Augmentative and alternative communication brain-computer interface systems are intended to offer communication access to people with severe speech and physical impairment without requiring volitional movement. As the field moves toward clinical implementation of AAC-BCI systems, research involving participants with SSPI is essential. Research has demonstrated variability in AAC-BCI system performance across users, and mixed results for comparisons of performance for users with and without disabilities. The aims of this systematic review were to describe study, system, and participant characteristics reported in (...) BCI research, summarize the communication task performance of participants with disabilities using AAC-BCI systems, and explore any differences in performance for participants with and without disabilities. Electronic databases were searched in May, 2018, and March, 2021, identifying 6065 records, of which 73 met inclusion criteria. Non-experimental study designs were common and sample sizes were typically small, with approximately half of studies involving five or fewer participants with disabilities. There was considerable variability in participant characteristics, and in how those characteristics were reported. Over 60% of studies reported an average selection accuracy ≤70% for participants with disabilities in at least one tested condition. However, some studies excluded participants who did not reach a specific system performance criterion, and others did not state whether any participants were excluded based on performance. Twenty-nine studies included participants both with and without disabilities, but few reported statistical analyses comparing performance between the two groups. Results suggest that AAC-BCI systems show promise for supporting communication for people with SSPI, but they remain ineffective for some individuals. The lack of standards in reporting outcome measures makes it difficult to synthesize data across studies. Further research is needed to demonstrate efficacy of AAC-BCI systems for people who experience SSPI of varying etiologies and severity levels, and these individuals should be included in system design and testing. Consensus in terminology and consistent participant, protocol, and performance description will facilitate the exploration of user and system characteristics that positively or negatively affect AAC-BCI use, and support innovations that will make this technology more useful to a broader group of people.Clinical trial registrationhttps://www.crd.york.ac.uk/prospero/display_record.php?ID=CRD42018095345, PROSPERO: CRD42018095345. (shrink)

Access to communication is critical for individuals with late-stage amyotrophic lateral sclerosis and minimal volitional movement, but they sometimes present with concomitant visual or ocular motility impairments that affect their performance with eye tracking or visual brain-computer interface systems. In this study, we explored the use of modified eye tracking and steady state visual evoked potential BCI, in combination with the Shuffle Speller typing interface, for this population. Two participants with late-stage ALS, visual impairments, and minimal volitional movement completed a (...) single-case experimental research design comparing copy-spelling performance with three different typing systems: commercially available eye tracking communication software, Shuffle Speller with modified eye tracking, and Shuffle Speller with SSVEP BCI. Participant 1 was unable to type any correct characters with the commercial system, but achieved accuracies of up to 50% with Shuffle Speller eye tracking and 89% with Shuffle Speller BCI. Participant 2 also had higher maximum accuracies with Shuffle Speller, typing with up to 63% accuracy with eye tracking and 100% accuracy with BCI. However, participants’ typing accuracy for both Shuffle Speller conditions was highly variable, particularly in the BCI condition. Both the Shuffle Speller interface and SSVEP BCI input show promise for improving typing performance for people with late-stage ALS. Further development of innovative BCI systems for this population is needed. (shrink)

When people speak, their words never fully encode what they mean, and the context is always compatible with a variety of interpretations. How can comprehension ever be achieved? Wilson and Sperber argue that comprehension is an inference process guided by precise expectations of relevance. What are the relations between the linguistically encoded meanings studied in semantics and the thoughts that humans are capable of entertaining and conveying? How should we analyse literal meaning, approximations, metaphors and ironies? Is the ability to (...) understand speakers' meanings rooted in a more general human ability to understand other minds? How do these abilities interact in evolution and in cognitive development? MEANING AND RELEVANCE sets out to answer these and other questions, enriching and updating relevance theory and exploring its implications for linguistics, philosophy, cognitive science and literary studies. (shrink)

How are non-declarative sentences understood? How do they differ semantically from their declarative counterparts? Answers to these questions once made direct appeal to the notion of illocutionary force. When they proved unsatisfactory, the fault was diagnosed as a failure to distinguish properly between mood and force. For some years now, efforts have been under way to develop a satisfactory account of the semantics of mood. In this paper, we consider the current achievements and future prospects of the mood-based semantic programme.

The study of the mind has always been one of the main preoccupations of philosophers, and has been a booming area of research in recent decades, with remarkable advances in psychology and neuroscience. Oxford University Press now presents the most authoritative and comprehensive guide ever published to the philosophy of mind. An outstanding international team of contributors offer 45 specially written critical surveys of a wide range of topics relating to the mind. The first two sections cover the place of (...) the mind in the natural world: its ontological status, how it fits into the causal fabric of the universe, and the nature of consciousness. The third section focuses on the much-debated subjects of content and intentionality. The fourth section examines a variety of mental capacities, including memory, imagination, and emotion. The fifth section looks at epistemic issues, in particular regarding knowledge of one's own and other minds. The volume concludes with a section on self, personhood, and agency. The Oxford Handbook of Philosophy of Mind will be an invaluable resource for advanced students and scholars of philosophy, and also for researchers in neighboring disciplines seeking a high-level survey of the state of the art in this flourishing field. (shrink)

It might be that intuitions are central to philosophy, and it might be that this is true because when philosophers give case‐based arguments for philosophical claims (in published philosophy), the case verdict is typically (a) an intuited proposition and (b) either left undefended or defended on the grounds that it is an intuited proposition. This paper remains neutral on these global issues, however, and instead focuses on whether there is a nontrivial (or many‐membered) class of case‐based arguments in philosophy in (...) which the case verdict is defended by appeal to background beliefs and not on the grounds that it is an intuited proposition. The paper argues that the answer is affirmative by examining seven such arguments that are referred to as “paradigm cases” of case‐based arguments in which the verdict is justified via an appeal to intuition. (shrink)

This important text introduces students to both feminism and other social and political theories via an examination of the inter-relationship between different feminist positions and key contemporary debates. The book takes each debate in turn, outlines the main themes, discusses different feminist responses and evaluates the implications for real-life political and social issues. This user-friendly structure effectively redraws the map of contemporary feminist thought, offering a fresh and succinct summary of an extensive range of material and graphically demonstrating the ongoing (...) relevance and value of a feminist perspective. (shrink)

In this paper we argue that greater attention must be given to peoples’ expression of “care” in relation to consumption. We suggest that “caring about” does not necessarily lead to “care-giving,” as conceptualising an attitude–behaviour gap might imply, but that a closer examination of the intensity, morality, and articulation of care can lead to a greater understanding of consumer narratives and, thus, behaviour. To examine this proposition, a purposive sample of self-identified ethical consumers was interviewed. Care is expressed by the (...) study’s participants in a variety of ways and linked to behaviour through diverse patterns that includes consumption and abstention. We find significant correspondence between the academic literature on the ‘ethics of care’ and our participants’ articulation of their ethical consumption behaviours. We suggest, therefore, that a close understanding of an ethics of care among consumers is important both in providing insight into the attitude–behaviour gap challenge evident in the literature and to the continued development of an ethical consumption discourse. (shrink)

This paper questions the widespread view that verbal communication is governed by a maxim, norm or convention of truthfulness which applies at the level of what is literally meant, or what is said. Pragmatic frameworks based on this view must explain the frequent occurrence and acceptability of loose and figurative uses of language. We argue against existing explanations of these phenomena and provide an alternative account, based on the assumption that verbal communication is governed not by expectations of truthfulness but (...) by expectations of relevance, raised by literal, loose and figurative uses alike. Sample analyses are provided, and some consequences of this alternative account are explored. In particular, we argue that the notions of ‘literal meaning’ and ‘what is said’ play no useful theoretical role in the study of language use, and that the nature of explicit communication will have to be rethought. (shrink)

The purpose of this article is to examine whether patient/client autonomy is always compatible with the nurse’s role of advocacy. The author looks separately at the concepts of autonomy and advocacy, and considers them in relation to the reality of clinical practice from professional, ethical and legal perspectives. Considerable ambiguity is found regarding the legitimacy of claims of a unique function for nurses to act as patient advocates. To act as an advocate may put nurses at personal and professional risk. (...) It may also be deemed arrogant and insulting to other health care professionals. Patient autonomy can be seen as a subcategory of the right of every individual to self-determination, and as such is protected by law. However, it is questionable whether the traditionally paternalistic approach to health care provision truly respects the autonomous rights of each patient. The author considers examples and cases from the literature that resulted in professional and/or personal difficulties for the nurses involved, and also reflects on an incident from her own practice where a positive outcome was achieved that demonstrated compatibility between the concepts under consideration. (shrink)

_How to Think Critically_ begins with the premise that we are all, every day, engaged in critical thinking. But just as we may develop bad habits in daily life if we don’t scrutinize our practices, so are we apt to develop bad habits in critical thinking if we are careless in our reasoning. Readers are presented with a traditional step-by-step method for analysis that can be applied to all argument forms. Hundreds of exercises (with solutions) are included, as are several (...) random statement generators that can be used to create thousands of additional examples. Truth tables, Venn diagrams, and other essential concepts are introduced not merely as objects for academic study but also as tools for better thinking and living. At a time when the value of critical thinking is recognized to be greater than ever, this book is an important resource both inside and outside the classroom. (shrink)

Survival after solid-organ transplantation has improved significantly, and many contemporary transplant recipients are of childbearing potential. There are limited data to guide decision-making surrounding pregnancy after transplantation, variations in clinical practice, and significant knowledge gaps, all of which raise significant ethical issues. Post-transplant pregnancy is associated with an increased risk of maternal and fetal complications. Shared decision-making is a central aspect of patient counselling but is complicated by significant knowledge gaps. Stakeholder interests can be in conflict; exploring these tensions can (...) help patients to evaluate their options and inform their deliberations. We argue that uniform, evidence-based recommendations for pregnancy after solid organ transplantation are needed. Conducting research, including patient-engaged studies, in this area should be priority for the transplant community. (shrink)

The interpretation of metaphorical utterances often results in the attribution of emergent properties, which are neither standardly associated with the individual constituents in isolation nor derivable by standard rules of semantic composition. An adequate pragmatic account of metaphor interpretation must explain how these properties are derived. Using the framework of relevance theory, we propose a wholly inferential account, and argue that the derivation of emergent properties involves no special interpretive mechanisms not required for the interpretation of ordinary, literal utterances.

The interpretation of metaphorical utterances often results in the attribution of emergent properties, which are neither standardly associated with the individual constituents in isolation nor derivable by standard rules of semantic composition. An adequate pragmatic account of metaphor interpretation must explain how these properties are derived. Using the framework of relevance theory, we propose a wholly inferential account, and argue that the derivation of emergent properties involves no special interpretive mechanisms not required for the interpretation of ordinary, literal utterances.

Our book Relevance (Sperber and Wilson 1986) treats utterance interpretation as a two-phase process: a modular decoding phase is seen as providing input to a central inferential phase in which a linguistically encoded logical form is contextually enriched and used to construct a hypothesis about the speaker's informative intention. Relevance was mainly concerned with the inferential phase of comprehension: we had to answer Fodor's challenge that while decoding processes are quite well understood, inferential processes are not only not understood, but (...) perhaps not even understandable (see Fodor 1983). Here we will look more closely at the decoding phase and consider what types of information may be linguistically encoded, and how the borderline between decoding and inference can be drawn. It might be that all linguistically encoded information is cut to a single pattern: all truth conditions, say, or all instructions for use. However, there is a robust intuition that two basic types of meaning can be found. This intuition surfaces in a variety of distinctions: between describing and indicating, stating and showing, saying and conventionally implicating, or between truth-conditional and non-truth-conditional, conceptual and procedural, or representational and computational meaning. In the literature, justifications for these distinctions have been developed in both strictly linguistic and more broadly cognitive terms. The linguistic justification goes as follows (see for example Recanati 1987). Utterances express propositions; propositions have truth conditions; but the meaning of an utterance is not exhausted by its truth conditions, i.e. the truth conditions of the proposition expressed. An utterance not only expresses a proposition but is used to perform a variety of speech acts. It can.. (shrink)

For a century and a half, the artists and intellectuals of Europe have scorned the bourgeoisie. And for a millennium and a half, the philosophers and theologians of Europe have scorned the marketplace. The bourgeois life, capitalism, Mencken’s “booboisie” and David Brooks’s “bobos”—all have been, and still are, framed as being responsible for everything from financial to moral poverty, world wars, and spiritual desuetude. Countering these centuries of assumptions and unexamined thinking is Deirdre McCloskey’s _The Bourgeois Virtues_, a magnum (...) opus that offers a radical view: capitalism is good for us. McCloskey’s sweeping, charming, and even humorous survey of ethical thought and economic realities—from Plato to Barbara Ehrenreich—overturns every assumption we have about being bourgeois. Can you be virtuous and bourgeois? Do markets improve ethics? Has capitalism made us better as well as richer? Yes, yes, and yes, argues McCloskey, who takes on centuries of capitalism’s critics with her erudition and sheer scope of knowledge. Applying a new tradition of “virtue ethics” to our lives in modern economies, she affirms American capitalism without ignoring its faults and celebrates the bourgeois lives we actually live, without supposing that they must be lives without ethical foundations. _High Noon_, Kant, Bill Murray, the modern novel, van Gogh, and of course economics and the economy all come into play in a book that can only be described as a monumental project and a life’s work. _The Bourgeois Virtues _is nothing less than a dazzling reinterpretation of Western intellectual history, a dead-serious reply to the critics of capitalism—and a surprising page-turner. (shrink)

This article draws on recent research in the medical humanities to analyze two contemporary Chinese films: Zhang Yuan's Sons (1996) and Zhou Xiaowen's The Common People (1998). By portraying psychic and physical anguish in ways that refuse to divorce biology from culture, such films offer rare moral dialogues on biomedical issues and contribute a cross-cultural perspective invaluable to the task of responding to illness and suffering.

This narrative symposium examines the relationship of bioethics practice to personal experiences of illness. A call for stories was developed by Tod Chambers, the symposium editor, and editorial staff and was sent to several commonly used bioethics listservs and posted on the Narrative Inquiry in Bioethics website. The call asked authors to relate a personal story of being ill or caring for a person who is ill, and to describe how this affected how they think about bioethical questions and the (...) practice of medicine. Eighteen individuals were invited to submit full stories based on review of their proposals. Twelve stories are published in this symposium, and six supplemental stories are published online only through Project MUSE. Authors explore themes of vulnerability, suffering, communication, voluntariness, cultural barriers, and flaws in local healthcare systems through stories about their own illnesses or about caring for children, partners, parents and grandparents. Commentary articles by Arthur Frank, Bradley Lewis, and Carol Taylor follow the collection of personal narratives. (shrink)

This book brings together the work of eleven leading international scholars to map the contribution of teaching Sisters, who provided schooling to hundreds of thousands of children, globally, from 1800 to 1950. The volume represents research that draws on several theoretical approaches and methodologies. It engages with feminist discourses, social history, oral history, visual culture, post-colonial studies and the concept of transnationalism, to provide new insights into the work of Sisters in education. Making a unique contribution to the field, chapters (...) offer an interrogation of historical sources as well as fresh interpretations of findings, challenging assumptions. Compelling narratives from the USA, Canada, New Zealand, Africa, Australia, South East Asia, France, the UK, Italy and Ireland contribute to what is a most important exploration of the contribution of the women religious by mapping and contextualizing their work. _Education, Identity and Women Religious, 1800–1950: Convents, classrooms and colleges_ will appeal to academics, researchers and postgraduate students in the fields of social history, women’s history, the history of education, Catholic education, gender studies and international education. (shrink)

C-minimality is a variant of o-minimality in which structures carry, instead of a linear ordering, a ternary relation interpretable in a natural way on set of maximal chains of a tree. This notion is discussed, a cell-decomposition theorem for C-minimal structures is proved, and a notion of dimension is introduced. It is shown that C-minimal fields are precisely valued algebraically closed fields. It is also shown that, if certain specific ‘bad’ functions are not definable, then algebraic closure has the exchange (...) property, and for definable sets dimension coincides with the rank obtained from algebraic closure. (shrink)

This article analyses abortion health activism (AHA) in the Irish context. AHA is a form of activism focused on enabling abortion access where it is restricted. Historically, AHA has involved facilitating the movement of abortion seekers along ‘abortion trails’ (Rossiter, 2009). Organisations operate transnationally, enabling access to abortion care across borders. Such AHA is a form of feminist anarchism, resisting prohibitions on abortion through direct action. However, AHA work has changed over time. Existing scholarship relates this to advancements in medical (...) technology, particularly the emergence of telemedicine and the increased use of early medical abortion. This article goes beyond those explanations to explore how else AHA has changed by comparing the work of AHA before and after the Republic of Ireland’s referendum on abortion in May 2018. Based on this, I argue that there is a visible shift in the politics of AHA. Drawing on qualitative data from research on AHA organisations along the Liverpool–Ireland Abortion Corridor, specifically those based outside Ireland, the article argues that in the aftermath of the referendum, Irish AHA has increasingly moved towards decolonising feminist activism, thus drawing attention to the relationship between abortion health activists (AHAs) and broader political discourses entangled with abortion law reform. (shrink)

This paper argues for seeing in-depth news coverage of political, social, and economic issues as “public policy pedagogy.” To develop my argument, I draw on Nancy Fraser’s democratic theory, which attends to social differences and does not assume that unity is a starting point or an end goal of public dialogue. Alongside the formation of “subaltern counterpublics”, alternative media outlets sometimes develop. There, members of alternative publics debate their interests and strategize about how to be heard in wider, mass-mediated public (...) arenas. I address the normative implications of this non-unitary, multiple-publics model for news journalism, analyzing how current conventions in mainstream news journalism can restrict public debate and impoverish the public policy pedagogy on offer. I illustrate my arguments with a case study of media coverage of the creation and implementation of a social justice curriculum in British Columbia, Canada. (shrink)

The purpose of this paper is to study an analogue of Hilbert's seventeenth problem for functions over a valued field which are integral definite on some definable set; that is, that map the given set into the valuation ring. We use model theory to exhibit a uniform method, on various theories of valued fields, for deriving an algebraic characterization of such functions. As part of this method we refine the concept of a function being integral at a point, and make (...) it dependent on the relevant class of valued fields. We apply our framework to algebraically closed valued fields, model complete theories of difference and differential valued fields, and real closed valued fields. (shrink)

Written by one of Ireland's leading medical law academics, this practical book comprehensively covers case law and regulations regarding the healthcare system, the law relating to human reproduction, and the key issues of consent and treatment. Designed to be used by lawyers and healthcare professionals, Medicine, Ethics and the Law in Ireland provides an invaluable reference tool for anybody who requires accurate information and guidance on this area of Irish law. This new edition includes: Medical research and clinical trials; Organ (...) donation and transportation; Patient safety and QA; and Biobanking. (shrink)

The vast majority of studies of Hannah Arendt's thought are concerned with her as a political theorist. This book offers a contribution to rectifying this imbalance by providing a critical engagement with Arendtian ethics. Arendt asserts that the crimes of the Holocaust revealed a shift in ethics and the need for new responses to a new kind of evil. In this new treatment of her work, Arendt's best-known ethical concepts - the notion of the banality of evil and the link (...) she posits between thoughtlessness and evil, both inspired by her study of Adolf Eichmann - are disassembled and appraised. The concept of the banality of evil captures something tangible about modern evil, yet requires further evaluation in order to assess its implications for understanding contemporary evil, and what it means for traditional, moral philosophical issues such as responsibility, blame and punishment. In addition, this account of Arendt's ethics reveals two strands of her thought not previously considered: her idea that the condition of `living with oneself' can represent a barrier to evil and her account of the `nonparticipants' who refused to be complicit in the crimes of the Nazi period and their defining moral features. This exploration draws out the most salient aspects of Hannah Arendt's ethics, provides a critical review of the more philosophically problematic elements, and places Arendt's work in this area in a broader moral philosophy context, examining the issues in moral philosophy which are raised in her work such as the relevance of intention for moral responsibility and of thinking for good moral conduct, and questions of character, integrity and moral incapacity. (shrink)