Retroviruses encode a small, basic nucleocapsid (NC) protein that is found complexed to genomic RNA within the viral particle. The NC protein appears to function not only in a histone‐like manner in packaging the RNA into the particle but also in specifically selecting the viral genomic RNA for packaging. A cysteine‐histidine (cys‐his) region, usually composed of 14 amino acids and reminiscent of the ‘zinc fingers’ of transcription factors, is the only highly conserved sequence element among the retroviral NC proteins. This (...) review discusses the biochemical properties of NC, and its possible role(s) in retroviral replication. We also speculate on how the biochemical properties may relate to its function in RNA recognition and packaging. (shrink)

In the aftermath of the events of September 11, 2001, Stanley Katz (who now chairs the editorial board of this journal) invited the intellectual community to reflect on its own history of involvement in public affairs and to make good on its mistakes. This essay examines a single case of intellectuals involving themselves in public affairs and some of the difficulties in saying and evaluating exactly what happened. Critical attention is given to Anthropological Intelligence, a book by David Price (...) published in 2008, which concerns the involvement of anthropologists in wartime activities during World War II and argues that even that “just war” left an indelible stain on the moral fabric of the discipline. (shrink)

The essays in this volume are a contribution to this process of reappraisal, focusing specifically on the phenomena of scepticism and millenarianism, especially ...

Each contributor to this book has used personal experience as the basis from which to frame his individual sociological perspectives. Because they have personalized their work, their accounts are real, and recognizable as having come from 'real' persons, about 'real' experiences. There are no objectively-distanced disembodied third person entities in these accounts. These writers are actual people whose stories will make you laugh, cry, think, and want to know more.

Humanist sociologists are activists rooted in the reality of history and change and guided by a concern for the 'real life' problems of equality, peace, and social justice. They view people as active shapers of social life, capable of creating societies in which everyone's potential can unfold. Alfred McClung Lee introduces this volume with 'Sociology: Humanist and Scientific' and develops the theme that a sociology that is humanist is also scientific. The other nine selections are grouped into four parts: 'The (...) Individual and Social Life;' 'Social Institutions: Technology, Science, and Formal Organization;' 'Political Structures: Issues of Justice and Equality;' and 'Methodological Critiques and Counterproposals.'. (shrink)

In the late 1970s and early 1980s, Richard Rorty advocated that his confréres kick the ‘philosophy habit’-that is, adopt a post-positivist, post-metaphysical style of interpretation. Philosophers largely ignored Rorty’s clarion call. Unburdened by the kind of Selbstverständnis of scholarly mission held by most analytics, members of departments of literature instead became the most important advocates for reading literature philosophically during the last two decades of the twentieth century. Though the academic Left, especially practitioners of ‘theory’, largely celebrated and encouraged (...) this development, Rorty, in the late 1990s, came to view it as harmfully elevating ‘cultural politics’ above ‘real politics’, which would ultimately lead to the abandonment of civic responsibilities. While heavy-handed and partial, Rorty’s critique of the uses of philosophy by literary critics was not only perceptive, but can be helpful for understanding how the contemporary academic Left might move forward as well. (shrink)

Access to clear and concise medication information is essential to support safe and effective use of prescription drugs. Patient misunderstanding of medication information is a common reason for non-adherence to medication regimens and a leading cause of outpatient medication errors and adverse drug events in the U.S. Medication errors are the most common source of risk to patient safety, leading to poor health outcomes, hospitalizations, and deaths. Over half a million adverse drug events occur in the outpatient setting each year (...) at a cost of approximately $1 billion annually.Nearly half of adults in the U.S. experience difficulty understanding and acting upon health information. Even individuals with high levels of general literacy may find medication information difficult to understand or use. The risk of misunderstanding medication information is compounded for patients with limited English proficiency who may not have access to this information in their own language. (shrink)

To reject a false theory on the basis of an unsound argument is, in my opinion, as much an intellectual sin as to embrace a false theory. Thus, although I am no fan of any particular form of moral rationalism—and, indeed, on occasion have gone out of my way to criticize it—when rationalism is assailed for faulty reasons I find myself in the curious position of leaping to its defense (which goes to show that in philosophy it isn’t the case (...) that one’s enemy’s enemy is one’s friend). This puts me at something of a dialectical disadvantage, since my “defense” of moral rationalism has strict limits: I will defend it against specific kinds of criticism, but I have no interest in defending it simpliciter. It is important to bear in mind that what is in dispute between Shaun Nichols and myself is not the truth or falsity of moral rationalism, but rather what kind of evidence bears on the matter. (shrink)

In patients with pain characterized by a painful focus and allodynia, the painful symptoms arise from altered central processing that is initiated and subsequently maintained by persistent input from nociceptive afferents. Treatments directed at this normal consequence of persistent input are inherently limited. The most efficacious treatments will target the pathology, the various sources of ongoing nociceptor input. [blumberg et al.; coderre & katz; dickenson].

How much can and should be said about the beginning of Wittgenstein's Philosophical Investigations (PI) on the basis of its very first section alone? Is the only thing worth mentioning that it is designed to introduce the topic for the rest of the book - may this be a "pre-philosophical", "pre-theoretical", "Augustinian" picture of Ianguage (Baker/Hacker, Kenny, Katz, Canfield et al.) or a mentalistic picture of the use of language (Savigny)? These ways of interpreting leave too many aspects of (...) the text untouched. Some of these are: Why does Wittgenstein quote just from the Confessions if his only interest was to get a picture of language? How about Wittgenstein's different ways of dealing with the quotation from Augustine? Trying to answer these questions means to develop a new, more complicated picture o f the beginning of the PI. (shrink)

Ambos-Spies, K. and R.A. Shore, Undecidability and 1-types in the recursively enumerable degrees, Annals of Pure and Applied Logic 63 3–37. We show that the theory of the partial ordering of recursively enumerable Turing degrees is undecidable and has uncountably many 1-types. In contrast to the original proof of the former which used a very complicated O''' argument our proof proceeds by a much simpler infinite injury argument. Moreover, it combines with the permitting technique to get similar results for any (...) ideal of the r.e. degrees. (shrink)

We show that the maximal linear extension theorem for well partial orders is equivalent over RCA0 to ATR0. Analogously, the maximal chain theorem for well partial orders is equivalent to ATR0 over RCA0.

Cellular dedifferentiation is an important developmental response to perturbations in morphogenesis. In the cellular slime mold Dictyostelium discoideum this process gives cells the flexibility, when multicellular development is disrupted, to respond to nutrients and reinitiate vegetative growth. Recent studies in D. discoideum described by Soll and colleagues(1) show that genes previously thought to be expressed only during spore germination are also expressed during induced dedifferentiation, suggesting that similar molecular mechanisms are involved in these two developmental processes. It should now be (...) possible to determine whether the developmental programs that control dedifferentiation during spore germination also control conversion of cell types in the multicellular organism. (shrink)

Posner characterizes the current preoccupation with moral and constitutional theory as an evasion of the real need of American law, which is for a greater understanding of the social, economic, and political facts out of which great legal controversies arise, and advocates a rebuilding of the law on the basis of systematic empirical inquiry.

A Conversation with Claire Katz about her book, Levinas and the Crisis of Humanism.

This elevating pull of an ethics that can account for the relation of self and other without reducing either term is the central theme of these essays.

This book is a defense of realism about truth.

The reputation and influence of Emmanuel Levinas has grown powerfully. Well known in France in his lifetime, he has since his death become widely regarded as a major European moral philosopher profoundly shaped by his Jewish background. A pupil of Husserl and Heidegger, Levinas pioneered new forms of exegesis with his post-modern readings of the Talmud, and as an ethicist brought together religious and non-religious, Jewish and non-Jewish traditions of contemporary thought. Richard A. Cohen has written a book which (...) uses Levinas' work as its base but goes on to explore broader questions of interpretation in the context of text-based ethical thinking. Levinas' reorientation of philosophy is considered in critical contrast to alternative contemporary approaches such as those found in modern science, psychology, Nietzsche, Freud, Husserl, Heidegger, Sartre, Merleau-Ponty, Derrida and Ricoeur. Cohen explores a manner of philosophizing which he terms 'ethical exegesis'. (shrink)

Richard A. Watson - Descartes: A Biography - Journal of the History of Philosophy 45:1 Journal of the History of Philosophy 45.1 159-161 Muse Search Journals This Journal Contents Reviewed by Richard Watson Washington University Desmond M. Clarke. Descartes: A Biography. New York-Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006. Pp. xi + 507. $40.00. This is an excellent critical and contextual presentation of the development of Descartes's thought in its historical context. No recent biographer has done as well in providing (...) names, dates, and outlines of the ideas and positions of thinkers contemporary with Descartes who influenced, criticized, and annoyed him. The persona that emerges from this study is that of an irascible, belligerent egotist of colossal proportions: a man who never admitted a mistake, who sometimes was almost clinically paranoid, who picked fights well beyond reasonable cause and need, who trashed two of the intellectual giants of his day , who tried to take credit for the conception of Pascal's experiment concerning the weight of the atmosphere (in fact, lots of people.. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:THE BARTH LEGACY: NEW ATHANASIUS OR ORIGEN REDIVIVUS? :A RESPONSE TO T. F. TORRANCE RICHARD A. MULLER Fuller Theological Semma1·y Pasadena, California I I N A SERIES of papers, essays, and introductions reaching back some twenty years, T. F. Torrance has provided an interpretation of the place arnd of the importance of Karl Barth not only in the theological debates of the twentieth cent- -bury but also and (...) more importantly in the who1e of the history of doctrine. According to Torrance, Barth is not only the greatest theologian since Schleiermacher and the most important thinker of our own times, he is also the greatest theologian since Athanasius, the heir of the Reformers, and the thinker on whose insights our theological future must rest.1 In these essays by Torrance, the characterization of Barthian thought as "neo1 Cf. Karl Barth, Theology and Church: Shorter Writings, 1920-1928, trans. Louise Pettibone Smith, with an introduction (1962) by T. F. Torrance (N.Y.: Harper & Row, 1962), pp. 7, 9-10; T. F. Torrance, Theology in Reconstruction (London: SCJ'vf, 1965), pp. 99, 103-105, 111-115; idem, ReaUty and Evangelical Theology (Philadelphia: Westminster, 1982),,pp. 14-15; idem, Transformation and Convergence in the Frame of Knowledge (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1984), pp. vii-x, 279-283; idem, "The Legacy of Karl Barth (1886· 1986)," in Scottish Journal of Theology, 39 (1986): 289-308 and "Karl Barth and the Latin Heresy," in 39 (1986): 461-482. The latter two essays draw together themes from the earlier words..Although the term "Latin heresy" does not seem to have been used by Torrance in any of his previous writings, it does represent a continuation of the attack on medieval and postReformation theology :first presented in his introduction to The School of Faith: The Oatechisms of the Reformed Ohi1rch (N.Y.: Harper, 1959), pp. lxx-lxxix, and elaborated in Space, Time and IncM'nation (London: Oxford, 1969). 673 674 RICHARD A, MULLER orthodox" takes on a new meaning. Barth himself rejected the term, just as (we might guess) Calvin or Chemnitz would have!'ejected any claim that their great dogmatic projects were the proper basis for a new orthodoxy in the sixteenth century. Both Calvin and Chemnitz stood for right teaching, for ortho-doxy, but neither would have presented their own views-no matter how correct they believed their exegesis and interpretation to be-as a final ground for the establishment of future theological formulations. Both in the Reformation aind in the twentieth century, it has been the next generation, the generation of the students of the great teaicher, that has moved definitely from the system of the teaicher to the establishment of a new orthodoxy. And in all fairness to the Protestant orthodox of the late sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, we must l'ecognize that they neither exalted the theology of the Reformation to the status of a new orthodoxy (ovcer against the faith of the church throughout the centuries) nor identified any single theological system, whether that of Calvin or that of Chemnitz or of a later, more fully "orthodox" and "scholastic" thinker like Polanus or Gerhard, as an exhaustive statement of theological Ol1thodoxy for the chmch.2 In the writings of Torrance, we encounter this second-generation sense of orthodoxy but, I believe, without the caution characteristic of the Protestant orthodox of the seventeenth century. In the following essay, I propose to examine the origin and the subsequent trajectory of Torrance's views on Barth's relationship to the tradition, with attention to his view of Barth's patristic roots and of Barth's position over against the western theological mind. In the concluding sections of the essay, I will try to provide a corrective to Torrance's approach to the history of 1Christian doctrine and, on the basis of that correc-. tive, an alternative view of the lega1cy of Karl Barth. Torrance's pronouncements concerning the role of Barth in 2 Cf. Richard A. Muller, " Scholasticism Protestant and Catholic: Francis Turretin on the Object and Principles of Theology," in Ohuroh Historv, 55 ( 1986) ; 19::!-205, THE BARTH LEGACY 675 the history of Christian doctrine and, therefore, in its future development a11e based on an... (shrink)

In papers published in the 25 years following his famous 1964 proof John Bell refined and reformulated his views on locality and causality. Although his formulations of local causality were in terms of probability, he had little to say about that notion. But assumptions about probability are implicit in his arguments and conclusions. Probability does not conform to these assumptions when quantum mechanics is applied to account for the particular correlations Bell argues are locally inexplicable. This account involves no superluminal (...) action and there is even a sense in which it is local, but it is in tension with the requirement that the direct causes and effects of events are nearby. (shrink)

Rare is the scholarship that does not somewhere refer to Hobbes's philosophy as a system, but nowhere does Hobbes refer to his philosophy by this term. Since Hobbes in most recognized for his moral and political philosophy, and since the interpretation of his moral and political concepts varies with the variety of views about the systematic relationship between his political and natural philosophy, the issue of system is the most crucial in Hobbes interpretation. ;The standard interpretation is that Hobbes's anthropology (...) is the direct logical result of his mechanistic materialism, that his thoroughly modern moral and political philosophy is the logical consequence of that anthropology. Taylor and Strauss for different reasons denied a systematic relationship between Hobbes's political and natural philosophy, thus ushering in almost fifty years of Hobbes research following their insights, as well as a new generation of scholars who sought to render Hobbes's philosophy systematic by finding in his works new principles of systematization. But as late as 1982, even Willms noted that a comprehensive book on system had not yet emerged. ;This dissertation attempts to show that Hobbes's political philosophy is demonstrative, as he intended it to be, only if it is based upon his natural philosophy. Chapter one traces the history of the system concept to the Seventeenth Century to find an historically accurate operational description of system against which to view Hobbes's philosophy. Chapter Two spells out the systematicity in Hobbes's philosophy and shows how the formal concept of system developed in Chapter One applies accurately to Hobbes's philosophy. Chapter Three confirms the view of Hobbes's system established in Chapter Two by showing that Hobbes's view of Aristotle depends upon his own view of philosophic system. Chapter Four argues that Hobbes did intend a system in which the political philosophy depends upon the natural and that, as a result, Hobbes's moral and political concepts, particularly natural right and natural law, are not "moral" in any traditionally recognized sense. (shrink)

The present article argues: that to support the primary aim of Religion Within the Limits of Reason Alone, which is to establish the primacy of practical reason for religion, Kant elaborates and assigns to it a social ethics. Contrary to the tired adage that without religious foundation ethics must collapse, the reverse is actually the case: without ethical foundation religion must collapse, degenerating into dogmatism, superstition and fanaticism. To ground and concretize the link between ethics and religion Kant elaborates a (...) three layered “anthropology” of human sociality upon which religion builds its communities wherein holiness consists above all in the solidarity of ethical striving to achieve virtue for each and justice for all. Despite his good intentions, however, and independent of the question of the legitimacy of ethical religion, Kant fails in Religion Within the Limits of Reason Alone owing to the imposition of a debilitating formalism owing to an undiminished allegiance to the epistemological strictures and structures—the Transcendental Idealism—of the Critique of Pure Reason. (shrink)

... and Normative Epistemology The Distinction Between Metaepistemology and Normative Epistemology Although this terminology is relatively new, ...

Alternative oppositions to “infinity” and “totality” are suggested, examined and shown to be inadequate by comparison to the sense of the opposition contained in title Totality and Infinity chosen by Levinas. Special attention is given to this opposition and the priority given to ethics in relation Kant’s distinction between understanding and reason and the priority given by Kant to ethics. The book’s title is further illuminated by means of its first sentence, and the first sentence is illuminated by means of (...) the book’s title. Special attention is given to explicating the nature and significance of the hitherto unnoticed “informal” fallacy contained in the first sentence. (shrink)

Brosio (social foundations of education, Ball State U.) describes and analyzes a number of philosophies that can provide a solid framework for the construction of critical, democratic educational theory and practice. Theorists discussed include the classical Greek thinkers, Marx, Dewey, the existentialists, liberationists, Freire, politics of identity thinkers, and postmodernists. Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR.