Taxometric analyses were applied to the construct of psychopathy (as measured by the Psychopathy Checklist) and to several variables reflecting antisocial childhood, adult criminality, and criminal recidivism. Subjects were 653 serious offenders assessed or treated in a maximum-security institution. Results supported the existence of a taxon underlying psychopathy. Childhood problem behaviors provided convergent evidence for the existence of the taxon. Adult criminal history variables were continuously distributed and were insufficient in themselves to detect the taxon.

Graduate-level historical study is ideal for students intending to specialize in the topic, as well as those who only need a general treatment. Part I discusses traditional and symbolic logic. Part II explores the foundations of mathematics, emphasizing Hilbert’s metamathematics. Part III focuses on the philosophy of mathematics. Each chapter has extensive supplementary notes; a detailed appendix charts modern developments.

Health care begins as an act of conscience, which urges a response to the sick and holds caregivers accountable to moral standards that public authorities ultimately do not define. Conscience nonetheless expresses itself as a type of dialogue within oneself that is influenced by dialogue with others, especially with society in the form of civil law and professional standards. A well-formed conscience for health care relates the foundations of morality to health care practices and contributes sound moral judgment about them (...) to the common good. Some current health care policies and medical education presume a distorted view of conscience as personal sentiment. These policies circumvent serious discussion and possible resolution of society's most vexing bioethics controversies. (shrink)

This chapter contains sections titled: Chemical Revelations? The Veil of Maya and the Reducing Valve The Insane Root The Peacock in the Mirror.

In a short article, published in an earlier volume of Philosophy 1 under the title “Philosophy and Mathematics,” I tried to explain the current conception of pure mathematics as the study of abstract structure by construction and elaboration of appropriate axiomatic formalisms. In the present paper I propose to consider certain philosophical problems, of interest to philosophers and mathematicians alike, which have their origin in the relation between such formalisms and any applications to experience that they may possess. Consideration of (...) problems of this kind is no new undertaking, and in Reichenbach's Wahrscheinlichkeitslehre , for instance, a considerable amount of space is devoted to the Anwendungsproblem or problem of application of the formal calculus under consideration. Most such discussions, however, are at bottom an appendage to an account of the formalism itself, and the author's interest is primarily mathematical. The result is that the philosophical issues involved are not given due weight; and it is these philosophical issues that I wish to discuss in the present paper. (shrink)

This essay is an attempt to take stock of what has been done by those who have worked on the foundations of mathematics and to suggest, very inadequately in so short a space, what may be a satisfactory approach to this subject for one who is not an expert in it. The subject is one that neither mathematicians nor philosophers can any longer afford to ignore, but in the technicalities of which they may not be very interested.

The act/omission distinction is used throughout Western legal systems, and indeed elsewhere, to police the boundaries between acceptable medical practice and unacceptable interventions designed to bring about the death of patients. Without exception, it has proved impossible to maintain the distinction with any clarity. In the United Kingdom, for example, it is lawful both to withhold and to withdraw from a patient treatment that the medical ….