According to a standard representationalist view cognitive capacities depend on internal content-carrying states. Recent alternatives to this view have been met with the reaction that they have, at best, limited scope, because a large range of cognitive phenomena—those involving absent and abstract features—require representational explanations. Here we challenge the idea that the consideration of cognition regarding the absent and the abstract can move the debate about representationalism along. Whether or not cognition involving the absent and the abstract requires the positing (...) of representations depends upon whether more basic forms of cognition require the positing of representations. (shrink)

Bioethicists frequently call for empirical researchers to engage participants and community members in their research, but don't themselves typically engage community members in their normative research. In this article, we describe an effort to include members of the public in normative discussions about the risks, potential benefits, and ethical responsibilities of social and behavioral genomics (SBG) research. We reflect on what might—and might not— be gained from engaging the public in normative scholarship and on lessons learned about public perspectives on (...) the risks and potential benefits of SBG research and the responsible conduct and communication of such research. We also provide procedural lessons for others in bioethics who are interested in engaging members of the public in their research. (shrink)

How should scarce healthcare resources be distributed? This is a contentious issue that became especially pressing during the pandemic. It is often emphasised that studies exploring public views about this question provide valuable input to the issue of healthcare priority setting. While there has been a vast number of such studies it is rarely articulated, more specifically, what the results from these studies would mean for the justification of principles for priority setting. On the one hand, it seems unreasonable that (...) public values would straightforwardly decide the ethical question of how resources should be distributed. On the other hand, in a democratic society, it seems equally unreasonable that they would be considered irrelevant for this question. In this paper we draw on the notion of reflective equilibrium and discuss the relevance and roles that empirical studies may plausibly have for justification in priority setting ethics. We develop a framework for analysing how different kinds of empirical results may have different kinds of implications for justification. (shrink)

We address some frequently encountered criticisms of Radical Embodied/Enactive Cognition. Contrary to the claims that the position is too radical, or not sufficiently so, we claim REC is just radical enough.

Knowledge is more valuable than mere true belief. Many authors contend, however, that reliabilism is incompatible with this item of common sense. If a belief is true, adding that it was reliably produced doesn't seem to make it more valuable. The value of reliability is swamped by the value of truth. In Goldman and Olsson (2009), two independent solutions to the problem were suggested. According to the conditional probability solution, reliabilist knowledge is more valuable in virtue of being a stronger (...) indicator than mere true belief of future true belief. This article defends this solution against some objections. (shrink)

Background: Metaphors are often used within the context of ethics and healthcare but have hardly been explored in relation to moral reasoning. Objective: To describe a central set of metaphors in one case and to explore their contribution to moral reasoning. Method: Semi-structured interviews were conducted with 16 parents of a child suffering from the neurodegenerative disease CLN3. The interviews were recorded, transcribed, and metaphors were analyzed. The researchers wrote memos and discussed about their analyses until they reached consensus. Ethical (...) considerations: Participants gave oral and written consent and their confidentiality and anonymity were respected. Findings: A central set of metaphors referred to the semantic field of the hands and arms and consisted of two central metaphors that existed in a dialectical relationship: grasping versus letting go. Participants used these metaphors to describe their child’s experiences, who had to “let go” of abilities, while “clinging” to structures and the relationship with their parent(s). They also used it to describe their own experiences: participants tried to “grab” the good moments with their child and had to “let go” of their child when (s)he approached death. Participants, in addition, “held” onto caring for their child while being confronted with the necessity to “let go” of this care, leaving it to professional caregivers. Discussion: The ethical analysis of the findings shows that thinking in terms of the dialectical relationship between “grasping” and “letting go” helps professional caregivers to critically think about images of good care for children with CLN3. It also helps them to bear witness to the vulnerable, dependent, and embodied nature of the moral self of children with CLN3 and their parents. Conclusion: Metaphorical reasoning may support the inclusion of marginalized perspectives in moral reasoning. Future studies should further explore the contribution of metaphorical reasoning to moral reasoning in other cases. (shrink)

This paper examines issues of ontology and methodology in behavioral economics: the attempt to increase the explanatory and predictive power of economic theory by providing it with more psychologically plausible foundations. Of special interest is the epistemological status of neoclassical economic theory within behavioral economics, the runaway success story of contemporary economics. Behavioral economists aspire to replace the fundamental assumptions of orthodox, neoclassical economic theory. Yet, behavioral economists have gone out of their way to praise those very assumptions. Matthew Rabin, (...) for example, writes that behavioral economics “is not only built on the premise that [orthodox] economic methods are great, but also that most mainstream economic assumptions are great.” These apparently contradictory attitudes toward neoclassical theory raises the question of what, exactly, its epistemological status within behavioral economics is. This paper argues that the paradox can be resolved, and the question answered, by thinking of the epistemological status of neoclassical theory within behavioral economics in terms of Max Weber’s ideal types: analytical constructs that are not intended to be descriptively true of anything but which nevertheless can be used for a variety of theoretical purposes. The analysis is consistent with many of the insights from the philosophical literature on models in science and has important implications for the practice of economics—behavioral and neoclassical—as well as for the very nature of rationality. (shrink)

There is an emerging consensus in the literature on probabilistic coherence that such coherence cannot be truth conducive unless the information sources providing the cohering information are individually credible and collectively independent. Furthermore, coherence can at best be truth conducive in a ceteris paribus sense. Bovens and Hartmann have argued that there cannot be any measure of coherence that is truth conducive even in this very weak sense. In this paper, I give an alternative impossibility proof. I provide a relatively (...) detailed comparison of the two results, which turn out to be logically unrelated, and argue that my result answers a question raised by Bovens and Hartmann’s study. Finally, I discuss the epistemological ramifications of these findings and try to make plausible that a shift to an explanatory framework such as Thagard’s is unlikely to turn the impossibility into a possibility. (shrink)

Persons with profound intellectual and multiple disabilities cannot speak about their Quality of Life, which makes it necessary to involve others. In current approaches, these ‘others’ are seen as assessors trying to describe QoL as objectively as possible, which involves a reduction of their experiences, through which they develop knowledge on the QoL of the person with PIMD. The objective of this paper is to give caregivers’ knowledge on the QoL of a person with PIMD a theoretical basis that values (...) these experiences. We will argue that caregivers should be seen as witnesses, not assessors, and their statements on QoL as testimonies, not assessments. Audiences judge the trustworthiness of these witnesses intersubjectively, which implies a relationship characterized by trust and suspicion. Trust supports the witness to tell in her own words about the QoL of the person with PIMD; it demands receptivity, indicating that both the witness and the audience are willing to reconsider their perspective on QoL. Suspicion is necessary too, which helps the witness to critically approach her own interpretations and supports her to create more trustworthy testimonies. We conclude that the concept of witnessing helps to acknowledge caregivers’ experiential knowledge of QoL of a person with PIMD, which may also apply to other persons who cannot speak about their own QoL. We hope that our study will empower caregivers to give testimonies on QoL of a person with PIMD, which is crucial when complex decisions about the life of this person have to be made. (shrink)

We aim to further develop and evaluate the prospects of a uniquely Islamic extension of the Standard Aquinas/Calvin model. One obstacle is that certain Qur’an passages such as Surah 8:43–44 apparently suggest that Muslims have reason to think that Allah might be deceiving them. Consistent with perfect/maximally good being theology, Allah would allow such deceptions only if doing so leads to a greater good, so such passages do not necessarily give Muslims reason to doubt Allah’s goodness. Yet the possibility of (...) deception of the faithful threatens to provide a subjective defeater for the (epistemic) reliability of their cognitive faculties. (‘Even if Allah can be morally good while deceiving, how do you know you aren’t being deceived for a greater good on a more macro level, such as about the nature of the Qur’an?’) Similar in structure to Alvin Plantinga’s Evolutionary Argument Against Naturalism (EAAN), this defeater threatens to undermine all of a Muslims warrant claims. We consider and evaluate the reply that there are other Qur’anic passages and/or additional conceptual resources in the Islamic tradition that provide grounds for thinking that God’s faithfulness or truthfulness is more centrally and securely embedded in a Muslim’s noetic structure than such doubts. Specifically, we will argue that under certain conditions, there exists a subjective defeater for some Muslims that, unlike McNabb’s approach, isn’t based off of the proper function condition but Plantinga’s truth aimed condition. (shrink)

General relativity poses serious problems for counterfactual propositions peculiar to it as a physical theory. Because these problems arise solely from the dynamical nature of spacetime geometry, they are shared by all schools of thought on how counterfactuals should be interpreted and understood. Given the role of counterfactuals in the characterization of, inter alia, many accounts of scientific laws, theory confirmation and causation, general relativity once again presents us with idiosyncratic puzzles any attempt to analyze and understand the nature of (...) scientific knowledge must face. (shrink)

This chapter deals with an area of study sometimes called “formal value theory” or “formal axiology”. Roughly characterized, this area investigates the structural and logical properties of value properties and value relations, such as goodness, badness, and betterness. There is a long-standing controversy about whether goodness and badness can, in principle, be measured on a cardinal scale, in a way similar to the measurement of well-understood quantitative concepts like length. Sect. 28.1 investigates this issue, mainly by comparing the properties of (...) the relations “longer than” and “better than”. In Sect. 28.2, some attempts to define goodness and badness in terms of the betterness relation are discussed, and a novel suggestion is made. Sect. 28.3, finally, contains an attempt to define the recently much discussed value relation “on a par with” in terms of the more familiar betterness relation. (shrink)

This paper analyzes a European research project called ‘Deepening Ethical Engagement and Participation in Emerging Nanotechnologies’ with the abbreviation DEEPEN. The DEEPEN’s findings and conclusions on the narratives, public understandings and the lay ethics of nanotechnologies are examined in a critical manner. Through a criticism of the theoretical framings of what constitutes a narrative and the application of a different theoretical framing of narratives, the paper argues that the findings and conclusion of the DEEPEN should be approached with caution as (...) there are several unjustified claims concerning the contextualization of the findings. Such claims pertain to the theoretical framing of narratives, virtue ethics, modernity, lay attitudes, and earlier research. (shrink)

Den här boken handlar om invasiva främmande växter. I det föregående kapitlet reflekterade Niklas Vareman om vad som läggs i begreppet ‘invasiv’, men vad gäller då för den andra termen i begreppet – alltså ordet ‘främmande’? Vid första påseende kan det verka som att ’främmande’ borde vara ett enklare ord att definiera. Det är ju vanligare och inte så tekniskt jämfört med ‘invasiv’. Frågan är dock om inte just dessa två egenskaper gör ordet ’främmande’ mer svårdefinierat. Ord som är både (...) vanligare och mer vardagliga används av fler personer och på fler olika sätt. (shrink)

When they want to discredit the political relevance of Deleuze's thought, Hallward considers counter-effectuation as a ‘redemptive gesture’, and Rancière describes Deleuze's history of cinema as a ‘history of redemption’. Each time, redemption refers pejoratively to a break ‘out of this world’ and a form of apolitical passivity, in an attempt to reduce Deleuze to be a mere ‘spiritual’ thinker, simply renewing ‘that “Oriental intuition” which Hegel found at work in Spinoza's philosophy’. But is it all that simple? How should (...) we envisage the relationship between creativity and redemption, politics and passivity in Deleuze's work? And in what way does that concern Deleuze's philosophy connection to the Non-West, and namely China? (shrink)

För att kunna känna igen liv när vi hittar det och för att veta hur vi skall leta behöver vi ha en uppfattning om vad liv är. Att försöka konstruera en definition av liv hjälper oss också att formulera våra tankar kring vad liv är. De flesta av oss har nog en intuitiv uppfattning av vad liv är, och kan i de flesta situationer utan problem skilja ut vad som är levande från vad som inte är det. Det finns dock (...) situationer när det inte är fullt så enkelt. Man är till exempel inte överens om huruvida virus är liv. Virus kan föröka sig och genomgår evolution men de har ingen egen metabolism vilket många hävdar är en nödvändig egenskap för att vara levande. Numera finns det också datorprogram som har vissa egenskaper gemensamma med sådant som vi normalt kallar liv. De kan till exempel föröka sig och genomgå en slags evolution. Däremot är de inte uppbyggda av DNA, och dessutom är de ju tillverkade av oss. Trots detta finns det de som vill hävda att datorprogram kan vara levande. Å andra sidan finns det desto fler som förnekar det. Många förnekar också att levande datorprogram alls är möjligt. De som gör det kan till exempel hävda att liv måste ha en viss form av kemisk bas eller vara ett resultat av naturligt urval i motsats till urval baserat på regler som vi människor har konstruerat. När man diskuterar utomjordiskt liv så blir det ofta ännu svårare att avgöra vad som är levande än när vi diskuterar liv här på jorden. Utomjordiskt liv kommer förmodligen att vara väldigt olikt det vi normalt kallar liv men någonting bör det ju ha gemensamt med livet på jorden för att det skall vara befogat att använda beteckningen liv om båda. När man letar efter liv i extrema miljöer här på jorden, och i ännu högre grad när man letar efter liv på andra himlakroppar, är det av avgörande betydelse att man har någon slags uppfattning om vad liv är. Det finns framför allt två skäl till det. Det ena är att man behöver kunna avgöra om det man hittar är liv. Det andra är att vi behöver bestämma oss för hur och var vi skall leta (resurserna för att leta efter liv är ju inte obegränsade). Man behöver till exempel välja rätt slags instrument som reagerar på rätt saker. För att kunna göra det behöver man veta vilka egenskaper man skall leta efter, det vill säga man behöver veta vad liv är. (shrink)

Feminists are divided on whether consent should be employed in legal definitions of rape. Catharine MacKinnon has criticized the usefulness of consent in enabling legal systems to recognize and prosecute instances of rape (MacKinnon 1989, 2005, 2016). In a recent article in this journal, Lisa H. Schwartzman defends the use of affirmative consent in rape law against MacKinnon’s critique (Schwartzman 2019). In contrast to MacKinnon, Schwartzman claims our understanding of rape must include both force and consent components. In this paper, (...) I will argue in agreement with Schwartzman and against MacKinnon that the legal definition of rape should include an affirmative consent component. I will take Schwartzman’s discussion as my point of departure and consider whether she has responded adequately to MacKinnon’s criticisms of consent. I will argue that her responses are not fully adequate. In particular, she has not successfully rebutted the argument that an appeal to consent is unnecessary once we have accepted an expanded definition of coercion. I will then provide a more affirmative defense of affirmative consent in response to MacKinnon’s most challenging criticism. (shrink)

William Lane Craig’s inuential kalam cosmological argument concludes that the universe has a cause of its beginning. Craig provides some supplementary reasoning to suggest that the first cause is God—a God that exists timelessly without the universe and temporally with the universe. I argue that Craig’s hypothesis about the nature of the first cause is impossible. In particular, it cannot be the case that God timelessly wills to create the universe and the universe begins to exist.

This paper traces the historical origins of Friedrich A. Hayek's theory of cultural evolution, and argues that Hayek's evolutionary thought was significantly inspired by Alexander M. Carr-Saunders and Oxford zoology. While traditional Hayek scholarship emphasizes the influence of Carl Menger and the British eighteenth-century moral philosophers, I claim that these sources underdetermine what was most characteristic of Hayek's theory, viz. the idea that cultural evolution is a matter of group selection, and the idea that natural selection operates on acquired as (...) well as on inherited properties. (shrink)

My concern in this paper is a debate between Pascal Engel and Richard Rorty documented in the book What’s the Use of Truth? Both Engel and Rorty problematize the natural suggestion that attaining truth is a goal of our inquiries. Where Rorty thinks this means that truth is not something we should aim for at all over and beyond justification, Engel maintains that truth still plays a distinct role in our intellectual and daily lives. Thus, the debate between Engel and (...) Rorty ends in a standoff. In the present paper, I question the claim that truth is not a goal of inquiry. I do so from the point of view of a systematic and general theory of rational goal-setting which has its roots in management science. I argue, in this connection, that Rorty’s central claim rests on a principle of goal-setting rationality that is generally invalid. The bottom line is that the goal of truth, like other visionary goals, is likely to have the positive effect of increasing motivation and effort, and this may offset the drawbacks which Rorty, rightly, calls attention to. In largely following Rorty in this regard, Engel is making one concession too much to his opponent. (shrink)

The three-tenet model, which focuses on ‘distributional justice’, ‘procedural justice’, and ‘justice as recognition’, has emerged as the most influential framework in the field of energy justice. Based on critical reviews of the three-tenet model, we identify three challenges that the model currently still faces: (i) a normative challenge on the grounding of the three-tenet model in philosophical theories; (ii) an ‘elite’ challenge on the justification of the use of power in energy-related decision; and (iii) a practical challenge on the (...) application of the three tenets in situations of conflicting justice demands. In this article, we provide the basic contours of a three-step pluralist and pragmatic dialogue model for questions of energy justice that addresses the three challenges, based on the ‘commonwealth model’ of Luc Boltanski and Laurent Thévenot. The model proposes to create moral legitimacy in the face of plural demands for energy justice by engaging actors in an inclusive dialogue based on an explicit recognition of Boltanski and Thévenot’s commonwealth model. We thereby make three contributions to the existing literature on energy justice. First, the commonwealth model’s rootedness in normative political theory provides a stronger philosophical underpinning than was available up till now in the literature (challenge 1). Second, it allows one to go beyond the (almost exclusive) focus on injustices perpetrated on disempowered or marginalised groups, to include questions on the justified exercise of power (challenge 2). Third, the commonwealth model shows us practical ways out of situations where conflicting demands for justice are being made (challenge 3). (shrink)

It is uncontroversial to claim that the extent to which health care interventions benefit patients is a relevant consideration for health care priority setting. However, when effects accrue to the individual patient, effects of a more indirect kind may accrue to other individuals as well, such as the patient's children, friends, or partner. If, and if so how, such relational effects should be considered relevant in priority setting is contentious. In this paper, we illustrate this question by using disease‐modifying drugs (...) for Alzheimer's disease as a case in point. The ethical analysis begins by sketching the so‐called prima facie case for ascribing moral weight to relational effects and then moves on to consider a number of objections to it. We argue that, whereas one set of objections may be dismissed, there is another set of arguments that poses more serious challenges for including relational effects in priority setting. (shrink)

In the small village of Kinnarumma in western Sweden an old wooden church was replaced by a new church buildning in the early twentieth century. The old church was de-sacralized by being moved to an open-air museum in Borås and used there for exhibitions and the storage of museum objects. The need for more church premises in the city led to the re-sacralization of the old church in 1930. The transition of Kinnarumma’s old wooden church to museum object, its museumification, (...) was an expression of change in religious heritage, and its re-sacralization expressed an unchanged part of the same heritage. (shrink)

Alfred Cuzán proposed five “laws of politics” that allegedly govern elections in democracies. Drawing from insights in the general philosophy of science and the philosophy of the social sciences, I argue that—although his empirical evidence is impressive—he failed to develop a convincing argument for calling the five theses “laws.” This article discusses other examples that often are claimed to be “laws of politics” and describes the global picture supporting this analysis.

Sokrates var inte bara en filosofisk nydanare. Genom sitt sätt att involvera sina samtalspartners i den filosofiska processen var han också i hög utsträckning en pedagogisk nydanare. Hans pedagogiska grundidé var den så kallade majeutiska metoden – det vill säga ”barnmorskemetoden”. Med det menade han att han inte överförde sina egna färdiga tankar till den han talade med utan han hjälpte sin samtalspartner att föda sina egna tankar. Inom pedagogiken är det vanligt att använda den så kallade ”Sokratiska metoden” vilket (...) i sin enklaste form bara innebär att man ställer frågor till studenterna. Den här artikeln kommer emellertid att handla om en mer sofistikerad metod som används för begreppsanalys/begreppsdefinition i grupp. Metoden är inspirerad av Sokrates men skiljer sig också en del från hur Sokrates själv grep sig an sina dialoger – åtminstone så som de beskrivs av Platon. Artikeln innehåller en kort historisk och pedagogisk bakgrund men syftar framför allt till att utgöra en praktisk vägledning för genomförande av sokratiska dialoger i filosofiundervisningen. Artikeln bygger framför allt på mina egna erfarenheter av att använda Sokratisk Dialog i undervisningen vid Filosofiska institutionen vid Lunds universitet, Lunds Tekniska Högskola, Sveriges Lantbruksuniversitet och i det privata näringslivet. Artikeln vänder sig till alla som undervisar i filosofi på universitetet eller gymnasiet eller i filosofiska metoder för studenter vid andra utbildningar, t.ex. värdeteori, vetenskapsteori eller tillämpad etik för ingenjörer eller medicinare – eller i vilket annat ämne som helst där det förekommer begrepp som saknar en enkel och knivskarp definition men som är viktiga för ämnet. (shrink)

My dissertation combines a historical case study with an argument derived from the philosophy of science. Why do states act the way they do, and how should foreign policy actions be explained? I begin by showing how existing explanations advanced both by historians and social scientists have problems incorporating intentional factors into the framework of their analyses. The historian will always be tempted to overwrite the meanings of the past with the meanings she constructs through her own narrative; the social (...) scientist is tempted to neglect intentions since they don't easily lend themselves to scientific manipulation. ;My own argument begins by trying to make sense of 'meaning.' We create meaning through metaphor and as we expand metaphors into narratives we come to see certain actions as required. Which stories that we do tell about ourselves, however, depends upon the audiences we address. Through our narratives we constantly seek support and recognition. Our narratives consequently perform two tasks. On the one hand they define what our interests are, but on the other hand, they also define our identities. On this basis I develop two different models for explaining action: one which explains action as undertaken in defense of interests, the other as undertaken in defense of an identity. ;The historical case study explains why Sweden went to war in 1630. Although historians traditionally have explained the action as undertaken for various economic, political or military reasons, I show that none of these factors can account for the intervention. 'Interests' were not at stake. Instead the action is best explained as a defense of a particular definition of a Swedish national identity. The country, and especially its king, was denied recognition as a legitimate actor in international politics, and it went to war in order to force the European powers to grant them the recognition that hadn't been granted freely. (shrink)

In “Ducking Friendly Fire: Davison on the Grounding Objection”, William Lane Craig responds to a statement of The Grounding Objection articulated by Scott Davison in “Craig on the Grounding Objection to Middle Knowledge”. According to Davison, unless we have an explanation of true counterfactuals that makes reference to actual human persons in specific situations we lack an adequate explanation of how counterfactuals of creaturely freedom could possibly be true. Drawing from and elaborating on Edward Wierenga’s response to The Grounding Objection (...) in “Providence, Middle Knowledge, and the Grounding Objection”, I formulate and motivate a view that satisfies the plausible requirement that the grounds for God’s knowledge of true counterfactuals of creaturely freedom are actually existent things while eschewing Davison’s implausibly strong requirement that the things in question must be specific human persons in specific situations. I conclude that, contrary to Davison, facts about uninstantiated human person essences can do at least some of the relevant explanatory work. (shrink)

This introductory article starts by describing the genesis of this special issue and the interconnection of its topics. The editors offer a variety of reading entries into the key-note articles and responses. The article reconstructs the research interests underpinning the idea of integrating meaningfulness, volunteers and citizenship. It highlights the explicit interdisciplinary design of the special issue, and shows how the key-note authors, and their respondents, weave connections between meaningfulness, volunteering and citizenship. And, finally, the editors bring the background understandings (...) of the key-note papers to the foreground, and reconstruct a non-intentional meta-level discussion on two fundamental concepts and their interplay: self and world. (shrink)