How “political” is Quong’s political liberalism?
In this short paper I ask to what extent the sharp contrast between the 
 political and the comprehensive, on which political liberals such as Rawls 
 and Quong place primary emphasis, caters to a truly “political” conception of 
 liberalism. I argue that Quong’s own take on this point is more distinctively 
 “political” than Rawls’s, in that it assigns far less weight to citizens’ 
 comprehensive doctrines. Indeed, I suggest that Quong’s exclusion of 
 comprehensive doctrines (exemplified by his worries about an “overlapping 
 consensus”) has more radical implications than Quong himself seems to think. 
 In doing so, I offer a streamlined version of Quong’s critique, which 
 encompasses two more or less direct criticisms of Rawls’s doctrine of the 
 overlapping consensus. I will call them the “sincerity objection” and the 
 “liberal objection”.
The Place of Comprehensive Doctrines in Political Liberalism: On Some Common Misgivings About the Subject and Function of the Overlapping Consensus
In this paper I argue that Rawlsians have largely misunderstood the idea of an overlapping consensus of reasonable comprehensive doctrines, thereby failing to delineate in an appropriate way the place of comprehensive doctrines in political liberalism. My argument rests on two core claims. The first claim is that (i) political liberalism is committed to three theses about the overlapping consensus. The first thesis concerns the subject of the overlapping consensus; the second thesis concerns the function of the overlapping consensus; the third thesis explains how the overlapping consensus can serve its function in accordance with political liberalism’s commitment to epistemic neutrality. The second claim on which my argument relies is empirical: (ii) Rawlsians typically deny at least one of the three theses to which political liberalism is committed. Based on (i) and (ii), I conclude that Rawlsians have hitherto provided unconvincing accounts of the place of comprehensive doctrines in political liberalism.
Genetic Effects of Acute and Chronic Ionizing Irradiation on Pinus sylvestrisL. Inhabiting the Chernobyl Meltdown Area
The main results of the 12-year radiation-genetic monitoring of radiobiological, cytogenetic, and genetic parameters in Pinus sylvestrisforest plantation from the Chernobyl meltdown area are presented. The acute ionizing irradiation at doses > 1 Gy was shown to induce formation of morphoses and depressed growth; at doses >2 Gy, the reproductive ability of the trees declined. The radiobiological parameters showed a linear or close to linear dose-dependence relationship. The acute irradiation at a dose of 0.5 Gy induced cytogenetic and genetic effects that were significantly higher than the corresponding control values. The relationship between the cytogenetic effects and the absorbed dose was exponential. The dependence of the mutation frequency at specific loci on the absorbed dose was described by a nonlinear curve. The results of cytogenetic analysis of seedlings obtained from seeds annually collected in zones of slight, moderate, and strong damage of Pinus sylvestrisL. are presented.