This study investigates the performance of psychopathic individuals on tasks believed to be sensitive to dorsolateral prefrontal and orbitofrontal cortex (OFC) functioning. Psychopathic and non-psychopathic individuals, as defined by the Hare psychopathy checklist revised (PCL-R) [Hare, The Hare psychopathy checklist revised, Toronto, Ontario: Multi-Health Systems, 1991] completed a gambling task [Cognition 50 (1994) 7] and the intradimensional/extradimensional (ID/ED) shift task [Nature 380 (1996) 69]. On the gambling task, psychopathic participants showed a global tendency to choose disadvantageously. Specifically, they showed an (...) impaired ability to show learning over the course of the task. On the ID/ED task, the performance of psychopathic individuals was not significantly different from incarcerated controls on attentional set-shifting, but significant impairments were found on response reversal. These results are interpreted with reference to an OFC and amygdala dysfunction explanation of psychopathy. (shrink)

Conventional medical ethics and the law draw a bright line distinguishing the permitted practice of withdrawing life-sustaining treatment from the forbidden practice of active euthanasia by means of a lethal injection. When clinicians justifiably withdraw life-sustaining treatment, they allow patients to die but do not cause, intend, or have moral responsibility for, the patient's death. In contrast, physicians unjustifiably kill patients whenever they intentionally administer a lethal dose of medication. We argue that the differential moral assessment of these two practices (...) is based on a series of moral fictions – motivated false beliefs that erroneously characterize withdrawing life-sustaining treatment in order to bring accepted end-of-life practices in line with the prevailing moral norm that doctors must never kill patients. When these moral fictions are exposed, it becomes apparent that conventional medical ethics relating to end-of-life decisions is radically mistaken. (shrink)

Physicalists motivate their position by posing a problem for the opposition: given the causal completeness of physics and the impact of the mental (or, more broadly, the seemingly nonphysical) on the physical, antiphysicalism implies that causal overdetermination is rampant. This argument is, however, equivocal in its use of 'physical'. As Scott Sturgeon has recently argued, if 'physical' means that which is the object of physical theory, completeness is plausible, but the further claim that the mental has a causal impact on (...) the physical is no longer so evident. In this paper I assess the damage due to the ambiguity of 'physical' and provide a repair to the overdetermination strategy. (shrink)

The latter half of the eighteenth century saw radical changes in the way nature - both external and human nature - was perceived. It is these new perceptions, these new images of the 'the natural' that this book examines: new appreciations of the 'sublime' wildness of landscape; new revelations by the life sciences of natural creative fecundity; new assertions of the innocence of 'natural man', as illustrated by the noble savage, the contented peasant, the happy family; a new sense of (...) harmony between man and nature, reflected in changing moral, psychological, economic, and religious attitudes. Professor Charlton concentrates on French examples, for in France the contrast between old and new views was particularly vivid; but there are also numerous comparisons with England and other European countries, making this a major study in the cultural history of Europe at an especially crucial time for the formation of many of our modem assumptions about man and nature. (shrink)

J. Angelo Corlett’s response to Leigh Turner defends the current practice of anonymous refereeing in scholarly journals. In reply to him: a slightly refined proposal for signed referees’ reports, with temporarily blind refereeing, would restore to the process of publication, in philosophy at least, the sense of responsibility for rational debate, cooperation, mutual criticism, and simple courtesy which is expected among colleagues in public academic relations, and would also allow more credit for the difficult task for refereeing. Personal observation of (...) the quality of referees’ reports suggests that a gathering of anecdotal evidence would show the need for reform. (shrink)

Christopher Miles Coope offers a letter, drafted by Helen Taylor but certified by Mill, in which Mill asserts the duty to vote, as evidence that he could not have regarded harmfulness to others as a necessary condition of moral wrongness. But it is clear that Mill regarded the duty to vote as one of imperfect obligation, and the wrongness of not fulfilling it as a matter roughly of not doing enough, in this case not doing one's fair share. He has (...) room for the common-sense harmlessness of staying at home. At the same time he grounds political duties in the harmfulness of neglecting the power of legislation and in the possibility, consistently maintained, that one can harm by inaction. Mill's view, central to his relation between morality and liberty, remains at work here, while also suggesting reflections on the peculiarity of his conception of harm. (shrink)

Historically, the years between the start of the tenth century AD and the mid-twelfth century witnessed dramatic socio-political and religious convulsions and transformation. This article first adumbrates the political role of Rayy, then gives an overview of the major trends in the religious history of the Seljūq period. These included the promotion and spread of the madrasa, with its accompanying madhhab -based ʿaṣabiyya and violence; paradoxically, a reduction in the level of violence against dhimmīs and Shiʿites; the final acceptance of (...) Sufism and its incorporation into mainstream religious life, including court life; and, above all, the close tying, and subsequent subservience, of the Sunni ʿulamāʾ to the government. (shrink)

(1999). Millian Liberalism and Colonial Oppression. Canadian Journal of Philosophy: Vol. 29, Supplementary Volume 25: Civilization and Oppression, pp. 79-97.