Wilkinson (1991) suggests that the problems of polarity decisions and homoplasy in a cladistic analysis may be solved if cladists simply accept plesiomorphy as a reliable indicator of monophyly. Here we argue that: (1) Wilkinson's argument is based on misapprehension of synapomorphy and the problem of homoplasy; (2) His proposed methodology fails to consider the full ramifications of rooting, polarity, and parsimony; and (3) His method does not solve the problems he raises. We demonstrate the limitations of this methodology by (...) using Wilkinson's practical example. We find no justification for the assertion that plesiomorphy may reliably delimit monophyly and recommend against Wilkinson's suggested methodological revisions. (shrink)

A large number of cellular proteins bind ATP, frequently utilizing the free energy of ATP hydrolysis to drive specific biological reactions. Recently, a family of closely related ATP‐binding proteins has been identified, the members of which share considerable sequence identity. These proteins, from both prokaryotic and eukaryotic sources, presumably had a common evolutionary origin and include the product of the white locus of Drosophila, the P‐glycoprotein which confers multidrug resistance on mammalian tumours, and prokaryotic proteins associated with such diverse processes (...) as membrane transport, cell division, nodulation and DNA repair. A comparison of these various proteins provides valuable insights into the function and evolution of the multicomponent systems with which they are associated. (shrink)

Black Art and Aesthetics comprises essays, poems, interviews, and over 50 images from artists and writers: GerShun Avilez, Angela Y. Davis, Thomas F. DeFrantz, Theaster Gates, Aracelis Girmay, Jeremy Matthew Glick, Deborah Goffe, James B. Haile III, Vijay Iyer, Isaac Julien, Benjamin Krusling, Daphne Lamothe, George E. Lewis, Sarah Elizabeth Lewis, Meleko Mokgosi, Wangechi Mutu, Fumi Okiji, Nell Painter, Mickaella Perina, Kevin Quashie, Claudia Rankine, Claudia Schmuckli, Evie Shockley, Paul C. Taylor, Kara Walker, Simone White, and Mabel O. Wilson. The (...) stellar contributors practice Black aesthetics by engaging intersectionally with class, queer sexuality, female embodiment, dance vocabularies, coloniality, Afrodiasporic music, Black post-soul art, Afropessimism, and more. Black aesthetics thus restores aesthetics to its full potential by encompassing all forms of sensation and imagination in art, culture, design, everyday life, and nature and by creating new ways of reckoning with experience, identity, and resistance. Highlighting wide-ranging forms of Black aesthetics across the arts, culture, and theory, Black Art and Aesthetics: Relationalities, Interiorities, Reckonings provides an unprecedented view of a field enjoying a global resurgence. Black aesthetics materializes in communities of artists, activists, theorists, and others who critique racial inequities, create new forms of interiority and relationality, uncover affective histories, and develop strategies for social justice. (shrink)

Recently several philosophers have argued that environmental reform movements cannot halt humankind’s destruction of the biosphere because they still operate within the anthropocentric humanism that forms the root of the ecological crisis. According to “radical” environmentalists, disaster can be averted only if we adopt a nonanthropocentric understanding of reality that teaches us to live harmoniouslyon the Earth. Martin Heidegger agrees that humanism leads human beings beyond their proper limits while forcing other beings beyond their limits as weIl. The doctrine of (...) the “rights of man” justifies human exploitation of nonhuman beings. Paradoxically, however, the doctrine of rights for nonhuman beings does not escape the orbit of humanism. According to Heidegger, a nonanthropocentric conception of humanity and its relation to nature must go beyond the doctrine of rights. We can dweIl harmoniously on Earth only by submitting to our primary obligation: to be open for the Being of beings. We need a new way of understanding Being, a new ethos, that lets beings manifest themselves not merely as objects for human ends, but as intrinsically important. Heidegger calls this ethos the “fourfold” of earth and sky, gods and mortals. Humanists argue that Heidegger is wrong to abandon the principle of human rights in favor of the notion that we are obligated to “let beings be,” while some radical environmentalists accuse hirn of being a humanist because he supposedly overestimates the importance of humankind’s ability to speak. Heidegger insists, however, that language makes possible culture, without which thereis no human experience of nature. An environmentally sound ethos. can arise, according to Heidegger, only from a shift within the cultural heritage of the West. Richard Rorty agrees that we must become open for a new “conversation” with the West, even if this requires abandoning traditionally important fields such as epistemology. The need to develop a new understanding of Being is so great that thinkers from the analytic and continental traditions of philosophy are finally initiating a long-overdue dialogue. (shrink)

Recently several philosophers have argued that environmental reform movements cannot halt humankind’s destruction of the biosphere because they still operate within the anthropocentric humanism that forms the root of the ecological crisis. According to “radical” environmentalists, disaster can be averted only if we adopt a nonanthropocentric understanding of reality that teaches us to live harmoniouslyon the Earth. Martin Heidegger agrees that humanism leads human beings beyond their proper limits while forcing other beings beyond their limits as weIl. The doctrine of (...) the “rights of man” justifies human exploitation of nonhuman beings. Paradoxically, however, the doctrine of rights for nonhuman beings does not escape the orbit of humanism. According to Heidegger, a nonanthropocentric conception of humanity and its relation to nature must go beyond the doctrine of rights. We can dweIl harmoniously on Earth only by submitting to our primary obligation: to be open for the Being of beings. We need a new way of understanding Being, a new ethos, that lets beings manifest themselves not merely as objects for human ends, but as intrinsically important. Heidegger calls this ethos the “fourfold” of earth and sky, gods and mortals. Humanists argue that Heidegger is wrong to abandon the principle of human rights in favor of the notion that we are obligated to “let beings be,” while some radical environmentalists accuse hirn of being a humanist because he supposedly overestimates the importance of humankind’s ability to speak. Heidegger insists, however, that language makes possible culture, without which thereis no human experience of nature. An environmentally sound ethos. can arise, according to Heidegger, only from a shift within the cultural heritage of the West. Richard Rorty agrees that we must become open for a new “conversation” with the West, even if this requires abandoning traditionally important fields such as epistemology. The need to develop a new understanding of Being is so great that thinkers from the analytic and continental traditions of philosophy are finally initiating a long-overdue dialogue. (shrink)

* This paper was originally given as one of the Doris Lee Lectures on February 20th 1975, at the University of London Institute of Education.

Berichte zur Wissenschaftsgeschichte, Volume 45, Issue 3, Page 434-451, September 2022.

Berichte zur Wissenschaftsgeschichte, Volume 45, Issue 3, Page 434-451, September 2022.

This chapter contains sections titled: Introduction Early Species Concepts—Linnaeus Biological Species Concepts Phylogenetic Species Concepts Species Concepts and Speciation Conclusions Postscript: Counterpoint References.

Patients fit with cochlear implants commonly indicate at the time of device fitting and for some time after, that the speech signal sounds abnormal. A high pitch or timbre is one component of the abnormal percept. In this project, our aim was to determine whether a number of years of CI use reduced perceived upshifts in frequency spectrum and/or voice fundamental frequency. The participants were five individuals who were deaf in one ear and who had normal hearing in the other (...) ear. The deafened ears had been implanted with a 18.5 mm electrode array which resulted in signal input frequencies being directed to locations in the spiral ganglion that were between one and two octaves higher than the input frequencies. The patients judged the similarity of a clean signal presented to their implanted ear and candidate, implant-like, signals presented to their normal-hearing ear. Matches to implant sound quality were obtained, on average, at 8 months after device activation and at 35 months after activation. At Time 1, the matches to CI sound quality were characterized, most generally, by upshifts in the frequency spectrum and in voice pitch. At Time 2, for four of the five patients, frequency spectrum values remained elevated. For all five patients F0 values remained elevated. Overall, the data offer little support for the proposition that, for patients fit with shorter electrode arrays, cortical plasticity nudges the cortical representation of the CI voice toward more normal, or less upshifted, frequency values between 8 and 35 months after device activation. Cortical plasticity may be limited when there are large differences between frequencies in the input signal and the locations in the SG stimulated by those frequencies. (shrink)

Michael F. Duggan ABSTRACT: This article examines the basis for testing historical claims and proffers the observation that the historical method is akin to the scientific method in that it utilizes critical elimination rather than justification. Building on the critical rationalism of Karl Popper – and specifically the deductive component of the scientific method called ….

ABSTRACTIs it possible to reconcile the concept of conscious agency with the view that humans are biological creatures subject to material causality? The problem of conscious agency is complicated by the tendency to attribute autonomous powers of control to conscious processes. In this paper, we offer an embodied process model of conscious agency. We begin with the concept of embodied emergence – the idea that psychological processes are higher-order biological processes, albeit ones that exhibit emergent properties. Although consciousness, experience, and (...) representation are emergent properties of higher-order biological organisms, the capacity for hierarchical regulation is a property of all living systems. Thus, while the capacity for consciousness transforms the process of hierarchical regulation, consciousness is not an autonomous center of control. Instead, consciousness functions as a system for coordinating novel representations of the most pressing demands placed on the organism at any given time.... (shrink)

This article examines overpopulation as a basis for historical interpretation. Drawing on the ideas of T.R. Malthus, Elizabeth Kolbert, John Lovelock, Lynn Margulis, and Edward O. Wilson, I make the case that the only concept of ‘progress’ that accurately describes the human enterprise is the uncontrolled growth of population. I explain why a Malthusian/Gaia interpretation is not a historicist or eschatological narrative, like Hegelian idealism, Marxism, fundamentalist religion, or ‘end of history’ neoliberalism. My article also includes a discussion of the (...) ideas and prescriptions of contemporary commentators like physicist, Adam Frank, and the philosophers, John Gray, and Roy Scranton. What makes my article distinctive is bringing together ideas of population theory through a lens of sociobiology and post-humanist philosophy. Through this interpretive synthesis, I form a basis for recasting history as the record of the growing imbalance of our species in light of the unprecedented crises of the environment that are its byproduct. I conclude with the idea that regardless of whether the world is dying or simply going through a fundamental chaotic transformation, the role of the critical-rational historian remains the same: to tell the truth as best as she or he can know it. (shrink)

Deliberative democrats would appear to face something of a dilemma: They want to secure robust citizen input into the policy process, especially on the big, controversial issues that affect people’...

An Aims-based Curriculum spells out a ground-breaking alternative to the familiar school curriculum constructed around a number of largely academic subjects. Its starting point is not subjects, but what schools should be for. It argues that aims are not to be seen as high-sounding principles that can be easily ignored: they are the lifeblood of everything a school does. -/- The book begins with general aims to do with equipping each learner to lead a personally fulfilling life, and to help (...) others to do so too. From these, they derive more specific aims covering the personal qualities, skills and understanding needed for a life of personal, civic and vocational well-being. -/- The second half of the book, on political realities of implementation, takes this process of aims-derivation further. Some of its detailed aims, but by no means all, overlap with conventional curriculum objectives. It also looks at the role of the state in curriculum decisions, as well as the implications of the book’s central argument for student choice, school ethos, assessment, inspection and teacher education . (shrink)

All species continuously evolve to adapt to changing environments. The genetic variation that fosters such adaptation is caused by a plethora of mechanisms, including meiotic recombination that generates novel allelic combinations in the progeny of two parental lineages. However, a considerable number of eukaryotic species, including many fungi, do not have an apparent sexual cycle and are consequently thought to be limited in their evolutionary potential. As such organisms are expected to have reduced capability to eliminate deleterious mutations, they are (...) often considered as evolutionary dead ends. However, inspired by recent reports we argue that such organisms can be as persistent as organisms with conventional sexual cycles through the use of other mechanisms, such as genomic rearrangements, to foster adaptation. (shrink)

Schober et al. describe two studies on how survey interview respondents misunderstand interview questions. After answering a survey, participants are given standardized definitions of the questions they have just answered. Even apparently simple questions such as “Have you smoked more than 100 cigarettes?” are interpreted very differently by participants. Moreover, clarifying the meaning of the definitions with the interviewer does not always help resolve the miscommunication.

Fremtidsstaten og samfundsmaskinen – Social ingeniørkunst mellem teknokrati og produktivisme.

Original essays by leading scholars on Plotinus' philosophy of nature.

This paper compares Plotinus’s neoplatonic conception and account of time with Bergson’s and Husserl’s phenomenologic conceptions and accounts of it. I argue that despite fundamental differences owing to their respective approaches, their conceptions and accounts are remarkably comparable, especially in considering time to play a fundamental role in the organic unity of our physical environment—in what I characterize also as the continuously and intrinsically connected sequentiality of its events, processes, and constituents—in Plotinus’s case, of our physical environment as such; in (...) Bergson’s and Husserl’s case, as it manifests itself to us in experience and our reflective awareness of that experience. (shrink)

This paper compares Plotinus’s neoplatonic conception and account of time with Bergson’s and Husserl’s phenomenologic conceptions and accounts of it. I argue that despite fundamental differences owing to their respective approaches, their conceptions and accounts are remarkably comparable, especially in considering time to play a fundamental role in the organic unity of our physical environment—in what I characterize also as the continuously and intrinsically connected sequentiality of its events, processes, and constituents—in Plotinus’s case, of our physical environment as such; in (...) Bergson’s and Husserl’s case, as it manifests itself to us in experience and our reflective awareness of that experience. (shrink)

The authors attempt to prove that single energy arrays cannot specify reality. We offer contrary evidence that motion structures the acoustic array to specify fundamental attributes of the source. Against direct detection in general, we cite evidence that humans weight acoustic inputs differentially when making perceptual judgments of auditory motion.

Video ethics in educational research involving children is a recent topic that has arisen since the increase in the use of visual mediums in research especially with the development of new and ubiquitous internet technologies and social media. This paper emerged as an expressed concerned by a group of scholars associated with the new Video Journal of Education and Pedagogy that was established in 2016. The paper is the result of a collective writing process over a period of a few (...) months that discusses visual studies in education and visual ethics in relation to qualitative research in education, and as it applies to children. The article also uses the newly established convention of open review, publishing the results with the paper. (shrink)

Introduction There has been philosophical discussion for centuries on the nature and scope of human life. Lucretius, for example, contends that human life ...

Conversational partners' representations may be less aligned than they appear even when interlocutors believe they have successfully understood each other, as data from a series of experiments on surveys about facts and behaviors suggest. Although the goal of a mechanistic psychology of dialogue is laudable, the ultimate model is likely to require far greater specification of individual and contextual variability.