유가전통(儒家傳統)과 유가정치사상(儒家政治思想)은 한국정치 후진성의 원인으로 줄곧 지목된다. 이 통념에서 주로 지적되는 폐단은 유가적 정치원리가 가족적 질서를 국가 영역으로 확대·적용함으로써 궁극적으로 공공 영역 확립을 방해한다는 것이다. 이는 소위 “유교 가족주의”의 폐단이다. 본고는 이 폐단이 나올 수밖에 없는 그 사상 내적인 요인이 무엇인지 살펴본다. 특히 그 문제점이 파벌과 권위주의의 중첩에 있음을 지적하고, 이를 “유교 가족주의의 이중성”이라고 편의상 명명한다. 본고가 주목하는 요인은 유가정치사상의 특징 중 하나인 “의제(擬制)적 확대”이다. 이 기제가 유가전통의 두 중핵인 인(仁)과 의(義)에 연관되어 어떻게 작동하는지 살펴봄으로써, 파벌과 권위주의의 유교 내적 원인에 (...) 좀 더 체계적으로 접근한다. 이를 바탕으로 그 폐단을 극복할 수 있는 가능성이 유가정치사상에 이미 내재하는지, 그리고 만일 내재한다면 어떤 한계를 노정하는지도 또한 고찰한다. (shrink)

Elliot R. Wolfson intervenes in the debate over Martin Heidegger and Nazism from a unique perspective, as a scholar of Jewish mysticism and philosophy who has been profoundly influenced by Heidegger's work. He reveals crucial aspects of Heidegger's thinking that betray an affinity with dimensions of Jewish thought.

Research integrity is core to the mission of higher education. In undergraduate student samples, self-reported rates of data fabrication have been troublingly high. Despite this, no research has investigated undergraduate data fabrication in a more systematic manner. We applied duplication screening techniques to 18 data sets submitted by psychology honors students for assessment. Although we did not identify any completely duplicated cases, there were numerous partial duplicates. Rather than indicating fabrication, however, these partial duplicates are likely a consequence of (...) poor measure selection, insufficient data screening, and/or participant characteristics. Implications for the teaching and supervision of honors students are discussed. (shrink)

We develop a combinatorial model to study the evolution of graphs underlying proofs during the process of cut elimination. Proofs are two-dimensional objects and differences in the behavior of their cut elimination can often be accounted for by differences in their two-dimensional structure. Our purpose is to determine geometrical conditions on the graphs of proofs to explain the expansion of the size of proofs after cut elimination. We will be concerned with exponential expansion and we give upper and lower bounds (...) which depend on the geometry of the graphs. The lower bound is computed passing through the notion of universal covering for directed graphs. In this paper we present ground material for the study of cut elimination and structure of proofs in purely combinatorial terms. We develop a theory of duplication for directed graphs and derive results on graphs of proofs as corollaries. (shrink)

It has become a truism that we humans are genetically about 99% identical to chimpanzees. The origins of this assertion are clear: among early studies of DNA sequences, nucleotide identity between humans and chimpanzees was found to average around 98.9%.1 However, this figure is correct only with respect to regions of the genome that are shared between humans and chimpanzees. Often ignored are the many parts of their genomes that are not shared. Genomic rearrangements, including insertions, deletions, translocations and duplications, (...) have long been recognized as potentially important sources of novel genomic material2,3 and are known to account for major genomic differences between humans and chimpanzees.4 Further, such changes have been implicated in a number of genetic disorders, such as DiGeorge, Angelman/Prader‐Willi and Charcot‐Marie‐Tooth syndromes5. BioEssays 28: 335–338, 2006. © 2006 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. (shrink)

Mutational robustness facilitates evolutionary innovations. Gene duplications are unique kinds of mutations, in that they generally increase such robustness. The frequent association of gene duplications in regulatory networks with evolutionary innovation is thus a special case of a general mechanism linking innovation to robustness. The potential power of this mechanism to promote evolutionary innovations on large time scales is illustrated here with several examples. These include the role of gene duplications in the vertebrate radiation, flowering plant evolution and heart development, (...) which encompass some of the most striking innovations in the evolution of life. BioEssays 30:367–373, 2008. © 2008 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. (shrink)

The article considers how the use of duplicates and the practice of photography interacted in museums of ethnography, contributing to the ambivalent framing of ethnographic objects as items that can be both scientific specimens and works of art. It focuses on the Musée d'ethnographie du Trocadéro in Paris and on the key period of its reorganization between 1928 and 1935, which was central to the institutionalization of French ethnology. By examining the place of duplicates in this museum, as well as (...) the major role attributed to photographs of objects and their materiality, the paper shows that these others of the ethnographic artefacts, often considered separately from their originals, still participated in the same project: the development of the museum and its growing cultural influence. While the duplicates positioned the museum in the various networks of the scientific community, the photographs appealed to the avant-garde, amateurs, African and Oceanian art dealers and the general public. (shrink)

We get cut-free sequent calculi for the interpolable propositional intermediate logics by translating suitable duplication-free tableau calculi developed within a semantical framework. From this point of view, the paper also provides semantical proofs of the admissibility of the cut-rule for appropriate cut-free sequent calculi.

The nineteenth-century museum and auction house are seemingly distinct spaces with opposing functions: while the former represents a contemplative space that accumulates objects of art and science, the latter provides a forum for lively sales events that disperse wares to the highest bidders. This contribution blurs the border between museums and marketplaces by studying the Berlin Zoological Museum's duplicate specimen auctions between 1818 and the 1840s. It attends to the operations and tools involved in commodifying specimens as duplicates, particularly the (...) auction catalogue. The paper furthermore contextualizes the museum's sales in a broader history of duplicate auctions across Berlin's collection landscape. (shrink)

Kris McDaniel has argued that strong composition as identity entails a principle he calls the Plural Duplication Principle, and that is inconsistent with the possibility of strongly emergent properties. Theodore Sider has objected that this possibility is only inconsistent with a closely analogous principle he calls the Set Duplication Principle. According to Sider, however, the friend of strong composition as identity is under no pressure to accept. In this paper, I argue that she has strong reason to accept (...) either or a principle that is also inconsistent with the possibility of strongly emergent properties. (shrink)

Rare copy number variants have a prominent role in the aetiology of schizophrenia and other neuropsychiatric disorders. Substantial risk for schizophrenia is conferred by large CNVs at several loci, including microdeletions at 1q21.1, 3q29, 15q13.3 and 22q11.2 and microduplication at 16p11.2. However, these CNVs collectively account for a small fraction of cases, and the relevant genes and neurobiological mechanisms are not well understood. Here we performed a large two-stage genome-wide scan of rare CNVs and report the significant association of copy (...) number gains at chromosome 7q36.3 with schizophrenia. Microduplications with variable breakpoints occurred within a 362-kilobase region and were detected in 29 of 8,290 patients versus 2 of 7,431 controls in the combined sample. All duplications overlapped or were located within 89 kilobases upstream of the vasoactive intestinal peptide receptor gene VIPR2. VIPR2 transcription and cyclic-AMP signalling were significantly increased in cultured lymphocytes from patients with microduplications of 7q36.3. These findings implicate altered vasoactive intestinal peptide signalling in the pathogenesis of schizophrenia and indicate the VPAC2 receptor as a potential target for the development of new antipsychotic drugs. © 2011 Macmillan Publishers Limited. All rights reserved. (shrink)

Susan Hurley has attacked the ''Duplication Assumption'', the assumption thatcreatures with exactly the same internal states could function exactly alike inenvironments that are systematically distorted. She argues that the dynamicalinterdependence of action and perception is highly problematic for the DuplicationAssumption when it involves spatial states and capacities, whereas no such problemsarise when it involves color states and capacities. I will try to establish that theDuplication Assumption makes even less sense for lightness than for some ofthe spatial cases. This is (...) due not only to motor factors, but to the basic physicalasymmetry between black and white. I then argue that the case can be extendedfrom lightness perception to hue perception. Overall, the aims of this paper are:(1) to extend Susan Hurley''s critique of the Duplication Assumption; (2) to argueagainst highly constrained versions of Inverted Spectrum arguments; (3) to proposea broader conception of the vehicle for color perception. (shrink)

In this paper, I develop an argument for the thesis that ‘maximality is extrinsic’, on which a whole physical object is not a whole of its kind in virtue of its intrinsic properties. Theodore Sider has a number of arguments that depend on his own simple argument that maximality is extrinsic. However, Peter van Inwagen has an argument in defence of his Duplication Principle that, I will argue, can be extended to show that Sider's simple argument fails. However, van (...) Inwagen's argument fails against a more complex, sophisticated argument that maximality is extrinsic. I use van Inwagen's own commitments to various forms of causation and metaphysical possibility to argue that maximality is indeed extrinsic, although not for the mundane reasons that Sider suggests. I then argue that moral properties are extrinsic properties. Two physically identical things can have different moral properties in a physical world. This argument is a counterexample to a classical ethical supervenience idea (often attributed to G.E. Moore) that if there is identity of physical properties in a physical world, then there is identity in moral properties as well. I argue moral value is ‘border sensitive’ and extrinsic for Kantians, utilitarians, and Aristotelians. (shrink)

If X loves Y does it follow that X has reasons to love a physiologically exact replacement for Y? Can love's reasons be duplicated? One response to the problem is to suggest that X lacks reasons for loving such a duplicate because the reason-conferring properties of Y cannot be fully duplicated. But a concern, played upon by Derek Parfit, is that this response may result from a failure to take account of the psychological pressures of an actual duplication scenario. (...) In the face of the actual loss of a loved one and the subsequent appearance of a duplicate, how could we resist the inclination to love? Drawing upon duplication scenarios from Parfit and from Stanislaw Lem's Solaris, this paper will argue that there could be reasons for X to come to love a duplicate of Y but that these would not be identical with the reasons that X had (and may still have) to love Y. Nor (in the case of an agent with a normal causal history) could they be reasons for a love that violates the requirement that love is a response to a relationship and therefore takes time to emerge. (shrink)

The problem of trickster leadership is discussed in this chapter in the context of the Romanian experience of modernity. This experience has emerged as a Post-Byzantine condition; it was strongly marked by the forty years of communist regimes and was loaded with a high amount of duplicity and ambivalence. The chapter argues that the communist type of trickster leadership in Romania was the outcome of a clash between two types of corruption: a domestic one and a global one. The idea (...) of ‘forms without substance’, coined in 1868 by the historian Titu Maiorescu, is shown to be indicative of the exilic condition in which Romanians remained caught even after their country became independent. The description of this paradoxical condition is followed by a review of the main eras of Romania as a modern state, arguing that this condition has led to an accumulation of disharmony and the absurd in the social fabric of the people. (shrink)

In the annals of Indian modernity, narratives of tricksters and counterfeiters have a long, popular, and cautionary history. The topographies of deception outlined by colonial and post-colonial police reports established both its history as an aspect of modern industrial life as well as the city as the ‘scene of the crime’. This article explores the meanings that attach to certain contemporary acts of deceiving and faking, and the ways in which they are both produced by being in the city as (...) well as producing certain kinds of relationships. The article focuses on the residents of a Delhi slum and their various acts of producing fake identity cards and a variety of other documents. It offers a discussion about simulation and dissimulation, feigning and duplicity, and passing and pretending as significant contexts for gaining security of livelihood and residence in the city as well as constituting specific senses of community. Faking and counterfeiting, the article suggests, are arenas where the state both constitutes itself and contributes to the making of imagined non-state sensibilities of community. (shrink)

Suppose that a physical duplicate of me, right down to the arrangements of subatomic particles, comes into existence at the time at which I finish this sentence. Suppose that it comes into existence by chance, or at least by a causal process entirely unconnected with me. It might be so situated that it, too, is seated in front of a computer, and finishes this paragraph and paper, or a corresponding one, just as I do. (i) Would it have the same (...) thoughts I do? (ii) Would it speak my language? (iii) Would my duplicate have any thoughts or (iv) speak any language at all? To fix the interpretation of these questions, I will take ‘thought’ to cover any mental state which has a representational content, where ‘representational content’ is intended to be neutral with respect to psychological mode. By 'psychological mode' I mean what distinguishes kinds of thoughts, such as belief, visual perceptual experience, desire, etc. Representational content, or thought content, as I will also say, determines the conditions under which a thought is true or false, veridical or non-veridical, or, more broadly, is satisfied or fails to be satisfied, independently of relativization to circumstances, possible worlds, or the like. Beliefs, desires, hopes, intentions, and perceptual experiences will all count as thoughts on this usage. The question whether one person has the same (type of) thought as another is the question whether both have a mental state with the same representational content in the same psychological mode. I will not count epistemic verbs, however, as picking out or expressing a (pure) psychological mode. Thus, although knowing that the time is ripe, seeing that there is a goldfinch in the garden, and remembering that my wife’s birthday is next Tuesday are all thoughts, they do not pick out the thoughts by using a verb that expresses a psychological mode. Therefore knowing, seeing or remembering the same things is not a requirement on having the same thoughts.. (shrink)

In the late nineteenth century, the anthropology curators of the Smithsonian Institution consulted their cataloguing systems and storerooms, assessing specimens in order to determine which could be designated as duplicate specimens and exchanged with museums domestically and abroad. The status of ‘duplicate’ for specimens was contingent on conceptions of similiarity impacted by disciplinary classification praxis, with particular emphasis on object nomenclature and formal attributes. Using rattles from Haida Gwaii collected between 1881 and 1885 by James Swan for the Smithsonian Institution, (...) this article explores how anthropology curators designated rattles as exchangeable duplicate specimens. It considers cataloguing and spatial arrangements, as well as changing populations and formal characteristics of rattles, in order to explore how similarity was operationalized in the museum to produce duplicate anthropological specimens. (shrink)

The rearrangement or permutation of protein substructures is an important mode of divergence. Recent work1 explored one possible underlying mechanism called permutation‐by‐duplication, which produces special forms of motif rearrangements called circular permutations. Permutation‐by‐duplication, involving gene duplication, fusion and truncation, can produce fully functional intermediate proteins1 and thus represents a feasible mechanism of protein evolution. In spite of this, circular permutations are relatively rare and we discuss possible reasons for their existence. BioEssays 28: 973–978, 2006. © 2006 Wiley (...) Periodicals, Inc. (shrink)

The principal aim of this paper is to defend a certain view about temporary properties from an important objection to that view. More specifically, I will be defending the view that ostensible temporary intrinsic properties are really relations between the things that have those properties and times. The objection is, roughly speaking, that by construing ostensible temporary intrinsics as relations to times, persisting things are impoverished, being clothed only by their essential (and perhaps also their permanent) intrinsic properties. The worry (...) is that the relations to times view moves us towards thinking of persisting particulars as being quite bare. I do not suggest that this is the only difficulty for the relations to times view (in fact, I uncover a potential problem for the view in Section 3), but it is an important one. If the objection is successfully addressed, then a significant obstacle to the relations to times view is overcome. (shrink)

For centuries, herbarium specimens were the focus of exchange in global botanical networks. The aim was the ‘complete’ registration of the flora, for which ‘complete’ collections in botanical institutions worldwide were considered to be a necessary basis, although this ardently sought-after ideal was never achieved. The study of colonial plants became a special priority of botanical research in the metropolises. With knowledge of the many treasures of the plant world considered the key to securing wealth and power, political and economic (...) interests influenced both the organization and the subject matter of scientific research. After the German Reich began annexing colonies in the 1880s, legal regulations established Berlin's botanical institutions as the research centre on colonial flora. They also became a clearing house for plant material from overseas. Berlin-based curators selected duplicates of herbarium specimens from the German colonies, distributing them to other botanical institutions throughout Germany. More importantly, duplicates became a form of currency in trans-imperial networks, which relied on reciprocity. In exchange for duplicate German colonial herbarium specimens, the Berlin institutions received vast quantities of botanical samples from their British, Dutch, French and American counterparts. (shrink)

In this paper an "unconscious" structure common to such altered psychological states as dreaming, schizophrenic disintegration, out-of body experiences, and creative acts is described. This description is accomplished by setting psychoanalytic, clinical, and empirical studies zuithin a phenomenological framework. Phenomenological self-reflection is first made a party to discussions which focus on memories and the experience of the lived body. The configurations of "unconsciousness" then take precedence in describing relationships between the "I" of waking consciousness and a transformative body image . (...) A unique experience of the self-as undergoing a process of ego "duplication" and body "doubling"-is highlighted. (shrink)

People commonly believe that any form of deception, no matter how innocuous it is and no matter whether the deceiving person intended it otherwise, is always morally wrong. In this paper, I will argue that deceiving in real-time is morally distinguishable from deceiving on-line because online actions aren’t as fine-grained as actions occurring in real-time. Our failure to detect the fine-grained characteristics of another avatar leads us to believe that that avatar intended to do a moral harm. Openly deceiving someone (...) on Facebook or Twitter is not a way to build wholesome virtual friendships but to destroy them. This paper will show how the traditional understanding of the doing / allowing distinction fails to apply in cyberspace. (shrink)

The issue of duplicates and duplication in ethnographic collection is frequently regarded as a process that begins and ends in the museum as a fundamental act of the process of curating. In contrast, this article maintains, this practice occurred all along the chain of collecting, where indigenous artefacts operated as items of exchange in the context of the colonial encounter. Using the example of German New Guinea, the article maintains that epistemological concerns, as symbolic currency both in terms of (...) inter-museum exchange and in terms of contributing to individual and institutional prestige, guiding ethnographic intuitions had little influence on colonial resident collectors. Colonial residents, who resented the heavy hand of colonial and museum officials in Berlin, infused duplication with their own desires, which included commercial gain or the conferment of the many German state decorations. The colonized indigenous population benefited from the increasing demand for their material culture, which provided valuable items and bargaining chips in the emerging colonial exchange. Duplicates are identified as doppelgängers to explore the political tensions that emerged in connection with duplication among museum officials and European and indigenous colonial residents. (shrink)

This dissertation explores the concepts of naturalness, intrinsicality, and duplication. An intrinsic property is had by an object purely in virtue of the way that object is considered in itself. Duplicate objects are exactly similar, considered as they are in themselves. The perfectly natural properties are the most fundamental properties of the world, upon which the nature of the world depends. In this dissertation I develop a theory of intrinsicality, naturalness, and duplication and explore their philosophical applications. Chapter (...) 1 introduces the notions, gives a preliminary survey of some proposed conceptual connections between the notions, and sketches some of their proposed applications. Chapter 2 gives my background assumptions and introduces notational conventions. In chapter 3 I present a theory of naturalness. Although I take ‘natural’ as a primitive, I clarify this notion by distinguishing and explicating various conceptions of naturalness. In chapter 4 I give a theory of various notions related to naturalness, especially intrinsicality and duplication. I show that ‘intrinsic’ and ‘duplicate’ are interde nable, and then give analyses of these and other notions in terms of naturalness. If, as I think likely, naturalness cannot be analyzed, then what is the proper response? David Lewis suggests: accept naturalness as a primitive. I am sympathetic to this proposal, but not to the form Lewis gives it: chapter 5 contains an argument against Lewis’s theory of naturalness. In chapter 6 I reject the idea that naturalness is analyzable in terms of immanent universals. I focus on the work of D. M. Armstrong. I also criticize Armstrong’s arguments against transcendent universals. (shrink)

THE PASSAGE CITED IN THE TITLE IS commonly said to deal with puzzles or paradoxes about size and other measurable attributes of bodies. Nearly all recent commentators seek to interpret this portion of the dialogue as supporting or otherwise cohering with the Protagorean position Socrates expounds in the Theaetetus. On the present analysis, however, the support or harmony is mere appearance. The puzzles Socrates brings up are indeed associated with entities rejected by Protagoras. Socrates certainly uses the puzzles to foster (...) Theaetetus's trust in Protagorean doctrine. All the same, Socrates' procedure should not be taken at face value. The passage, which is an important digression, is fundamentally quite critical of the Protagorean position. (shrink)

The similarity of documents in a large database of published Fractals articles was examined for redundancy. Three different text matching techniques were used on published Abstracts to identify redundancy candidates, and predictions were verified by reading full text versions of the redundancy candidate articles. A small fraction of the total articles in the database was judged to be redundant. This was viewed as a lower limit, because it excluded cases where the concepts remained the same, but the text was altered (...) substantially. Far more pervasive than redundant publications were publications that did not violate the letter of redundancy but rather violated the spirit of redundancy. There appeared to be widespread publication maximization strategies. Studies that resulted in one comprehensive paper decades ago now result in multiple papers that focus on one major problem, but are differentiated by parameter ranges, or other stratifying variables. This ‘paper inflation’ is due in large part to the increasing use of metrics (publications, patents, citations, etc) to evaluate research performance, and the researchers’ motivation to maximize the metrics. (shrink)

The similarity of documents in a large database of published Fractals articles was examined for redundancy. Three different text matching techniques were used on publisheds to identify redundancy candidates, and predictions were verified by reading full text versions of the redundancy candidate articles. A small fraction of the total articles in the database was judged to be redundant. This was viewed as a lower limit, because it excluded cases where the concepts remained the same, but the text was altered substantially.Far (...) more pervasive than redundant publications were publications that did not violate the letter of redundancy but rather violated the spirit of redundancy. There appeared to be widespread publication maximization strategies. Studies that resulted in one comprehensive paper decades ago now result in multiple papers that focus on one major problem, but are differentiated by parameter ranges, or other stratifying variables. This ‘paper inflation’ is due in large part to the increasing use of metrics (publications, patents, citations, etc) to evaluate research performance, and the researchers’ motivation to maximize the metrics. (shrink)

The similarity of documents in a large database of published Fractals articles was examined for redundancy. Three different text matching techniques were used on published Abstracts to identify redundancy candidates, and predictions were verified by reading full text versions of the redundancy candidate articles. A small fraction of the total articles in the database was judged to be redundant. This was viewed as a lower limit, because it excluded cases where the concepts remained the same, but the text was altered (...) substantially.Far more pervasive than redundant publications were publications that did not violate the letter of redundancy but rather violated the spirit of redundancy. There appeared to be widespread publication maximization strategies. Studies that resulted in one comprehensive paper decades ago now result in multiple papers that focus on one major problem, but are differentiated by parameter ranges, or other stratifying variables. This ‘paper inflation’ is due in large part to the increasing use of metrics (publications, patents, citations, etc) to evaluate research performance, and the researchers’ motivation to maximize the metrics. (shrink)

At first sight, “theory” does not seem to be a major issue in Heidegger's thought. Yet, as his early Freiburg lectures from 1919 demonstrate, Heidegger's development of a phenomenological method of his own required a systematic debate with the neo-Kantians and the philosophical privilege they accorded to theoretization. While laying the foundation for a phenomenological method whose prime object is the lived experience of the surrounding world, Heidegger sketches out a double concept of theorization, one which, through a process of (...) successive stages of unliving, culminates in the objectified conception of an empty “something,” and another concept of theoretization for which the “something” is “the experienceable in general,” and which guides the a-theoretical encounter of phenomenology as an “archontic form of life” with the world, the other, and the “not yet.”. (shrink)

This article introduces the notion of duplex elements of the finite rings and corresponding neutrosophic rings. The authors establish duplex ring Dup(R) and neutrosophic duplex ring Dup(R)I)) by way of various illustrations. The tables of different duplicities are constructed to reveal the comparison between rings Dup(Zn), Dup(Dup(Zn)) and Dup(Dup(Dup(Zn ))) for the cyclic ring Zn . The proposed duplicity structures have several algebraic systems with dissimilar consequences. Author’s characterize finite rings with R + R is different from the duplex ring (...) Dup(R). However, this characterization supports that R + R = Dup(R) for some well known rings, namely zero rings and finite fields. (shrink)

Hegel is one of the major philosophers of the nineteenth century. Many of the major philosophical movements of the twentieth century - from existentialism to analytic philosophy - grew out of reactions against Hegel. He is also one of the hardest philosophers to understand and his complex ideas, though rewarding, are often misunderstood. In this magisterial and lucid introduction, Frederick Beiser covers every major aspect of Hegel's thought. He places Hegel in the historical context of nineteenth-century Germany whilst clarifying the (...) deep insights and originality of Hegel's philosophy. A masterpiece of clarity and scholarship, _Hegel_ is both the ideal starting point for those coming to Hegel for the first time and essential reading for any student or scholar of nineteenth century philosophy. Additional features: glossary chapter summaries chronology annotated further reading. (shrink)

Since the solution to many public health problems depends on research, it is critical for the progress and well-being for the patients that we can trust the scientific literature. Misconduct and poor laboratory practice in science threatens the scientific progress, leads to loss of productivity and increased healthcare costs, and endangers lives of patients. Data duplication may represent one of challenges related to these problems. In order to estimate the frequency of data duplication in life science literature, a (...) systematic screen through 120 original scientific articles published in three different cancer related journals [journal impact factor 20] was completed. The study revealed a surprisingly high proportion of articles containing data duplication. For the IF 20 journals, 25 % of the articles were found to contain data duplications. The IF 5–10 journal showed a comparable proportion. The proportion of articles containing duplicated data was comparable between the three journals and no significant correlation to journal IF was found. The editorial offices representing the journals included in this study and the individual authors of the detected articles were contacted to clarify the individual cases. The editorial offices did not reply and only 1 out of 29 cases were apparently clarified by the authors, although no supporting data was supplied. This study questions the reliability of life science literature, it illustrates that data duplications are widespread and independent of journal impact factor and call for a reform of the current peer review and retraction process of scientific publishing. (shrink)

In this paper, I will defend a strategy for employing perfect being theology that Jeff Speaks calls “restriction strategy.” In Section I, I will outline what the restriction strategy is and explicate Speaks’s objection to it. In Section II, I will propose a response to Speaks’s objection. In Section III, the response will be refined to avoid objections. My contention will be that this refined version of perfect being theology avoids Speaks’s objection, and therefore can help theists find what divine (...) attributes God has. (shrink)

This is my first professional philosophical essay. I wrote "The twofold meaning of being" in 1996 when I was a student of Nunzio Incardona at University of Palermo (Italy) and before my degree thesis, "The difference in Aristotle’s Metaphysics". It still waits to be published.