Philosophy of meaning

The aim of this paper is to examine the basis of eligibility rules in sport by exhibiting the logic of categorisation, with its associated ethical problems. We shall be concerned mainly with pre-competition categories - age, sex, weight and dis/ability - because they are directly relevant to sport performance, and are relatively stable inequalities. We shall prefer to use the term 'categorisation', although we mean by it just what others might mean by classification, to refer to divisions, classes, groups, etc...

The role of a journal like HPLS during the novel coronavirus pandemic should serve as a means for scholars in different fields and professions to consider historically and critically what is happening as it unfolds. Surely it cannot tackle all the possible issues related to the pandemic, in particular to the COVID-19 pandemic, but it does have a responsibility to foster the best possible dialogue about the various issues related to the history and philosophy of the life sciences, and thus to solicit contributions from potential authors working in different parts of the world and belonging to different cultural traditions...

Background: Many designs of TKR have been developed to optimize the kinematics and improve satisfaction, including the 'medial rotating' philosophy. The purpose of this study is to report the mid-term clinical outcome of MRK knees and evaluate whether resurfacing the patella makes any difference in outcome. Methods: A retrospective analysis was done of 104 MRK total knee replacement done between 2008 and 2017. Patients were called for a review for evaluation of OKS, Baldini and Feller scores...

This article aims to share the historical context of spirituality in nursing, meanings and expressions of spirituality, and different models of spirituality along with its significance in nursing education and practice. Several challenges and tools for the successful integration of spirituality in education and practice are also discussed.

This article presents and defends an integrated view of the placebo effect, termed "affective-meaning-making" model, which draws from theoretical reflection, clinical outcomes, and neurophysiological findings. We consider the theoretical limitations of those proposals associated with the "meaning view" on the placebo effect which (a) leave the general aspects of meaning unspecified, (b) fail to analyze fully the role of emotions and affect, and (c) establish no clear connection between the theoretical, physiological, and psychological aspects of the effect...

In this paper, we quest the capability of transferring the quality of natural scene images to the images that are not acquired by optical cameras (e.g., screen content images, SCIs), rooted in the widely accepted view that the human visual system has adapted and evolved through the perception of natural environment. Here, we develop the first unsupervised domain adaptation based no reference quality assessment method for SCIs, leveraging rich subjective ratings of the natural images (NIs). In general, it is a non-trivial task to directly transfer the quality prediction model from NIs to a new type of content (i...

Person-centred care, with its central focus on the patient in partnership with healthcare practitioners, is considered to be the contemporary gold standard of care. This type of care implies effective communication from and by both the patient and the healthcare practitioner. This is often problematic in the case of the paediatric population, because of the many communicative challenges that may arise due to the child's developmental level, illness and distress, linguistic competency and disabilities. The principle of universal design put forth in conventions and legislation means that the design of products and services should be usable by all people, to the greatest extent possible...

The value of structured development processes has been recognized and implemented in formal physician training programs such as residencies and fellowships. Physicians are seemingly viewed as a "finished product" upon completing formal training. In recent years, a number of academic medical centers have implemented formalized early-career development programs for physicians, largely those who have a major research focus. However, beyond the early stage of physicians' careers, formalized and intentional physician career development programs are rare...

BACKGROUND: Best interests is a ubiquitous principle in medical policy and practice, informing the treatment of both children and adults. Yet theory underlying the concept of best interests is unclear and rarely articulated. This paper examines bioethical literature for theoretical accounts of best interests to gain a better sense of the meanings and underlying philosophy that structure understandings. METHODS: A scoping review of was undertaken. Following a literature search, 57 sources were selected and analysed using the thematic method...

Although there is a growing acknowledgement of the potential of a more nuanced healthcare paradigm and practice, the discourses of health promotion-and with that nursing and other healthcare professionals' practice-still tend to focus on the medical diagnosis, disease and the rationale of biomedicine. There is a need for shifting to a human practice that draws on a broader perspective related to illness. This requires a transformation of practices which can be constructed within a narrative understanding. A narrative approach appreciates the importance of emotion and intersubjective relation in the telling and listening that occur in the clinical encounter...

Evidence-based medicine has been the subject of much controversy within and outside the field of medicine, with its detractors characterizing it as reductionist and authoritarian, and its proponents rejecting such characterization as a caricature of the actual practice. At the heart of this controversy is a complex linguistic and social process that cannot be illuminated by appealing to the semantics of the modifier evidence-based. The complexity lies in the nature of evidence as a basic concept that circulates in both expert and non-expert spheres of communication, supports different interpretations in different contexts, and is inherently open to contestation...

BACKGROUND: Sphenoid wing meningiomas are a challenging surgical disease with relatively high perioperative morbidity. Most studies to date have focused on resection strategies as it relates to disease recurrence. Few have examined the optimal strategy as it relates to overall patient survival. We retrospectively reviewed our case series and evaluated extent of resection and perioperative stroke as it relates to all cause and disease-specific survival. PATIENTS/METHODS: Ninety-four patients were included in the study...

Interspecies intimacy defines an inescapable reality of lab animal research. This essay is an effort to disentangle this reality's consequences-both in and outside the lab-as framed by the quandaries of ethnographic engagement. Encounters with lab staff and, in turn, with audiences unfamiliar with laboratory life, together provide crucial entry points for considering how the "messiness of the moral" might facilitate an "unbounded" approach to lab animal worlds. Within the lab, one encounters specialized ethical principles-often codified as law-that delimit strict boundaries of in/appropriate human thought and action...

INTRODUCTION: Mental health support workers (MHSWs) make positive contributions to mental health recovery practice yet their roles and support needs are often unclear. This research explored the occupational lived experiences of three MHSWs working in Irish mental healthcare services. AIM: To explore the experiences and perceptions of MHSWs regarding their mental health recovery work. METHOD: A narrative design was used incorporating participatory art-based inquiry as a collaborative means of engaging participants...

The World Health Organization has issued international instructions for certification and classification (coding) of the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) as cause of death. Central to these instructions is the selection of the underlying cause of death for a public health preventive purpose. This article focuses on two rules for this selection: (1) that a death due to COVID-19 should be counted independently of pre-existing conditions that are suspected of triggering a severe course of COVID-19 and (2) that COVID-19 should not be considered as due to anything else...

Compositionality has been a central concept in linguistics and philosophy for decades, and it is increasingly prominent in many other areas of cognitive science. Its status, however, remains contentious. Here, I reassess the nature and scope of the principle of compositionality (Partee, 1995) from the perspective of psycholinguistics and cognitive neuroscience. First, I review classic arguments for compositionality and conclude that they fail to establish compositionality as a property of human language. Next, I state a new competence argument, acknowledging the fact that any competent user of a language L can assign to most expressions in L at least one meaning which is a function only of the meanings of the expression's parts and of its syntactic structure...

The author seeks to articulate the philosophical significance of Heinz Kohut's original theory of the self by showing (a) how it explains the basis of our ability to create and be motivated by personal ideals; (b) how it transforms our understanding of ethical life by showing why it is in one's self-interest to become an empathic, respectful person who embodies the moral virtues as articulated by Aristotle; and (c) how it reverberates with profound insights into what it means to be human by some of the most esteemed philosophers in the Western philosophic tradition, especially Plato, Aristotle, Hegel, and Nietzsche...

Digital health and welfare technologies and artificial intelligence are proposed to revolutionise healthcare systems around the world by enabling new models of care. Digital health and welfare technologies enable remote monitoring and treatments, and artificial intelligence is proposed as a means of prediction instead of reaction to individuals' health and as an enabler of proactive care and rehabilitation. The digital transformation not only affects hospital and primary care but also how the community meets older people's needs...

Situated approaches to affectivity overcome an outdated individualistic perspective on emotions by emphasizing the role embodiment and environment play in affective dynamics. Yet, accounts which provide the conceptual toolbox for analyses in the philosophy of emotions do not go far enough. Their focus falls (a) on the present situation, abstracting from the broader historico-cultural context, and (b) on adopting a largely functionalist approach by conceiving of emotions and the environment as resources to be regulated or scaffolds to be used...

A prevalent narrative locates the discovery of the statistical phenomenon of regression to the mean in the work of Francis Galton. It is claimed that after 1885, Galton came to explain the fact that offspring deviated less from the mean value of the population than their parents did as a population-level statistical phenomenon and not as the result of the processes of inheritance. Arguing against this claim, we show that Galton did not explain regression towards mediocrity statistically, and did not give up on his ideas regarding an inheritance process that caused offspring to revert to the mean...