http://westernflag.johngerrard.net
John Gerrard - Western Flag (Spindletop, Texas), 2017
My source: Twitter
The 23rd International conference on Cooperative Design Visualization and Engineering (CDVE2026) will be held at the Leuphana University, Lunenburg, Germany on September 21-23, 2026 in their amazing architecture landmark main building. Please check the Youtube video:
The source for the post:
- reminds me that Hodges' model provides a potential 'World Model'. Not just one world, but (seriously and non-trivially) several, in the form of the ...
Hodges' model is applicable in assessment, planning, interventions, evaluation and review. The key of course, is as was as computers first arrived on wards and clinics: the human users of Hodges' model.
Of course, each comes with their own, hard won (see what I did there!) model, that needs extending by several intensive years of study.
Situated and person-centred, Hodges' model can assist all its users, to 'incorporate the learned dynamics of the environment', however it presents: medicine anyone? What about surgical, psychiatry, paediatrics, orthopaedics, or gynaecology? You get my drift?
Wenninghoff, N., Schwammberger, M. (2026). Interpretable World Model Imaginations as Deep Reinforcement Learning Explanation. In: Guidotti, R., Schmid, U., Longo, L. (eds) Explainable Artificial Intelligence. xAI 2025. Communications in Computer and Information Science, vol 2578. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-032-08327-2_7
*And not necessarily a student nurse, but possibly medical, social work, psychology, probation, ... ai!
The BCS Sociotechnical Specialist Group and the STEIN-UX Research Group at UWL are launching the online Human-Technology Lecture Series, connecting critical perspectives on digital technologies and design with insights about people, organisations and society.
Our first lecture is:
Thinking Language, Fast and Slow: Speed, Data, and Decolonial Inquiry
📅 25 March 2026
🕛 12:00–13:00 (UK time)
💻 Online
🎟 Free to attend
Speaker: Dr. Lindsey DeWitt Prat, whose work explores how language, culture and technology intersect in the development of AI systems.
Talk Synopsis:
As language increasingly becomes training data for AI, timing begins to shape power. Decisions about datasets are made quickly, while their consequences unfold over much longer horizons. What does it mean to design responsibly with — rather than after — underserved language communities?
Drawing on industry work with African languages and large language models, alongside research examining how AI data is produced globally, the talk reflects on why anthropological, participatory and human-centred approaches need to be integrated early in technological development.
Best wishes,
José
This International Women's Day, we're amplifying the work of women philosophers.
Our Women Reading Deleuze virtual issue pulls out articles from the Deleuze and Guattari Studies journal, chapters from the Deleuze Connections series and blog posts from our Deleuze Centenary celebrations, all written by women.
20 articles, chapters and blog essays by women
Clearing books, magazines and journals (to make space for a few new acquisitions) on a trip to Hay-on-Wye, I bought a secondhand copy of:
Weizsacker, Carl Friedrich von. (1980). The Unity of Nature.
I noticed chapters on the definition of health and illness, and information.
Models of Health and Illness, Good and Evil, Truth and Falseness
Chapter Jun 2014
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-03671-7
In book: Carl Friedrich von Weizsäcker: Major Texts in Philosophy (pp.74-89)
AbstractUnfortunately, I cannot find a copy of the lecture. In my softback copy the title is "Lack of Peace as Psychic Illness".
This essay is the core of our reflections on cybernetics. It is the only essay in this Part that tries to describe concretely what cybernetics can achieve. Written in the fall of 1967 but unpublished until now, it was inspired by a lecture on “Peacelessness as Mental Illness” delivered in Bethel in 1967 (published in Der ungesicherte Friede; Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1969). On that occasion the question arose whether it is medically justifiable, or merely metaphoric, to call the inability to maintain peace an illness. As far as I can see, contemporary medicine lacks a sufficiently clear concept of illness to decide this question. Since I had no desire to merely skirt the issue, I was faced with the task of outlining a scientifically justifiable definition of illness. The result is presented in Sect. 6.2 of this essay; its social application is very briefly sketched in Sect. 6.4.
(My emphasis)
We don't tend to think of mental illness in the collective, but history provides many examples within and extended across communities - 'mass psychogenic illness'. More recently there is a literature on the mental health, competency of global leaders, also known as 'hubris syndrome' previously. Even the history of Carl Friedrich von Weizsäcker is controversial, his World War II record and knowledge of nuclear physics.
We have a veritable storm across all the domains of Hodges' model (including the spiritual) that point to the model's ongoing relevance, consider:
Link:
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/300477492_Models_of_Health_and_Illness_Good_and_Evil_Truth_and_Falseness?
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| Figure 2 |
ABSTRACT
Landscape genetic analyses of wildlife populations can exclude variation in a broad suite of potential spatiotemporal correlates, including consideration of how such variation might have similarly influenced people over time. Grizzly bear (Ursus arctos) populations in what is now known as coastal British Columbia, Canada, provide an opportunity to examine the possible effects of a complex set of landscape and human influences on genetic structure. In this collaboration among the Nuxalk, Haíɫzaqv, Kitasoo/Xai’xais, Gitga’at, and Wuikinuxv First Nations and conservation scientists, we characterized patterns of genetic differentiation in the grizzly bear, a species of high cultural value, by genotyping 22 microsatellite loci from noninvasively collected hair samples over a 23,500 km² area. We identified three well-differentiated groups. Resistance surfaces, which incorporated past and present human use, settlement, and landscape resistant features, could not explain this pattern of genetic variation. Notably, however, we detected spatial alignment between Indigenous language families and grizzly bear genetic groups. Grizzly bears sampled within an area represented by a given language family were significantly similar to those sampled within that language family (P = 0.001) and significantly divergent to those sampled outside the language family (P = 0.001). This spatial co-occurrence suggests that grizzly bear and human groups have been shaped by the landscape in similar ways, creating a convergence of grizzly bear genetic and human linguistic diversity. Additionally, grizzly bear management units designated by the provincial government currently divide an otherwise continuous group and exclude recently colonized island populations that are genetically continuous with adjacent mainland groups. This work provides not only insight into how ecological and geographic conditions can similarly shape the distribution of people and wildlife but also new genetic evidence to support renewed, locally led management of grizzly bears into the future.
INDIVIDUAL|INTERPERSONAL : SCIENCESHUMANISTIC -------------------------------------- MECHANISTICSOCIOLOGY : POLITICAL|GROUP
Spatial overlap
Grizzly bear (Ursus arctos)
Population genetic structure
Landscape genetics
Indigenous language families
Human linguistic diversity
Awareness - Respect
Henson, L. H., N. Balkenhol, R. Gustas, M. Adams, J. Walkus, W. G. Housty, A. V. Stronen, J. Moody, C. Service, D. Reece, B. M. vonHoldt, I. McKechnie, B. F. Koop, and C. T. Darimont. 2021. Convergent geographic patterns between grizzly bear population genetic structure and Indigenous language groups in coastal British Columbia, Canada. Ecology and Society 26(3):7.
https://doi.org/10.5751/ES-12443-260307
My source:
Roman Goergen. Grizzly spoken here! Resurgence & Ecologist, July/August2023: 339: pp.10-11.See also: https://iaac-aeic.gc.ca/050/documents/p21799/85674E.pdf
'Adam's one task in the Garden had been to invent language, to give each creature and thing its name. In that state of innocence, his tongue had gone straight to the quick of the world. His words had not been merely appended to the things he saw, they had revealed their essences, had literally brought them to life. A thing and its name were interchangeable. After the fall, this was no longer true. Names became detached from things, words devolved into a collection of arbitrary signs; language had been severed fom God. The story of the Garden, therefore, records not only the fall of man, but the fall of language.'
Paul Auster
In, Robert C. Stalnaker (2008) Our Knowledge of the Internal World. Oxford, GB: Oxford University Press. hb. p.132.
Auster, P. (1985) The New York Trilogy (New York: Penguin Books). p.52.
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| Brian E. Hodges - c/o Brian's family. |
Born in Liverpool, NW England, UK.
Community Mental Health Nurse NHS, Part-time Lecturer,
Researcher Nursing & Technology Enhanced Learning
Registered Nurse - Mental Health & General
Community Psychiatric Nursing (Cert.) MMU
PG Cert. Ed.
BA(Joint Hons.) Computing and Philosophy - BIHE - Bolton
PG(Dip.) Collaboration on Psychosocial Education [COPE] Univ. Man.
MRES. e-Research and Technology Enhanced Learning, Lancaster Univ.
Live and work in NW England - seeking a global perspective.
The views expressed on W2tQ are entirely my own, unless stated otherwise.
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