If You Can't Change What You Believe, You Don't Believe It

I develop and defend the view that subjects are necessarily psychologically able to revise their beliefs in response to relevant counter-evidence. Specifically, subjects can revise their beliefs in response to relevant counter-evidence, given their current psychological mechanisms and skills. If a subject lacks this ability, then the mental state in question is not a belief, though it may be some other kind of cognitive attitude, such as a supposition, an entertained thought, or a pretense. The result is a moderately revisionary view of belief: while most mental states we thought were beliefs are beliefs, some mental states which we thought were beliefs are not beliefs. The argument for this view draws on two key claims: First, subjects are rationally obligated to revise their beliefs in response to relevant counter-evidence. Second, if some subject is rationally obligated to revise one of her mental states, then that subject can revise that mental state, given her current psychological mechanisms and skills. Along the way to defending these claims, I argue that rational obligations can govern activities which reflect on one's rational character, whether or not those activities are under one's voluntary control. I also show how the relevant version of epistemic ‘ought’ implies ‘can’ survives an objection which plagues other variants of the principle.

Blaming friends

The aim of this paper is to shed light on the complex relations between friendship and blame. In the first part, I show that to be friends is to have certain evaluative, emotional and behavioral dispositions toward each other, and distinguish between two kinds of norms of friendship, namely friendship-based obligations and friendship-constituting rules. Friendship-based obligations tag actions of friends as obligatory, permissible or wrong, whereas friendship-constituting rules specify conditions that, if met, make it so that two persons stand in a particular type of relationship defined by various friendship-based obligations. I argue that whereas friendship-based obligations apply to actions under direct voluntary control, friendship-constituting rules apply to emotional and evaluative attitudes. The second part develops an account of friendship blame by comparing Scanlon’s account of blame with Wallace’s Strawsonian account of blame. I demonstrate that Scanlon’s account picks out responses that become appropriate when friends’ attitudes are not in agreement with friendship-constituting rules, whereas Wallace’s account picks out responses that become appropriate when friends violate friendship-based obligations. Arguing that the responses picked out by Scanlon’s account do not amount to blame, I show that, when combined, the views give an illuminating picture of possible reactions to friends who fall short of the standards of friendship.

Neuromotor Prosthetic to Treat Stroke-Related Paresis

Background Functional recovery of independent arm movement typically plateaus within six months following a stroke, leaving chronic motor deficits. This feasibility study tested whether a wearable, powered exoskeletal orthosis, driven by a percutaneous, implanted brain–computer interface (BCI), using the activity of neurons in the precentral gyrus in the affected cortical hemisphere, could restore voluntary upper extremity function in a person with chronic hemiparetic subsequent to a cerebral hemispheric stroke of subcortical gray and white matter and cortical gray matter.Methods One person with chronic hemiparetic stroke with upper-limb motor impairment used a powered elbow-wrist-hand orthosis that opened and closed the affected hand using cortical activity, recorded from four 64-channel microelectrode arrays implanted in the ipsilesional precentral gyrus, based on decoding of spiking patterns and high frequency field potentials generated by imagined hand movements using technology and decoding methods used for people with other causes of paralysis. The system was evaluated in a home setting daily for 12 weeks. Results Robust single unit activity, modulating with attempted or imagined movement, was present throughout the precentral gyrus areas. The participant was able to acquire voluntary control over a hand-orthosis BCI, with a score of 10 points on the Action Research Arm Test (out of 53) using the BCI, compared to 0 without any device, and 5 using myoelectric control. Orthosis-powered hand-opening was faster with BCI control compared to myoelectric control, on a standardized object-movement task. Conclusions The findings demonstrate the therapeutic potential of an implantable BCI system coupled to a brace to “electrically bypass” the stroke and promote neurally driven limb function. The participant’s ability to rapidly acquire voluntary control over otherwise paralyzed hand opening, more than 18 months after a subcortical stroke, lays the foundation for a fully implanted movement restoration system.

Forgiveness out of control

This article challenges the widespread assumption that forgiveness transpires under voluntary control. I explain that that assumption underlies the lively debate of the question of whether forgiveness is or ought to be free or conditional. I then critically examine two accounts of forgiveness, those of Avishai Margalit and Pamela Hieronymi, to which the assumption of control is pivotal, and argue that they are compromised by that assumption. The premise that forgiveness is voluntary leads Margalit to incorrectly dissociate it from forgetting, and Hieronymi to grant judgment a role it can't reliably fulfill on its own. Drawing on works of theory and literature, I suggest that elements outside our control, such as time, other persons, identification and circumstances can play significant parts in bringing forgiveness about. I thus try to pave the way for a more complete view of forgiveness.

Neuromotor Prosthetic to Treat Stroke-Related Paresis

BackgroundFunctional recovery of independent arm movement typically plateaus within six months following a stroke, leaving chronic motor deficits. This feasibility study tested whether a wearable, powered exoskeletal orthosis, driven by a percutaneous, implanted brain–computer interface (BCI), using the activity of neurons in the precentral gyrus in the affected cortical hemisphere, could restore voluntary upper extremity function in a person with chronic hemiparetic subsequent to a cerebral hemispheric stroke of subcortical gray and white matter and cortical gray matter.MethodsOne person with chronic hemiparetic stroke with upper-limb motor impairment used a powered elbow-wrist-hand orthosis that opened and closed the affected hand using cortical activity, recorded from four 64-channel microelectrode arrays implanted in the ipsilesional precentral gyrus, based on decoding of spiking patterns and high frequency field potentials generated by imagined hand movements using technology and decoding methods used for people with other causes of paralysis. The system was evaluated in a home setting daily for 12 weeks.ResultsRobust single unit activity, modulating with attempted or imagined movement, was present throughout the precentral gyrus areas. The participant was able to acquire voluntary control over a hand-orthosis BCI, with a score of 10 points on the Action Research Arm Test (out of 53) using the BCI, compared to 0 without any device, and 5 using myoelectric control. Orthosis-powered hand-opening was faster with BCI control compared to myoelectric control, on a standardized object-movement task.ConclusionsThe findings demonstrate the therapeutic potential of an implantable BCI system coupled to a brace to “electrically bypass” the stroke and promote neurally driven limb function. The participant’s ability to rapidly acquire voluntary control over otherwise paralyzed hand opening, more than 18 months after a subcortical stroke, lays the foundation for a fully implanted movement restoration system.

Neural correlates of goal-directed and non–goal-directed movements

What are the cortical neural correlates that distinguish goal-directed and non–goal-directed movements? We investigated this question in the monkey frontal eye field (FEF), which is implicated in voluntary control of saccades. Here, we compared FEF activity associated with goal-directed (G) saccades and non–goal-directed (nG) saccades made by the monkey. Although the FEF neurons discharged before these nG saccades, there were three major differences in the neural activity: First, the variability in spike rate across trials decreased only for G saccades. Second, the local field potential beta-band power decreased during G saccades but did not change during nG saccades. Third, the time from saccade direction selection to the saccade onset was significantly longer for G saccades compared with nG saccades. Overall, our results reveal unexpected differences in neural signatures for G versus nG saccades in a brain area that has been implicated selectively in voluntary control. Taken together, these data add critical constraints to the way we think about saccade generation in the brain.

Varietals of Control’s Exercise

This chapter first offers a clear explication of control’s exercise. It then briefly discusses control over omissions, before turning to a discussion of different varietals of control. So, in particular, voluntary control is central to several debates in philosophy. No acceptable account exists. This chapter extends the account of control to offer an explication of voluntary control. It then discusses this account in light of Alfred Mele’s recent work on direct control. Finally, this chapter offers an explication of a notion that is important to many who think and write about free will. This is the notion of what is “up to” an agent. The explication turns on the notion of voluntary control.

Heart rate variability predicts decline in sensorimotor rhythm control

Voluntary control of sensorimotor rhythms (SMR, 8-12 Hz) can be used for brain-computer interface (BCI)-based operation of an assistive hand exoskeleton, e.g., in finger paralysis after stroke. To gain SMR control, stroke survivors are usually instructed to engage in motor imagery (MI) or to attempt moving the paralyzed fingers resulting in task- or event-related desynchronization (ERD) of SMR (SMR-ERD). However, as these tasks are cognitively demanding, especially for stroke survivors suffering from cognitive impairments, BCI control performance can deteriorate considerably over time. It would thus be important to identify biomarkers that predict decline in BCI control performance within an ongoing session in order to optimize the man-machine interaction scheme. Here we determine the link between BCI control performance over time and heart rate variability (HRV). Specifically, we investigated whether HRV can be used as a biomarker to predict decline during voluntary control of SMR-ERD across 17 healthy participants using Granger causality. SMR-ERD was visually displayed on a screen. Participants were instructed to engage in MI-based SMR-ERD control over two consecutive runs of 8.5 minutes each. During the second run, task difficulty was gradually increased. While control performance (p = .18) and HRV (p = .16) remained unchanged across participants during the first run, during the second run, both measures declined over time at high correlation (performance: -0.61%/10s, p = 0; HRV: -0.007ms/10s, p < .001). We found that HRV Granger-caused BCI control performance (p < .001) exhibited predictive characteristics of HRV on an individual participant level. These results suggest that HRV can predict decline in BCI performance paving the way for adaptive BCI control paradigms, e.g., to individualize and optimize assistive BCI systems in stroke.