Product innovation integrates technology, knowledge, management practices, and market innovation, making it essential to gain a competitive advantage. Effective management of dynamic knowledge, which is the foundation of and driving force for product innovation, is a powerful tool that allows a firm to successfully innovate, adapt to environmental changes, and improve its competitiveness. In the “nanosecond age,” unlearning and learning in an organization is crucial to a firm’s ability to promptly update its organizational knowledge and maintain innovation vitality. Based on (...) the dynamic knowledge management perspective, this study integrates and constructs a theoretical model with environmental dynamism as the moderating variable, discusses the impact of organizational unlearning on product innovation performance, and empirically analyzes 208 valid questionnaires in the Yangtze River Delta using the multiple regression method. The results show that organizational unlearning shares a positive relationship with dynamic capabilities and product innovation performance. Dynamic capability is positively related to product innovation performance and has a partial mediating effect on the relationship between organizational unlearning and product innovation performance. Environmental dynamism shares a positive moderating effect on the relationship between organizational unlearning and product innovation performance. This study deepens the existing research on the factors that influence product innovation performance, which may help firms improve their dynamic knowledge management and product innovation performance. (shrink)

This study investigates the impacts of intellectual capital through Value-Added Intellectual Capital (VAIC) and its components: human capital efficiency (HCE) and structural capital efficiency (SCE) on financial performance in terms of return on assets (ROA) and return on equity (ROE). In addition, this study compares the effects between firms from financial and pharmaceutical industries. A total of 149 Vietnamese firms comprising of 108 financial firms and 41 pharmaceutical firms were examined. Based on the findings, VAIC and HCE show beneficial impacts (...) on both financial performance measures, ROA, and ROE. However, SCE shows adverse and beneficial implications on ROA and ROE, respectively. In terms of industry comparison, VAIC has positive effects on ROA and ROE among the firms from financial industry, whereas it has no effect in the firms from pharmaceutical industry. The effect of HCE on ROA is stronger in the firms from financial industry than firms from pharmaceutical industry while the effect of HCE on ROE is stronger in the firms from pharmaceutical industry than firms from financial industry. The effect of SCE on ROA is stronger in the pharmaceutical firms than financial firms while the effect of SCE on ROE is stronger in the financial firms than pharmaceutical firms. Lastly, the implications of the importance of knowledge-based resources on value creation were elaborated. (shrink)

Bringing together Deleuze, Blanchot, and Foucault, this book provides a detailed and original exploration of the ideas that influenced Deleuze's thought leading up to and throughout his cinema volumes and, as a result, proposes a new definition of art. Examining Blanchot's suggestion that art and dream are "outside" of power, as imagination has neither reality nor truth, and Foucault's theory that power forms knowledge by valuing life, Eugene Brent Young relates these to both Deleuze's philosophy of time and his (...) work with Guattari on art. In doing so, he uses case studies from literature and popular film, including Kafka's Castle, Villeneuve's Arrival, and Kubrick's Eyes Wide Shut. Providing important new insights for those working in literary and cinematic studies, this book advances a new definition of art as that which reverses the realities and truths of power to express obscure ideas and values beyond both our exterior and interior worlds. (shrink)

This study explores to what extent immigrants adopt the business ethical attitudes of their host country and/or maintain those of their country of origin. For countries that have significant immigration, acculturation is an important social issue. An immigrant’s acculturation is influenced through the ability to adapt his/her “ethical culture of origin” by integrating it with the host country’s ethical culture. The purpose of this study was to examine the impact of the role of acculturation on immigrant’s ethical attitudes. What happens (...) to individuals, who have developed in one cultural context, when they attempt to live in a new cultural context? Three groups were the object of this study: native students of business administration in Israel, students of business administration in the Ukraine and business students in Israel who had emigrated from the Ukraine. Samples of these student populations allowed the study of acculturation effects on the immigrants as they acclimated to Israeli society. Results showed that students living in the Ukraine had the lowest ethical attitudes, followed by Ukraine immigrants in Israel. Israeli-born students had significantly higher ethical attitudes than either of the two Ukrainian groups. Accordingly, the ethical perceptions of immigrant students showed that they were influenced by both their home and host cultures. According to Berry’s : 5–68, 1997) model of acculturation strategies, integration was their preferred strategy. The implications of these results and guidelines for further research are suggested. (shrink)

Linguistics. Artificial intelligence. Related fields. Computation.

Is it possible ontologically to think about education? Can the ontological category of “being” allow us to think of an educational human being? How can the ontological category of “being there” contextualize the educational reality in Latin America? These questions will guide an ontological reflection based on Latin-American philosophical categories “being” and “being there” for thinking about education. This reflection will propose an ontological presence of the symbol from the analogy and the educational experience, as a reality that opens to (...) new experiences in teaching and learning. (shrink)

Tomando como fundamento la historia y literatura astrobiológicas, exploramos la posibilidad y necesidad de una Filosofía de la Astrobiología, proponemos una definición de Filosofía de la Astrobiología y su consideración como subdisciplina de la Filosofía de la Ciencia, distinta de la Filosofía de la Biología. Incluimos una bibliografía para una Filosofía de la Astrobiología.

Is it possible to think about an education that responds to contemporary needs? Is there a new way to think for an emerging education? This paper invites the reader to reflect philosophically about the educational challenges from a new emerging rationality. Besides the logic and instrumental reason of Modernity, the emerging rationality appears in education as an inclusive, colloquial and integrative new way to think.

This paper is a conceptual analysis of the theory debate in psychology, as carried out by cognitivists and radical behaviorists. The debate has focused on the necessity of theories in psychology. However, the logically primary issue is the nature of theories, or what theories are. This claim stems from the fact that cognitivists and radical behaviorists adopt disparate accounts of the nature of theories. The cognitivists' account is closely akin to the received view from logical positivism, where theories are collections (...) of statements and theoretical terms are restricted to designate unobservable entities. Radical behaviorists also conceive theories as collections of statements, but restrict theoretical terms in psychology to designate observable entities. If each side approaches the necessity issue with its preferred account, both agree that theories are necessary in psychology. Hence, there is no disagreement over the necessity of theories in psychology per se, only over the nature of theories. The received view, however, has been shown to suffer from irreparable difficulties that have led to its total rejection in post-positivistic philosophy of science. Alternative accounts, like the structuralist and semantic views, do not raise the issue of whether theories are necessary in psychology. (shrink)

The seventeenth and eighteenth centuries are arguably the most important period in philosophy’s history, given that they set a new and broad foundation for subsequent philosophical thought. Over the last decade, however, discontent among instructors has grown with coursebooks’ unwavering focus on the era’s seven most well-known philosophers—all of them white and male—and on their exclusively metaphysical and epistemological concerns. While few dispute the centrality of these figures and the questions they raised, the modern era also included essential contributions from (...) women—like Margaret Cavendish, Elisabeth of Bohemia, Mary Wollstonecraft, and Émilie Du Châtelet—as well as important non-white thinkers, such as Anton Wilhelm Amo, Julien Raimond, and Ottobah Cugoano. At the same time, there has been increasing recognition that moral and political philosophy, philosophy of the natural world, and philosophy of race—also vibrant areas of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries—need to be better integrated with the standard coverage of metaphysics and epistemology. -/- A New Modern Philosophy: The Inclusive Anthology of Primary Sources addresses—in one volume—these valid criticisms. Weaving together multiple voices and all of the era’s vibrant areas of debate, this volume sets a new agenda for studying modern philosophy. It includes a wide range of readings from 34 thinkers, integrating essential works from all of the canonical writers along with the previously neglected philosophers. Arranged chronologically, editors Eugene Marshall and Susanne Sreedhar provide an introduction for each author that sets the thinker in his or her time period as well as in the longer debates to which the thinker contributed. Study questions and suggestions for further reading conclude each chapter. At the end of the volume, in addition to a comprehensive subject index, the book includes 13 Syllabus Modules, which will help instructors use the book to easily set up different topically structured courses, such as "The Citizen and the State," "Mind and Matter," "Education," "Theories of Perception," or "Metaphysics of Causation." -/- And an eresource offers a wide range of supplemental online resources, including essay assignments, exams, quizzes, student handouts, reading questions, and scholarly articles on teaching the history of philosophy. (shrink)

The rationale, scientific necessity, and character of intentionality ascriptions (assertions that attribute beliefs, expectations, wishes and such to certain systems) remain unresolved issues in the philosophy of mind and psychology. Foxall's proposed resolution (2007), which he calls "Intentional Behaviorism" (IB), is that intentionality ascriptions should be tied to the experimental analysis of behavior, nervous systems, and evolutionary considerations. Foxall's tone of scientific pluralism and attention to academic philosophy and psychology are steps in the right direction. However, I remain skeptical about (...) IB's adequacy as a philosophical underpinning of psychology. My skepticism stems from IB's a-ontological character (which ignores the nature of intentionality, a major issue in psychology), pragmatist inclination (which invites relativism), and adoption of the linguistic view of intentionality, where intensionality is the defining criterion of intentionality. The linguistic view forces us either to restrict intentionality to humans, a deal-breaker for animal cognition psychologists, of to talk of mental language, a deal-breaker for operant psychologists. Also, an emphasis on extensionality, which is about logical validity and not soundness, fails to capture the emphasis of scientific psychology on evidence as a rationality criterion. Finally, if IB presupposes or entails linguistic anti-nativism, it is unlikely to appeal to evolutionary psychologists. IB would thus be better off by abandoning the linguistic view of intentionality. (shrink)

This paper is a rejection of parsimonious behaviorism (PB). PB was proposed by Stemmer (2003) to avoid certain problems with radical behaviorism's (RB) appeal to covert behavior to account for mental phenomena. According to Stemmer, covert behavior was not clearly defined and its existence was not supported by empirical evidence. However, overt behavior is not as undefined, nor its existence as empirically unsupported as Stemmer claimed. Nor does PB avoid the problems, as it does not encourage us to seek a (...) definition or empirical evidence that supports this existence. Moreover, Stemmer did not define the entities he accepted as existent (physiological traces), nor did he cite empirical evidence that supported their existence or his proposed interpretation of mental phenomena. Also, his claim that PB is more parsimonious than RB rests on a fallacious acceptance of the existence of physiological traces and a misinterpretation of the explanatory role of physiological events in RB. Finally, Quine's repudiation theory does not avoid the questions of the status, nature, and location of mental entities in identity theories. Such questions are not fundamentally different from those raised by material entities in general. The questions are thus faced by any materialist position, Quine's repudiation theory included. (shrink)

Jonathan Neufeld proposes a concept of aesthetic disobedience that parallels the political concept of civil disobedience articulated by John Rawls in A Theory of Justice. The artistic transgressions he calls aesthetic disobedience are distinctive in being public and deliberative in their aim to bring about specific changes in accepted artworld norms. We argue that Neufeld has offered us valuable insight into the dynamic and potent nature of art and the artworld; however, we contend that Neufeld errs by constraining aesthetic disobedience (...) to the artworld. Through a reconsideration of the parallel between aesthetic and civil disobedience, we illustrate how aesthetic disobedience is more accurately conceived of in terms of two kinds of acts: artistic and artworld. In addition to artistic disobedience and artworld disobedience, we add a broader and more diverse sort of transgressive aesthetic disobedience. Our aim is to articulate how Neufeld’s account of a kind of disobedience in the artworld that parallels civil disobedience can prove even more generative. (shrink)

This paper deals with the concept of religiousness and religion in the context of Krause´s panentheist metaphysics, understood as a life of union, as intimacy of and with God, particularly on the part of human beings and also in relation to the rest of the existing. An evolutionary review of this conception of religion is undertaken throughout Krause´s work, and the program of a philosophy of religion is traced, which, besides a metaphysical and anthropological substantiation, would address an understanding of (...) the history of religions and especially of Christianity, proposing a vision of reciprocal illumination between religion, knowledge, feeling and morality, as well as the possibility of an appealing notion of religious freedom, the hallmark of Krausism in its historical development. (shrink)

Both the target article and the precommentary demonstrate that relatively simple biobehavioral processes have the cumulative effect of fostering behavioral outcomes characteristic of attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). As such, the articles illustrate a central theme of Darwinian thinking – basic processes acting over time can produce complex and diverse outcomes. In this commentary, we indicate that tracing the action of processes over time can be facilitated by quantitative methods such as artificial neural networks.

This essay examines the relationship between African American internal colonialism and democracy, highlighting the complexities of democracy that make it both susceptible to oppressive violence at home and abroad, as well as a potential resource for emancipation and equality. I understand “internal colonialism” here to encompass various terms used by African Americans beginning in the 1830s, including semi-colonialism, domestic colonialism, and a nation within a nation. Much political philosophy assumes that society is “nearly just” or “generally just,” or that oppression (...) and injustice are found in societies that we nonetheless deem legitimate. Centering the complexities and possibilities of democracy instead shifts the focus to how democracy is compatible with violence and injustice, as well as their overcoming. Such a focus leads to a consideration of abolition democracy and the question of what the process of overcoming internal colonialism demands. (shrink)

Diversos estudios internacionales indican que los pescadores sufren diferentes problemas de salud, entre los cuales son frecuentes las enfermedades cardiovasculares, accidentes laborales, heridas, ahogamientos, estrés laboral y problemas de salud mental. Objetivo: Con el estudio se pretendió identificar el nivel de bienestar sicológico y sedentarismo de pescadores artesanales de la Región de Los Lagos, Chile. Método: Se realizó un estudio cuantitativo que consistió en la aplicación de la escala de bienestar sicológico de Ryff y la versión breve del cuestionario de (...) actividad física IPAQ a 41 pescadores artesanales con una media de edad de 53,22 años. Resultados: Los resultados indican que un 68,3 % de pescadores son sedentarios, mientras que en las dimensiones del bienestar sicológico un 22 % muestra un alto nivel de crecimiento personal, seguido de un 14,7 % que presenta un alto nivel de dominio del entorno. No obstante, un alto porcentaje de los pescadores, 34,1 %, se encuentra en un nivel bajo de crecimiento personal, seguido de un 31,7 % con bajo nivel de autonomía y un 26,8 % con bajo nivel de relaciones positivas. Conclusiones: Los datos indican la necesidad de generar acciones preventivas de promoción y tratamiento oportuno de las patologías de salud mental para evitar que se conviertan en causas directas o indirectas de fallecimiento de los trabajadores. Diverse international studies show that artisanal fishermen suffer from different health issues, among which cardiovascular diseases, occupational accidents, injuries, drowning, work-related stress and mental health problems are the most frequent. Objective: the aim of the study was to identify the psychological well-being and sedentary lifestyle levels in artisanal fishermen from Los Lagos Region, Chile. Method: this was quantitative study consisting in applying Ryff's Psychological Well-being Scale and the short form of the International Physical Activity Questionnaire to 41 artisanal fishermen, whose mean age was 53.22 years. Results: the results reveal that 68.3 % of the fishermen have a sedentary lifestyle, while in the psychological well-being dimensions 22 % of them show a high level of personal development, followed by 14.7 % who have a high level of the control of the environment. Nevertheless, there is a considerable percentage of fishermen, 34.1 %, who have a low level od personal development, followed by 31.7 % with a low level of autonomy and 26.8 % with a low level of positive relationships. Conclusions: the data reveals a need to generate preventive healthcare measures and its promotion, and ensure an opportune treatment of mental pathologies in order to avoid that those become a direct or indirect cause for the demise of workers. (shrink)

A la luz del análisis heideggeriano del espacio y del arte, y su vinculación con un hito de la escultura moderna como Eduardo Chillida, se presenta el espacio, junto al tiempo, como un elemento fundamental del arte y especialmente de la escultura y de la arquitectura, no como un fondo neutro homogéneo, sino como un fenómeno originario que compromete desde el principio la creación y el modo peculiar de trascendencia al que nos invita toda obra de arte. Toda obra nos (...) sumerge de un lado en una febril inmanencia sensible y corporal, en el misterio de lo sensible que somos, pero a su vez nos lleva más allá o más acá de los significados y relaciones convenidas y de nuestra situación. A partir de aquí se planteará si y cómo se puede poner la experiencia estética del espacio en relación con la trascendencia de la que habla comúnmente la religión, iluminada a su vez desde el estudio de lo sagrado de Mircea Eliade. (shrink)

Las sugerentes meditaciones de Zambrano sobre la ciudad se cotejan a la luz de otros escritos coetáneos sobre la casa; y no tanto porque la ciudad sea también arquitectura, sino porque es habitada y recorrida, porque presenta un orden a ser ejecutado, avivado desde el ritmo de nuestro ir, venir, nuestras estancias y nuestras ausencias; como la música. Para Zambrano la ciudad es paradigma y lugar idóneo de la creación humana a lo largo de la historia. Es el amor como (...) entrega y fe el motor de toda creación que trasciende su propia época, y sólo desde ahí cabe una recuperación de la ciudad en nuestro presente, en el que sólo vivimos en grandes construcciones urbanísticas, pero en el que ya no surgen ciudades. Zambrano reivindica recuperar la ciudad como centro sacral y creador, pero no como una vuelta nostálgica a las ciudades del pasado, sino como verdadera realización de su ideal político democrático. (shrink)

Existen conceptos o concepciones sobre la realidad que permean asiduamente el despliegue del pensamiento y la vida en sus devenires cotidianos o fácticos. En este sentido, quien comienza a formarse en los quehaceres de la investigación filosófica, encara con alguna frecuencia la responsabilidad de confrontar aquellas nociones que, bajo la forma de precomprensiones, obstruyen las transiciones comprensivas e interpretativas propias de toda tarea investigativa. En este caso, la posibilidad de distinguir el contenido característico de las ideologías naturalistas, de aquellas otras (...) que le son propias a las filosofías trágicas o inmanentistas, quizá pueda incidir argumentalmente en las tensiones dialógicas que hoy atraviesan a las culturas cuando se pone de manifiesto el deseo de reivindicar posiciones totalitarias o relativistas en relación con esferas de la vida y del pensamiento humanos tan diversas como la política, la religión, el género, la sexualidad, la etnia, la raza, entre otras. La tarea de quien se forma en investigación filosófica consiste, en buena medida, en advertir que los conceptos filosóficos logran vivificarse cuando ceden a la interlocución vital que les proponen constantemente las contingencias propias de todo lapso histórico. En efecto, algunos asuntos se palpan en la atmósfera de un tiempo determinado; también se encuentran en las tramas tangibles de las existencias humanas. (shrink)

Drawing on recent scholarship and delving systematically into Iamblichean texts, these ten papers establish Iamblichus as the great innovator of Neoplatonic philosophy who broadened its appeal for future generations of philosophers.

Working from Adorno’s notion of negative dialectics, this essay charts a dialectical course of resistance toward a horizon of universal freedom. Rather than propose relations between ideal types of resistance, it emphasizes the ineliminable historical dimensions of not only real-world resistance movements but also the philosophical and political theorizing that attempts to make sense of them. In doing so it brings out certain conceptual relations that emerge or recede as the context of resistance shifts. The first moment considers the dichotomy (...) between reform and revolution, the second moment delves into modes of reform, and the third looks to modes of revolution. Along the way the essay discusses the work of such varied figures and organizations as Rosa Luxemburg, John Rawls, Martin Luther King, Jr., Candice Delmas, Robin Celikates, Kimberlee Brownlee, Emma Goldman, Students for a Democratic Society and the Weather Underground, and the Black Panther Party and the Black Liberation Army. In the end, the essay is written in the service of understanding the stakes and presuppositions of resistance, in theory and practice. (shrink)

El siguiente texto aborda la poesía de Carlos Fajardo Fajardo, cuya obra sólida, rigurosa y de estupenda factura, lo sitúa entre uno de los poetas más representativos de la actual poesía colombiana. El texto muestra las constantes poéticas de Fajardo, sus propuestas estéticas e influencias, rastreando la sugerente lucidez y la exquisita sensibilidad que habitan en sus poemas.

Most Artificial Intelligence theories of language either assume a syntactic component which serves as “front end” for the rest of the system, or else reject all attempts at distinguishing modules within the comprehension system. In this paper we will present an alternative which, while keeping modularity, will account for several puzzles for typical “syntax first” theories. The major addition to this theory is a “marker passing” (or “spreading activation”) component, which operates in parallel to the normal syntactic component.

In Experiencing and the Creation of Meaning, Eugene Gendlin examines the edge of awareness, where language emerges from nonlanguage.

Conventional wisdom holds that the von Neumann entropy corresponds to thermodynamic entropy, but Hemmo and Shenker (2006) have recently argued against this view by attacking von Neumann's (1955) argument. I argue that Hemmo and Shenker's arguments fail due to several misunderstandings: about statistical-mechanical and thermodynamic domains of applicability, about the nature of mixed states, and about the role of approximations in physics. As a result, their arguments fail in all cases: in the single-particle case, the finite particles case, and the (...) infinite particles case. (shrink)

A new interpretation of quantum theory is proposed. It coincides in a number of points with the orthodox interpretation, the main difference being that the projection of the state vector can occur without the intervention of any observer.

In Everettian quantum mechanics, justifications for the Born rule appeal to self-locating uncertainty or decision theory. Such justifications have focused exclusively on a pure-state Everettian multiverse, represented by a wave function. Recent works in quantum foundations suggest that it is viable to consider a mixed-state Everettian multiverse, represented by a (mixed-state) density matrix. Here, we develop the conceptual foundations for decoherence and branching in a mixed-state multiverse, and extend the standard Everettian justifications for the Born rule to this setting. This (...) extended framework provides a unification of 'classical' and 'quantum' probabilities, and additional theoretical benefits, for the Everettian picture. (shrink)

In philosophical thought experiments, as in ordinary discourse, our understanding of verbal case descriptions is enriched by automatic comprehension inferences. Such inferences have us routinely infer what else is also true of the cases described. We consider how such routine inferences from polysemous words can generate zombie intuitions: intuitions that are ‘killed’ (defeated) by contextual information but kept cognitively alive by the psycholinguistic phenomenon of linguistic salience bias. Extending ‘evidentiary’ experimental philosophy, this paper examines whether the ‘zombie argument’ against materialism (...) is built on zombie intuitions. We examine the hypothesis that contextually defeated stereotypical inferences from the noun ‘zombie’ influence intuitions about ‘philosophical zombies’. We document framing effects (‘zombie’ vs ‘duplicate’) predicted by the hypothesis. Findings undermine intuitions about the conceivability of ‘philosophical zombies’ and address the philosophical ‘hard problem of consciousness’. Findings support a deflationary response: The impression that principled obstacles prevent scientific explanation of how physical processes give rise to conscious experience is generated by philosophical arguments that rely on epistemically deficient intuitions. (shrink)

I argue that influential recent discussions have whitewashed blame, characterizing it in ways that deemphasize or ignore its morally problematic features. I distinguish “definitional,” “creeping,” and “emphasis” whitewash, and argue that they play a central role in overall endorsements of blame by T.M. Scanlon, George Sher, and Miranda Fricker. In particular, these endorsements treat blame as appropriate by definition (Scanlon), or as little more than a wish (Sher), and infer from blame's having one useful function that it is a good (...) practice overall (Fricker). I use an analogy with revenge to illustrate the mechanisms of whitewashing, including broadening a concept to include available alternatives to it and inference from one feature of a practice to an overall conclusion about that practice. Several features of blame make it particularly prone to whitewashing, including blamers' personal or emotional stake in blaming and widespread disagreement about the nature of blame. I argue that a non‐whitewashing treatment of blame must pay closer attention both to blame's harms, and to comparisons between blame and alternative, non‐blaming reactions. (shrink)

Philosophical personalism has generated a very powerful field of study in the twentieth and twenty first centuries but has not produced a systematic exposition. This book fills this big gap by offering for the first time a full systematic personalistic vision of the human person. This ambitious volume offers a pedagogical and integrated exposition of philosophical personalism, answering vital questions about human identity and existence in a way that the reader can achieve an integrated view of the person. The book (...) points to the real life of each person so that, by partially unraveling the mystery of the personal being, it becomes a philosophical guide for life. For these reasons, the book can be used both for academic purposes, as a manual of philosophy of man or for personal enlightenment. Divided in five parts, the first part of the book works as an introduction, offering an overview of the human person and of the notion of person. The second part describes the internal structure of the human being addressing topics as corporeity as a personal fact; sensibility and the senses; affectivity; intelligence; freedom understood as choice and self-determination and, finally, the personal self. The third part analyses the person in action and some special types of action such as work and language. The fourth part deals with interpersonal relationships beginning with I-You relationship and following with the family and the social structure. Finally, part five deals with the so-called ultimate questions, that is, those that decide the final meaning of each person's life, namely, time, death, immortality, and religion. (shrink)

The CRISPR-Cas systems of bacterial and archaeal adaptive immunity have become a household name among biologists and even the general public thanks to the unprecedented success of the new generation of genome editing tools utilizing Cas proteins. However, the fundamental biological features of CRISPR-Cas are of no lesser interest and have major impacts on our understanding of the evolution of antivirus defense, host-parasite coevolution, self versus non-self discrimination and mechanisms of adaptation. CRISPR-Cas systems present the best known case in point (...) for Lamarckian evolution, i.e. generation of heritable, adaptive genomic changes in response to encounters with external factors, in this case, foreign nucleic acids. CRISPR-Cas systems employ multiple mechanisms of self versus non-self discrimination but, as is the case with immune systems in general, are nevertheless costly because autoimmunity cannot be eliminated completely. In addition to the autoimmunity, the fitness cost of CRISPR-Cas systems appears to be determined by their inhibitory effect on horizontal gene transfer, curtailing evolutionary innovation. Hence the dynamic evolution of CRISPR-Cas loci that are frequently lost and acquired by archaea and bacteria. Another fundamental biological feature of CRISPR-Cas is its intimate connection with programmed cell death and dormancy induction in microbes. In this and, possibly, other immune systems, active immune response appears to be coupled to a different form of defense, namely, “altruistic” shutdown of cellular functions resulting in protection of neighboring cells. Finally, analysis of the evolutionary connections of Cas proteins reveals multiple contributions of mobile genetic elements to the origin of various components of CRISPR-Cas systems, furthermore, different biological systems that function by genome manipulation appear to have evolved convergently from unrelated MGE. The shared features of adaptive defense systems and MGE, namely the ability to recognize and cleave unique sites in genomes, make them ideal candidates for genome editing and engineering tools. (shrink)