Prosthesis and the human hand have been terms used by various philosophers in order to describe the interaction that binds together the human being and the technical artefact – Martin Heide...

Therapeutic strategies capable of inducing and enhancing prosthesis embodiment are a key point for better adaptation to and acceptance of prosthetic limbs. In this study, we developed a training protocol using an EMG-based human-machine interface that was applied in the preprosthetic rehabilitation phase of people with amputation. This is a case series with the objective of evaluating the induction and enhancement of the embodiment of a virtual prosthesis. Six men and a woman with unilateral transfemoral traumatic amputation without (...) previous use of prostheses participated in the study. Participants performed a training protocol with the EMG-based HMI, composed of six sessions held twice a week, each lasting 30 mins. This system consisted of myoelectric control of the movements of a virtual prosthesis immersed in a 3D virtual environment. Additionally, vibrotactile stimuli were provided on the participant’s back corresponding to the movements performed. Embodiment was investigated from the following set of measurements: skin conductance response, crossmodal congruency effect, ability to control the virtual prosthesis, and reports before and after the training. The increase in the skin conductance response in conditions where the virtual prosthesis was threatened, recalibration of the peripersonal space perception identified by the crossmodal congruency effect, ability to control the virtual prosthesis, and participant reports consistently showed the induction and enhancement of virtual prosthesis embodiment. Therefore, this protocol using EMG-based HMI was shown to be a viable option to achieve and enhance the embodiment of a virtual prosthetic limb. (shrink)

Recently, bioethicists and the UNCRPD have advocated for supported medical decision-making on behalf of patients with intellectual disabilities. But what does supported decision-making really entail? One compelling framework is Anita Silvers and Leslie Francis’ mental prosthesis account, which envisions supported decision-making as a process in which trustees act as mere appendages for the patient’s will; the trustee provides the cognitive tools the patient requires to realize her conception of her own good. We argue that supported decision-making would be better (...) understood as a collaborative process, giving patients with intellectual disabilities the opportunity to make decisions in a respectful relationship with trusted others. We offer an alternative account of supported decision-making where the primary constraint is to protect the patient from domination by the trustee. This is advantageous in its preservation of the prospects for genuine collaboration, for the mental prosthesis approach ultimately reinforces a problematic ideal of isolated patient self-determination. (shrink)

McCarthy and Howard (2023) develop an ethical case for supported decision-making in medical contexts, mainly building upon the republican ideal of non-domination. Their theoretical inquiry is of mu...

With the development of visual prostheses research from the engineering phase to clinical trials, volunteer recruitment for the early visual prosthesis trials needs to be carefully considered. In this article, we mainly discuss several issues related to volunteer recruitment that had posed serious challenges to the visual prosthesis trials, such as low rates of participants, high expectations and underlying motivations to participate in the visual prosthesis trials as well as the importance of informed consent. When recruiting volunteers (...) for visual prosthesis implants, it is critical that the visual prosthesis researchers should not only take into account the patient’s expectations and motivations, but also make the patients fully aware of the possible benefits and risks involved with their participation, and help patients establish realistic expectations for the early phase of visual prosthesis implantation. Based on these considerations to the challenges, eligible volunteers may be recruited in the preliminary stages of visual prosthesis trials. (shrink)

In this essay, I draw on Henri Bergson and Maurice Merleau-Ponty to interrogate what philosophy is and how it can continue to think. Though my answer is not reducible to the views of either philosopher, what joins them is an attempt to elaborate philosophy as a different way of seeing. In this light, I propose a view of philosophy as prosthesis—as a means and a way for seeing differently. Rather than a simple tool, philosophy as prosthesis is a (...) transformative supplement, one that our bodily perception calls for and wherein that perception is recast. Rather than a fixed or assured view, this prosthesis holds open the interval in which thinking can take place. Philosophy, I argue, must wait. It sees and thinks hesitatingly, for the temporality it inscribes is not a foreseeable development but the unfolding of life as tendency, as that which creates its own possibility as it comes into existence. (shrink)

This article situates the (human) body as a signifier for society at large, arguing that developments in many societies of structural and systematic violence that targets minorities such as refugees and first nation peoples, points to a failure of democratic values. Using two examples, we elaborate technology and digital devices as prosthesis of the body, that are also acting as proxy for state violence. The first example is from the carceral archipelago of Manus Island as a site of remote (...) detention of refugees carried out by the Australian government. Refugees held on Manus Island describe the treatment they experience as torture. The second example is drawn from the Australian mainland, telling the stories of First Nations children subjected to abuse and violence in juvenile detention centers. A judicial inquiry (Royal Commission) found that a systematic approach aimed at punishing children constituted torture. The concepts developed in this article are those of bordering and racialization, while the intertwining of human and “more than human life” helps to understand and challenge the necropolitical power evident in (liberal) capitalism. (shrink)

Psychogenic depersonalization is an altered mental state consisting of an unusual discontinuity in the phenomenological perception of personal being; the individual is engulfed by feelings of unreality, self-detachment and unfamiliarity in which the self is felt to lack subjective perspective and the intuitive feeling of personal embodiment. A new sub-feature of depersonalization is delineated. 'Prosthesis' consists in the thought that the thinker is a 'mere thing'. It is a subjectively realized sense of the specific and objective 'thingness' of the (...) particular object thought about. I show that prosthesis is an important cognitive feature of depersonalization, and may be psychologically connected with the tendency of depersonalized individuals to report 'philosophical' types of thinking. Indeed, several philosophical issues concerning the identity of the self appear to have been enhanced by prosthesis experiences. Thus, far more efficient than William James's experimental attempts to uncover philosophical truths under the influence of nitrous oxide intoxication, prosthesis may be a safe and recommended experience for philosophers. The history of depersonalization theories is presented from Krishaber to Freud, and the main approaches to prosthesis criticized. Finally, a fresh approach to psychogenic depersonalization is outlined on the basis of certain cognitive similarities with visual agnosia. This paper may be understood as continuing the Jamesian tradition 'experimental abnormal psychology', that is, of examining extraordinary mental states with an eye to their philosophical implications. (shrink)

Neuropsychiatric disorders introduce distinct challenges to clinical decision-making. Affected patients often experience impairments or absences in rationality, lucidity and cogni-emotional capacities, rendering it difficult for them to engage in the decision-making process. In turn, dynamics of the patient-physician relationship become strained, including when physicians employ bioethical principlism or moral case deliberation to arrive at ethically justified courses of action–both of which require sufficient communication and rationality that may be impaired or altogether absent in the presence of psychopathology. The complexity of (...) neuropsychiatric conditions therefore compels interrogation towards how ethics consultations are currently constructed and conducted when full communication or rational decision-making cannot be assumed. Delany et al, for example, present a robust, methodical framework for ethical deliberation.1 Such methodologies for facilitating ethical decision-making, although valuable in predominant contexts, assume full participant engagement and decision-making capacities (eg, independent moral agency). Neuropsychiatric disorders complicate this assumption, making it difficult for patients with limited decision-making capacity to engage meaningfully in proposed ethics consultations.2 This paper will explore how neuropsychiatric disorders complicate the assumptions of full participant engagement underlying ethical frameworks. It will argue that, by adapting ethics consultations to function as a ‘mental prosthesis’, clinicians can better navigate the ethical challenges posed by neuropsychiatric disorders, helping to ensure that patient autonomy is upheld even in cases of impaired cognitive …. (shrink)

This chapter focuses on Gilles Deleuze's theatres of movement and repetition. It proposes a ‘Digital Deleuze’ who provides a creative approach to mediality from which to consider the revolutionary variation of corporeality through digitality in the new-media performances of several digital artists including Shelley Eshkar, Paul Kaiser, and Jonah Bokaer. It suggest that the underappreciated key to Deleuze's theatre of movement is how its shift away from the sameness of identity opens the path to the revolutionary imperatives of sociability and (...) community that take place within the framework of interrogation. (shrink)

The aim of the paper is to show the way in which human cognitive system uses external prostheses. Currently developed technologies provide human beings with tools that change their way of functioning in the environment, their understanding and the perspective from which they perceive the world. Modifying systems of thoughts, reasoning and modes of operation non­‑biological prostheses extend human cognitive system. A human being uses non­‑biological interfaces for processing information from the external world.

This article critically examines the ways in which the trope of prosthesis has been used in recent theory to understand human-technology relationships. Analyzing the trope from a number of angles, including disability, factory labor practices, mass production, and marketing, the author scrutinizes ways in which technologies are simultaneously wounding and enabling in ways for which the prosthesis trope cannot account.

Wearing a myoelectric prosthesis is a basic way for limb amputees to restore their lost limb functions in the activities of daily living. However, it is estimated that around 40% of amputees refuse the prosthesis. One of the primary reasons would be that the current prostheses lack appropriate sensory feedback. Currently, the amputees only depend on their visual feedback when using their arm prostheses. It would be difficult for them to accurately control the wrist position, which is vital (...) for flexible manipulation in ADLs. This manuscript designed a myoelectric arm prosthesis with wrist position feedback. To study the effect level of position feedback on prosthetic control, two tests were performed. The vibrotactile perception range test aims to analyze the perception sensitivity of the vibration in humans and obtain the optimal perception range utilized in the sensory feedback test. The sensory feedback test analyzes the effectiveness of the position feedback by comparing three feedback methods of Vis-FB, WP-FB, and a combination of Vis-FB and WP-FB. These tests were conducted by asking six able-bodied subjects to perform 20 movement combinations of five target positions. The WP-FB was transiently activated with five vibrating motors embedded in an armband to stimulate the arm stump when the prosthetic wrist rotates to the target positions. Our experimental results showed that when WP-FB was added to the prosthetic control, the absolute angular error of the prosthetic wrist declined from 4.50° to 1.08° while the success rate 3 increased from 0.34 to 0.84, respectively. This study demonstrates the importance of WP-FB to the effective control of the arm prosthesis. (shrink)

" This book intertwines theoretical reflection with historical and cultural particularity to enunciate, then analyze this conundrum in terms of the distinguished author's own relationship to the French language.

Researchers in America are developing a hippocampal cognitive prosthesis. The technology aims to improve or even restore memory for people with Alzheimer’s disease through implanting electrodes into the brain. In this paper we discuss the ways that this technology could affect memory, with concomitant potential for impact on personal identity and related attributes like autonomy, agency, and authenticity. To do this we describe how developers of technologies like this adopt functionalist positions on minds and brains, whereby functionally equivalent technology (...) can undertake functions previously executed by the brain without negative impact on mental states. Our position is that such accounts are too uncertain to adopt uncritically, and after examining some critiques of functionalism, we argue that material differences in function could affect the phenomenological experience of mental state generation, including memory. We conclude with proposals for researchers to consider so as to take into account some of these limitations. (shrink)

Visual cortical prostheses (VCPs) have the potential to provide artificial vision for visually impaired persons. However, the nature and utility of this form of vision is not yet fully understood. Participants in the early feasibility trial for the Orion VCP were interviewed to gain insight into their experiences using artificial vision, their motivations for participation, as well as their expectations and assessments of risks and benefits. Analyzed using principles of grounded theory and an interpretive description approach, these interviews yielded six (...) themes, including: the irreducibility of benefit to device functionality, mixed expectations for short-term device functionality and long-term technological advancement of visual prostheses, and a broad range of risks, concerns, and fears related to trial participation. We argue that these narratives motivate a nuanced set of ethical considerations related to the complex relationship between functionality and benefit, the intersection of user experience with disability justice, and the import of expectations and indirect risks on consent. (shrink)

“I have but one language—yet that language is not mine.” This book intertwines theoretical reflection with historical and cultural particularity to enunciate, then analyze this conundrum in terms of the author’s own relationship to the French language. The book operates on three levels. At the first level, a theoretical inquiry investigates the relation between individuals and their “own” language. It also explores the structural limits, desires, and interdictions inherent in such “possession,” as well as the corporeal aspect of language and (...) the question of the “countability” of languages. At the second level, the author testifies to aspects of his acculturation as an Algerian Jew with respect to language acquisition, schooling, citizenship, and the dynamics of cultural-political exclusion and inclusion. At the third level, the book is comparative, drawing on statements from a wide range of figures, from the Moroccan Abdelkebir Khatibi to Franz Rosenzweig, Gershom Scholem, Hannah Arendt, and Emmanuel Levinas. Since one of the book’s central themes is the question of linguistic and cultural identity, its argument touches on several issues relevant to the current debates on multiculturalism. These issues include the implementation of colonialism in the schools, the tacit or explicit censorship that excludes other languages from serious critical consideration, the investment in an ideal of linguistic purity, and the problematics of translation. The author also reveals the complex interplay of psychological factors that invests the subject of identity with the desire to recover a “lost” language of origin and with the ambition to master the language of the colonizer. (shrink)

This paper investigates the role of a pre-existing body-model that is an enabling constraint for the incorporation of objects into the body. This body-model is also a basis for the distinction between body extensions (e.g., in the case of tool-use) and incorporation (e.g., in the case of successful prosthesis use). It is argued that, in the case of incorporation, changes in the sense of body-ownership involve a reorganization of the body-model, whereas extension of the body with tools does not (...) involve changes in the sense of body-ownership. (shrink)

As the demand for prosthetic limbs with reliable and multi-functional control increases, recent advances in myoelectric pattern recognition and implanted sensors have proven considerably advantageous. Additionally, sensory feedback from the prosthesis can be achieved via stimulation of the residual nerves, enabling closed-loop control over the prosthesis. However, this stimulation can cause interfering artifacts in the electromyographic (EMG) signals which deteriorate the reliability and function of the prosthesis. Here, we implement two real-time stimulation artifact removal algorithms, Template Subtraction (...) (TS) and ε-Normalized Least Mean Squares (ε-NLMS), and investigate their performance in offline and real-time myoelectric pattern recognition in two transhumeral amputees implanted with nerve cuff and EMG electrodes. We show that both algorithms are capable of significantly improving signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) and offline pattern recognition accuracy of artifact-corrupted EMG signals. Furthermore, both algorithms improved real-time decoding of motor intention during active neurostimulation. Although these outcomes are dependent on the user-specific sensor locations and neurostimulation settings, they nonetheless represent progress toward bi-directional neuromusculoskeletal prostheses capable of multifunction control and simultaneous sensory feedback. (shrink)

This article analyses the everyday experiences of lower limb amputees with prosthesis during the first eighteen months after rehabilitation. It is based on an ethnographic and longitudinal research carried out with fourteen patients whose lower limb(s) has or have been recently amputated. Grounded in semi-directive interviews conducted one year and a half after the end of their rehabilitation ended, this study specifically focuses on the cross-analysis of the amputees’ discourses and feedback regarding their daily experiences of, and accommodation to, (...) a prosthesis. In this article, daily life with a prosthesis is analysed from two different points of view. The first one concentrates on the everyday uses of the prosthesis and its repercussions in relation to experiences of disability. The second one deals with the various strategies that amputees use in social interactions, particularly the strategies they use to manage the visibility and/or invisibility of the prosthesis to deal with the pressure of normalcy. (shrink)

It is within the context of a person’s lifestory, we argue, that the idea of wearing aprosthesis assumes place and meaning. Todevelop this argument, a brightly colored hookprosthesis for children is taken as a startingpoint for reflection. The prosthesis can beseen as fitting this person perfectly, when thebodily difference is understood as positivelyadding to this person’s identity. The choicefor the prosthesis is normative in a moralsense, in that it is grounded in a person’sfundamental convictions with respect to hisbeing (...) and living. This understanding of ‘howto live’ can best be grasped – as is suggested– in contrastive terms of ‘sameness’ and‘otherness’. Striving for conformity andsimilarity would do no justice to theexperiences and ideals of unique persons, andwould come at great cost. Moreover, society isnot benefited by persons who merely conform,who copy and imitate others, but by those whowillfully live up to their own unique standards. (shrink)

The mental prosthesis model (Silvers and Francis 2009) suggests that interpersonal “prosthetic” thinking could support decision making for people with limited cognitive capacities, and positions th...

:Neuroprosthetic speech devices are an emerging technology that can offer the possibility of communication to those who are unable to speak. Patients with ‘locked in syndrome,’ aphasia, or other such pathologies can use covert speech—vividly imagining saying something without actual vocalization—to trigger neural controlled systems capable of synthesizing the speech they would have spoken, but for their impairment.We provide an analysis of the mechanisms and outputs involved in speech mediated by neuroprosthetic devices. This analysis provides a framework for accounting for (...) the ethical significance of accuracy, control, and pragmatic dimensions of prosthesis-mediated speech. We first examine what it means for the output of the device to be accurate, drawing a distinction between technical accuracy on the one hand and semantic accuracy on the other. These are conceptual notions of accuracy.Both technical and semantic accuracy of the device will be necessary for the user to have sufficient control over the device. Sufficient control is an ethical consideration: we place high value on being able to express ourselves when we want and how we want. Sufficient control of a neural speech prosthesis requires that a speaker can reliably use their speech apparatus as they want to, and can expect their speech to authentically represent them. We draw a distinction between two relevant features which bear on the question of whether the user has sufficient control: voluntariness of the speech and the authenticity of the speech. These can come apart: the user might involuntarily produce an authentic output or might voluntarily produce an inauthentic output. Finally, we consider the role of the interlocutor in interpreting the content and purpose of the communication.These three ethical dimensions raise philosophical questions about the nature of speech, the level of control required for communicative accuracy, and the nature of ‘accuracy’ with respect to both natural and prosthesis-mediated speech. (shrink)

What are the relative epistemic merits of building prosthetic models versus building nonprosthetic models and simulations? I argue that prosthetic models provide a sufficient test of affordance validity, that is, of whether the target system affords mechanisms that can be commandeered by a prosthesis. In other respects, prosthetic models are epistemically on par with nonprosthetic models. I focus on prosthetics in neuroscience, but the results are general. The goal of understanding how brain mechanisms work under ecologically and physiologically relevant (...) conditions is narrow compared to the search for maker's knowledge about how the brain can be made to work for us. (shrink)

Although there have been many efforts in the last decade to reconcile the humanities and the information sciences, they have not radically changed the research standards prevailing in most humanistic departments. Against all appearances, the abrupt opening to quantitative methods in the digital humanities still has the character of a minority avant-garde movement. The article looks at the scientometric tradition, largely forgotten by the humanities, which may prove to be another interface bringing the two academic cultures back together. An account (...) of scientometric networks highlights the advantages and disadvantages of this orientation. The broader implications regarding the use of visual networks in the humanities are framed by the category of prostheticity, which aims to encapsulate their ambivalent status as both substitutes and cognitive enhancers. (shrink)

Writing is frequently analyzed as a mode of communication. But writing can be done for personal reasons, to remind oneself of things to do, of thoughts, of events. The cellphone has revealed this shift, commencing as a communication device and ending up as a memory prosthesis that records what we see, hear, read and think. The recordings are not necessarily for communicating a message to others, but sometimes just for oneself. Today, when machine learning algorithms read, write and transmit, (...) a new mode of communication arises that is not centered on the human. In this chapter the various phases of modern writing are modeled according to postphenomenology. As a branch of philosophy of technology, postphenomenology offers a set of analytical tools to study technologies and our relations to them. One of its central frameworks is the scheme of “I–technology–world.” The author proposes some modifications so that the scheme can systematically model the changes in the humans users, in machine learning algorithms imbued with non-human cognition and in the environments of readers, interlocutors and contexts. (shrink)

In this article I discuss the prosthetic phenomenon during the First World War and Weimar Germany. As opposed to contemporary trends, with their inflationary use of the ‘prosthesis’, sometimes even hypothesizing ‘prostheticization’ as a paradigm, I seek to return the debate about the prosthesis to its historical concreteness. I describe the phenomenology of the prosthesis in three senses: first, in the statistical sense, in the form of a dramatic growth in the number of prostheses; second, in the (...) visual sense, in the form of a dramatic growth in the visibility of the prosthesis. Basing myself on the Heideggerian perception of the ‘phenomenon’, I seek to reveal an additional, third, aspect of the phenomenology of the prosthesis. It is my contention, against the background of the major catastrophe of the First World War and the frequent crises that afflicted Weimar Germany, but also in the light of additional contexts — technological, economic, cultural — that the prosthesis was increasingly perceived as a phenomenon, i.e. as something which appeared in a wide range of ways — as prosthesis, as tool (hammer, writing instrument), as an organic limb (hand, leg), and even as a paradigm (man as ‘prosthetic God’, man as ‘Dasein’). (shrink)

Connecting human minds to various technological devices and applications through brain-computer interfaces (BCIs) affords intriguingly novel ways for humans to engage and interact with the world. Not only do BCIs play an important role in restorative medicine, they are also increasingly used outside of medical or therapeutic contexts (e.g., gaming or mental state monitoring). A striking peculiarity of BCI technology is that the kind of actions it enables seems to differ from paradigmatic human actions, because, effects in the world are (...) brought about by devices such as robotic arms, prosthesis, or other machines, and their execution runs through a computer directed by brain signals. In contrast to usual forms of action, the sequence does not need to involve bodily or muscle movements at all. A motionless body, the epitome of inaction, might be acting. How do theories of action relate to such BCI-mediated forms of changing the world? We wish to explore this question through the lenses of three perspectives on agency: subjective experience of agency, philosophical action theory, and legal concepts of action. Our analysis pursues three aims: First, we shall discuss whether and which BCI-mediated events qualify as actions, according to the main concepts of action in philosophy and law. Secondly, en passant, we wish to highlight the ten most interesting novelties or peculiarities of BCI-mediated movements. Thirdly, we seek to explore whether these novel forms of movement may have consequences for concepts of agency. More concretely, we think that convincing assessments of BCI-movements require more fine-grained accounts of agency and a distinction between various forms of control during movements. In addition, we show that the disembodied nature of BCI-mediated events causes troubles for the standard legal account of actions as bodily movements. In an exchange with views from philosophy, we wish to propose that the law ought to reform its concept of action to include some, but not all, BCI-mediated events and sketch some of the wider implications this may have, especially for the venerable legal idea of the right to freedom of thought. In this regard, BCIs are an example of the way in which technological access to yet largely sealed-off domains of the person may necessitate adjusting normative boundaries between the personal and the social sphere. (shrink)

Biomedical engineering technologies such as brain–machine interfaces and neuroprosthetics are advancements which assist human beings in varied ways. There are exciting yet speculative visions of how the neurosciences and bioengineering may influence human nature. However, these could be preparing a possible pathway towards an enhanced and even posthuman future. This article seeks to investigate several ethical themes and wider questions of enhancement, transhumanism and posthumanism. Four themes of interest are: autonomy, identity, futures, and community. Three larger questions can be asked: (...) will everyone be enhanced? Will we be “human” if we are not, one day, transhuman? Should we be enhanced or not? The article proceeds by concentrating on a widespread and sometimes controversial application: the cochlear implant, an auditory prosthesis implanted into Deaf patients. Cochlear implantation and its reception in both the deaf and hearing communities have a distinctive moral discourse, which can offer surprising insights. The paper begins with several points about the enhancement of human beings, transhumanism’s reach beyond the human, and posthuman aspirations. Next it focuses on cochlear implants on two sides. Firstly, a shorter consideration of what technologies may do to humans in a transhumanist world. Secondly, a deeper analysis of cochlear implantation’s unique socio-political movement, its ethical explanations and cultural experiences linked with pediatric cochlear implantation—and how those wary of being thrust towards posthumanism could marshal such ideas by analogy. As transhumanism approaches, the issues and questions merit continuing intense analysis. (shrink)

This paper investigates the role of a pre-existing body-model that is an enabling constraint for the incorporation of objects into the body. This body-model is also a basis for the distinction between body extensions (e.g., in the case of tool-use) and incorporation (e.g., in the case of successful prosthesis use). It is argued that, in the case of incorporation, changes in the sense of body-ownership involve a reorganization of the body-model, whereas extension of the body with tools does not (...) involve changes in the sense of body-ownership. (shrink)

Derrida’s autobiographical and philosophical text Monolingualism of the Other; or, the Prosthesis of Origin is a partial recounting of his own childhood and upbringing in Algeria at a time when it was a colony of France. It is on one level a reflection on matters related to colonialism, and especially on the effects of the imposition of colonial language upon schooling and wider practices of education and coming into the world. Yet Derrida’s text also opens onto structural questions about (...) estrangement, unsettledness and Unheimlichkeit such as they pertain to and characterise life in language more generally. This paper puts Derrida’s Monolingualism of the Other into relation with contemporary discussions of multilingualism and language learning in the context of the global education agenda. The result, as we shall see, is the destabilising of assumptions that underpin multilingualism and the global education agenda and foreclose their democratic and ethical aims. At the same time, as we shall also see, Derrida’s text opens ways in which the education of language subjects can be reconstructed in relation to a new conception of ethics and the humanities. (shrink)

The massive industrialization of World War I resulted in a previously unimaginable number of casualties. The military and civil agencies in Germany that managed the welfare systems for veterans collaborated with companies, engineers and physicians to produce prosthetic arms, hands and legs that would allow disabled former soldiers to re-enter the factory as productive workers. This article focuses on the one of the best known arm prosthesis, the Siemens-Schuckert-Arm. While other historians have argued that the military command “recycled” disabled (...) soldiers effectively, this article argues instead that this “recycling” was incomplete due to three factors: not all offices and individuals worked together effectively; the price of the arm was too high; and employers thought the disabled would be less productive then female or elderly workers. In other words, while military and civil welfare agencies attempted to re-purpose disabled soldiers using advanced prosthetic technology, their efforts fell far short of fully reintegrating these soldiers into the war effort. (shrink)

McCarthy and Howard (2023) advocate for supported decision making for patients with intellectual and developmental disabilities (IDD). Departing from the “mental prosthesis” model of supported deci...