Editors provide a substantive introduction to the history and theories of perfectionism and neutrality, expertly contextualizing the essays and making the collection accessible.

Interdisciplinary explorations of the implications of recent developments in vision theory for our understanding of the nature of pictorial representation and ...

Recent advances in our understanding of the mechanism and regulation of eukaryotic DNA replication have been expedited by the use of cell‐free systems capable of initiation of DNA replication. The system capable of replicating plasmid DNAs containing the SV40 origin of DNA replication in vitro is a paradigm for studies on the replication of other virus DNAs and the replication of cellular chromosomes. This review outlines some of the contemporary issues and developments related to this complex problem.

Many of our inherited civic institutions are dead or dying. We need an ambitious reform program to revive democratic life. This essay advances a four-pronged “citizenship agenda”: a campaign finance initiative granting each voter fifty “patriot dollars” to fund candidates and political parties of his or her choice; a proposal for a new national holiday, Deliberation Day, held before each national election, enabling citizens to deliberate on the merits of rival candidates; a system of federally financed electronic news-vouchers to permit (...) professional journalism to survive the destruction of its traditional business model; and a new form of citizenship inheritance, which provides $80,000 to all Americans as they start off life as adults. Working with collaborators, I have developed each of these initiatives at book length. This essay suggests how the “citizenship agenda” yields a whole that is larger than the sum of its parts. (shrink)

"The day will come when not only my writings, but precisely my life--the intriguing secret of all the machinery--will be studied and studied." Søren Kierkegaard's remarkable combination of genius and peculiarity made this a fair if arrogant prediction. But Kierkegaard's life has been notoriously hard to study, so complex was the web of fact and fiction in his work. Joakim Garff's biography of Kierkegaard is thus a landmark achievement. A seamless blend of history, philosophy, and psychological insight, all conveyed with (...) novelistic verve, this is the most comprehensive and penetrating account yet written of the life and works of the enigmatic Dane who changed the course of intellectual history. Garff portrays Kierkegaard not as the all-controlling impresario behind some of the most important works of modern philosophy and religious thought--books credited with founding existentialism and prefiguring postmodernism--but rather as a man whose writings came to control him. Kierkegaard saw himself as a vessel for his writings, a tool in the hand of God, and eventually as a martyr singled out to call for the end of "Christendom." Garff explores the events and relationships that formed Kierkegaard, including his guilt-ridden relationship with his father, his rivalry with his brother, and his famously tortured relationship with his fiancée Regine Olsen. He recreates the squalor and splendor of Golden Age Copenhagen and the intellectual milieu in which Kierkegaard found himself increasingly embattled and mercilessly caricatured. Acclaimed as a major cultural event on its publication in Denmark in 2000, this book, here presented in an exceptionally crisp and elegant translation, will be the definitive account of Kierkegaard's life for years to come. (shrink)

Cosmopolitanism is a form of egalitarianism about global justice. Egalitarians hold that economic inequalities are justifiable only under limited conditions. Cosmopolitans, like Brock, embrace basic principles of distributive justice that apply to all human beings. Their opponents, sometimes called liberal nationalists, are also egalitarians but limit the scope of egalitarian justice to cooperating members of a society. Outsiders are owed help to lead minimally decent lives but these are humanitarians obligations, not obligations of distributive justice. Brock’s defense of cosmopolitanism is (...) thoughtful and sensitive but appears to be too weak. Her basic principle of distributive justice appears to allow more inequality than cosmopolitans can accept. Liberal nationalists defend preference for fellow citizens and Brock seems not to have done a fully adequate job answering their arguments, especially their appeal to reciprocity among citizens. It’s therefore difficult to know where Brock stands on some of the crucial issues about global justice. (shrink)

Religious outlooks are combinations of theological, moral and political principles, individuated in a medium-grained way. Distinguish between religious outlooks that are friendly to the fundamental political principles characteristic of liberal democracy, and those that are hostile to, or knowingly subversive of, them. I claim that (1) in some respects, but not all, governments are justified in discriminating against 'hostile' religious outlooks, but (2) governments should not intentionally favour some 'friendly' ones over others, and (3) governments should respect all 'friendly' faith-based (...) organisations with which it deals, but may on various grounds favour some over others. (shrink)

Use of quantum probability as a top-down model of cognition will be enhanced by consideration of the underlying complex-valued wave function, which allows a better account of interference effects and of the structure of learned and ad hoc question operators. Furthermore, the treatment of incompatible questions can be made more quantitative by analyzing them as non-commutative operators.

Despite societal expectations that graduate students in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) disciplines integrate broader impacts into their professional activities, few of them actually receive any formal training in this area. This paper describes a graduate seminar entitled “Broader Impacts of Natural Sciences on Society” taught at the University of Florida in 2006 and 2008. In addition to course goals, recruitment, expectations, format, content, and outcomes, this paper describes challenges and recommendations for others who might want to teach a (...) similar course. (shrink)

. The author argues, by analyzing the logic implicit in scientific and religious statements, that these two kinds of statements belong to different universes of discourse. Religious statements are not admissible into scientific discourse and scientific statements are not admissible into religious discourse. This separation of discourse into universes of discourse is based on validity conventions which legislate different kinds of truth criteria for statements in different universes.

The ancient tradition is strong that the execution of M. Marius Gratidianus during the Sullan proscriptions was carried out by L. Sergius Catilina. The earliest evidence comes from several passages in Cicero's speech in toga candida, delivered just before the consular elections in 64 and designed to rake up as much prejudice as possible against his two main rival candidates, Catilina and C. Antonius . While in none of the passages does Cicero specifically mention the executioner or the victim, it (...) is Asconius commenting on the passages who reveals that Catilina was the executioner and Marius Gratidianus the victim. We do not have a great deal of the speech in toga candida left ; if we did have the whole speech, it is clear that we would have been given the name by Cicero himself. The Ciceronian version is that the head of Gratidianus was cut off by Catilina, carried in his hands through the city from the Janiculum to the temple of Apollo, and delivered to Sulla still full of life and breath. This version is followed by Plutarch . A variation can be found, as early as Sallust . There is a fragment of the historiae which says that Gratidianus died after his arms and legs had been broken and his eyes gouged out, so that he expired as it were through each and every limb. There is nothing about his head being cut off and carried about, nor is there any mention of Catilina as the executioner. While the details of the torture and mutilation become progressively more gory, this version is followed by Livy , Valerius Maximus , Lucan , and Florus. (shrink)

The author of African Philosophy and Enactivist Cognition: The Space of Thought responds to four critiques of his book. After giving some context and history of the book, he addresses points raised by each of the readers.

Conversational thinking has emerged in recent years out of the scholarly philosophical work centered in Calabar Nigeria and spread throughout Africa and elsewhere. I have previously had the pleasure of discussing some of the finer points of conversationalism with Jonathan O. Chimakonam in the journal Confluence and the journal’s relaunch as the Journal of World Philosophies.. Our discussion there centered on questions I raised earlier about the nature and limits of dialogue, as well as my work on philosophy and place (...) in an African context. Our conversation, in other words, has a history, and I expect it will also have a future. It is a conversation that comes from different places. I am not an African, and I lay no claim to be able to represent African life. Therefore, the approach to philosophy I take is one of examining the conditions for the possibility of philosophy, and the barriers to being able to enact those conditions. This is why I write about place so much. The conditions for thinking in a place and abouta place differ in different places, but also have some commonalities. And the barriers to thinking in and about place can be fairly clearly outlined. This is of relevance, I argue, in thinking Africa, not as a set of identities or a history but as a space of thought. (shrink)