This study investigated the performance of boys with psychopathic tendencies and comparison boys, aged 9 to 17 years, on two tasks believed to be sensitive to amygdala and orbitofrontal cortex func- tioning. Fifty-one boys were divided into two groups according to the Psychopathy Screening Device (PSD, P. J. Frick & R. D. Hare, in press) and presented with two tasks. The tasks were the gambling task (A. Bechara, A. R. Damasio, H. Damasio, & S. W. Anderson, 1994) and the Intradimensional/ (...) Extradimensional (ID/ED) shift task (R. Dias, T. W. Robbins, & A. C. Roberts, 1996). The boys with psychopathic tendencies showed impaired performance on the gambling task. However, there were no group differences on the ID/ED task either for response reversal or extradimensional set shifting. The implications of these results for models of psychopathy are discussed. (shrink)

In this 1970 introduction to philosophy Mr Taylor concentrates on two central topics - explanation and meaning. He takes the argument far enough to acquaint the reader first-hand with the methods and approach of analytical philosophy, and yet because of the scope of these two topics he is able to introduce many of the traditional philosophical problems in epistemology, metaphysics, ethics, aesthetics, and logic. By this approach he avoids the dangers both of superficiality and of undue technicality. Philosophers are concerned (...) to analyse and describe certain concepts and modes of argument, not to establish facts or conclusions of any sort that can be tested by formal demonstration or controlled observation; their findings cannot be conveniently categorized or graded into a comprehensive and progressive course of studies. Mr Taylor meets this difficulty with his extended discussions of specific topics and questions which have implications over the whole subject. (shrink)

The purpose of this paper is to review relativistic quantum theories with an invariant evolution parameter. Parametrized relativistic quantum theories (PRQT) have appeared under such names as constraint Hamiltonian dynamics, four-space formalism, indefinite mass, micrononcausal quantum theory, parametrized path integral formalism, relativistic dynamics, Schwinger proper time method, stochastic interpretation of quantum mechanics and stochastic quantization. The review focuses on the fundamental concepts underlying the theories. Similarities as well as differences are highlighted, and an extensive bibliography is provided.

Book review of Bruce Epperly's Process Theology: A Guide for the Perplexed.

XLRI, in association with a few Tata Group companies, established the XLRI-JRD Tata Foundation in Business Ethics in 1991 to mark their long-standing commitment and contribution to business ethics in India. The foundation seeks to address this by publicly affirming the urgent need for ethics in business and the need to bring about a conducive culture in which it can thrive.

“Towards a Theory of Taxation” is a proper theme for an Englishman to take when giving a paper in America. After all it was from the absence of such a theory that the United States derived its existence. The Colonists felt strongly that there should be no taxation without representation, and George III was unable to explain to them convincingly why they should contribute to the cost of their defense. Since that time, understanding has not advanced much. In Britain we (...) still maintain the fiction that taxes are a voluntary gift to the Crown, and taxing statutes are given the Royal Assent with the special formula, “La Reine remercie ses bons sujets, accepte leur benevolence, et ainsi le veult” instead of the simple “La Reine le veult,” and in the United States taxes have regularly been levied on residents of the District of Columbia who until recently had no representation in Congress, and by the State of New York on those who worked but did not reside in the State, and so did not have a vote. Taxes are regularly levied, in America as elsewhere, on those who have no say on whether they should be levied or how they should be spent. I am taxed by the Federal Government on my American earnings and by state governments on my American spending, but I should be hard put to it to make out that it was unjust. Florida is wondering whether to follow California in taxing multinational corporations on their world-wide earnings. (shrink)

This article traces the multiple enactments of sex in clinical practices of transgender medicine to argue against the presumed singularity of ‘transexuality’. Using autoethnography to analyse my own experience as a trans patient, I describe my clinical encounters with doctors, psychiatrists and surgeons in order to theorise sex as multiple. Following recent developments in science and technology studies (STS) that advance the work of Judith Butler on sex as performatively reproduced, I use a praxiographic approach to argue that treatment practices (...) produce particular iterations of what sex (and transexuality) ‘is’ and how these processes limit and foreclose other trans possibilities. I consider the ethical, political and material-discursive implications of treatment practices and offer a series of reflections about the effects and effectiveness of current clinical practices and the possibilities for intervening in such processes in order that, following Annemarie Mol, we might (re)make sex (and transexuality) differently. (shrink)

From all points of the political compass, from widely different groups, have come indignant outcries against the trade in human organs from live vendors. Opponents contend that such practices constitute a morally outrageous and gross exploitation of the poor, inherently coercive and obviously intolerable in any civilized society. This article examines the arguments typically offered in defense of these claims, and finds serious problems with all of them. The prohibition of organ sales is derived not from the principles and argument (...) usually invoked in support of prohibition, but rather, from strong feelings of repugnance which exert an invisible but powerful influence on the debate, distorting the arguments [and working] to the detriment of the [very] people most in need of protection. (shrink)

The author of the acclaimed Gay Fiction Speaks brings us new interviews with twelve prominent gay writers who have emerged in the last decade. Hear Us Out demonstrates how in recent decades the canon of gay fiction has developed, diversified, and expanded its audience into the mainstream. Readers will recognize names like Michael Cunningham, whose Pulitzer Prize-winning novel The Hours inspired the hit movie; and others like Christopher Bram, Bernard Cooper, Stephen McCauley, and Matthew Stadler. These accounts explore the vicissitudes (...) of writing on gay male themes in fiction over the last thirty years--prejudices of the literary marketplace; social and political questions; the impact of AIDS; commonalities between gay male and lesbian fiction... and even some delectable bits of gossip. (shrink)

One of the great virtues of Oxford is that most of its members are not academics, nor ever supposed that they sould be. They come to Oxford for three or four years and then go on their way to other occupations in "the service of God in Church and State". It is not that they were not good enough to become dons: it is simply that they had other fish to fry, and would rather be a barrister, a Member of (...) Parliament, a schoolmaster or a clergyman, and would not be tempted from their chosen vocation by any offer of a Fellowship or a life of ease and scholarship. The benefits of this are great. To have left Oxford of one's own accord and not on account of having failed to get an award or a post is to part from a friend with no sense of having been rejected. The Civil Servant who goes down with a first in Greats has no sense that he did not make it at Oxford, no need to shake its dust off his shoes because Oxford did not offer him a job, and in consequence he can easily look back on four golden years of widening horizons, untarnished by some final disappointment. And in general our alumni can feel warmly to their alma mater, because their going was of their choosing, and not because they were rudely pushed out of the nest. (shrink)

Sir Arthur Norrington deserved better of the world than to be known for his table. The Norrington Room, his presidency of Trinity, his long service to the University Press, deserve repeated coverage in the papers. But the only thing they say about him year after year is that he devised the table for comparing the academic prowess of the colleges in the Schools. It is not even true. Long before the Norrington table was first published, when I was an Assistant (...) Tutor in a Cambridge college, I used to see the table which the Tutor drew up each year to show how our college was faring in tripos in comparison with other colleges. And, as a private tutorial check on Schools results, it is a legitimate and useful tool. But, published in the newspapers and made the subject of tea-time conversation in the country, it is a menace and counterproductive to the good things that Oxford should be chiefly concerned to foster. (shrink)