Care as a Communautary Process: A Pragmatist Reading of the Digitalization of Care Relationships
FBK Aula Piccola
Fondazione Bruno Kessler - Polo delle Scienze Umane e sociali
Aula Piccola
FBK Aula Piccola
Fondazione Bruno Kessler - Polo delle Scienze Umane e sociali
Aula Piccola
Digital health tools promise to break isolation and build connection (teleconsultation, shared medical records, patient communities). This paper examines that promise through the pragmatist approach to the individual/community relationship in Peirce, Dewey, and Mead: the individual does not preexist the community but is constituted within it through transaction and social interaction. Dewey distinguishes association, a universal fact, from community, an achievement reached through communication that transforms interdependence into awareness of shared consequences — the structure of inquiry, already conceived by Peirce.
Applied to care, this framework shows that digitalization multiplies association (the rise of teleconsultation, Mon espace santé) without necessarily producing the corresponding community : we will endeavor to show the stakes and challenges of constituting such a community through the example of patient follow-up via teleconsultation in the advanced stage of ALS, and of facilitating access to care for people with disabilities through digital technology.
The seminar is part of the Cycle ‘Medicine and Contemporary Humanities’ and is organized by ISR in collaboration with the ‘Health and Humanities’ Laboratory of the Department of Literature and Philosophy at the University of Trento.
JEAN-PHILIPPE COBBAUT | Université Catholique de Lille
Cycle of Seminars: “Solitude and Communion in Religion and Ethics“
Scientific coordination: Massimo Leone, FBK-ISR
The event will be in-person in the FBK Aula Piccola, while seats last, and online, and it will be held in English.
Registration by September 10, 2026 at 12:00 a.m. is required to arrange the connection.
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Image: AdobeStock_518968971
Speakers
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Jean-Philippe Cobbaut - Guest SpeakerProf. Jean-Philippe COBBAUT, Director of the Centre for Medical Ethics, Université Catholique de Lille. Jean-Philippe COBBAUT is a lawyer, philosopher, and holds a Habilitation to Direct Research (HDR) in Public Health. He directs the Centre for Medical Ethics at Université Catholique de Lille (research unit EA 7446 ETHICS), dedicated to research, training, and intervention in healthcare and medico-social fields. He is also Professor of Medical Ethics and Health Law at the Faculty of Medicine and Public Health at UCLouvain. He served on the Belgian Advisory Committee on Bioethics, was a researcher at the UCLouvain Centre for Philosophy of Law, and a visiting researcher at Harvard Law School. His research explores contemporary medicine's transformations and ethical issues in care relationships, organizations, and health policies. He acts as a clinical ethics consultant and leads action-research supporting self-determination for people with disabilities.
Registration
Registration to this event is mandatory.
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Organizers
The initiative was also realized thanks to the contribution of "Direzione generale Educazione, ricerca e istituti culturali" of the Ministry of Culture.