June 4-5 'Ecologies of Care' - London, UK

With more to follow from RCN Congress, this morning I received the agenda for next month's conference 'Ecologies of Care'. I am speaking, first session on the Thursday, which is a good to know and see the broad range of presentations. 

The focus on attention, is helpful for a possible further event in October. In the meantime, the Call for Papers began:

Chancellor’s Hall, Senate House London

June 4 & 5, 2026

Keynote lecture by Professor Yves Citton

How do increasing demands on our attention influence what we know, and how we act, in response to climate change? Despite a strong scientific consensus that climate change is ongoing and anthropogenic, political and legal action remains fragmented. Ecologies of Care asks to what extent the environmental crisis is a crisis of attention. Speaking to the dynamics of the attention economy, Yves Citton notes that “the new scarcity is no longer to be situated on the side of material goods to be produced, but on the attention necessary to consume them.” The word ‘attention’ is etymologically linked to the notion of care, or that which one attends to. This relationship (of subject and object) is fundamentally collective, insofar as collective attentional regimes influence what each one of us pays attention to on a daily basis, and how we navigate the barrage of informational flows from popular media.

Terms such as "the Anthropocene" and "planetary boundaries" function both as scientific descriptors and attempts to provoke action commensurate to the urgency that scientists believe their research demonstrates. The recent decision not to formalize the Anthropocene as an official geological unit, for example, highlights growing unease concerning intensifying media attention directed at scientific expertise. Under conditions of increasing disparity between what we know, and how we act, in response to climate change, the role of scientific expertise plays an increasingly normative, and not only informative, function. Scientific expertise attempts to direct what we attend to, and consequently, how (or if) we care. This is a collective practice of narrating and internalizing mythologies, whereby informational flows draw attention to some thing that needs to be cared for: Earth, the planetary, capital, or each other.

Continued ...

 c/o Law and the Environmental Humanities Network

n.b. With little time, I'm not going to transfer the pdf text, but may add here.

#RCN26 RCN Congress - Nurse Education

If you think hard-enough all the debates at RCN Congress connect to 'education', but two are laser-focussed:

Protecting nurse education

Resolution submitted by the Education Forum
That this meeting of RCN Congress asks RCN Council to lobby UK governments to protect nurse education from university sector economic pressures.

Quality of clinical placements

Matter for discussion submitted by the Students Committee
That this meeting of RCN Congress discusses ways in which the quality of clinical placements can be ensured and consistent across all 4 countries.

For more senior colleagues, you may momentarily think back - all rose-tinted - to the pre-undergraduate Schools of Nursing, but you also realise change was needed and inevitable. A new millennium was fast approaching.

Now, however it seems within the university ecosystem, nursing is a threatened subject and discipline. Nurse education is exposed and itself vulnerable. In the 21st century fitness-stakes - finance wins:

individual

|

INTERPERSONAL : SCIENCES

humanistic ------------------------------- mechanistic

SOCIOLOGY : POLITICAL

|

group

mental fitness	physical fitness
SOCIAL VALUE  & VALUES	FINANCIAL FITNESS

 

At RCN Congress, the status of nursing as a profession in the USA, was raised. Looking online, I found the following at the U.S. Department of Education: Myth vs. Fact: The Definition of Professional Degrees.

In January 2025 I posted about the situation at Cardiff University. At Congress the matter of the quality of clinical placements, became a resolution. The protection of nurse education provoked an impassioned and emotional debate. Student nurses seeing what is happening to nurse faculty. Nurse faculty seeing the years of experience 'walk' be-pushed out through the door. It seems there is no collective noun for a group, or collection of redundancies. Mass comes to mind, especially in this instance. A 'rash' seems appropriate. But, the condition is more serious and bears further investigation:

As a Google search demonstrates - https://share.google/SViFPWuJovKWhErEE

IT doesn't stop there ...

How many of us (nurses, and other 'professionals') are seeing job offers(?) such as:

Remote
Contract

$35/hr - $80/hr (this is lower than others ...)

About the job

Nursing Informatics Specialist (AI Training)

About The Role

Your clinical knowledge is more valuable than you think — beyond the bedside. We're looking for experienced nursing professionals to help train and evaluate AI systems built for healthcare. As a Nursing Informatics Specialist at Alignerr, you'll apply your frontline expertise to ensure AI understands real-world clinical workflows, EHR systems, and nursing documentation the way actual nurses do.

This is a unique opportunity to work at the intersection of nursing practice and cutting-edge AI — on your own schedule, from anywhere.

• Organization: ---------
• Type: Hourly Contract
• Location: Remote
• Commitment: 10–40 hours/week
  
  

What You'll Do

• Evaluate AI-generated clinical content for accuracy, safety, and alignment with real nursing workflows
• Review and annotate EHR documentation scenarios, flagging errors or gaps in clinical reasoning
• Translate nursing practice knowledge into structured feedback that improves AI model outputs
• Assess how well AI systems reflect clinical informatics best practices across areas like documentation, data integrity, and care coordination
• Provide expert insight on health IT tools, including EHR platforms such as Epic or Cerner
• Work independently and asynchronously on task-based assignments
  
  

Who You Are

• Registered Nurse (RN) or equivalent clinical background with hands-on experience in a healthcare setting
• Familiar with EHR systems and clinical documentation workflows
• Able to analyze clinical scenarios and communicate clear, structured feedback
• Detail-oriented with strong written communication skills
• Self-motivated and comfortable working independently in a remote environment
• No prior AI experience required — your clinical expertise is what matters
  
  

Nice to Have

• Experience in clinical informatics, health IT, or nursing informatics roles
• Familiarity with data annotation, quality review, or evaluation processes
• Background in quality improvement, patient safety, or clinical education
• Exposure to health data standards (e.g., HL7, FHIR, SNOMED)
  
  

Why Join Us

• Work on cutting-edge AI projects with leading research labs and AI teams
• Fully remote and flexible — set your own hours and work at your own pace
• Freelance perks: autonomy, variety, and global collaboration
• Apply your nursing expertise in a completely new and impactful way
• Contribute to AI that could meaningfully improve how healthcare technology serves patients and clinicians
• Potential for ongoing work and contract extension

You might think (no pun intended!): 

'Well this all about informatics. Don't worry - it will all work out fine!'

But, please notice, the clinical and nursing requirement:

"Registered Nurse (RN) or equivalent clinical background with hands-on experience in a healthcare setting."

Not exactly, Hodges' model is it? Even if specific to this role, what does it say:

• about :: the title of 'Registered Nurse'
• about :: Nurses and Nursing as a Profession
• and :: to search engines and agentic AI?

So be aware, and concerned (worried even!) for nursing and nurse education ... 
for the humanity of healthcare:

individual

|

INTERPERSONAL : SCIENCES

humanistic ------------------------------- mechanistic

SOCIOLOGY : POLITICAL

|

group

de-humanisation	BIG TECH
"Where has everyone gone?" Social values Social justice What about research, debate, evidence..?	Nursing Faculty Universities as Institutions that reflect Society Why is there an echo in here? It's been hollowed out.

P.S. I am not a technophobe. Previously: 'AI' : 'SOCIO-technical'

RCN Congress: Ebola, privacy and 'care bundles'

The first discussion at RCN Congress #RCN26 on Nursing as a STEM profession, or STEAM, with the arts added, became a resolution:

https://www.rcn.org.uk/congress/congress-events/nursing-as-a-stem-profession-2026

This was marvellous as it touched so many aspects that Hodges' model readily encompasses.

There is scope for the addition of emergency items:

https://www.rcn.org.uk/congress/Submit-an-emergency-agenda-item

Yesterday I wondered about the latest ebola outbreak, national and international aid^. Plus, privacy, having noticed a stream on twitter regards the NHS and a contract with Palantir. Yes, 'X' as a source is a problem, but concerns about access to confidential clinical information is found in the quality press. What does the Information Commissioner's Office say? Well, it seems there is a history:

https://icosearch.ico.org.uk/s/search.html?collection=ico%7Esp-search&query=PALANTIR&profile=_default

While searching for 'care bundles' I came across this:

 'The scope and force of medical privacy is further supported by a secondary layer of protections based in sectoral and other forms of regulation. Anti-discrimination laws, disability rights, and employment law, for example, all recognize and operate to preserve medical privacy by restrictions of use of medical information outside of the medical setting. 

 These intersecting normative strands of medical privacy, derived from different sources, together form a set of norms designed to protect a bundle of interests that is essential to the maintenance of an effective healthcare system that encourages and protects appropriate care-seeking and treatment. Whether and how technological changes in the collection, storage, and processing of data affect the construct of medical privacy is a pressing question. Just as a bell cannot be unrung, erosion of the sphere of medical privacy is unlikely to be restored.' p.330.

I realised over the past twenty years or so I've paid less attention to the fact that sections of a population, those often most in need of healthcare will not engage, be care-seeking - if they have no faith and trust in how their information is managed and protected. Minority groups, the digitally excluded (whether by choice, or literacy, economics) the influence of media are all vulnerable. Protection of data and the integrity of health services and systems is surely a matter of professional import both clinically and informaticians? As a registrant, I've always put it to student nurses that they should be aware of what happens to the data they as a registered nurse, enter in the electronic health record.

Pierce, R. (2018). Medical Privacy: Where Deontology and Consequentialism Meet. In B. van der Sloot & A. de Groot (Eds.), The Handbook of Privacy Studies: An Interdisciplinary Introduction (pp. 327–332). Amsterdam University Press. https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctvcmxpmp.17

 

^What, only one sentence? Yes, but I'm still worried; geography - distance now matters little. While, on the other-hand: care-seeking...?

 

Previous posts: 'ebola' : #RCN26

Call for Abstracts: Prototypes for Humanity - Submission Deadline 22 May 2026

Dear Colleagues, 

I am pleased to invite the submission of abstracts to the Prototypes for Humanity 2026 Short Papers Platform. 

Abstract Submission Deadline: 22nd May 2026
Invitations to Successful Authors: 8th July 2026
Conference Dates: 15th - 19th November, Dubai, UAE 

** Description **

The Short Papers Platform provides a forum for professors to share their research and engage in interdisciplinary dialogue, fostering global collaboration and knowledge exchange, with a focus on driving real-world impact through academic research.

For 2026, Prototypes for Humanity is delighted to announce the launch of a strategic partnership with the Investment Corporation of Dubai (ICD), for the Short Papers Platform. This joint effort reinforces the programme’s commitment to advancing impactful innovation through collaboration between academia and industry, focusing on the key sectors and themes that reflect international research priorities and that are relevant to the city and to the fund. 

Themes 

• Wellbeing and Human Performance
• Infrastructures and Cities
• Autonomous Systems and Advanced Manufacturing
• Environment, Sustainability and Energy
• Mobility and Logistics
• Socio-Economic Empowerment, Digital Economies and Future Markets
• Open and Speculative

Awards

As part of the programme’s ongoing commitment to research translation, ICD will award a $50,000 prize to one of the short papers presented at the conference. The award recognises academic work with strong potential for practical application, identified through engagement with ICD industry experts, and will support the winning project’s next stage of development towards implementation.

Submissions

Full details can be found at: https://www.prototypesforhumanity.com/press-releases/stories/Call_For_Abstracts_2026

Apply here: https://form.jotform.com/260705028532451?source=https://www.jisc.ac.uk

Deadline for abstract submission: 22 May, 2026

We strongly encourage you to apply where your interests and research aligns with the programme’s thematic areas.

If you have any questions, please contact us at professors AT prototypesforhumanity.com

Sarah Ward
University Relations Manager
Prototypes for Humanity

E: sarah.ward AT prototypesforhumanity.com

My source: Email - https://www.bcs-sgai.org/

CFP: Nonsense in Language and Thought

Guest editor: 
Krystian Bogucki (Polish Academy of Sciences)

Deadline for submissions: 
the 31st of July 2026 

Description:

Studia Semiotyczne (Semiotic Studies) invites submissions for a special issue of the journal. Papers should be written in English and prepared for blind review. 

An interest in nonsense was a hallmark of the early analytic philosophy. Bertrand Russell (1908) thought that a theory of nonsense could help us avoid some daunting paradoxes in logic. Ludwig Wittgenstein (1922, 1953) and Rudolf Carnap (1931) recognised nonsense as a fundamental concept for philosophical criticism. They claimed that much of philosophical discourse is defective in the most fundamental way: it is neither true nor false, it does not consist of thoughts and propositions ? it is nonsense. According to the early Wittgenstein, philosophers want to describe the nature of the world, thought, language and ethics, but they unwittingly fall into nonsense. The Tractatus was supposed to free us from this troublesome position by presenting a perspicuous notation. On the other hand, the later Wittgenstein claimed that we should compare deceptive philosophical images with our ordinary ways of thinking and speaking in order to avoid nonsense. Philosophical problems arise when language goes on holiday, so we must always remember the everyday use of concepts. For Carnap, propositions should be reducible to sense data and constructed according to the rules of logical syntax in order to be meaningful. 

Later, the topic of nonsense was discussed by Alfred Ayer, Gilbert Ryle, Willard V. O. Quine, Arthur Prior, Richard Routley and Georg H. von Wright, among others. Since the late 1970s, however, the interest in nonsense has faded. Only recently, some important works have been published. The first important stimulus came from foundational works on theories of nonsense (Cappelen 2012, 2013; Camp 2004; Glock 2015; Magidor 2009, 2013). The second source of the revival of interest in nonsense was Wittgenstein scholarship on the austere and substantial conceptions of nonsense (Conant 2001; Diamond 1995, 2005; Glock 2004; Hacker 2003; Moore 2003; Sullivan 2003). Some works also examined the relation of nonsense to other phenomena (Gotham 2017, Keller and Keller 2021, Shaw 2015, Sorensen 2003). 

The important questions to be addressed in the forthcoming volume are (to name but a few):

• What are the sources of nonsense? 
• Are some parts of philosophical and non-philosophical discourse nonsense?
• What is the relation between nonsense and figurative speech?
• Is it at all possible to be wrong whether our own thoughts are meaningful? 

We hope that the special issue of Studia Semiotyczne will further strengthen and deepen the scholarly interest in nonsense. 

Possible topics include, but are not limited to:

Theories of nonsense
Nonsense and logical syntax
Nonsense and category mistakes
Nonsense and figurative speech (e.g. metaphor, metonymy)
Nonsense and fiction
History of the concept of nonsense (in particular Wittgenstein's and the Vienna Circle's views on nonsense)
Nonsense and understanding
Nonsense and illusions of sense
Nonsense and quantification
Nonsense and linguistics
Nonsense and ineffability
Nonsense, knowledge-how and knowledge-that
Logics of nonsense
Nonsense and semantic paradoxes
How to diagnose philosophical nonsense?
Metaphilosophical and methodological issues concerning nonsense

In order to submit the paper one is kindly asked to submit the manuscript by sending it to:
krystian.bogucki AT ifispan.edu.pl and studiasemiotyczne AT pts.edu.pl 

All submitted papers will be double-blind peer-reviewed.

My source (and emphasis):
Philos-L "The Liverpool List" is run by the Department of Philosophy, University of Liverpool 
https://www.liverpool.ac.uk/philosophy/philos-l/

Wittgenstein's - Tractatus

Apparently, Wittgenstein walked away from philosophy after publication of the Tractatus. He thought he had solved the problems of philosophy, logic and reality.

In trying to ‘see’ Hodges’ model, in mathematical terms, there may be lessons in Wittegenstein’s approach, both in content and style. Of course, as a non-mathematician, I probably should leave well-alone; and stick to nursing. But that is the problem: from 1987-88 there is a need for a different perspective, even if this is a personal challenge. As with many ‘reviews’ here, we can look at Wittengenstein’s work, reflect upon it, and consider how it relates to the purposes, structures and content of Hodges’ model.

The Tractatus’s first line then, offers a warm welcome.

‘The world is everything that is the case.’ [I]

Making the decision to become a nurse and enrolling as a student makes you an educational and workforce demographic case.

Once a student in the university lecture theatre, you hopefully whether consciously, or not are exposed to the theory – practice gap; as you yearn to be on your first placement. Now it you who is seeking ‘cases’. As we live, and statistics roll and tally, the question of caseness (and categories) is key, one that is carried around even if not always active, recognised as such.

As noted in the previous post, we can for Hodges’ model (and other models, frameworks it must be said) think of ‘case’ as a, or the situation. 

A mathematical approach to Hodges’ model involves looking at things, concepts, people as objects. This includes patients and carers. In terms of a project worthy of pursuing in nursing and other disciplines involved in healthcare, this mathematization presents a non-trivial challenge. A fully-deserved response would be: 'What have you done to the aptitude for care and caring attitude? You've cancelled - subtracted it!' Humour aside:

'In order to know an object, I must know not its external but all its internal qualities.' [2.01231] 

Is this equivalent to us getting to know our patient / client and their socio-political context? 

‘The way in which objects hang together in the atomic fact is the structure of the atomic fact.’ [2.032] 

It is a help that Wittgenstein points to structure (crumbs of understanding are welcome here, as incremental steps). In formulating Hodges’ model we first identify the axes. It is the axes that then provide a space, four domains in total, to frame the objects that we decide; or, as the situation dictates, what concepts are placed in the domains of Hodges' model.

There is a successive series that follows, combining place, space and logic: ‘The proposition determines a place in logical space: the existence of this logical place is guaranteed by the existence of the constituent parts alone, by the existence of the significant proposition.’ [3.4]

‘The propositional sign and the logical coordinates : that is the logical place.’ [3.41]

‘The geometrical and the logical place agree in that each is the possibility of an existence.’ [3.411]

‘Although a proposition may only determine one place in logical space, the whole logical space must already be given by it.
(Otherwise denial, the logical sum, the logical product. etc., would always introduce new elements -in co-ordination.) 
(The logical scaffolding round the picture determines the logical space. The proposition reaches through the whole logical space.)' [3.42]

While Wittgenstein came to view ‘the picture theory of meaning’ as incorrect, as a conceptual framework and diagrammatic resource Hodges’ model is closely tied to this form of representation.

Of course, the logic at work here, is far from mathematical, but there is surely a logic.

'Formal concepts cannot, like proper concepts, be presented by a function.' [4.126]

'There is therefore really a sense in which in philosophy we can talk of a non-psychological I.
The I occurs in philosophy through the fact that the "world is my world'".
The philosophical I is not the man, not the human body or the human soul of which psychology treats, but the metaphysical subject, the limit - not a part of the world.' [5.641] 

'Although the spots in our picture are geometrical figures, geometry can obviously say nothing about their actual form and position. But the network is purely geometrical, and all its properties can be given a priori.

Laws, like the law of causation, etc., treat of the network and not of what the network describes.' [6.35]

There is much more in this work, and much that remains a challenge. Many commentators have written and said in interviews that the Tractatus rewards re-reading and some sentences stay with you for life (The Great Philosophers BBC TV). 

I'm still seeking mine.

https://www.gutenberg.org/files/5740/5740-pdf.pdf