This item was digitized as part of the Million Books Project led by Carnegie Mellon University and supported by grants from the National Science Foundation (NSF). Cornell University coordinated the participation of land-grant and agricultural libraries in providing historical agricultural information for the digitization project; the University of Arizona Libraries, the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences, and the Office of Arid Lands Studies collaborated in the selection and provision of material for the digitization project.

This item was digitized as part of the Million Books Project led by Carnegie Mellon University and supported by grants from the National Science Foundation (NSF). Cornell University coordinated the participation of land-grant and agricultural libraries in providing historical agricultural information for the digitization project; the University of Arizona Libraries, the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences, and the Office of Arid Lands Studies collaborated in the selection and provision of material for the digitization project.

This item was digitized as part of the Million Books Project led by Carnegie Mellon University and supported by grants from the National Science Foundation (NSF). Cornell University coordinated the participation of land-grant and agricultural libraries in providing historical agricultural information for the digitization project; the University of Arizona Libraries, the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences, and the Office of Arid Lands Studies collaborated in the selection and provision of material for the digitization project.

This item was digitized as part of the Million Books Project led by Carnegie Mellon University and supported by grants from the National Science Foundation (NSF). Cornell University coordinated the participation of land-grant and agricultural libraries in providing historical agricultural information for the digitization project; the University of Arizona Libraries, the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences, and the Office of Arid Lands Studies collaborated in the selection and provision of material for the digitization project.

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No description available.

In this project, I defend a holistic, internalist conceptual-role theory of mental content (‘Holism’, for short). The account of communicative success which must be adopted by the Holist is generally thought to be unattractive and perhaps even untenable. The primary aim of my thesis is to show that this account is actually far more plausible than the accounts available to competing theories of mental content. Holism is thought to suffer from a special problem of communication because it entails that no two subjects ever mean the same thing by an utterance of the same word-forms, or share the same thought content. Many think that it is necessary for communicative success (or, at least, sometimes required) that the content grasped by the hearer is the same content as that which is expressed by the speaker. As such, theories such as social externalism are thought to be well-equipped to explain communicative success because they can posit shared content. Holism claims that subjects think, and speak, in their own idiosyncratic idiolects. As such, Holists must deny that it is ever required for communicative success that subjects share content. Holists must maintain instead that successful communication requires only similarity of content between speaker and hearer. This is supposed to be a serious cost of the view. In this project, I argue that it is, in fact, a virtue. Views like Holism, which can posit only mere similarity of content, are better placed to explain communicative success than views which can posit shared content. In the first part of my thesis, I argue that externalist theories of content face a dilemma when it comes to explaining communicative success. They must choose between (a), endorsing an account of communication which renders the relationship between the content expressed by the speaker and grasped by the hearer irrelevant to communicative success and (b), endorsing an account which gives implausible diagnoses as to the success and failure of communicative attempts. I argue that the reason that externalist theories face this dilemma is because they allow that content and understanding can come apart. Interestingly, it is, in part, because they posit a communal language that they face the dilemma. In contrast, the Holist’s similar content account does not face the dilemma. It can naturally incorporate understanding into its explanation of how mental content facilitates communicative success because, on Holism, understanding perfectly tracks mental content. In the second part of my thesis, I develop an account of communicative success for the Holist and defend the account from objections. The account claims that communication succeeds to the degree that content is similar across communication partners. In defending the view, I propose a criterion for similarity of content for the Holist. I also argue that (pure) internalists can agree with externalists as to the extensions of concepts and the truth-conditions of contents without the need to appeal to any factors outside of the individual. Finally, I explain how my account of communication impacts upon a theory of testimony. Most work on testimony stipulates that the content of the testimony grasped by the hearer is the same as that expressed by the speaker. I present and defend an account of testimony which claims instead that testimonial exchanges can be successful even when the content grasped by the hearer is merely similar to the content expressed by the speaker.

Comparisons of flowering plant genomes reveal multiple rounds of ancient polyploidy characterized by large intragenomic syntenic blocks. Three such whole-genome duplication (WGD) events, designated as rho (rho), sigma (sigma), and tau (tau), have been identified in the genomes of cereal grasses. Precise dating of these WGD events is necessary to investigate how they have influenced diversification rates, evolutionary innovations, and genomic characteristics such as the GC profile of protein-coding sequences. The timing of these events has remained uncertain due to the paucity of monocot genome sequence data outside the grass family (Poaceae). Phylogenomic analysis of protein-coding genes from sequenced genomes and transcriptome assemblies from 35 species, including representatives of all families within the Poales, has resolved the timing of rho and sigma relative to speciation events and placed tau prior to divergence of Asparagales and the commelinids but after divergence with eudicots. Examination of gene family phylogenies indicates that rho occurred just prior to the diversification of Poaceae and sigma occurred before early diversification of Poales lineages but after the Poales-commelinid split. Additional lineage-specific WGD events were identified on the basis of the transcriptome data. Gene families exhibiting high GC content are underrepresented among those with duplicate genes that persisted following these genome duplications. However, genome duplications had little overall influence on lineage-specific changes in the GC content of coding genes. Improved resolution of the timing of WGD events in monocot history provides evidence for the influence of polyploidization on functional evolution and species diversification.

The aim of this thesis is to examine how Judaism, Christianity, Islam, Hinduism and Buddhism are portrayed in four Swedish textbooks for use in upper secondary school using José Casanova’s theory about the public and the private sphere and Craig Calhoun’s interpretation of Jürgen Habermas theory of the public sphere. The four textbooks examined are all to fit the latest curriculum for upper secondary school education on the subject Religionskunskap 1 (Religious education 1). The research questions for this paper are: (1) how can the depictions of the five world religions in Swedish textbooks be understood analysed with the concept of public and private and (2) how can the presentations be understood using José Casanovas theory of de-privatization. The result of the study showed that the depictions given of the religions differed from religion to religion while being rather consistent throughout the different textbooks. It showed that Christianity and Buddhism were depicted as private while Islam and Judaism are depicted as public. Hinduism on the other hand were harder to decide which category they belonged to since they are depicted as both public and private.

Many contemporary philosophers are committed – either implicitly or explicitly – to Propositionalism about thought-experimental intuitions. According to this view, thought-experimental intuitions are (1) phenomenally conscious, (2) spontaneous, (3) and non-theoretical; most importantly, Propositionalists claim that intuitions (4) bear consciously accessible propositional content. The negative project of this essay is a critique of (4), the rejection of which is tantamount to rejecting Propositionalism. In addition, I propose an alternative position – namely, Interpretationalism. According to Interpretationalism, intuitions possess the features ascribed in (1)-(3); however, they do not bear consciously accessible propositional content. Instead, intuitions acquire cognitive significance by virtue of being interpreted in light of a subject’s background beliefs.