Riassunto: L’indagine sui fondamenti neurali del giudizio morale è uno dei principali ed attuali temi di ricerca della Neuroscienza, il quale si intreccia inevitabilmente con tematiche relative all’Intelligenza Artificiale, al futuro dei trasporti e alla Filosofia della Mente. Gli esseri umani sono naturalmente dotati di un innato senso della morale, il quale è governato dalle intuizioni, ma sono anche provvisti di alcuni principi razionali. Il giudizio e il comportamento morale sono il risultato dell’integrazione fra le emozioni e i processi razionali, (...) proprio come i processi cognitivi erano una combinazione di istinto e pura computazione. Nella parte finale di questo lavoro, ho preso in considerazione i problemi di natura morale derivanti dall’introduzione dei veicoli a guida autonoma, i quali si presentano come un’applicazione diretta del problema del carrello : come dovrebbe essere programmato un veicolo per comportarsi nel caso di un incidente inevitabile, nel quale deve scegliere tra due mali? Parole chiave: Processi decisionali; Neuroscienza; Giudizi morali; Prospettiva comparata; Problema del carrello Brains and Trolleys: Formalizing Morality in Automated Driving Cars: Inquiry into the neural bases of moral judgment is one of the current frontiers in neuroscientific research and is intertwined with issues in Artificial Intelligence, the future of transport, and Philosophy of Mind. Humans are naturally endowed with an innate moral sense, which is governed by intuition and informed by rational rules. Moral judgment and behavior are the byproduct of the integration of emotional and rational processes, just as cognitive processes are the result of a combination of emotional instinct and computational rationality. In the latter part of this work, I also consider the ethical issues raised by the introduction of Automated Driving Systems by reexamining the Trolley Problem : how should an autonomous vehicle be programmed to behave in the event of an unavoidable accident, in which it has to choose between two harmful consequences harms? Keywords: Decision-making; Neuroscience; Moral Judgments; Comparative Perspective; Trolley Problem. (shrink)

BackgroundFace-to-face visual contact is a key component of the early parent-child interaction, therefore a visual impairment condition of the parent or the child represents a risk factor for dyadic patterns' development.AimsThe study presents a critical single case of a blind father and a 18-month-old visually impaired child. The study aims to explore changes in the relational functioning of this dyad during an early family-centered intervention.Methods and proceduresTen parent-child sessions were videotaped and micro-analytically coded. Data were analyzed through a State Space (...) Grid crossing child's social cues and types of father verbalizations.Outcomes and resultsFindings showed a stable increase in the amount of child social cues over time. Moreover, the dyad exhibited progressive changes in dyadic regulation, stability, and organization. The return time to the “active interaction” region of interest decreased progressively. A reduction was observed also for the time spent by the dyad in the region “no vocal contact.”Conclusions and implicationsThis critical single case highlighted the benefits of parental engagement in early interventions for the dyadic regulation in parent-child interaction. (shrink)

Healthcare policy and academic literature have promoted improving the transitional care of young people leaving child and adolescent mental health services. Despite the availability of guidance on good practice, there seems to be no readily accessible, coherent ethical analysis of transition. The ethical principles of non-maleficence, beneficence, justice and respect for autonomy can be used to justify the need for further enquiry into the ethical pros and cons of this drive to improve transitional care. The objective of this systematic review (...) was therefore to systematically search for existing ethical literature on child- to adult-orientated health service transitions and to critically appraise and collate the literature, whether empirical or normative. A wide range of bioethics, biomedical and legal databases, grey literature and bioethics journals were searched. Ancestral and forward searches of identified papers were undertaken. Key words related to transition, adolescence and young adulthood, ethics, law and health. The timeframe was January 2000 to at least March 2016. Titles, abstracts and, where necessary, full articles were screened and duplicates removed. All included articles were critically appraised and a narrative synthesis produced. Eighty two thousand four hundred eighty one titles were screened, from which 96 abstracts were checked. Forty seven full documents were scrutinised, leading to inclusion of two papers. Ancestral and forward searches yielded four further articles. In total, one commentary, three qualitative empirical studies and two clinical ethics papers were found. All focused on young people with complex care needs and disabilities. The three empirical papers had methodological flaws. The two ethical papers were written from a clinical ethics context rather than using a bioethical format. No literature identified specifically addressed the ethical challenges of balancing the delivery of transitional care to those who need it and the risk of pathologizing transient and self-limited distress and dysfunction, which may be normal during adolescence. There is very little research on ethical aspects of transitional care. Most existing studies come from services for young people with complex care needs and disabilities. There is much scope for improvement in the amount and quality of empirical research and ethical analysis in this area. (shrink)

Antonio Signorini’s contribution to the constitutive theory of non-linear elasticity is reconstructed and analyzed. Some uninformed opinions suggesting he had a minor role, lacking of significant results, are discussed and refuted. It is shown that Signorini should be rightly credited for being among the first scholars aware of the central problem of non-linear elasticity: the determination of the general form of the elastic potential.