As discussed in Chapter 1, the primary focus of this book is on the potential of neurotechnology to support the rehabilitation of convicted persons by improving risk assessment and risk management – rather than on its potential for diagnosing and treating mental or brain disorders. Still, in some cases, neurorehabilitation might well become conducive or even crucial to the improvement of mental health in forensic populations. Brain stimulation to attenuate aggressive impulses might serve to reduce the mental distress experienced by some persons subject to these impulses. Furthermore, aggression can be a symptom of a recognised mental illness, such as a psychotic disorder, or may be a core feature of a disorder, as in intermittent explosive disorder. Diminishing aggression using neurotechnology could in such cases be relevant to the person’s mental health, which appears to be an interest protected by human rights law. For example, Article 12 of the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (ICESCR) recognises a “right to the highest attainable standard of physical and mental health”.

This chapter tracks the importance and resilience of CPC ideology by examining the development of Mao Zedong Thought from his early Communist writings (1927–1940) through to Yan’an Rectification (1942–1945) and then during his reign as Supreme Leader (1949–1976). It then explores Mao Zedong Thought’s importance for the CPC today. CPC leaders since Mao’s death have invoked, and continue to invoke, Mao Zedong Thought for legitimation and to exhibit continuity despite shifts away from the ideology and practice of the Mao era. Mao Zedong Thought thus fulfills a legitimative need rather than a social one; CPC leaders must acknowledge, and often reference, Mao Zedong Thought to project continuity even if the ruptures since Mao’s death have resulted in an un-Maoist Party-state.

The introductory chapter outlines the book’s central premise: disabled people have as much right to live in the world as the non-disabled. It introduces the human rights and critical disability studies methods used to interrogate the problem of disability discrimination throughout the life cycle, especially at the beginning and end of life. Along with providing an overview, the introductory chapter argues that the book is particularly needed because disability equal rights struggles remain marginal in mainstream bioethics and law.

This section explores integrating multicultural frameworks into migration management in South America, focusing on how various countries have embraced and implemented multiculturalism, interculturalism, and pluriculturalism. Argentina’s Migration Law emphasizes multiculturalism, promoting immigrant integration and respect for cultural diversity. Chile and Bolivia, on the other hand, have integrated interculturalism, focusing on immigrant and native population interactions. Paraguay’s pluriculturalism highlights the diversity inherent to South American nations, focusing on existing cultural differences. Through empirical studies, the section also examines the practical application of these frameworks, discussing how immigrants’ strategies – ranging from assimilation to multiculturalism – impact their integration outcomes. Political discourse and economic concerns are also discussed, highlighting the role of national rhetoric, media, and socioeconomic factors in shaping public attitudes toward immigration in the region. Together, these findings illuminate how South American countries navigate the complexities of migration, identity, and social inclusion.

Robert Schumann’s father August ran a publishing company; Robert grew up surrounded by books. As a teenager, he founded a literary society; as an adult, he made annotated reading lists filled with strong opinions. His early years belonged to the Age of Goethe, whose works he loved throughout his life, and he was captivated by the radical novelty that was Heinrich Heine. Other Romantic and contemporary poets, from Eichendorff to Adelbert von Chamisso, Rückert, and Robert Reinick, provided him with texts for songs, as did Robert Burns. He and Clara lived through the Revolution of 1848, and their liberal political convictions are inscribed in selected lieder. Later in his life, Robert discovered the poems of Nikolaus Lenau and Eduard Mörike, Emanuel Geibel, Heinrich Hoffmann von Fallersleben, and Elisabeth Kulmann. Both composers’ engagements with the literature of their day had massive impacts on their musical imaginations throughout their lives.

Telework presents two quite distinct faces: longer, more irregular work schedules; yet potentially a better reconciliation of work and family life, provided it is promoted. Yet the outcomes are clearly ambivalent. Teleworking in itself is no guarantee of co-responsibility or the transformation of gender roles. There is a risk that it is perceived as the most ‘appropriate’ working arrangement for women, in a way that perpetuates gender roles and, even, widens the labour gap. To address this danger, socio-economic and cultural alliances, policies and regulations must all row in the same direction and take steps to eliminate patriarchal structures and systemic discrimination This contribution emphasizes that telework is not gender-neutral because it brings paid work into the domestic sphere, a traditionally feminine domain where productive and reproductive spaces overlap. The chapter analyses the impact that labour legislation and business practices have on women, and explores issues to which teleworking gives rise in relation to working time and work–life balance. Additionally, and with the focus more firmly on business practices, the work addresses the opportunities afforded by telework as a working-time arrangement.

This chapter introduces the project of the book: an examination of a selection of funerary hymns collected in the so-called “Roman Edition” of the writings of Ephrem the Syrian, assembled under the auspices of Pope Clement XI, and known as the necrosima. The chapter accordingly seeks to locate the work ahead against a number of different backdrops: the life, work, and study of Ephrem the Syrian; the transmission, celebration, and eventual neglect of the necrosima; and the value of attending both to ritual sources and to works of uncertain attribution. The concluding section also outlines the remaining chapters and the plan for the book itself.

This chapter emphasises the ways in which chivalric poetry remained in dialogue with the everyday culture of the piazza as well as of élite court circles, crossing boundaries between high and low culture, publication in oral performance, writing and print, blending aspects of medieval and Renaissance worlds. Discussion focuses on the evolution of themes and techniques across the three major writers of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, Luigi Pulci, Matteo Maria Boiardo and Ludovico Ariosto, exploring how their works continue to interact with the oral culture of the canterini. Although each of their three poems constitutes a distinct response, analysis reveals an underlying and continuous relationship with the popular and oral traditions of performed poetry that helped to shape authors’ presentations of their own poems and of the art of poetry itself.

Fictional discourse is, primarily, discourse that is used to produce literary fictions; but there is also the ‘metafictional’ discourse used to talk about fictions, i.e., to report their contents or other features. On a traditional view articulated by Searle, primary fictional discourse doesn’t have any specific semantics; sentences there just have the semantics that they would have in their standard uses. Fiction-makers convey their fictions by pretending to use sentences in their standard ways without doing so, and without giving them a specific, dedicated representational point with a semantics of its own. This Mere Pretense view is less popular nowadays than it used to be. A question the now more popular alternative Dedicated Representation view raises is: What is the contribution of intuitively empty names to such a dedicated semantics? Many supporters of the traditional Mere Pretense view, including Searle, argue that, in the metafictional uses to which they grant a semantics, apparently empty names are not in fact empty; rather, they each refer to some more or less exotic entity. Some of those who grant a dedicated semantics to primary fictional discourse, like Salmon and others, extend this realist view to it. This chapter aims to uphold considerations that have already been raised by irrealists against these proposals, by highlighting their counterintuitive features and explaining in our theoretical setting why they are bad.

Among the most difficult challenges facing the European Union (EU) is the development of a European identity. The countries and regional groups of Europe have long histories and traditions, and have had numerous wars against one another over the centuries. European identity must overcome traditional rivalries. In addition, European identity must encompass the tens of millions of immigrants who have arrived in Europe since the Second World War, and who tend to be dissimilar from the host society population in terms of religion, language, culture, and other important characteristics. But Europe has an aging and declining population and needs immigrant labor. Despite challenges, as reflected by the Eurobarometer and other indicators, European identity is becoming more salient, especially among the young.

This chapter frames the debate between those who think that Kant’s philosophy of Right is in some way independent from his moral philosophy and those who do not in two ways. First, the chapter argues that Kant recognizes only two forms of practical reason, namely the pure practical reason of morality and the empirical practical reason of prudential self-love, and that if his philosophy of Right is not to be a version of Hobbesian prudence, it can only be a part of morality – namely, the coercively enforceable part. It argues further that the moral foundation of Kant’s philosophy of Right is the innate right to freedom, itself the correlative of our obligation always to treat humanity as an end and never merely as a means, since humanity is equivalent to the ability of each to set his or her own ends, that is, freedom. In the second part of the chapter, it is argued that the duties of individuals and rulers alike to both institute and maintain the civil condition, namely the state, make sense only as moral and indeed ethical duties, although not duties of virtue to promote self-perfection and the happiness of others.

This chapter starts with a discussion on models informing probability versus the case where probability is inherent in the model. The chapter also goes into detail to argue why a particular interpretation of quantum mechanics, Bohmian economics, can be useful in finance. We provide for an example of how such mechanics can be applied to daily returns on commodity prices. We also briefly look into the potential connection between Bohmian mechanics and a macroscopic fluid system.

Corruption became a problem in Hong Kong as the colonial state extended its reach over a bustling entrepôt economy. Shifting boundaries separating the public and the private marked traditional norms of gift-giving and reciprocity as problematic. In the second half of the twentieth century, British officials saw corruption as a “Chinese” problem. This culturalist thesis was disembedded: It discounted the racialized hierarchy of colonial governance and overlooked the embeddedness of corruption within its power structure. Yet the cultural thesis was a visible ideological support that justified the rule of difference. This racialized structure was momentarily upended in 1973, when Peter Godber, a senior British police officer, fled Hong Kong while under investigation for taking bribes. The scandal led to the creation of the Independent Commission Against Corruption (ICAC), an independent unit that supposedly stood outside of the racialized organization of the police. Through a reading of the Foreign and Commonwealth Office’s declassified correspondence, this chapter argues that, while the ICAC was an independent unit that tackled corruption, it remained embedded within the broader racialized structure that defined colonialism. Though misleading and sociologically naïve, the culturalist thesis of corruption can be and is often ideologized to justify colonial domination.

How much do we care when no one is looking? A patient with critical injury and vulnerable to bias—as an uninsured Person of Color experiencing homelessness and social isolation, with a history of mental illness and drug use— experiences barriers to receiving necessary treatment and standard care. When a patient is unable to ask for help, and has no family member or friend to help, what standard of care can they hope to receive? Can the quality of care provided to unrepresented patients represent a hospital’s culture of care? The writer wonders whether to “stay in my lane” and focus only on the ethical question prompting consultation, or if the principles of beneficence and nonmaleficence justify speaking up about substandard care. To mitigate the risk of acting as the “ethics police” by engaging in micromanagement of patient care, the writer describes efforts to expand ethics’ scope to change systemic and cultural attitudes by establishing preventative measures to identify and combat bias and preemptive judgments of futility.

The chapter discusses concepts in plasticity that go beyond memory. Several examples are discussed starting with the complexity of dendritic structure in biological neurons, nonlinear summation of signals from synapses by neurons and the vast range of plasticity that has been discovered in biological brain circuits. Learning and memory are commonly assigned to synapses; however, non-synaptic changes are important to consider for neuromorphic hardware and algorithms. The distinction between bioinspired and bio-realistic designs of hardware for AI is discussed. While synaptic connections can undergo both functional and structural plasticity, emulating such concepts in neuromorphic computing will require adaptive algorithms and semiconductors that can be dynamically reprogrammed. The necessity for close collaboration between neuroscience and neuromorphic engineering community is highlighted. Methods to implement lifelong learning in algorithms and hardware are discussed. Gaps in the field and directions for future research and development are discussed. The prospects for energy-efficient neuromorphic computing with disruptive brain-inspired algorithms and emerging semiconductors are discussed.