BackgroundWith the emergence of Brain Computer Interfaces, clinicians have been facing a new group of patients with severe acquired brain injury who are unable to show any behavioral sign of consciousness but respond to active neuroimaging or electrophysiological paradigms. However, even though well documented, there is still no consensus regarding the nomenclature for this clinical entity.ObjectivesThis systematic review aims to 1) identify the terms used to indicate the presence of this entity through the years, and 2) promote an informed discussion (...) regarding the rationale for these names and the best candidates to name this fascinating disorder.MethodsThe Disorders of Consciousness Special Interest Group of the International Brain Injury Association launched a search on Pubmed and Google scholar following PRISMA guidelines to collect peer-reviewed articles and reviews on human adults published in English between 2006 and 2021.ResultsThe search launched in January 2021 identified 4,089 potentially relevant titles. After screening, 1,126 abstracts were found relevant. Finally, 161 manuscripts were included in our analyses. Only 58% of the manuscripts used a specific name to discuss this clinical entity, among which 32% used several names interchangeably throughout the text. We found 25 different names given to this entity. The five following names were the ones the most frequently used: covert awareness, cognitive motor dissociation, functional locked-in, non-behavioral MCS and higher-order cortex motor dissociation.ConclusionSince 2006, there has been no agreement regarding the taxonomy to use for unresponsive patients who are able to respond to active neuroimaging or electrophysiological paradigms. Developing a standard taxonomy is an important goal for future research studies and clinical translation. We recommend a Delphi study in order to build such a consensus. (shrink)

El presente artículo busca realizar una aproximación al proceso de huelga general convocada por la Convención Nacional de Trabajadores en Uruguay frente al golpe de Estado perpetrado el 27 de junio de 1973. En el marco del 50 aniversario, el artículo se propone reflexionar y presentar algunas interrogantes sobre los hechos, las memorias y los relatos construidos en relación a la temática. Además, plantear una lectura que vincula más estrechamente la decisión y la preparación de la emblemática huelga con (...) una serie de acontecimientos acaecidos a nivel nacional y regional desde la década de 1950. (shrink)

The classification of medical interventions as either invasive or non-invasive is commonly regarded to be morally important. On the most commonly endorsed account of invasiveness, a medical intervention is invasive if and only if it involves either breaking the skin (‘incision’) or inserting an object into the body (‘insertion’). Building on recent discussions of the concept of invasiveness, we show that this standard account fails to capture three aspects of existing usage of the concept of invasiveness in relation to medical (...) interventions—namely, (1) usage implying that invasiveness comes in degrees, (2) that the invasiveness of an intervention can depend on the characteristics of the salient alternative interventions, and (3) that medical interventions can be invasive in non-physical ways. We then offer the beginnings of a revised account that, we argue, is able to capture a wider range of existing usage. Central to our account is a distinction between two properties: basic invasiveness and threshold invasiveness. We end by assessing what the standard account gets right, and what more needs to be done to complete our schematic account. (shrink)

The corporate social responsibility and industrial relations studies have evolved mostly in parallel. In this paper, we integrate the IR with the CSR perspective, highlighting their similarities and differences. In particular, the study adopts a framework which includes a wide set of CSR-related issues to explore what unions and companies negotiate under the umbrella of CSR. It analyses and compares the national sectoral agreements of two key industries in the Italian economy, i.e. Metal and Chemical. We find that these two (...) sectors exhibit differences because the CSR-related issues covered by the two contracts are formally labelled as CSR in the Chemical contract, and not labelled as CSR in the Metal contract. We also find similarities regarding the CSR-related issues covered and not covered by the national contracts, and the binding processes centrally negotiated for their implementation. We interpret the similarities in light of the specificities of the Italian IR system, and the differences in light of the negotiation traditions of the two sectors under study, which induce the actors in the Metal sector to focus more on what differentiates the CSR and IR perspectives, and the actors in the Chemical sector to focus more on what the CSR and IR perspectives share. (shrink)

In the theoretical literature on moral responsibility, one sometimes comes across cases of manipulated agents. In cases of this type, the agent is a victim of wholesale manipulation, involving the implantation of various pro-attitudes (desires, values, etc.) along with the deletion of competing pro-attitudes. As a result of this manipulation, the agent ends up performing some action unlike any that she would have performed were it not for the manipulation. These sorts of cases are sometimes thought to motivate historical views (...) of responsibility, on which the agent’s past is relevant to whether she is responsible for a specific action. In a recent paper, Daniel Sharp and David Wasserman bring these theoretical discussions on moral responsibility to bear on practical issues regarding neurological modifications of individuals. After proposing and arguing for a historical view, Sharp and Wasserman offer some insight into how such a view may help us in determining the responsibility of subjects who have undergone Deep Brain Stimulation. This paper aims to join this discussion, by arguing that the correct historical view to be applied will also appeal to the agent’s control over her mental life and the fact that this was bypassed. I conclude with some brief comments on the practical implications of such a historical view. (shrink)

In this paper, we are going to address job satisfaction and perceived self-efficacy within the context of residential child-care. A joint report from the European Foundation for the Improvement on Living and Working Conditions and the European Agency for Safety and Health at Work revealed that managers in the field of health and education were the most concerned about the psychosocial risk of their employees, although concern is not automatically translated into tools to face the risk and to manage it. (...) So, measuring and improving employees’ job satisfaction and self-efficacy can be an important means for organizations to prevent the outcomes of psychosocial risk, and supporting high quality performance of workers. But profound changes are affecting the nature of work at large, and specifically social educator’s in the field of residential care with minors. Globalization, radical technological and communication developments, as well as the pressure to frame care as a commodity, are quickly changing procedures and praxis at work, and even the meaning of job itself. All these changes are highly demanding for this category of professionals, as much as the fact that the organizational setting is vanishing as a resource to sustain their professional attitudes and behaviours. Under these circumstances, job satisfaction and self-efficacy can be hard to experience, and isolating their precursors is essential to develop healthy and effective work environments. This paper means to highlight the process of supporting self-efficacy and job satisfaction in the educational work in residential youth care that is still underrepresented in research. It presents data emerging from two studies, study 1 involving 268 educators and study 2 involving 472 educators belonging to different Italian residential child-care services. Study 1 consists of a quantitative study including the following measures: attachment style, job satisfaction, work-related self-efficacy, and length of service. Study 2 consist of a qualitative exploration deepening the sources of educators’ work-satisfaction. Quantitative data support the identification of attachment style and length of service as antecedents of work-related self-efficacy. Qualitative data show the importance of relational issues in shaping the educators’ satisfaction at work. (shrink)

When it comes to determining how healthcare resources should be allocated, there are many factors that could—and perhaps should—be taken into account. One such factor is a patient’s responsibility for his or her illness, or for the behavior that caused it. Policies that take responsibility for the unhealthy lifestyle or its outcomes into account—responsibility-sensitive policies—have faced a series of criticisms. One holds that agents often fail to meet either the control or epistemic conditions on responsibility with regard to their unhealthy (...) lifestyles or their outcomes. Another holds that even if patients sometimes are responsible for these items, we cannot know whether a particular patient is responsible for them. In this article, we propose a type of responsibility-sensitive policy that may be able to surmount these difficulties. Under this type of policy, patients are empowered to change to a healthier lifestyle by being given what we call a ‘Golden Opportunity’ to change. Such a policy would not only avoid concerns about patients’ fulfilment of conditions on responsibility for their lifestyles, it would also allow healthcare authorities to be justified in believing that a patient who does not change her lifestyle is responsible for the unhealthy lifestyle. We conclude with a discussion of avenues for further work, and place this policy in the broader context of the debate on responsibility for health. (shrink)

Background: Although performance on the category fluency test is influenced by many cognitive functions, item-level scoring methods of CFT performance might be a promising way to capture aspects of semantic memory that are less influenced by intervenient abilities. One such approach is based on the calculation of correlation coefficients that quantify the association between item-level features and the serial order with which words are recalled.Methods: We explored the neural underpinnings of 10 of these correlational indices in a sample of 40 (...) healthy adults who completed a classic 1-min CFT and an MRI protocol inclusive of T1-weighted and resting-state fMRI sequences for the evaluation of the default-mode network. Two sets of linear models were defined to test the association between neural maps and each correlational index: a first set in which major demographic and clinical descriptors were controlled for and a second set in which, additionally, all other 9 correlational indices were regressed out.Results: In the analysis of the DMN, ‘SRO-frequency’, ‘SRO-dominance’ and ‘SRO-body-object interaction’ correlational indices were all negatively associated with the anterior portion of the right temporoparietal junction. The ‘SRO-frequency’ correlational index was also negatively associated with the right dorsal anterior cingulate and the ‘SRO-dominance’ correlational index with the right lateral prefrontal cortex. From the second set of models, the ‘SRO-typicality’ correlational index was positively associated with the left entorhinal cortex. No association was found in relation to grey matter maps.Conclusion: The ability to retrieve more difficult words during CFT performance as measured by the correlational indices between SRO and item-level descriptors is associated with DMN expression in regions deputed to attentional reorienting and processing of salience of infrequent stimuli and dominance status. Of all item-level features, typicality appears to be that most closely linked with entorhinal functioning and may thus play a relevant role in assessing its value in testing procedures for early detection of subtle cognitive difficulties in people with suspected Alzheimer’s degeneration. Although exploratory, these findings warrant further investigations in larger cohorts. (shrink)

Neurointerventions—interventions that physically or chemically modulate brain states—are sometimes imposed on criminal offenders for the purposes of diminishing the risk that they will recidivate, or, more generally, of facilitating their rehabilitation. One objection to the nonconsensual implementation of such interventions holds that this expresses a disrespectful message, and is thus impermissible. In this paper, we respond to this objection, focusing on the most developed version of it—that presented by Elizabeth Shaw. We consider a variety of messages that might be expressed (...) by nonconsensual neurointerventions. Depending on the message, we argue either that such interventions do not invariably express this message, that expressing this message is not invariably disrespectful, or that the appeal to disrespect is redundant. (shrink)

Arguably, agents can be at least partly responsible for their unhealthy lifestyles and/or the health outcomes of said lifestyles. Health care policies that take an agent’s responsibility into account—for example, by reducing priority for treatment, increasing premiums, and so on—face a variety of objections. One of these is the harshness objection: the objection that such policies, and the practices they would justify, are too harsh in the ways that they hold patients accountable. This chapter discusses the harshness objection and evaluates (...) different versions of it. First, I clarify some of the concepts this objection relies on, including “responsibility” and “holding accountable.” Making use of these clarification, I then distinguish between different versions of the objection, which object to different aspects of the policy and practices. Finally, I assess the strength of differing versions of the objection, as well as the strength of some responses to it. I conclude with some thoughts about how such policies will need to be designed to avoid the objection. (shrink)

In this paper, we identify a class of responses to cases of manipulation that we label manipulator-focused views. The key insight of such views is that being subject to the will of another agent significantly affects our freedom and moral responsibility. Though different authors take this key insight in different directions, and the mechanics of their views are quite different, these views turn out to share many key components, and this allows us to discuss several authors’ views at the same (...) time, highlighting a variety of challenges for such views and helping to identify pitfalls to avoid in further developments of views of this type. Moreover, as we survey manipulator-focused views and the challenges that plague them, we go beyond the typical problem cases for such views—natural force variations of manipulation cases—and introduce several new manipulation cases. We conclude by comparing the prospects for this family of views with its main rival, namely bypassing views. (shrink)

In a recent paper, Kristin Mickelson argues that Alfred Mele’s Zygote Argument, a popular argument for the claim that the truth of determinism would preclude free action or moral responsibility, is not valid. This sort of objection is meant to generalize to various manipulation arguments. According to Mickelson, the only way to make such arguments valid is to supplement them with an argument that is an inference to the best explanation. In this paper, I argue that there are two other (...) ways in which the proponent of such manipulation arguments can modify their argument, neither of which requires an inference to the best explanation. I then briefly consider and respond to a worry with one of these proposed solutions. (shrink)

In discussions of nudging, transparency is often taken to be important; it is often suggested that a significant moral consideration to take into account when nudging is whether the nudge is transparent. Another consideration taken to be relevant is whether the nudge is easy to resist. Sometimes, these two considerations are taken to be importantly related: if we have reason to make nudges easy to resist, then we have reason to make them transparent, insofar as a nudge’s transparency is relevant (...) to whether the nudge is easy to resist. In this paper, we critically scrutinize this view. First, we draw out the purported connections between transparency and resistibility, combining them into what we call the Resistibility-to-Transparency Argument (RTA). Then, we do some conceptual groundwork elaborating on different forms of transparency mentioned in the debate. With this in place, we argue that in order to be plausible, the RTA must appeal to certain forms of transparency; those on which the transparency of a nudge depends on the nudgee’s ability to become aware of the relevant facts about the nudge. We then argue against the common assumption that in order for a nudge to be easy to resist for an individual, that individual needs to have the capacity to easily become aware of the relevant nudge facts. We conclude that the connection between the easy resistibility of a nudge and its transparency is, at best, a weak one. (shrink)

Crutchfield and Redinger argue that consciousness-altering chemical restraints are less “liberty-intrusive” (or as we will sometimes put it, just less “intrusive”) than physical restraints. Physica...

In discussions on moral responsibility for actions, a commonly discussed case is one in which an agent is manipulated into performing some action. On some views, such agents lack responsibility for those actions partly because they issue from attitudes that were acquired in an inappropriate way. In this paper, it is argued that such views are in need of revision. After introducing a new problematic case of a manipulated agent, revisions are offered for specific views. The paper concludes with a (...) discussion of the views in a broader context, as well as some potential implications of the revisions. (shrink)

A common style of argument in the literature on free will and moral responsibility is the Manipulation Argument. These tend to begin with a case of an agent in a deterministic universe who is manipulated, say, via brain surgery, into performing some action. Intuitively, this agent is not responsible for that action. Yet, since there is no relevant difference, with respect to whether an agent is responsible, between the manipulated agent and a typical agent in a deterministic universe, responsibility is (...) not compatible with the truth of determinism. This paper introduces some key types of manipulation cases, the schema for a manipulation argument against compatibilism, the hard-line/soft-line categories of responses to manipulation arguments, and various issues that have become important in discussions of manipulation cases and arguments. (shrink)

In this paper—Part 2 of 3—we discuss one of the two main types of soft-line responses to manipulation cases, which we refer to as manipulator-focused views. Manipulator-focused views hold, roughly, that the reason that Victim lacks responsibility (or lacks full responsibility) is because of the way the action is related to the Manipulator. First, we introduce these views generally, and then we survey some detailed versions of such views. We then introduce cases of natural forces, often taken to be a (...) problem for such approaches in general, followed by a discussion of various sorts of cases—accidental results, lucky manipulators, and parallel cases—that present challenges for some of the detailed versions of such views. We conclude with some thoughts about the prospects for manipulator-focused views going forward. (shrink)

As neuroscience progresses, we will not only gain a better understanding of how our brains work, but also a better understanding of how to modify them, and as a result, our mental states. An important question we are faced with is whether the state could be justified in implementing such methods on criminal offenders, without their consent, for the purposes of rehabilitation and reduction of recidivism; a practice that is already legal in some jurisdictions. By focusing on a prominent type (...) of view of free action, which I call bypassing views, this paper evaluates how such interventions may negatively impact the freedom of their subjects. The paper concludes that there will be a tension between the goals of rehabilitation and reduction of recidivism, on the one hand, and the negative impact such interventions may have on free action, on the other. Other things equal, the better that a particular intervention is at achieving the former, the more likely it is to result in the latter. (shrink)

In this paper—Part 2 of 3—we discuss one of the two main types of soft-line responses to manipulation cases, which we refer to as manipulator-focused views. Manipulator-focused views hold, roughly, that the reason that Victim lacks responsibility (or lacks full responsibility) is because of the way the action is related to the Manipulator. First, we introduce these views generally, and then we survey some detailed versions of such views. We then introduce cases of natural forces, often taken to be a (...) problem for such approaches in general, followed by a discussion of various sorts of cases—accidental results, lucky manipulators, and parallel cases—that present challenges for some of the detailed versions of such views. We conclude with some thoughts about the prospects for manipulator-focused views going forward. (shrink)

A common style of argument in the literature on free will and moral responsibility is the Manipulation Argument. These tend to begin with a case of an agent in a deterministic universe who is manipulated, say, via brain surgery, into performing some action. Intuitively, this agent is not responsible for that action. Yet, since there is no relevant difference, with respect to whether an agent is responsible, between the manipulated agent and a typical agent in a deterministic universe, responsibility is (...) not compatible with the truth of determinism. In response, some theorists have argued that there is a relevant difference, and have developed two sorts of accounts of that difference: bypassing views, and manipulator-focused views. Manipulator-focused views suggest that the difference concerns the presence of a manipulator, whereas bypassing views suggest that the relevant difference concerns the fact that the action issues from attitudes that the manipulated agent acquired in a way that bypassed her capacities for control over her mental life. One sort of case used to decide between these sorts of accounts is a case of machine induction, which is just like a manipulation case, yet the change in the agent is the result of some natural force. Against the received view, Xiaofei Liu argues that such cases pose problems for bypassing views, and favor manipulator-focused views instead. This paper addresses Liu’s arguments, as well as a variety of cases, concluding that cases of machine induction do not provide motivation for a bypassing theorist to adopt a manipulator-focused view. (shrink)

We are grateful to the commentators for their close reading of our article 1 and for their challenging and interesting responses to it. We do not have space to respond to all of the objections that they raise, so in this reply, we address only a selection of them. Some commentaries question the usefulness of developing an account of the sort we provide, 2 or of revising the Standard Account (SA) in doing so. 3–5 Our schema is intended to provide (...) a framework for developing a full account of invasiveness that captures existing uses of the term. On the assumption that the term is used somewhat reliably and consistently–and we are inclined to agree with some of our commentators 3 4 that people are not terribly confused or mistaken in how they employ the term–an account that captures these... (shrink)

The Case of Jim: Jim was arrested arriving at the house of an unattended minor, having brought with him some alcoholic drinks, condoms, and an overnight bag. Records of online conversations Jim was having with the minor give the court strong evidence that the purpose of this meet-up was to engage in sexual relations with the minor. In the course of searching his home computer, investigators also found child pornography. Jim was charged with intent to sexually abuse a child and (...) possession of child pornography. He was given due process, and convicted, by a jury of his peers, on both counts. This is not the first time that Jim has been convicted of a sexual offence. He had been found guilty of possession of child pornography in the past, and served time for it. What should we do with Jim? (shrink)

The main objective of this work is to discuss the materiality of relationships and experiences of infants in early childhood education, based on a dialogue with the Brazilian curriculum guidelines for Early Childhood Education in 3 municipalities in the state of São Paulo, and with the concepts of technical objects and individuation developed by Simondon. This is a qualitative research that uses bibliographic and documentary research as a methodology and the production of cartographies of scenes in which relationships between babies (...) and objects are observed. The cartography used here is inspired by the records developed by Fernand Deligny (2015) and its appropriation for research with babies, as proposed by Julia Oliveira (2016). Research was carried out on this topic in the field of education, going through scientific articles and guiding documents for early childhood education. The authors mapped the paths and affections of babies and their relationships with objects in two distinct scenes that were collected within the scope of a collective project. It is a work that contributes to early childhood education in general and, specifically, to baby studies (Infantology, Babyhood studies). (shrink)

In a recent book, Ann Whittle develops a view of freedom and responsiblity according to which their attribution to agents is sensitive to the speakers' contexts. This review provides a summary of the main argument, and briefly mentions some points that will be of interest in further developing the view.

Motor learning can be defined as a process that leads to relatively permanent changes in motor behavior through repeated interactions with the environment. Different strategies can be adopted to achieve motor learning: movements can be overtly practiced leading to an amelioration of motor performance; alternatively, covert strategies (e.g., action observation) can promote neuroplastic changes in the motor system even in the absence of real movement execution. However, whether a training regularly alternating action observation and execution (i.e., Action Observation Training, AOT) (...) may surpass the pure motor practice (MP) and observational learning (OL) remains to be established. To address this issue, we enrolled 54 subjects requiring them to learn tying nautical knots via one out of three types of training (AOT, MP, OL) with the scope to investigate which element mostly contributes to motor learning. We evaluated the overall improvement of each group, along with the predictive role that neuropsychological indexes exert on each treatment outcome. The AOT group exhibited the highest performance improvement (42%), indicating that the regular alternation between observation and execution biases participants toward a better performance. The reiteration of this sequence provides an incremental, adjunct value that super-adds onto the efficacy of motor practice or observational learning in isolation (42% > 25% + 10%, i.e., OL + MP). These findings extend the use of the AOT from clinical and rehabilitative contexts to daily routines requiring the learning and perfectioning of new motor skills such as sports training, music, and occupational activities requiring fine motor control. (shrink)

A volume with 14 chapters on various aspects of the relationship between responsibility and healthcare, plus a substantial introduction that offers a comprehensive overview of the relevant debates and how they relate to one another. Questions of responsibility arise at all levels of health care. Most prominent has been the issue of patient responsibility. Some health conditions that risk death or serious harm are partly the result of lifestyle behaviours such as smoking, lack of exercise, or extreme sports. Are patients (...) with such conditions responsible for them? If so, might healthcare providers, be they state-run systems or private entities, be justified in treating such patients differently? And if they are, which forms of differential treatment are justified? Responsibility isn’t just relevant for patients. Even when individuals affect their health through voluntary behaviour, other influences are also at work before, during, and after the patient’s interaction with the health care system. What are the responsibilities of individual clinicians and other medical professionals, when thinking about individual and public health? What about institutions such as governments or national health care services, or society as a whole? This collection brings together work by world-renowned experts in population ethics, distributive justice, philosophy of action, cognitive science, and medical ethics in order to push the debate forward by elucidating our understanding of these questions, their possible answers, and how they are related. (shrink)