scholarly journals Predictability in Contemporary Medicine

2021 ◽  
Vol 8 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michele M. Ciulla

Medical practice is increasingly coming under the guidance of statistical-mathematical models that are, undoubtedly, valuable tools but are also only a partial representation of reality. Indeed, given that statistics may be more or less adequate, a model is still a subjective interpretation of the researcher and is also influenced by the historical context in which it operates. From this opinion, I will provide a short historical excursus that retraces the advent of probabilistic medicine as a long process that has a beginning that should be sought in the discovery of the complexity of disease. By supporting the belonging of this evolution to the scientific domain it is also acknowledged that the underlying model can be imperfect or fallible and, therefore, confutable as any product of science. Indeed, it seems non-trivial here to recover these concepts, especially today where clinical decisions are entrusted to practical guidelines, which are a hybrid product resulting from the aggregation of multiple perspectives, including the probabilistic approach, to disease. Finally, before the advent of precision medicine, by limiting the use of guidelines to the original consultative context, an aged approach is supported, namely, a relationship with the individual patient.

Author(s):  
Emma Simone

Virginia Woolf and Being-in-the-world: A Heideggerian Study explores Woolf’s treatment of the relationship between self and world from a phenomenological-existential perspective. This study presents a timely and compelling interpretation of Virginia Woolf’s textual treatment of the relationship between self and world from the perspective of the philosophy of Martin Heidegger. Drawing on Woolf’s novels, essays, reviews, letters, diary entries, short stories, and memoirs, the book explores the political and the ontological, as the individual’s connection to the world comes to be defined by an involvement and engagement that is always already situated within a particular physical, societal, and historical context. Emma Simone argues that at the heart of what it means to be an individual making his or her way in the world, the perspectives of Woolf and Heidegger are founded upon certain shared concerns, including the sustained critique of Cartesian dualism, particularly the resultant binary oppositions of subject and object, and self and Other; the understanding that the individual is a temporal being; an emphasis upon intersubjective relations insofar as Being-in-the-world is defined by Being-with-Others; and a consistent emphasis upon average everydayness as both determinative and representative of the individual’s relationship to and with the world.


2000 ◽  
Vol 26 (2-3) ◽  
pp. 175-186
Author(s):  
Timothy S. Jost

If any trend can be confidently predicted for the next millennium (or, more modestly, for our lifetimes) it is the globalization of health law. We live in an age of global markets and global communications. While care of the individual patient has remained largely local, national borders are quite porous to health care professionals. The cross-border flow of patients is a significant factor in some regions, and the development of telemedicine and internet pharmacies is radically expanding the possibility of cross-border medical practice.


2007 ◽  
Vol 13 (2) ◽  
pp. 111-118 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ceri Evans

Cognitive–behavioural therapy (CBT) is an effective treatment for a number of psychiatric disorders in adults of all ages. With the proportion of the population aged 65 or over increasing steadily, it is important to be aware of how the CBT needs of this age group can be best met. This article provides an overview of CBT and the historical context of using it with older people. Although an understanding of the individual, irrespective of age, is at the core of CBT, potential modifications to the procedure and content aimed at optimising its effectiveness for older people are discussed.


Early China ◽  
2014 ◽  
Vol 37 ◽  
pp. 471-517 ◽  
Author(s):  
Andrew Meyer

AbstractThough the Guodian manuscripts have been viewed as an eclectic mix of texts, this article argues that, viewed in historical context, the collection has more coherence than has conventionally been supposed. Since the texts were interred in Chu c. 300 b.c.e., they should be read against other expressions of that time and place. The Mozi, much of which was likely used or produced by authors active in Chu at the time of the Guodian internment, is particularly illuminating in this regard. Though the individual Guodian texts do frequently contradict one another, they are yet commonly useful for formulating logical and rhetorical attacks on the teachings of the Mozi. The occupant of Guodian Tomb Number One may thus have collected these texts not for their doctrinal consistency with one another, but for their usefulness in use against intellectual opponents (among whom the Mohists clearly ranked). This, in fact, was likely a guiding principle for many Warring States literati in negotiating their production and utilization of texts.


Author(s):  
António Queirós ◽  

Central conceptual terms, such as ‘culture’, ‘environment’, ‘nature’ and ‘landscape’, are far from being neutral scientific objects. They are academic constructions which need to be understood in their emergence across their historic contexts. Morality is a cultural expression determined by social domination and historical context, which gives it a sectary character. We need a moral theory that can be universal, timeless and that is able to guide the individual conduct, science and political ideologies, without considering the man the zenith of Life. Life, with its biodiversity, is only the tip of a complex Cosmos evolution, but we don’t know if our species, bom on planet Earth, are the final link in the Cosmos evolution. To answer all these questions, a new ethical perspective was born, a theory built upon the principles of meta-ethics and applicable to all human activities. Environmental ethics are supported by two principles - the critique against anthropocentrism and the critique against ethnocentrism, giving a universal answer to the macro moral problems of our era - environmental, social, economical and political crisis, war and weapons of mass destruction... And contributes towards rebuilding the human activities in all domains of individual and social life.


2019 ◽  
Vol 23 (4) ◽  
pp. 930-949
Author(s):  
Marina Terkourafi

Indirectness has traditionally been viewed as commensurate with politeness and attributed to the speaker’s wish to avoid imposition and/or otherwise strategically manipulate the addressee. Despite these theoretical predictions, a number of studies have documented the solidarity-building and identity-constituting functions of indirectness. Bringing these studies together, Terkourafi 2014 proposed an expanded view of the functions of indirect speech, which crucially emphasizes the role of the addressee and the importance of network ties. This article focuses on what happens when such network ties become loosened, as a result of processes of urbanization and globalization. Drawing on examples from African American English and Chinese, it is argued that these processes produce a need for increased explicitness, which drives speakers (and listeners) away from indirectness. This claim is further supported diachronically, by changes in British English politeness that coincide with the rise of the individual Self. These empirical findings have implications for im/politeness theorizing and theory-building more generally, calling attention to how the socio-historical context of our research necessarily influences the theories we end up building.


2021 ◽  
Vol 3 (1) ◽  
pp. 106-118
Author(s):  
Timea Vitan ◽  

In the context of the COVID19 pandemic, during last year all public attention has been focused on Medicine. Epidemiology is no longer just one medical specialty among many others, but became the main paradigm and the unique background of medical science. The individual pacient has turned into the collective pacient. Medical policies are not centered on the pacient anymore, but on its social group. In this article I will try to show how the characteristics of medical practice changed since the pandemic began and which are the deontological implications of such changes. With a short introduction on the medical policies proposed by the WHO during the last decades, I wish to underline the recent history of medical practice and its obvious turning point occasioned by the pandemic. Once the new bioethical vantage points are set, I wonder to which extent posthumanist philosophy foresaw this new deontological paradigm. Having Rosi Braidotti`s “The Posthuman” as my starting point, I maintain that medical doctors no longer practice on a humanist background, but with a sort of commitment that goes beyond the individual. However, this is not an antihumansit pledge, because contemporary medical doctors still adhere to certain humanist principles. As it so often happens, we will be left with even more questions. If the pacient is no longer the individual, but the group of individuals, which is the nature of a symptom and how should we decipher its meaning? How would a new medical science look like if we are to build it not on a human but on a posthuman biology?


2019 ◽  
Vol 34 (4) ◽  
pp. 123-151
Author(s):  
Katarzyna Trzeciak ◽  
Jakob Ziguras

The goal of this essay is twofold: firstly, it is a description a post-critical tendency within the contemporary, Anglo-American humanities; secondly, it presents propositions which broaden the boundaries current in the post-critical current, which lead to the replacement of critical sci-entificity with an affirmation of everyday readerly affects. The claims regarding the rejection of a criticism based on suspicion, formulated by, among others, Rita Felski, accentuate the elite character of reading, the goal of which is the unveiling of the economico- political entan-glement of the text as a product of historical reality. The distrust towards the surface of the text and the illusion of aesthetic autonomy, central for cultural studies, raised the critical atti-tude to the rank of an activity that is revelatory and privileged. The opponents of an unmask-ing criticism underline its limitations—unmasking reveals the ultimate source of every cultural production, the logic of capitalism, the total character of which leaves no chance for change. In defense of change, and in the hope of restoring to literature a widespread interest, there appear tendencies which bring back the individual experience of reading, the basis of which is to be aesthetic pleasure, freed from the historical context and its determinants. In the article, examples of such tendencies will be pointed out, as also will be their consequences caused by the elevation and universalisation of non-professional reading. The rejection of the political task of criticism leads to the questioning of its anti-systemic potential; in turn, the apotheosis of suspicion paralyses the postulative dimension of criticism. For this reason, in the last part of the essay, I propose going beyond oppositional con ceptualisations in the direction of a criti-cism that is situated and material, and whose model, in my rendering, is subordi nated knowledge.


Author(s):  
Danylo Radivilov ◽  
Olena Romanova

The paper introduces into academic discourse two letters by S. Donich to the famous Ukrainian orientalist A. Krymskyi. The letters were written in January, 1927, before the Donich’s academic career as an Egyptologist, an archaeologist and a museum curator was started. Both letters were compiled in Arabic; the first letter was more thorough and was compiled as a sample of traditional Arabic letter (it includes coloured basmala and colophon), another letter was brief and written in European style. Such way of communication was chosen by S. Donich (amateur who independently studied oriental languages at that moment) to demonstrate his competence in Arabic to A. Krymskyi, the leading Arabist of the Ukrainian Socialist Soviet Republic, and USSA at that time. S. Donich wrote about his interest in oriental languages and their study, about his fascination for Oriental Studies, and about his difficult life circumstances that interfered him to become an academic orientalist. Donich emphasized he was a devotee of the Arabic language and informed about his translation of “The Thousand and One Night”. Some fragments of his translation into Russian he included into the letter. Thus S. Donich hoped to declare himself as a potential candidacy for further oriental study. The analysis of the content of the letters in a broader historical context, and in combination with other archive documents related to S. Donich, A. Krymskyi, and the academic Oriental Studies institutions of USSR, make it possible to uncover the circumstances in which of the individual orientalists lived and made their careers in the 1920s. It also provides us with some new facts of the biography and professional activity of S. Donich, as well as it makes possible to verify some previously known information about him. An assumption was made that these letters led to a new period of the Donich’s life, his turning to the Oriental Studies, with his later career as an Egyptologist, a museum curator and an archaeologist with his continuous interest in Arabic studies and other fields of Oriental Studies. The appendix provides a complete translation of the Arabic letters into Ukrainian together with and photographs of the documents. Key words: Ukrainian Museum Egyptology, History of Ukrainian Science, History of Ukrainian Humanities, History of Egyptology, History of Oriental Studies in Ukraine, S. Donich, A. Krymskyi.


This chapter discusses the concept of homo informaticus—the individual organization member framed in the IVO perspective. Homo informaticus is a cognitive microcosm that performs complex cognitive processes, engages in decision making and satisfying of informing needs, and designs and evaluates information systems (IS). Discussed are cognitive processes of thinking, feeling, perceiving, memorizing/memory recalling, and learning. These cognitive processes are involved in the fundamental informing process that starts with perception of external data, continues with applying knowledge to data, and ends with inferring information (meaning). The perspective of key cognitive processes enriches the informing model: perception is driven by previous knowledge, memory retrieval is engaged, and thinking is an overall driver, engaging both ratio and emotions. The discussion addresses cognitive limitations. Memory is limited in volume and content, perception is prone to illusions, and thinking is susceptible to biases. These limitations influence the outcomes of informing (information created) and learning (knowledge acquired). Decision making is affected as well, as indicated in its various models that reveal non-rational aspects. It is argued that homo informaticus is subject to informing (information) needs and actively seeks to satisfy them. Several models addressing this topic are examined. The chapter also covers cognitive and learning types that can be used for understanding the diversity characterizing homo informaticus. Karl Jung's typology is coupled with the dimensions of data scope, location, and processing mode. Kolb's learning styles are discussed in turn. Furthermore, the system evaluation capability of homo informaticus is demonstrated in the context of system adoption models. Finally, the system design capability is discussed in the historical context of Scandinavian experience.


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