C RITICAL DISCUSSIONS of the ideas of the philosopher/novelist Ayn Rand are often most interesting, especially in what they say about the critic and about Rand's relation to today's philosophical orthodoxy. In "Life and the Theory of Value," J. Charles King continues the criticism of Rand's ethics undertaken by Robert Nozick in his article, "On the Randian Argument."' Nozick's critique was exam...

Traditional philosophy has been under attack from several quarters in recent years. The traditional philosopher views philosophy as an armchair discipline relying, for the most part, on reason and reflection. Some philosophers doubt the legitimacy of this type of inquiry. Their arguments usually occur along two dimensions. Some argue that the primary data source for the armchair philosopher—int...

As I prepared these remarks I found myself reflecting upon the implications of an idea that is common to all of the major religions of the world and to most ethical positions, namely that it is desirable to give; it is, in effect, better to give than to receive. In the King James translation of the Bible, it is written: "It is more blessed to give than to receive." A fairly modem translation pl...

Outline shape carries a substantial part of the information present in an object view, and is more economical than classical representations such as geon-structural-descriptions or multiple-views. We demonstrate the utility of silhouette representations for a variety of visual tasks, ranging from basic-level categorization to nding the best view of an object. All these tasks necessitate the com...