As conversational AI systems increasingly generate perceptions of affective capacities, particularly the sense of "feeling heard," questions about AI moral status demand serious attention. We survey prominent approaches to grounding AI moral status, including ethical behaviorism, consciousness-based accounts, and agency-based frameworks. While each offers important insights, they face significant challenges: ethical behaviorism may be too permissive, while debates about consciousness and agency remain theoretically intractable. We argue for an alternative approach that asks direct normative questions about which rights, rules, reasons, and wrongs should protect AI systems, indexed to their specific capacities and vulnerabilities. This framework permits fine-grained, proportional moral consideration without requiring resolution of contested questions about machine consciousness or sentience and thus offers a pragmatic middle ground as AIs become increasingly integrated into social life.

Artificial Intelligence systems increasingly match or surpass human performance across a wide range of cognitive tasks. Recent advances in large language models have yielded conversational abilities often indistinguishable from human dialogue. In this chapter, we argue that whether artificial agents should be considered empathetic depends on how empathy itself is defined and how it relates to subjective experience. We show that different philosophical schools produce distinct, and often incompatible, answers to the question of whether such a system should be considered genuinely empathetic. On one hand, empathy is a functional trait that can be fully characterized by observable behavior; on the other hand, empathy is inseparable from subjective experience and conscious feeling. Drawing on the philosophical notion of the “zombie” we introduce a thought experiment involving a hypothetical chatbot that exhibits perfect empathic behavior across all conceivable benchmarks while lacking any subjective experience. This framing allows us to disentangle functional performance from conceptual attribution and to examine whether empathy judgments depend on observable behavior alone or on assumptions about inner experience. As artificial agents become increasingly integrated into emotionally contexts, understanding how and why humans attribute empathy to machines becomes a pressing scientific, ethical, and societal question.

In Chapter 3, human consciousness is discussed, including the need for legal recognition of the capacity of humans to communicate, emote, and perceive. The impact of technology on consciousness and human bonding is noted, such as generative AI that may reduce human literacy and the capacity to communicate.

This chapter examines one of the most distinctive features of Bishop’s work: her frequent use of correctio. When using this rhetorical scheme, writers will correct, question, rephrase or offer alternatives to their words and phrases in the body of the text itself (rather than, say, in the process of redrafting). The first part of this chapter gives an account of: correctio’s history; its characterisation in early-modern and twentieth-century rhetorical manuals; its risks and rewards; and its indiscriminate approval by Bishop’s critics. The chapter then analyses its frequent use by three major influences on Bishop: George Herbert, William Wordsworth and Marianne Moore. The main part of this chapter then examines Bishop’s use of correctio in relation to visual art, nature writing, memory, the representation of consciousness, scepticism, and elegy.

The Cambridge Edition of the Complete Fiction of Henry James provides, for the first time, a scholarly edition of a major writer whose work continues to be read, quoted, adapted and studied. This is the first full critical edition of James’s first major novel after his unhappy venture into commercial theatre. The Spoils of Poynton marks a shift towards the representation of complex psychological states characteristic of his later fiction, telling a dramatic story about the fate of the beautiful artefacts lovingly collected by the widow Adela Gereth and her late husband. Who do they, should they, belong to? The novel describes with extraordinary delicacy an intense family feud arising from the competing claims of those close to Mrs Gereth, and the ordeal endured by the young and intelligent Fleda Vetch as she tries to resolve it. This edition features a substantial introduction, explanatory notes, textual variants, bibliography and appendices.

The Conclusion draws together the book’s various thematic strands: the perceived primacy of the ‘reason’, the right of its possessors to rule, the exculpatory effect of a frenzy diagnosis, and the high cost paid by those who received one. It returns to the larger question posed at the outset: whether the organ of the brain and the faculties of the mind were seen as constitutive of ‘personhood’ in pre-1700s England. The responses to frenzy which we have encountered in this book suggests that they were. The operations of the mental faculties known as ‘reason’, ‘will’, and ‘memory’ (or simply the ‘wits’) were located in (and often colloquially identified with) the brain. The functionality and continuity of these faculties was integral to the maintenance of legal, social, and spiritual personhood. Yet what troubled frenzy’s witnesses the most, the Conclusion argues, was the way it disrupted its sufferers’ predictable ways of being in the world – the values they had once held dear, the ways they had once looked and spoken. It was a disease which had the power to change friends, neighbours, and loved ones beyond recognition.

Over the last fifty years, research into the development of second or other grammatical systems has been largely concerned with the stages through which language might evolve in the individual learner or in groups of learners. Explaining exactly how learner grammars undergo transition from one stage to the next has a much shorter history. However, there has in recent years been a rise in interest in the mechanisms that drive grammatical transition, particularly in online processing. Different theoretical approaches to the transition problem will be reviewed and exemplified here, including those in the few years that have elapsed since the first edition. Issues covered will also include (a) alternative definitions of grammar, (b) the acquisition of additional grammars after the second, (c) various other factors in the learner’s mind that help to shape the emergence of new grammatical structures. The chapter will close with an overview of the dominant questions still facing researchers embarking on investigations of grammatical transition.

This article presents a comprehensive neuroethical framework that seeks to deepen our understanding of human consciousness and free will, particularly in the context of psychiatric and neurological disorders. By integrating insights from neuroscience with philosophical reflections on freedom and personal identity, the paper examines how various states of consciousness from interoception to self-awareness influence an individual’s autonomy and decision-making capabilities. The discussion utilizes a multidimensional, bottom-up approach to explore how neurobiological processes underlie different levels of conscious experience and their corresponding types of freedom, such as “intero-freedom” related to internal bodily states and “self-freedom” associated with higher self-awareness. This stratification reveals the profound impact of neurological conditions on patients’ freedom of choice and the ethical implications therein. The insights gained from this analysis aim to inform more tailored and effective treatments for psychiatric patients, emphasizing the restoration of autonomy and respect for their inherent dignity. This work underscores the essential unity of the human person through the lens of neuroethics, advocating for healthcare policies that recognize and enhance the personal freedom of those with mental health challenges.

This chapter delves into the ethical dimensions of treating individuals with schizophrenia, emphasizing the need for a new perspective that integrates neuroethics into interventions. The author proposes a bio-systemic model to understand how schizophrenia impacts different levels of consciousness and freedom, highlighting the necessity for tailored interventions that restore autonomy rather than coercive measures. The chapter calls for a shift in policy towards early and assertive treatment, focusing on rebuilding autonomy and dignity for individuals with schizophrenia. Ultimately, the chapter serves as a call to action for a neuroethically informed approach to care that prioritizes the restoration of freedom and dignity for those affected by schizophrenia.

This chapter explores the ethical, legal, and clinical dimensions of treatment without consent in psychiatry, particularly in the context of neuroethics. Drawing on principles from the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR), the authors argue for a goal-oriented, process-based approach to ethical decision-making that prioritizes restoring mental capacity, dignity, and autonomy. The chapter critiques the limitations of functional mental capacity assessments and advocates for a layered understanding of consciousness grounded in neuroscience. It emphasizes the ethical duty to intervene when necessary, especially in cases involving neurodegenerative psychotic disorders (NDPPD), and highlights the importance of early, potentially disease-modifying interventions. The authors call for inclusive research practices, structured clinical decision-making, and a compassionate, scientifically grounded framework that transcends simplistic dichotomies of paternalism and liberty.

Chapter 1 establishes the foundational concepts of neuroimaging by exploring the complex relationship between brain structure and mental function. It traces the historical progression from ancient surgical approaches to modern noninvasive techniques, contextualizing how technological innovations have transformed our understanding of neural processes. The chapter examines the multiscale nature of brain investigation, from single-neuron recordings to population-level measurements, and evaluates the critical tradeoffs between spatial and temporal resolution across imaging modalities. Key neurophysiological principles underlying these technologies are introduced, including neuronal action potentials, hemodynamic responses, and the chemical processes that support neural activity. The text challenges common neuromyths while addressing fundamental questions about functional organization, from modular specialization to distributed network processing. By comparing the relative strengths and limitations of major neuroimaging tools (fMRI, EEG, MEG, PET, and TMS), the chapter provides an analytical framework for understanding how these methodologies collectively advance our ability to correlate brain activity with cognitive and behavioral processes, setting the stage for more detailed exploration in subsequent chapters.