I provide an updated version of The Impairment Argument against abortion and respond to numerous objections that can be (and have been) raised to it.

One challenge in providing an adequate definition of physical disability is unifying the heterogeneous bodily conditions that count as disabilities. We examine recent proposals by Elizabeth Barnes (2016), and Dana Howard and Sean Aas (2018), and show how this debate has reached an impasse. Barnes’ account struggles to deliver principled unification of the category of disability, whilst Howard and Aas’ account risks inappropriately sidelining the body. We argue that this impasse can be broken using a novel concept: marginalised functioning. Marginalised (...) functioning concerns the relationship between a person’s bodily capacities and their social world: specifically, their ability to function in line with the default norms about how people can typically physically function that influence the structuring of social space. We argue that attending to marginalised functioning allows us to develop, not one, but three different models of disability, all of which—whilst having different strengths and weaknesses—unify the category of disability without sidelining the body. (shrink)

Perry Hendricks’ original impairment argument for the immorality of abortion is based on the impairment principle (TIP): if impairing an organism to some degree is immoral, then ceteris paribus, impairing it to a higher degree is also immoral. Since abortion impairs a fetus to a higher degree than fetal alcohol syndrome (FAS) and giving a fetus FAS is immoral, it follows that abortion is immoral. Critics have argued that the ceteris paribus is not met for FAS and abortion, (...) and so we proposed the Modified Impairment Principle (MIP) to avoid these difficulties. Dustin Crummett has responded, arguing that MIP is open to various counterexamples which show it to be false. He also shows that MIP can generate moral dilemmas. Here, we propose a modification to MIP that resolves the issues Crummett raises. Additionally, Alex Gillham has criticized our appropriation of Don Marquis’ ‘future like ours’ reasoning about the wrongness of impairment. We show that his objections have minimal implications for our argument. (shrink)

Perry Hendricks’ impairment argument for the immorality of abortion is based on two premises: first, impairing a fetus with fetal alcohol syndrome is immoral, and second, if impairing an organism to some degree is immoral, then ceteris paribus, impairing it to a higher degree is also immoral. He calls this the impairment principle. Since abortion impairs a fetus to a higher degree than FAS, it follows from these two premises that abortion is immoral. Critics have focussed on the (...) ceteris paribus clause of TIP, which requires that the relevant details surrounding each impairment be sufficiently similar. In this article, we show that the ceteris paribus clause is superfluous, and by replacing it with a more restrictive condition, the impairment argument is considerably strengthened. There are no data in this work. (shrink)

Could it be that if a fetus is not a person abortion is still immoral? One affirmative answer comes in the form of ‘The Impairment Argument’, which utilizes ‘The Impairment Principle’ to argue that abortion is immoral even if fetuses lack personhood. I argue ‘The Impairment Argument’ fails. It is not adequately defended from objections, and abortion is, in fact, a counterexample to the impairment principle. Furthermore, it explains neither what the wrong-making features of abortion are (...) nor what features of fetuses ground their supposed moral significance. By presupposing the fetus lacks personhood and providing no alternate account of the basis of fetuses’ moral significance, there is nothing to constitute abortion’s wrongness. Attempts to modify it fail for the same reasons. Thus, the impairment argument fails to show abortion is immoral. (shrink)

Wszalek offers a detailed examination of the challenges involved in assisting people with language and communication impairments in the comprehension of legal language and concepts (LLC). If we settle for a minimum threshold of LLC comprehension, we are likely to observe that some people will not meet this threshold due to personal choices, such as not having practiced reading sufficiently or having avoided intellectually stimulating social interactions.

Given their salience in many sports and physical cultures, it is surprising that the practices, processes and production of intercorporeality and ‘doing together’ remain under-explored from a sociological perspective. The ongoing achievement of ‘togethering’ can be particularly important for the embodied partnership between a visually impaired (VI) runner and a sighted guide (SG) runner: a specific sporting dyad whose experiences are currently under-researched. To address this lacuna and contribute original insights to sensory sociological studies, here we explore the accomplishment of (...) running-together by VI runners and sighted guides, focusing on the auditory dimension. To illustrate how these runners put the sense of hearing ‘to work’ in achieving finely attuned intercorporeality, often at considerable speed, we draw on qualitative data from a research project on VI running in the UK, involving five VI runners and five SGs. Here, we focus on auditory attunement in two domains identified as highly salient in the running-partners’ intercorporeal experiences: (1) Listening out – auditory attention to non-linguistic sounds; and (2) Tuning in – the importance of attending to team-talk between VI runners and SG runners. (shrink)

In an article of this journal, Perry Hendricks makes a novel argument for the immorality of abortion. According to his impairment argument, abortion is immoral because: (a) it is wrong to impair a fetus to the nth degree, such as causing the fetus to have fetal alcohol syndrome (FAS); (b) it is wrong to impair a fetus to the n+1 degree (to cause the fetus to be more impaired than to have FAS); (c) killing the fetus impairs the fetus (...) to the n+1 degree (causes it to be more impaired than to have FAS); (d) abortion kills the fetus; (e) therefore, abortion is immoral. The impairment argument is a promising account for the wrongness of abortion because it does not rely on the controversial metaphysical premise that a fetus is a person. This article aims to show, that despite some immediate advantages over the rival theories of the immorality of abortion there is a reason to believe that the impairment argument is untenable. That is because there are goods that can be achieved by abortion but that cannot be achieved by impairing the fetus. (shrink)

Much of the discussion surrounding the ethics of abortion has centered around the notion of personhood. This is because many philosophers hold that the morality of abortion is contingent on whether the fetus is a person - though, of course, some famous philosophers have rejected this thesis (e.g. Judith Thomson and Don Marquis). In this article, I construct a novel argument for the immorality of abortion based on the notion of impairment. This argument does not assume that the fetus (...) is a person - indeed, I concede (for the sake of argument) that the fetus is not a person - and hence the morality of abortion is not contingent on whether the fetus is a person. I finish by answering a plethora of objections to my argument, concluding that none of them are successful. (shrink)

Perry Hendricks’ ‘impairment argument’, which he has defended in this journal, is intended to demonstrate that the generally conceded wrongness of giving a fetus fetal alcohol syndrome (FAS) shows that abortion must also be immoral, even if we allow that the fetus is not a rights-bearing moral person. The argument fails because the harm of causing FAS is extrinsic but Hendricks needs it to be intrinsic for it to show anything about abortion. Either the subject of the wrong of (...) causing FAS is a person who does not exist in the case of abortion or the wrong is negligible. (shrink)

In my article "Even if the fetus is not a person, abortion is immoral: The impairment argument" (this journal), I defended what I called “The impairment argument” which purports to show that abortion is immoral. Bruce Blackshaw (2019) has argued that my argument fails on three accounts. In this article, I respond to his criticisms.

The Heythrop Journal, Volume 63, Issue 5, Page 899-906, September 2022.

Psychopathy has been theorized as a disorder of emotion, which impairs moral judgments. However, these theories are increasingly being abandoned as empirical studies show that psychopaths seem to make proper moral judgments. In this contribution, these findings are reassessed, and it is argued that prevalent emotion‐theories of psychopathy appear to operate with the unjustified assumption that psychopaths have no emotions, which leads to the hypothesis that psychopaths are completely unable to make moral judgments. An alternative and novel explanation is proposed, (...) theorizing psychopathy as a degree‐specific emotional deficiency, which causes degree‐specific differences in moral judgments. (shrink)

When visual attention is directed away from a stimulus, neural processing is weak and strength and precision of sensory data decreases. From a computational perspective, in such situations observers should give more weight to prior expectations in order to behave optimally during a discrimination task. Here we test a signal detection theoretic model that counter-intuitively predicts subjects will do just the opposite in a discrimination task with two stimuli, one attended and one unattended: when subjects are probed to discriminate the (...) unattended stimulus, they rely less on prior information about the probed stimulus’ identity. The model is in part inspired by recent findings that attention reduces trial-by-trial variability of the neuronal population response and that they use a common criterion for attended and unattended trials. In five different visual discrimination experiments, when attention was directed away from the target stimulus, subjects did not adjust their response bias in reaction to a change in stimulus presentation frequency despite being fully informed and despite the presence of performance feedback and monetary and social incentives. This indicates that subjects did not rely more on the priors under conditions of inattention as would be predicted by a Bayes-optimal observer model. These results inform and constrain future models of Bayesian inference in the human brain. (shrink)

The partnership between a visually impaired runner (VIR) and sighted guide runner (SGR) constitutes a unique sporting dyad. The quality of these partnerships may profoundly impact the sport and physical activity (PA) experiences of visually impaired (VI) people, yet little is known about the experiences of VIRs and SGRs. This study aimed to explore qualitatively the running experiences of VIRs and SGRs. Five VIRs and five SGRs took part in in-depth, semi-structured interviews (M length = 62 minutes) exploring their running (...) journeys and perceptions of running-together. We analysed the dataset using reflexive thematic analysis. Four themes were generated, comprising: becoming and being a running team; a multifaceted intercorporeal experience; running-together promotes change; and disabling social interaction within running. Participants were generally positive about their running experiences, highlighting a range of benefits derived from the activity. Nevertheless, some examples of barriers to participation were also identified. Although the positive experiences described by the runners suggest guided running holds promise to increase PA in VI people, our findings illustrate the importance of directing attention towards developing high-quality relationships between VIRs and guides, alongside reinforcing the need for further change to promote inclusivity. (shrink)

This research examined the academic enablers that help undergraduate students wi hearing impairment (SWHI) succeed in higher education, addressing their uniq obstacles. SWHI students have unique academic challenges that need tailored interventio and support services to improve their education. Promoting diversity and academic succe in higher education requires understanding these obstacles and supports. A census samp of 30 SWHI undergraduates from a private institution was used for a quantitative stud Surveys in sign language were analyzed using SPSS. Descriptive and (...) inferential statisti were used to analyze academic engagement, interpersonal skills, academic motivation, a study abilities. Academic Engagement demonstrated significant engagement with 56.1 asking test questions and 68.3% participating in classroom discussions. Interpersonal Ski showed active listening (78.0%) and good group work (75.6%). Academic motivati emphasized self-improvement (78.0%) and intrinsic curiosity (73.2%). 73.2% attended cla without doing homework, indicating study skills issues. Future studies should exami academic diversity and accessibility initiatives. (shrink)

I use critical phenomenological resources in Tetsurō Watsuji and Sarah Ahmed to explore the spatial origin of some social impairments in Autistic Spectrum Disorder (ASD). I argue that a critical phenomenological perspective puts pressure on the idea that social impairments in ASD are exclusively (or even primarily) neurocognitive deficits that can be addressed by focusing on cognitive factors internal to the autistic person — for example, training them to adopt a more neurotypical approach to social cognition. Instead, I argue that (...) the structure and character of some neurotypical spaces may play a regulative role in shaping aspects of at least some of the social impairments autistic people exhibit when they inhabit these spaces. I also briefly consider some possible therapeutic applications of this critical phenomenological approach. (shrink)

Many philosophers are attracted to a complaints-based theory of the procreation asymmetry, according to which creating a person with a bad life is wrong (all else equal) because that person can complain about your act, whereas declining to create a person who would have a good life is not wrong (all else equal) because that person never exists and so cannot complain about your act. In this paper, I present two problems for such theories: the problem of impairable-life acceptance and (...) an especially acute version of the problem of improvable-life avoidance. I explain how these problems afflict two recent complaints-based theories of the procreation asymmetry, from Joe Horton and Abelard Podgorski. (shrink)

An important philosophical issue in the study of addiction is what difference the fact that a person is addicted makes to attributions of autonomy (and responsibility) to their drug-oriented behavior. In spite of accumulating evidence suggesting the role of emotional dysregulation in understanding addiction, it has received surprisingly little attention in the debate about this issue. I claim that, as a result, an important aspect of the autonomy impairment of many addicted individuals has been largely overlooked. A widely shared (...) assumption in the philosophical literature is that for addiction to impair a person’s autonomy it has to make them (in some sense) take drugs against their will. So-called “willing addicts” are therefore usually seen as exempted from the autonomy impairment believed to characterize “unwilling addicts”, the latter being those who ‘truly want’ to stop using drugs but find their attempts repeatedly derailed by failures of self-control. In this article, I argue that the association between addiction and emotional dysregulation shows why this assumption is false. Emotional dysregulation is not only consistent with the possibility that many addicts take drugs ‘willingly’, it supports the hypothesis that they use drugs because they truly want to. The article proposes an explanation for why emotional dysregulation should nevertheless be seen as an aspect of their loss of control and an important reason why they have impaired autonomy. I end by exploring some implications of this account for addict’s decision-making capacity when they are prescribed the drugs to which they are addicted. -/- . (shrink)

A basic criticism of Perry Hendrick's "Even if the fetus is not a person, abortion is immoral: The Impairment Argument," is offered, namely that the reasons why intentionally causing fetal alcohol syndrome is wrong simply do not apply to fetuses and so the "Impairment Argument" against abortion fails.

So far, the value dimension underlying affectivity disorders has remained out of focus in phenomenological psychopathology. As early as at the beginning of the 20th century, however, German phenomenologist Max Scheler examined in depth the relationship between affectivity and value dimension through the concept of valueception (Wertnehmung). In this sense, a recent noteworthy contribution has been provided by John Cutting, who has drawn attention to the importance of Scheler’s analyses for psychiatry. In this work I take into consideration only two (...) aspects of Cutting’s proposal: 1) the relationship between the impairments of valueception and the perception of certain value classes; and 2) the interpretation of Scheler’s phenomenological reduction and its juxtaposition with the modus vivendi of schizophrenia. According to Cutting, in the modus vivendi of schizophrenia the valueception impairment entails putting vital values in brackets and focusing on personal values, with a process that recalls Scheler’s phenomenological reduction. Regarding the first aspect, I share Cutting’s starting point, but then shift the focus on how important the valueception is for the intersubjective dimension. In particular, I maintain that rather than compromising the perception of vital values, valueception impairments in the modus vivendi of schizophrenia interfere with the intersubjective dimension and are interwoven with a process of disembodiment. My thesis is that the modus vivendi of schizophrenia involves a disturbance of the intersubjective dimension that arises from the level of valueception and that determines the person’s self-referential closure. With regard to the second point, by analyzing Scheler’s phenomenological reduction, I sustain that its main objective is to increase both the interaction with otherness and the openness to the world (Weltoffenheit). As a consequence, the modus vivendi of schizophrenia, in my opinion, is not comparable, as Cutting claims, with Scheler’s phenomenological reduction, but goes in a different direction. (shrink)

A broad pattern of correlations between mechanisms of brain function impairment and self-transcendence is shown. The pattern includes such mechanisms as cerebral hypoxia, physiological stress, transcranial magnetic stimulation, trance-induced physiological effects, the action of psychoactive substances and even physical trauma to the brain. In all these cases, subjects report self-transcending experiences o en described as ‘mystical’ and ‘awareness-expanding,’ as well as self-transcending skills o en described as ‘savant.’ The idea that these correlations could be rather trivially accounted for on (...) the basis of disruptions to inhibitory neural processes is reviewed and shown to be implausible. Instead, this paper suggests that an as-of-yet unrecognized causal principle underlying the entire pattern might be at work, whose further elucidation through systematic research could hold great promise. (shrink)

: This article critically examines the constitution of impairment in prenatal testing and screening practices and various discourses that surround these technologies. While technologies to test and screen prenatally are claimed to enhance women's capacity to be self-determining, make informed reproductive choices, and, in effect, wrest control of their bodies from a patriarchal medical establishment, I contend that this emerging relation between pregnant women and reproductive technologies is a new strategy of a form of power that began to emerge (...) in the late eighteenth century. Indeed, my argument is that the constitution of prenatal impairment, by and through these practices and procedures, is a widening form of modern government that increasingly limits the field of possible conduct in response to pregnancy. Hence, the government of impairment in utero is inextricably intertwined with the government of the maternal body. (shrink)

Since the completion of the human genome project in 2003, genomic sequencing, analysis, and interpretation have become staples of research in medicine and the life sciences more generally. While much ink has been spilled concerning genomics’ precipitous rise, there is little agreement among scholars concerning its meaning, both in general and with respect to our current moment. Some claim genomics is neither new, nor noteworthy; others claim it is a novel and worrisome instrument of newgenics. Contrary to the approaches of (...) Foucault scholars in both camps, in this paper I utilize research in philosophy of disability to argue that genomics is indeed noteworthy as a unique form of biopower and that its primary function is to precisify impairments in contradistinction to disability. I call the force at play in this process genopower. (shrink)

This study examines the relation of language use to a person’s ability to perform categorization tasks and to assess their own abilities in those categorization tasks. A silent rhyming task was used to confirm that a group of people with post-stroke aphasia (PWA) had corresponding covert language production (or “inner speech”) impairments. The performance of the PWA was then compared to that of age- and education-matched healthy controls on three kinds of categorization tasks and on metacognitive self-assessments of their performance (...) on those tasks. The PWA showed no deficits in their ability to categorize objects for any of the three trial types (visual, thematic, and categorial). However, on the categorial trials, their metacognitive assessments of whether they had categorized correctly were less reliable than those of the control group. The categorial trials were distinguished from the others by the fact that the categorization could not be based on some immediately perceptible feature or on the objects’ being found together in a type of scenario or setting. This result offers preliminary evidence for a link between covert language use and a specific form of metacognition. (shrink)

A growing number of young people with disabilities is pursuing university education. Available research on the impact of Information and Communication Technologies on this matter has mainly focused on assistive technologies and their compensatory role for the adjustment of this group of students to the tertiary setting. However, limited research has looked at the role played by digital technologies such as social media and mobile devices in the transition to university, a critical period of change for all students but more (...) challenging for those with impairments. This paper presents the findings of an empirical study that investigated the experiences of students with vision impairments aged 18 to 24 who were transitioning to a New Zealand university. The findings draw from observations, a researcher diary, focus groups, individual interviews, and data from social media. The study found that new technologies play several enabling roles that help students to manage diverse transition challenges. These roles not only include aspects such as impairment compensation, communication, information, and learning but also support arrangement, collaboration, and social connection and participation. By incorporating in the analysis the potential of digital tools, the article updates and expands the understanding of the role of ICTs in higher education from experiences and views of young people with vision impairments. (shrink)

The main objective of this project is to provide acoustic assistance to the blind people and also deal with the problems faced by them to walk like the normal human beings. Thus the project aims to develop a device that would serve as a guiding assistance to them. The paper focuses on designing a device for visual impaired (or blind) people that would help them to travel independently and also with more ease. One of the biggest problem that the visual (...) impaired ones face is while travelling because when they walk in the indoors and outdoors they are not well aware of information about their location and orientation with respect to traffic and obstacles on their way unlike the normal beings. The technology proposed in the paper serves as a solution for visual impaired people. The project consists of smart shoe and smart cane (stick) that alerts visually impaired people over obstacles coming between their ways and could help them in walking with less collision. The main objective of this paper is to address a reliable encompassing of a call and a shoe that could communicate with the user through voice alert and pre-coded messages. (shrink)

This article introduces Transition 2.0, a paradigm shift designed to study and support students with disabilities' transition to higher education. Transition 2.0 is the result of a qualitative study about how a group of young people with vision impairments used digital technologies for their transition to university. The findings draw from observations, a researcher diary, focus groups, individual interviews, and data from social media. The article discusses a conventional view of transition, referred to here as Transition 1.0, which has dominated (...) disability-related research and service provision in higher education. It counters this view by further developing the conceptual framework for Transition 2.0. The findings expand current conceptual approaches to transition by incorporating in the analysis the role played by digital tools such as social media and mobile devices. They also provide a new lens through which to study and understand student engagement in higher education. (shrink)

Background: In order to determine the pathophysiology of tinnitus and deciding on treatment, the function of peripheral hearing organs is very important. -/- Objective: To evaluate the cochlear functions in tinnitus patients with or without hearing-loss(HL). -/- Methods: Participants with tinnitus were divided into two groups; 16 participants with accompanying HL were included in the first study group (SG-I), and 15 participants without HL were included in the second group (SG-II). 21 normal-hearing subjects without tinnitus included as control group(CG). Tinnitus (...) discomfort levels was determined with Tinnitus Handicap Inventory(THI). Besides pure-tone audiometry, Otoacoustic Emissions, to evaluate cochlear functions and to decide dead regions (DR), Threshold Equalizing Noise-(TEN) was used. -/- Results: The threshold-shift was observed with TEN in subjects in SG-I and these levels were statistically different from SG-II and CG. There were both threshold-shift and DR in SG-II according to TEN. TEOAEs did not differ between SG-II and CG. The DPOAE results for SG-II showed significant decreases in emission amplitudes at 6 & 8 kHz. -/- Conclusion: While Tinnitus patients with HL can be evaluated with conventional tests, evaluating patients with normal hearing tinnitus with additional tests such as OAE and TEN allows us to get more precise results on the functions of peripheral hearing organs. (shrink)

Patients with schizophrenia have a higher risk of cardiovascular diseases and higher mortality from them than does the general population; however, the underlying mechanism remains unclear. Impaired cerebral autoregulation is associated with cerebrovascular diseases and their mortality. Increased or decreased cerebral blood flow in different brain regions has been reported in patients with schizophrenia, which implies impaired cerebral autoregulation. This study investigated the cerebral autoregulation in 21 patients with schizophrenia and 23 age- and sex-matched healthy controls. None of the participants (...) had a history of cardiovascular diseases, hypertension, or diabetes. All participants underwent 10-min blood pressure and cerebral blood flow recording through finger plethysmography and Doppler ultrasonography, respectively. Cerebral autoregulation was assessed by analyzing two autoregulation indices: the mean blood pressure and cerebral blood flow correlation coefficient (Mx), and the phase shift between the waveforms of blood pressure and cerebral blood flow determined using transfer function analysis. Compared with the controls, the patients had a significantly higher Mx (0.257 vs. 0.399, p = 0.036) and lower phase shift (44.3° vs. 38.7° in the 0.07–0.20 Hz frequency band, p = 0.019), which indicated impaired maintenance of constant cerebral blood flow and a delayed cerebrovascular autoregulatory response. Impaired cerebral autoregulation may be caused by schizophrenia and may not be an artifact of coexisting medical conditions. The mechanism underlying impaired cerebral autoregulation in schizophrenia and its probable role in the development of cerebrovascular diseases require further investigation. (shrink)

Scheler, like Jaspers, gives a key importance to the relations with alterity and grounds both the individual formation and social ontology on the practices of “sharing emotions”. My work attempts to interpret the impairments related to the capacities of communication – that Jaspers places at the roots of psychopathology and that the Japanese psychiatrist Bin Kimura has more recently argued to be the core of schizophrenia – as impairment of what Scheler calls ordo amoris, that is the “order of (...) feeling” of a person: like a "Psychopathology of the Ordo Amoris". (shrink)

The ‘man born blind restored to light’ was one of the foundational myths of the Enlightenment, according to Foucault. With ophthalmic surgery in its infancy, the fascination by the sighted with blindness and what the blind might ‘see’ after sight restoration remained largely speculative. Was being blind, as Descartes once remarked, like ‘seeing with the hands’? Did evidence from early cataract operations begin to resolve epistemological debates about the relationship between vision and touch in the newly sighted, such as the (...) famous ‘Molyneux Question’ posed by William Molyneux to John Locke? More recently, how have autobiographical accounts of blind and vision impaired writers and poets advanced the sighted public’s understanding of blind subjectivity? -/- Through an unfolding historical, philosophical and literary narrative that includes Locke, Molyneux and Berkeley in Britain, and Diderot, Voltaire and Buffon in France, this book explores how the Molyneux Question and its aftermath has influenced attitudes towards blindness by the sighted, and sensory substitution technologies for the blind and vision impaired, to this day. (shrink)

Much of the literature on impairment to self-governance focuses on cases in which a person either lacks the ability to protect herself from errant urges or cases in which a person lacks the capacity to initiate self-reflective agential processes. This has led to frameworks for thinking about self-governance designed with only the possibility of these sorts of impairments in mind. I challenge this orthodoxy using the case of melancholic depression to show that there is a third way that self-governance (...) can be undermined: an agent may fail to form the desire she most wants to act on. (shrink)

Until now, philosophical debate about human embryonic stem cell (hESC) research has largely been limited to its ethical dimensions and implications. Although the importance and urgency of these ethical debates should not be underestimated, the almost undivided attention that mainstream and feminist philosophers have paid to the ethical dimensions of hESC research suggests that the only philosophically interesting questions and concerns about it are by and large ethical in nature. My argument goes some distance to challenge the assumption that ethical (...) considerations alone must be foregrounded in philosophical discussions about hESC research by introducing a critical stance on the epistemological and ontological assumptions that underlie and condition it. A central aim of the paper is to show how Foucault's insights into knowledge-power, taken in combination with Hacking's claims about styles of reasoning, can make these assumptions evident, as well as cast light on their potentially deleterious implications for disabled people. Arguing in this way also enables me to draw out constitutive effects of research on stem cells, that is, to indicate how the discursive practices surrounding research on stem cells, as well as the technology itself, contribute to the constitution of impairment. (shrink)

This paper shows the smart walking stick based on ultrasonic sensors and Arduino for outwardly debilitated individuals. There are roughly 37 million individuals over the globe who are visually impaired as indicated by the World Health Organization. Individuals with visual inabilities are regularly subjected to outer help which can be given by people, trained dogs, or electronic gadgets as supportive networks for basic assistance. Thus, this played as the motivation to develop a smart cane white stick to survive these restrictions (...) which includes ultrasonic sensors at particular positions to the stick that gave data about nature to the client by initiating the signal sound and vibrations. We proposed minimal effort and light weight framework structured with micro controller that processes signal and alerts the visually impaired person over any obstacle, water or dark areas through beeping sounds or vibrations. The system comprises of obstacle and moisture detection sensors for process of receiving, processing and sending signals to the alarm system which finally alerts the user for prompt action. The system was designed, programmed using Java language and tried for exactness by the visually impaired. Our gadget can recognize obstacle inside the separation of around 2m from the client. (shrink)

Research on transition to higher education and young people with disabilities has increased in recent years. However, there is still limited understanding of transition issues and how digital technologies, such as social media and mobile devices, are used by this group of students to manage these issues. This article presents the findings of an empirical study that addressed this matter based on young people’s views and experiences. The qualitative study was conducted in the context of a group of students with (...) vision impairments transitioning to a New Zealand university. The findings draw from observations, a researcher diary, focus groups, individual interviews, and data from social media. The study shows that, like their non-disabled peers, the students actively engaged with interactive and collaborative digital technologies to make sense, individually and collectively, of different transition issues before, during and after the first academic trimester of their university journey. (shrink)

Since transition to higher education emerged as a research topic in the early 1970s, scholarly inquiry has focused on students without impairments and, what is more, little attention has been paid to the role of digital technologies. This article seeks to address this knowledge gap by looking at the university experiences of a group of first-year students with vision impairments from New Zealand, and the way they use digital tools, such as social media and mobile devices, to manage their transition-related (...) challenges. The article summarises the findings from a longitudinal qualitative project which was methodologically informed by action research (AR). The article explores and discusses scholarly inquiry of transition to university and introduces a conceptual framework which includes five overlapping stages, the transition issues faced by the students and the roles played by digital technologies. The article updates and expands the theoretical understanding of transition to higher education and provides empirical evidence for practitioners to support the needs, inclusion, and participation of young people with disabilities in the tertiary setting. (shrink)

Some theories of language, thought, and experience require their adherents to say unpalatable things about human individuals whose capacities for rational activity are seriously diminished. Donald Davidson, for example, takes the interdependence of the concepts of thought and language to entail that thoughts may only be attributed to an individual who is an interpreter of others’ speech. And John McDowell's account of human experience as the involuntary exercise of conceptual capacities can be applied easily only to individuals who make some (...) reasonable judgments, because conceptual capacities are paradigmatically exercised in judgments. In both cases, we seem forced towards an error theory about any ordinary understanding of impaired human individuals as minded, or as undergoing human experience. (shrink)

This paper is about teaching elementary logic to blind or visually impaired students. The targeted audience are teachers who all of sudden have a blind or visually impaired student in their introduction to logic class, find limited help from disability centers in their institution, and have no idea what to do. We provide simple techniques that allow direct communication between a teacher and a visually impaired student. We show how the use of what is known as Polish notation simplifies communication, (...) and pedagogically is a great notation for a Braille reader. (shrink)

Impairment of self-control is often said to be a defining feature of addiction. Yet many addicts display what appears to be a considerable amount of control over their drug-oriented actions. Not only are their actions clearly intentional and frequently carried out in a conscious and deliberate manner, there is evidence that many addicts are responsive to a wide range of ordinary incentives and counter-incentives. Moreover, addicts have a wide variety of reasons for using drugs, reasons which often seem to (...) go a long way towards explaining their drug-oriented behavior. Many use drugs, for example, to cope with stressful or traumatic experiences. In this article I argue that some standard philosophical explanations of addicts’ impairment of self-control are inadequate, and propose an alternative. (shrink)

Impairments in pragmatic abilities, that is, difficulties with appropriate use and interpretation of language – in particular, non-literal uses of language – are considered a hallmark of Autism Spectrum Conditions (ASC). Despite considerable research attention, these pragmatic difficulties are poorly understood. In this paper, we discuss and evaluate existing hypotheses regarding the literalism of ASC individuals, that is, their tendency for literal interpretations of non-literal communicative intentions, and link them to accounts of pragmatic development in neurotypical children. We present evidence (...) that reveals a developmental stage at which neurotypical children also have a tendency for literal interpretations and provide a possible explanation for such behaviour, one that links it to other behavioural, rule-following, patterns typical of that age. We then discuss extant evidence that shows that strict adherence to rules is also a widespread feature in ASC, and suggest that literalism might be linked to such rule-following behaviour. (shrink)

Objective: Vascular disorders severely impair the psycho-social status of individuals. Various laser and light systems, which have advantages and disadvantages, including the pro-yellow laser are used for the therapy of these disorders. Aim: The goal of the present study was to investigate the effectiveness and feasibility of the 577 nm pro-yellow laser for a broad range of indications including erythematelangiectatic rosacea, facial erythema, post-acne erythema, facial telangiectasis, hemangioma, genital angiokeratoma, and port wine stain nevus. Methods: A total of 98 patients (...) (25 male, 73 female) older than 15 years who were treated with the pro-yellow laser for vascular disorders at the cosmetology unit between 2017 and 2019 were retrospectively included in the study. Results: The mean rate of recovery was 100% in genital angiokeratoma, 94.4% in spider angioma, 83.3% in facial telangiectasis, 74.8% in erythematotelangiectatic rosacea, 72% in facial erythema + facial telangiectasis, and 68.3% in facial erythema. Over 60% of improvement was observed in most patients with vascular disorders. There was no significant link between the Fitzpatrick skin type and treatment success. Treatment success was significantly low in cases with nasal involvement. Conclusion: The current study concluded that pro-yellow laser is an efficient and safe laser modality that may yield satisfactory outcomes regardless of the different skin types. (shrink)

The normative force of evidence can seem puzzling. It seems that having conclusive evidence for a proposition does not, by itself, make it true that one ought to believe the proposition. But spelling out the condition that evidence must meet in order to provide us with genuine normative reasons for belief seems to lead us into a dilemma: the condition either fails to explain the normative significance of epistemic reasons or it renders the content of epistemic norms practical. The first (...) aim of this paper is to spell out this challenge for the normativity of evidence. I argue that the challenge rests on a plausible assumption about the conceptual connection between normative reasons and blameworthiness. The second aim of the paper is to show how we can meet the challenge by spelling out a concept of epistemic blameworthiness. Drawing on recent accounts of doxastic responsibility and epistemic blame, I suggest that the normativity of evidence is revealed in our practice of suspending epistemic trust in response to impaired epistemic relationships. Recognizing suspension of trust as a form of epistemic blame allows us to make sense of a purely epistemic kind of normativity the existence of which has recently been called into doubt by certain versions of pragmatism and instrumentalism. (shrink)

Though researchers working on congenital aphantasia (henceforth “aphantasia”) agree that this condition involves an impairment in the ability to voluntarily generate visual imagery, disagreement looms large as to which other impairments are exhibited by aphantasic subjects. This article offers the first extensive review of studies on aphantasia, and proposes that aphantasic subjects exhibit a cluster of impairments. It puts forward a novel cognitive theory of aphantasia, building on the constructive episodic simulation hypothesis of memory and imagination. It argues that (...) aphantasia is best explained as a malfunction of processes in the episodic system, and is therefore an episodic system condition. (shrink)

If each of the subtypes of autism is defined simply as constituted by a set of symptoms, then the criteria for its observation are straightforward, although, of course, some of those symptoms themselves might be hard to observe definitively. Compare with telling whether or not someone is bleeding: while it might be hard to tell if someone is bleeding internally, we know what it takes to find out, and when we have the right access and instruments we can settle the (...) issue. But matters are not so simple for the autism subtypes. For one thing, how do we settle which symptoms to group together under one heading? One key difference between “autism disorder” and “Asperger’s disorder” is that the former exhibit language delays (sometimes extreme), whereas the latter do not. But is that a sign of genuinely distinct conditions or is that an artifact of the distinct groups of subjects that Leo Kanner and Hans Asperger worked with? And in general, although there are certainly types of behavior that are taken to be indicative of autism, none by itself is taken by diagnosticians to be either necessary or sufficient for a definitive diagnosis for any of the autism subtypes. What is the diagnostician to do? This is not merely an academic issue, as many parents can attest. Are we in a situation, then, that each practitioner has his or her own “pet” signs that are the “real keys” to the diagnosis? That would suggest that the term “autistic” might meet the fate of the outdated term “neurotic,” which turned out to be a pseudo-scientific term for an inexact clumping together of unrelated phenomena. The assumption amongst specialists seems to be that we will reach the point with "autism" that we have with "water": there will be a root essence to autism whose presence or absence settles a diagnosis. If that is to be the case, however, we have to settle the level of application of the concept. Does the term apply to people who exhibit particular behaviors? Or is it possible to exhibit “autistic” behaviors without actually being autistic, because autism is instead a particular feature of the mind (as, for example, in Baron-Cohen’s “impaired theory of mind module” theory, discussed below) which usually but not necessarily has behavioral effects? Or is autism located instead in the brain, perhaps in damage to key areas, which in turn would typically have an effect on modules of the mind? Or perhaps autism is located in genetics or biology, so that some people with damage to the brain caused by accidents so that they exhibit autistic symptoms would not actually be autistic. Conversely, supposing one had an “autistic brain” but showed none of (or not a sufficient number of) the symptoms, would one not be autistic? The assumption is that the genotypes and phenotypes will line up neatly, but if they do not, what happens to the concept “autistic?” (There is an analogy in the philosophy of sex and gender: androgen insensitive individuals tend to self-identify as female and have outward female traits, but have XY chromosomes—should we go with chromosomes or self-identity in assigning sex category?) Finally, the implications for these complications for diagnosis and categorization, with the attendant social and medical implications is discussed. The typical assumption of the medical profession is that autism cannot be “cured.” That assumes that autism is not simply the symptoms. However, at the same time, the tests used to diagnose ASDs work simply from the symptoms (for example, Baron-Cohen’s Sally/Anne test, which ASD children of a certain age almost all fail, but which practically no ASD adult fails). This implies an inherent confusion over the status of the concept. I conclude that attempts to make sense of some true or accurate summary of what it is to be autistic (such as one would find in the DSM) are almost certainly misguided and will vanish into history along with “neurotic.” But as with racial terms, which are similarly shifting and perverse, the term has already passed into the public sphere and will have a lasting and dangerous influence beyond its short scientific shelf-life. (shrink)

No two individuals with the autism diagnosis are ever the same—yet many practitioners and parents can recognize signs of ASD very rapidly with the naked eye. What, then, is this phenotype of autism that shows itself across such distinct clinical presentations and heterogeneous developments? The “signs” seem notoriously slippery and resistant to the behavioral threshold categories that make up current assessment tools. Part of the problem is that cognitive and behavioral “abilities” typically are theorized as high-level disembodied and modular functions—that (...) are assessed discretely (impaired, normal, enhanced) to define a spectral syndrome. Even as biology reminds us that organic developing bodies are not made up of independent switches, we remain often seduced by the simplicity of mechanistic and cognitive models. Developmental disorders such as autism have accordingly been theorized as due to different modular dysfunctions—typically of cortical origin, i.e., failures of “theory of mind” (Baron-Cohen et al., 1985), of the “mirror neuron system” (Ramachandran and Oberman, 2006), of “weak central coherence” (Happe and Frith, 2006) or of the balance of “empathizing” and “systemizing” (Baron-Cohen, 2009), just to list a few. -/- The broad array of autonomic (Ming et al., 2005; Cheshire, 2012) and sensorimotor (Damasio and Maurer, 1978; Maurer and Damasio, 1982; Donnellan and Leary, 1995; Leary and Hill, 1996; Donnellan and Leary, 2012; Donnellan et al., 2012) differences experienced and reported by people with autism have by such theories typically been sidelined as “co-morbidities,” possibly sharing genetic causes, but rendered as incidental and decisively behaviorally irrelevant symptoms—surely disconnected from cognition. But what if the development of cortically based mental processes and autonomous control relies on the complexities and proper function of the peripheral nervous systems? Through such an “embodied” lens the heterogeneous symptoms of autism invites new interpretations. We propose here that many behavioral-level findings can be re-defined as downstream effects of how developing nervous systems attempt to cope and adapt to the challenges of having various noisy, unpredictable, and unreliable peripheral inputs. (shrink)

Emotion processing is known to be impaired in psychopathy, but less is known about the cognitive mechanisms that drive this. Our study examined experiencing and suppression of emotion processing in psychopathy. Participants, violent offenders with varying levels of psychopathy, viewed positive and negative images under conditions of passive viewing, experiencing and suppressing. Higher scoring psychopathics were more cardiovascularly responsive when processing negative information than positive, possibly reflecting an anomalously rewarding aspect of processing normally unpleasant material. When required to experience emotional (...) response, by ‘getting into the feeling’ of the emotion conveyed by a negative image, higher factor 1 psychopathic individuals showed reduced responsiveness, suggesting that they were less able to do this. These data, together with the absence of corresponding differences in subjective self-report might be used to inform clinical strategies for normalising emotion processing in psychopathic offenders to improve treatment outcome, and reduce risk amongst this client group. (shrink)

In recent years, philosophers have looked to empirical findings about psychopaths to help determine whether moral agency is underwritten by reason, or by some affective capacity, such as empathy. Since one of psychopaths’ most glaring deficits is a lack of empathy, and they are widely considered to be amoral, psychopaths are often taken as a test case for the hypothesis that empathy is necessary for moral agency. However, people with autism also lack empathy, so it is reasonable to think that (...) any empirically-informed attempt to answer the question of whether empathy is necessary for moral agency should give due attention to autism as well as psychopathy. Jeanette Kennett’s thought-provoking paper ‘Autism, Empathy and Moral Agency’ (2002) is an early and arguably the most notable example of such an attempt. Kennett argues that although autistic people and psychopaths both lack empathy, autistic people possess a ‘reverence for reason’ that enables them to become capable moral agents. By contrast, psychopaths lack this rational capacity, and it is this defect of reason rather than an empathic impairment that explains why they are amoral. Kennett thus concludes that empathy is not necessary for moral agency. In this chapter, I challenge Kennett’s argument. First, I review the empirical evidence in order to demonstrate that there is a component of empathy called affective empathy that is impaired in psychopaths but largely preserved in autistics. As such, the claim that psychopaths and autistics share a common lack of empathy is unjustified. Second, I challenge Kennett’s claim that empathy plays no role in explaining the moral difference between psychopaths and autistics. Instead, I contend that the intact affective empathy of autistic people is a crucial component of their capacity to act from reverence for reason. (shrink)