Planctomycetes, Verrucomicrobia and Chlamydia are prokaryotic phyla, sometimes grouped together as the PVC superphylum of eubacteria. Some PVC species possess interesting attributes, in particular, internal membranes that superficially resemble eukaryotic endomembranes. Some biologists now claim that PVC bacteria are nucleus‐bearing prokaryotes and are considered evolutionary intermediates in the transition from prokaryote to eukaryote. PVC prokaryotes do not possess a nucleus and are not intermediates in the prokaryote‐to‐eukaryote transition. Here we summarise the evidence that shows why all of the PVC traits (...) that are currently cited as evidence for aspiring eukaryoticity are either analogous (the result of convergent evolution), not homologous, to eukaryotic traits; or else they are the result of horizontal gene transfers. (shrink)

This volume inaugurates the publication of the series of biblical Dead Sea Scrolls written in the Jewish script that were discovered in Cave 4 at Qumran. It contains twenty-six manuscripts of the books of Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, and Numbers. These Hebrew texts antedate by a millenium what had previously been considered the earliest surviving biblical manuscripts in the original language. They document a pluriformity acceptable in the ancient biblical textual tradition that formed the basis for the Samaritan Pentateuch and helps (...) to illumine the historical and theological relationship between the Jews and the Samaritans. Superior textual variants from these manuscripts have been adopted in recent revised translations of the Bible. (shrink)

Studies in philosophy: I. Tufts, J.H. On moral evolution. II. Willcos, W.F. The expansion of Europe in its influence upon population. III. Woods, R.A. Democracy a new unfolding of human power. IV. Sharp, F.C. An analysis of the moral judgment. V. Woodbridge, F.J.E. The problem of consciousness. VI. Norton, E.L. The intellectual element in music. VII. Raub, W.L. Pragmatism and Kantianism. VIII. Lyman, E.W. The influence of pragmatism upon the status of theology.--Studies in psychology: IX. Delabarre, E.B. Influence of surrounding (...) objects on the apparent direction of a line. X. Swift, E.J. Beginning a language; a contribution to the psychology of learning. XI. Pierce, A.H. An appeal from the prevailing doctrine of a detached subconsciousness. XII. Woodworth, R.S. The cause of a voluntary movement. XIII. Burnett, C.T. An experimental test of the classical theory of volition. (shrink)

mind and certain collocations of living matter. Conscious mind is essentially a specialization, a distillation of that directive activity, inherent in certain mechanical activities, that distinguishes living from lifeless matter. The characteristics of mind ...

Excerpt from Archives of Philosophy Rhythm as a Distinguishing Characteristic of Prose Style: Assn: Lus. 50 cents. The Field of Distinct Vision: W. O. Bunions. 70 cents. The Influence of Bodily Position on Mental Activities: Ema E. Jonas. 50 cent. A Statistical Study of Literary Merit: Manama]: lyman Warns. 30 cents. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books (...) uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works. (shrink)

This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important, and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it. This work was reproduced from the original artifact, and remains as true to the original work as possible. Therefore, you will see the original copyright references, library stamps (as most of these works have been housed in our most important libraries around the world), and other notations in the work. This work is in the public domain (...) in the United States of America, and possibly other nations. Within the United States, you may freely copy and distribute this work, as no entity (individual or corporate) has a copyright on the body of the work. As a reproduction of a historical artifact, this work may contain missing or blurred pages, poor pictures, errant marks, etc. Scholars believe, and we concur, that this work is important enough to be preserved, reproduced, and made generally available to the public. We appreciate your support of the preservation process, and thank you for being an important part of keeping this knowledge alive and relevant. (shrink)

THE PURPOSE OF HISTORY i FROM HISTORY TO PHILOSOPHY The serious study of history is characteristic of a certain maturity of mind. ...

Throughout the biological and biomedical sciences there is a growing need for, prescriptive ‘minimum information’ (MI) checklists specifying the key information to include when reporting experimental results are beginning to find favor with experimentalists, analysts, publishers and funders alike. Such checklists aim to ensure that methods, data, analyses and results are described to a level sufficient to support the unambiguous interpretation, sophisticated search, reanalysis and experimental corroboration and reuse of data sets, facilitating the extraction of maximum value from data sets (...) them. However, such ‘minimum information’ MI checklists are usually developed independently by groups working within representatives of particular biologically- or technologically-delineated domains. Consequently, an overview of the full range of checklists can be difficult to establish without intensive searching, and even tracking thetheir individual evolution of single checklists may be a non-trivial exercise. Checklists are also inevitably partially redundant when measured one against another, and where they overlap is far from straightforward. Furthermore, conflicts in scope and arbitrary decisions on wording and sub-structuring make integration difficult. This presents inhibit their use in combination. Overall, these issues present significant difficulties for the users of checklists, especially those in areas such as systems biology, who routinely combine information from multiple biological domains and technology platforms. To address all of the above, we present MIBBI (Minimum Information for Biological and Biomedical Investigations); a web-based communal resource for such checklists, designed to act as a ‘one-stop shop’ for those exploring the range of extant checklist projects, and to foster collaborative, integrative development and ultimately promote gradual integration of checklists. (shrink)

As the expansion of the Internet and the digital formatting of all kinds of creative works move us further into the information age, intellectual property issues have become paramount. Computer programs costing thousands of research dollars are now copied in an instant. People who would recoil at the thought of stealing cars, computers, or VCRs regularly steal software or copy their favorite music from a friend's CD. Since the Web has no national boundaries, these issues are international concerns. The contributors-philosophers, (...) legal theorists, and business scholars, among others-address questions such as: Can abstract ideas be owned? How does the violation of intellectual property rights compare to the violation of physical property rights? Can computer software and other digital information be protected? And how should legal systems accommodate the ownership of intellectual property in an information age? Intellectual Property is a lively examination of these and other issues, and an invaluable resource for librarians, lawyers, businesspeople, and scholars. (shrink)

In this thorough compendium, nineteen accomplished scholars explore, in some manner the values they find inherent in the world, their nature, and revelence through the thought of Frederick Ferré. These essays, informed by the insights of Ferré and coming from manifold perspectives—ethics, philosophy, theology, and environmental studies, advance an ambitious challenge to current intellectual and scholarly fashions.

In this thorough compendium, nineteen accomplished scholars explore, in some manner the values they find inherent in the world, their nature, and revelence through the thought of Frederick FerrZ. These essays, informed by the insights of FerrZ and coming from manifold perspectives—ethics, philosophy, theology, and environmental studies, advance an ambitious challenge to current intellectual and scholarly fashions.

What is the experience of someone who is “colour‐blind” like? This paper presents the results of a study that uses qualitative research methods to better understand the lived experience of colour blindness. Participants were asked to describe their experiences of a variety of coloured stimuli, both with and without EnChroma glasses—glasses which, the manufacturers claim, enhance the experience of people with common forms of colour blindness. More generally, the paper provides a case study in the nascent field of experimental philosophy (...) of experience. (shrink)

At the turn of the twentieth century, William James was America's most widely read philosopher. In addition to being one of the founders of pragmatism, however, he was also a leading psychologist and author of the seminal work, The Principles of Psychology. While scholars argue that James withdrew from the study of psychology after 1890, Eugene Taylor demonstrates convincingly that James remained preeminently a psychologist until his death in 1910.Taylor details James's contributions to experimental psychopathology, (...) psychical research, and the psychology of religion. Moreover, Taylor's work shows that out of his scientific study of consciousness, James formulated a sophisticated metaphysics of radical empiricism. In light of historical developments in psychology, as well as the current philosophic implications of the neuroscience revolution related to the biology of consciousness, Taylor argues that both the subject matter of James's investigations and his metaphysics of radical empiricism are just as important for psychology today as James believed they were in his own time.This book represents a major new contribution both to James scholarship and to the history of American psychology. Although philosophers have analyzed radical empiricism, this book is the first to trace the development of radical empiricism as a metaphysics addressed to psychologists. It is also the first to show James's involvement in depth-psychology and psychotherapeutics and to trace historical continuity between James's work on consciousness and subsequent developments in psychoanalysis, personality theory, and humanistic psychology. (shrink)

Throughout his career, William James defended personal consciousness. In his Principles of Psychology (1890), he declared that psychology is the scientific study of states of consciousness as such and that he intended to presume from the outset that the thinker was the thought. But while writing it, he had been investigating a dynamic psychology of the subconscious, which found a major place in his Gifford Lectures, published as The Varieties of Religious Experience in 1902. This was the clearest statement (...) James was able to make before he died with regard to his developing tripartite metaphysics of pragmatism, pluralism and radical empiricism, which essentially asked ‘Is a science of consciousness actually possible?’ James’s lineage in this regard, was inherited from an intuitive psychology of character formation that had been cast within a context of spiritual self-realization by the Swedenborgians and Transcendentalists of New England. Chief among these was his father, Henry James, Sr, and his godfather, Ralph Waldo Emerson. However, James was forced to square these ideas with the more rigorous scientific dictates of his day, which have endured to the present. As such, his ideas remain alive and vibrant, particularly among those arguing for the fusion of phenomenology, embodiment and cognitive neuroscience in the renewed search for a science of consciousness. (shrink)

Throughout his career, William James defended personal consciousness. In his Principles of Psychology (1890), he declared that psychology is the scientific study of states of consciousness as such and that he intended to presume from the outset that the thinker was the thought. But while writing it, he had been investigating a dynamic psychology of the subconscious, which found a major place in his Gifford Lectures, published as The Varieties of Religious Experience in 1902. This was the clearest statement (...) James was able to make before he died with regard to his developing tripartite metaphysics of pragmatism, pluralism and radical empiricism, which essentially asked ‘Is a science of consciousness actually possible?’ James’s lineage in this regard, was inherited from an intuitive psychology of character formation that had been cast within a context of spiritual self-realization by the Swedenborgians and Transcendentalists of New England. Chief among these was his father, Henry James, Sr, and his godfather, Ralph Waldo Emerson. However, James was forced to square these ideas with the more rigorous scientific dictates of his day, which have endured to the present. As such, his ideas remain alive and vibrant, particularly among those arguing for the fusion of phenomenology, embodiment and cognitive neuroscience in the renewed search for a science of consciousness. (shrink)

The radical empiricism of William James was first formally presented in his seminal papers of 1904, 'Does Consciousness Exist?' and 'A World of Pure Experience'. In James's view, pure experience was to serve as the source for psychology's primary data and radical empiricism was to launch an effective critique of experimentalism in psychology, a critique from which the problem of experimentalism within science could be addressed more broadly. This collection of papers presents James's formal statements on radical (...) empiricism and a representative sample of contemporary responses from psychologists and philosophers. With only a few exceptions, these responses indicate just how badly James was misread - psychologists ignoring the heart of James's message and philosophers transforming James's metaphysics into something quite unintelligible to the emerging generation of experimental psychologists. (shrink)

William James is best known for his Pragmatism , his Varieties of Religious Experience , and his Principles of Psychology , but little is known about his excursions into depth psychology, meaning a dynamic psychology of inner experience, despite the fact that he claimed in The Varieties that the subconscious was the primary avenue through which ultimately transforming mystical experiences occur. A survey of James's evolving conceptions of consciousness thorough the stages of his career reveals that his theories (...) about the subconscious emerged in the 1890s and became crystallized in his 1896 Lowell Lectures on Exceptional Mental States. While these lectures were never published, their content found a major place in various chapters in The Varieties, in addition to launching the so-called Boston School of Psychotherapy, experimental psychopathology at Harvard, and the popular era of psychotherapeutics that followed. As such, the Exceptional Mental States Lectures can be considered a bridge between the cognitive psychology in James's Principles and his emphasis on the primacy of the mystical experience in The Varieties . Finally, some of the more important implications of James's metaphysics of pure experience are broached for current directions in neuroscience today, regarding just what constitutes an adequate science of consciousness in light of what James had to say about depth psychology. (shrink)

Western analytic philosophers tend to confine themselves almost exclusively to a discussion of William James’s pragmatism, when thirty years ago John McDermott determined that the core of James’s metaphysics was actually radical empiricism. James, in fact, developed a tripartite metaphysics of pragmatism, pluralism, and radical empiricism, which constituted the actualization of his philosophical legacy inherited through Henry James Sr’s Swedenborgianism and Ralph Walled Emerson’s transcendentalism, both of which he opposed, which he tempered through his contacts with (...) Charles Sanders Pierce, Chancy Wright, and others in the early years of the Metaphysical Club, until his own ideas began to come to maturity by the late 1890s. It is conjectured that, seeing as how James frequently built some of his major ideas by retailing the more cryptic philosophy of Peirce, the tripartite nature of James’s metaphysics was an attempt to model Peirce’s three categories of Firstness, Secondness, and Thirdness. The international success of pragmatism, however, prevented James from articulating the full nature of his philosophy, which he tried to do in the closing decade of his life, but alas, he left us with only an unfinished arch. There is enough there, however, to state emphatically that if modern psychologists and philosophers persist in talking only about James’s pragmatism without reference to pluralism and radical empiricism, they are not really talking about William James. (shrink)

The Key Issues series aims to make available the contemporary responses that met important books and debates on their first appearance. These take the form of journal articles, book extracts, public letters, sermons and pamphlets which provides an insight into the historical relevance and the social and political context in which a publication or particular topic emerged. Each volume brings together some of the key responses to the works.

The scientific study of consciousness in the late 19th century, which took place in Western countries across disciplines such as neurology, physiology, neuropathology, psychology, psychiatry and philosophy, appears to have striking parallels to current crossdisciplinary developments in the neurosciences. The 19th century period, however, has received little scholarly attention from historians of medicine, psychology, or science. Historians of depth psychology have investigated the area as part of the history of psychiatry, but cleaved most closely to the versions presented by early (...) psychoanalysts- turned-historians, who have consistently portrayed Freud as the only legitimate history of the period, thus marking the territory of the late 19th century as inherently Freudo-centric. More recently a new line of historiography emanating from the work of the late Henri Ellenberger has launched a post-Freudian perspective in which the classical depth psychologies of Freud, Jung, and Adler may now be understood in a wider and deeper historical context defined by the development of a so-called French, Swiss, English, and American psychotherapeutic axis between 1881 and 1918, before the advent of psychoanalysis. Chief among the prime movers of this axis was Frederic William Henry Myers, graduate of Cambridge University, and co-founder of the Society for Psychical Research in England in 1882. Myers' grasp of the literature of the day regarding the scientific study of consciousness was both profound, and highly influential, particularly on such figures as William James. Since the period itself has yet to be fully reconstructed, the identity of Myers and his contribution to the scientific study of consciousness remain obscure, but are also receiving new attention in the area of modern consciousness studies. (shrink)

Pragmatism is the distinctive contribution of American thought to philosophy. It is a movement that attracted much attention in the early part of the twentieth-century, went into decline, and reemerged in the last part of the century. Part of the difficulty in defining pragmatism is that misconceptions of what pragmatism means have abounded since its beginning, and continue in today’s “neopragmatism.”.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Can Virtue Be Bought?Eugene Garver1. The problem: Epistemic elitism or cognitive dominanceDemocracy and rationality can be enemies. Superior intelligence and information can silence people, and the voices of reason can be drowned out by anti-intellectual populism. Given the dearth of both democracy and rationality in contemporary American politics, I hope that each can be fortified by association with the other, but I don't think that mutual reinforcement is (...) easy. I start by giving short quotations from two of the most significant contemporary thinkers who question the relation between democracy and intelligence.First a thesis from James Bohman that sets the challenge for practical intelligence and rhetoric in a democracy: "Deliberative democracy should not reward those groups who simply are better situated to get what they want by public and discursive means; its standard of political equality cannot endorse any kind of cognitive elitism" (1997, 332).1Next, a longer passage from Henry Richardson:The fatal objection to an objectivist interpretation of arbitrary power [in which the public good is thought of as a determinate object] is that it excludes from counting as domination what should be counted as one of its primary cases, namely domination on the basis of superior knowledge and information. Whatever the content of the public good may be, we may suppose—absent liberal justificational restrictions—that there are some people who are relatively expert in discerning it. One way to track the public good with reasonable reliability, then, is to turn political decisions over to those experts or wise persons. If we accept an objectivist interpretation of what "nonarbitrary power" means, then we could not count such Platonic guardians as dominating us. Intuitively, however, I think that we would: They would be dominating us precisely in virtue of their superior knowledge and information about the public good. (2002, 41)2 [End Page 353]Bohman worries about the injustice of unequal powers of eloquence. Richardson worries about what I think is a harder problem, the injustice of unequal powers of practical intelligence, the domination by superior knowledge. These two concerns, rhetorical and epistemic, are related. In Hobbes's wonderful phrase, "eloquence is seeming prudence," everything turns on the permanently contested relation between the appearance of facility with public and discursive means and the reality of superior practical knowledge. The only practical knowledge worth worrying about is manifested practical knowledge.Richardson and Bohman pose the ethical problem of what happens to community when there are claims to superior practical wisdom. The question isn't whether such claims are true or false, but the conditions under which they can be asserted and accepted. When are successful claims to knowledge "arbitrary," "dominating," or in a word, unjust? Thus, David Estlund writes, "Even granting that some people might be far better at making the morally and technically best political decisions, such invidious comparisons among citizens are bound to be open to reasonable disagreement" (2000, 137). But the issue is whether such reasonable disagreement is itself grounds for denying the comparison. Why is a judgment of better and worse necessarily "invidious"? When is disagreement about what is the best political decision a "reasonable" disagreement?Of course we should worry when eloquence silences people. But many other things silence citizens, too. Some argue, for example, that the discursive power of cross-burning "has a silencing effect" since it intimidates African Americans, and similar arguments have been made about how pornography silences women, but it would be strange to call these powers superior eloquence, certainly not in the sense that Bohman, Richardson, and Estlund worry about (Fiss 1996, 119).3 Many forms of coercion and ways of limiting freedom have nothing to do with silencing, as they prevent us from even getting to a point where there can be discussion. Extra-discursive signs of power, such as age, wealth, or difference, can inhibit me from speaking my mind. The personal experience of a purported victim is hard to argue against. So are people with access to powerful symbols.For example, consider the resistance to some forms of victim impact statements. Opponents argue that these are too emotional to have probative value. Their presence is unfair. They are unfair because... (shrink)

Can we who have been touched by the scientific, intellectual, and experimental revolutions of modern and contemporary times still believe with and degree of coherence and consistency that we as individual persons are immortal. Indeed, is there even good cause to hope that we are? In examining the present relationship of reason to faith, can we find justifying reasons for faith? These are the central questions in Self, God, and Immortality, a compelling exercise in philosophical theology. Drawing upon the works (...) of William James and the principles of American Pragmatism, Eugene Fontinell extrapolates carefully from "data given in experience" to a model of the cosmic process open to the idea that individual identity may survive bodily dissolution. Presupposing that the possibility of personal immortality has been established in the first part, the second part of the essay is concerned with desirability. Here, Fontinell shows that, far from diverting attention and energies from the crucial tasks confronting us here and now, such belief can be energizing and life enhancing. The wider importance of Self, God, and Immortality lies in its pressing both immortality-believers and terminality-believers to explore both the metaphysical presuppositions and the lived consequences of their beliefs. It is the author's expressed hope that such explorations, rather than impeding, will stimulate co-operative efforts to create a richer and more humane community. (shrink)

If pragmatists conceive of thought as an internal dialogue, then why not externalize that thought as a dialogue in the form of letters to the major pragmatists concerning their ideas in the contemporary world. This piece consists of letters fired off to William James, Charles Peirce, George Herbert Mead, and John Dewey, concerning key ideas from each and how these ideas relate to contemporary social thought. Queries are posed concerning what modifications of pragmatists’ ideas might be needed today, how, (...) for example, Charles Peirce’s semiotic became known through the systematic misinterpretations of Charles Morris, how Peirce’s view of science as discon-nected from practical life and Dewey’s view of society as requiring a model of inquiry derived from science might be reframed today, in the age of scientism; how William James’s critique of science as unnecessarily excluding “the personality as a condition of events” might be reconciled with Peirce and contemporary outlooks; how Dewey’s aesthetic theory and public philosophy address contemporary issues; how George Herbert Mead’s idea of the generalized other might be critically refined in a time when what I term “the mechanical other” seems predominant, and what the evolutionary origins of the generalized other might be. The form of the letter not only provides a way to illustrate the dialogical nature of thought, but also to highlight how pragmatist ideas continue in dialogue with contemporary life, and to do so with panache: not simply epistles, but e-pistols. (shrink)