The Tragedy of Punishment: An Insight into Why Doing Something Good Feels Bad

My motivation for writing on what I have come to call “the tragedy of punishment” is the seemingly paradoxical state of affairs associated with punishment. The first state of affairs is the general understanding that punishment is not just a necessary practice but also a morally good one that serves not only to give criminals their just deserts but also generally benefit society and those in it. The second state of affairs is the realization that, despite the understanding that punishment is painted as a moral good, when thinking about all the harm caused by punishment one cannot help but feel badly about it. The problem arises with the obvious conclusion that these two state of affairs seem at the very least problematically counterintuitive. How can it be that doing a moral good ends up leaving us feeling bad? In fact, many cases in which a morally good action is committed are cause for celebration but not so for punishment. What then makes punishment different from the other cases in which the result is supposed to be a good? It is an answer to this question that motivates the rest of the paper

The Growth of Unintentional- and Sulphur-Doped Indium Phosphide by Molecular Beam Epitaxy

This thesis describes a detailed and systematic investigation of those factors which influence the properties of InP grown by Molecular Beam Epitaxy. The growth of any semiconductor material for device applications requires that the growth process is reproducible, and its capabilities characterised. Both the published literature and the analysis of epitaxial InP grown at the start of this programme indicated that neither of these criteria were satisfied for the MBE growth of InP. A detailed assessment of InP grown using an existing MBE chamber and involving Photoluminescence (PL), Secondary Ion Mass Spectroscopy (SIMS) and residual carrier concentration profiles is presented. This assessment and particularly the results of the SIMS analysis was able to identify a significant concentration of impurities in the epitaxial layers and, more importantly, enabled the source of these impurities to be determined. Further experiments which involved deliberate changes in the growth conditions (growth temperature, growth rate, and V:III flux ratio) during the growth of single epitaxial layers are reported. The results from the SIMS and residual carrier concentration profiles of these layers are shown to identify limitations imposed by the construction of the existing growth chamber. Such limitations were overcome by the design and commissioning of a second growth chamber. The significant improvement in both the purity and the growth control achieved using this second chamber enabled a detailed and systematic analysis of the influence of growth conditions on the properties of epitaxial InP to be undertaken. The results of PL, SIMS, Hall and residual carrier profiles of an extensive series of layers are presented. From these results the purity and properties of unintentionally doped InP grown from solid sources are shown to be dominated by a single extrinsic impurity. The origin of this impurity is unequivocally identified as the red phosphorus source material and it is believed that this impurity is responsible for the universal n-type behaviour of InP grown by solid source MBE to date. The role of Calcium shown by SIMS to be present in the epitaxial InP is also discussed. The intentional doping of InP using Sulphur from an electrochemical source has been characterised. No evidence of Sulphur diffusion has been observed but a previously unsuspected temperature sensitivity of the electrochemical cell has been identified. The use of Sulphur as an n-type dopant in the MBE growth of InP is shown to be an attractive alternative to Si, especially when the improved morphology at high doping concentrations and the reduced dependence of incorporation rate on the group V flux are considered. In the light of the limitation on the purity of InP grown by MBE from solid sources which is identified in this study, a detailed assessment of the routes available for reducing this impurity concentration is presented. Results from a comparison of different batches of nominally high purity red phosphorus source material reveal a variation in impurity concentration of over 2 orders of magnitude, while optimisation of the growth conditions is shown only to be viable at reduced growth temperatures. However, it is clear that using the appropriate phosphorus source high purity (ND+NA < 5x10e14cm-3) InP with reproducible properties can be obtained using molecular beam growth techniques

Copyhold tenure and its survival in Holderness in the East Riding of Yorkshire from c.1750 to 1925

The aim of this thesis is two-fold: first to trace and quantify the persistence of an ancient tenure, namely copyhold, in the Holderness area of East Yorkshire from the mid-eighteenth century; and second to plot its subsequent rate of extinction down to the legal end of the tenure in 1925.The main objective of this thesis was to identify the areas of copyhold tenure in Holderness at some early starting point, and to plot their disappearance over time. By the end of the eighteenth century, copyhold was widely seen as an antiquated form of tenure, having its origins rooted in the villein servitude of the middle ages. In focussing clearly on a specific form of tenure and the copyholders, who held their estates of the manor, it was possible to avoid the confusion which has been generated in the past historiography regarding landownership change involving different classes of rural people, variously described in texts as freeholders, leaseholders, yeomen, husbandmen, small farmers and peasants. Though copyhold owner-occupiers, farming their land were usually described as yeomen in the Holderness court rolls, this thesis has avoided the subject of small farmers and their demise - a topic which has been the focus of much historical debate in the past and concentrated on the survival of copyhold tenure.This thesis has also shown that the so-called 'ancient enclosures' of arable, meadow or pasture land in Holderness were almost entirely freehold by enclosure time and mostly farmed in larger units by the lords of the manors or other substantial landowners. Finally, where manorial control was strong, the village garths as for example held of the Manors of Burstwick, Easington, Kilnsea and Skeffiing, Homsea, North Frodingham, Patrington, Roos and Skipsea, contained a high proportion of copyhold tenements. In large measure these resolutely remained as copyholds to the end of 1925.Land once created freehold could never again be converted back to copyhold. In any manor of England, over a period of time, the proportion of copyholds was bound to diminish as the process of enfranchisement gathered momentum. If Holderness reflected the National scene whereby in pre-Tudor times, the bulk of farming land had been held by copyhold tenants, then the tenurial situation had reversed strongly in favour of freeholds by 1750. In spite of this, the proof that a proportion of copyholds survived enclosure is clearly established here and this thesis has also shown that in one area of the East Riding of Yorkshire, at least, the 'ancient tenure' did survive in measurable quantities down to the end of 1925

Aspects of violence in the drama of Fernando Arrabal

This thesis is structured in two parts and aims to contribute to our understanding of the drama of Fernando Arrabal by the elaboration and comparison of two interpretations of the role and significance of violence in that drama. In Part One it is shown that the fundamental opposition between individual and authority which stands at the heart of Arrabal's oeuvre reflects the terms of the main concerns of the author's biography. The meaning of that opposition is then elucidated by a comparison which is made between the terms of its expression in the form of violence, and the description given by Freud of the sub-conscious facets of the individual psyche. It is shown that Arrabal's use of violence reflects exactly Freud's elaboration of the psychological notions id and super-ego and it is thus concluded that Arrabal's plays express the plight of the individual caught between the demands of the id and those of the super-ego. While the interpretation developed in Part One depends upon a single comparison which is made between Arrabal's drama and the schema set out by Freud, the interpretation developed in Part Two depends upon comparisons which are drawn between Arrabal's drama and three separate schemas. Part Two therefore contains three sections which elucidate the content, form, and theatrical structure of Arrabal's plays respectively. In Section 1 of Part Two it is shown that the opposition which characterizes Arrabal's plays reflects not only the biographical concerns of the author, but equally the fundamental tenets of his 'panique' philosophy. It is argued that philosophy and plays alike may be interpreted in the light of the 'religious' theories elaborated by Caillois, Durkheim and Bataille and it is shown that the concept of 'la confusion' central to Arrabal's 'panique' philosophy, and denoting the nature of total reality, may be understood in the light of the concept of violence, as defined by Bataille. It is thus concluded that Arrabal's plays may be seen as an attempt to portray violence in this sense. Section 2 of Part Two assesses the validity of the symbols used by Arrabal to portray 'la confusion' (and hence violence in the sense defined by Bataille) on the basis of a parallel which is drawn between the notion of violence and the concept of the Collective Unconscious as defined by Jung. The archetypes of the Collective Unconscious identified by Jung are used as a yardstick for the evaluation of Arrabal's symbols, and the assertions made in Section 1 of Part Two are effectively substantiated, in as much as it is demonstrated that those symbols adequately express what is connoted by the term violence. In Section 3 of Part Two the method adopted by Arrabal to portray violence as theatre is discussed in detail. It is noted that Arrabal's philosophy is supported by a well-developed dramatic methodology which indicates the means of presenting the irrational notion of 'la confusion' (or violence as defined by Bataille) to a rational audience. The appropriateness of this methodology to Arrabal's stated philosophical objective is assessed, and the methodology itself is explained as a reflection and extension of the principles of drama, which, it is noted, perfoms a similar function in uniting the imaginary world of the illusion with the real world of the spectator. In the conclusion the findings of each part of the thesis are restated and the relationship between the two interpretations is examined and found to suggest, firstly the existence of a relationship between all the various, apparently unrelated systems referred to in their formulation, and secondly the terms of a final assessment of the nature of the achievement of Arrabal's drama

Neuronal Inhibition under the Spotlight

In this issue of Neuron, Lin et al. (2015) report an optical method to precisely manipulate the activity of GABAA receptors by designing a mutant receptor that binds photosensitive compounds. This allows for studying GABAA receptors in situ and represents a valuable tool to investigate how inhibition affects brain physiology