosophers of science are increasingly acknowledging the importance, if not the primacy, of scientific models as representational units of science, it's important to (...) stress that how they represent plays a fundamental role in how we are to answer other questions in the philosophy of science (e.g. the scientific realism debate). This entry begins by disentangling ‘the’ problem of scientific representation, before critically evaluating the current options available in the literature. (shrink)

This is a book grounded in the real ethical challenges of modern business practice, with a world-religious perspective so necessary in an era of globalization.

Over the last quarter century, the dominant tendency in comparative cognitive psychology has been to emphasize the similarities between human and nonhuman minds and to downplay the differences as (Darwin 1871). In the present target article, we argue that Darwin was mistaken: the profound biological continuity between human and nonhuman animals masks an equally profound discontinuity between human and nonhuman minds. To wit, there is a significant discontinuity in the degree to which human and nonhuman animals are able to approximate (...) the higher-order, systematic, relational capabilities of a physical symbol system (PSS) (Newell 1980). We show that this symbolic-relational discontinuity pervades nearly every domain of cognition and runs much deeper than even the spectacular scaffolding provided by language or culture alone can explain. We propose a representational-level specification as to where human and nonhuman animals' abilities to approximate a PSS are similar and where they differ. We conclude by suggesting that recent symbolic-connectionist models of cognition shed new light on the mechanisms that underlie the gap between human and nonhuman minds. (shrink)

This essay focuses on the role relationships of authority play in the communal production of knowledge. The author draws on recent developments in feminist epistemology and the pragmatism of John Dewey to show that not only is authority representation ineluctable, but is desirable if held properly accountable.

The so-called ergodic hierarchy (EH) is a central part of ergodic theory. It is a hierarchy of properties that dynamical systems can possess. Its five levels are egrodicity, weak mixing, strong mixing, Kolomogorov, and Bernoulli. Although EH is a mathematical theory, its concepts have been widely used in the foundations of statistical physics, accounts of randomness, and discussions about the nature of chaos. We introduce EH and discuss its applications in these fields.

Science should tell us what the world is like. However, realist interpretations of physics face many problems, chief among them the pessimistic meta induction. This book seeks to develop a realist position based on process ontology that avoids the traditional problems of realism. Primarily, the core claim is that in order for a scientific model to be minimally empirically adequate, that model must describe real experimental processes and dynamics. Any additional inferences from processes to things, substances or objects are not (...) warranted, and so these inferences are shown to represent the locus of the problems of realism. The book then examines the history of physics to show that the progress of physical research is one of successive eliminations of thing interpretations of models in favor of more explanatory and experimentally verified process interpretations. This culminates in collections of models that cannot coherently allow for thing interpretations, but still successfully describe processes. (shrink)

Western philosophical orthodoxy places many aspects of other people's lives outside the scope of our knowledge. Demonstrating an alternative to this view, however, this book argues that Jean-Paul Sartre's application of his unique psychoanalytic method to Gustave Flaubert is the culmination of his project to show that it is possible to know everything there is to know about another person. It examines how Sartre aims to revolutionize our way of thinking about others by presenting his existential psychoanalysis as the means (...) to knowledge of both ourselves and others. By so doing, it highlights how his determination to solve the longstanding philosophical conundrum about other minds drives him not only to incorporate insights from Descartes, Hegel, Husserl, Freud, Marx, and Beauvoir into his philosophy, but also to supplement and enhance his philosophy through the development and application of a new form of psychoanalysis. -/- Sartre's Existential Psychoanalysis integrates, for the first time, Sartre's psychoanalysis into his overarching philosophical project. By offering a critical interrogation of the role his psychoanalytical studies played in the development of his existentialism, Mary Edwards uncovers the overlooked philosophical significance of his existential psychoanalysis and brings it into a new and productive dialogue with current research in the fields of philosophy, psychology, and psychotherapy. (shrink)

Mathematical pluralism can take one of three forms: (1) every consistent mathematical theory consists of truths about its own domain of individuals and relations; (2) every mathematical theory, consistent or inconsistent, consists of truths about its own (possibly uninteresting) domain of individuals and relations; and (3) the principal philosophies of mathematics are each based upon an insight or truth about the nature of mathematics that can be validated. (1) includes the multiverse approach to set theory. (2) helps us to understand (...) the significance of the distinguished non‐logical individual and relation terms of even inconsistent theories. (3) is a metaphilosophical form of mathematical pluralism and hasn't been discussed in the literature. In what follows, I show how the analysis of theoretical mathematics in object theory exhibits all three forms of mathematical pluralism. (shrink)

It was proposed that the data from Monte Carlo statistical investigations be subjected to analysis of variance methods rather than the conventional techniques of tabling, graphing, and inspecting the data. Two examples in which analysis of variance methods were applied to published Monte Carlo studies were presented. It was suggested that balanced factorial designs should be used whenever possible in Monte Carlo studies so that analysis of variance methods would be directly applicable. Finally, three advantages of analysis of variance methods (...) over conventional techniques were described and analysis of variance methods were contrasted with a possible alternative analytical method, multiple regression analysis. (shrink)

John Dewey developed a pragmatic theory of inquiry to provide intelligent methods for social progress. He believed that the logic and attitude of successful scientific inquiries, properly conceived, could be fruitfully applied to morals and politics. Unfortunately, his project has been poorly understood and his logic of inquiry neglected as a resource. Contemporary pragmatists, like Richard Rorty, for example, dismiss his emphasis on method and avoid judgments of moral progress that are in any way independent of the biases of particular (...) cultures. In this article, I argue that Dewey’s theory of inquiry indeed provides intelligent methods and intellectual criteria for engaging moral and political matters. Inquiry, as Dewey conceives it, issues in judgments that are increasingly objective, reliable and refined in application. These judgments are rooted in particular times and places, in actual ‘situations’, but are not entirely hostage to specific cultures. I then apply Dewey’s theory to two standard moral problems to demonstrate how it works. The conclusion is that Dewey’s theory of inquiry gets it just right: it provides solid ground for criticism and moral progress while remaining acutely sensitive to cultural differences and changing circumstances. (shrink)

In this entry, Frege’s logic is introduced and described in some detail. It is shown how the Dedekind-Peano axioms for number theory can be derived from a consistent fragment of Frege’s logic, with Hume’s Principle replacing Basic Law V.

Although widely recognized as founder and key figure in the current re-emergence of pragmatism, Charles Peirce is rarely brought into contemporary dialogue. In this book, Kory Sorrell shows that Peirce has much to offer contemporary debate and deepens the value of Peirce’s view of representation in light of feminist epistemology, philosophy of science, and cultural anthropology. Drawing also on William James and John Dewey, Sorrell identifies ways in which bias, authority, and purpose are ineluctable constituents of shared representation. He nevertheless (...) defends Peirce’s realistic account of representation, showing how the independently real world both constrains social representation and informs its content. Most importantly, Sorrell shows how members of a given community not only represent but transform a shared world—and how those practices of representation may, and should, be improved. (shrink)

A provocative critique of Western attitudes about the Orient, this history examines the ways in which the West has discovered, invented, and sought to control the East from the 1700s to the present.

This paper argues that human beings possess the rational capabilities necessary to achieve the goal of more just and peaceable social orders, but that our educational institutions are failing in their responsibility to do what in fact can be done to produce graduates who make decisions in ways most likely to achieve this goal.Data compiled by us, consistent with other research, indicates that only a small percentage of the individuals graduating from universities and professional schools have developed the capacity for (...) post-conventional moral reasoning. (shrink)

The task of aligning the philosophical and clinical perspectives on ethics is a challenging one. Clinical practice informs philosophy, not merely by supplying cases, but through shaping and testing philosophical concepts in the reality of the clinical world. In this paper we explore several aspects of the relationship between the philosophical and the clinical within a framework of palliative care for people living with Alzheimer's disease. We suggest that health professionals have a moral obligation to question previous assumptions concerning the (...) quality of life among people with Alzheimer's, and to address the question: does the concept of palliative care properly embrace people with severe dementia? We propose an ethic of palliative care for people with Alzheimer's that is based, not on the traditionally understood principle of autonomy, but on the need to listen to those living with the disease, acknowledging their profound loss of cognitive abilities, with a focus on preventing and relieving suffering, and improving the individual's quality of life. (shrink)

This article argues that philosophy instructors in general, and critical thinking instructors in particular, profit from developing concise preparatory remarks for introductory classes. To this end, it argues for two simple, but effective, introductory descriptions of philosophy: talking about how we do what we do and why we do what we do, and critical thinking applied to writing. Of particular interest with respect to the second formulation is an introductory treatment of the concept of thinking, emphasizing critical thinking as a (...) synthetic as well as analytic activity. The article also includes a suggested application of its thesis, namely, “the index-card exercise,” in which students engage in philosophical writing from day one of an introductory course, and use the results to structure and write philosophical papers. (shrink)