Can science tell us everything there is to know about reality? The intellectual and practical successes of science have led some scientists to think that there are no real limits to the competence of science, and no limits to what can be achieved in the name of science. Accordingly, science has no boundaries; it will eventually answer all our problems. This view (and similar views) have been called Scientism. In this important book scientists' views about science and its relationship to (...) knowledge, ethics and religion are subjected to critical scrutiny. A number of distinguished natural scientists have advocated Scientism in one form or another - Francis Crick, Richard Dawkins, Carl Sagan, and Edward O. Wilson - and their impressive impact both inside and outside the sciences is considered. Clarifying what Scientism is, this book proceeds to evaluate its key claims, expounded in questions such as: Is it the case that science can tell us everything there is to know about reality? Can science tell us how we morally ought to live and what the meaning of life is? Can science in fact be our new religion? Ought we to become "science believers"? Stenmark addresses these and similar issues, concluding that Scientism is not really science but disguised materialism or naturalism; its advocates fail to see this, not being sufficiently aware that their arguments presuppose the previous acceptance of certain extra-scientific or philosophical beliefs. (shrink)

Pictures let us see what is not there. Or rather, since what pictures depict is not really there, we do not really see the things they are pictures of. Ever since Richard Wollheim introduced the notion of seeing-in into philosophical aesthetics, as part of his theory of depiction, there has been a lively debate about how, precisely, to understand this experience. However, one (alleged) feature of seeing-in that Wollheim pointed to has been almost completely absent in the subsequent discussion, namely (...) that seeing-in allows for non-localization. When looking at a picture, Wollheim says, there is not always an answer to the question of where one sees a certain thing in a picture. If Wollheim is right in this, pictures indeed let us see what is not there: we see things in pictures, but there is no ‘there’ where we see those things. In this paper I argue against Wollheim's claim that object-seeing-in allows for non-localization. But there is, I argue, a pictorial experience, which is closely tied to seeing-in and which is non-localized, namely (what I call) pictorial perceptual presence. (shrink)

It is suggested (1) that motivation must not be overlooked, (2) that most social imitation does not involve novel behaviors, and (3) that newborn babies do imitate.

Ostracism—being excluded and ignored—thwarts satisfaction of four fundamental needs: belonging, self-esteem, control, and meaningful existence. The current study investigated whether training participants to focus their attention on the here-and-now reduces distress from an ostracism experience. Participants were first trained in either focused or unfocused attention, and then played Cyberball, an online ball-tossing game for which half the participants were included or ostracized. Participants reported their levels of need satisfaction during the game, and after a short delay. Whereas both training groups (...) experienced the same degree of need-threat in the immediate measure, participants who were trained in focused attention showed more recovery for the delayed measure. We reason that focused attention would not reduce the distress during the ostracism experience, but it aided in recovery by preventing participants from reliving the ostracism experience after it concludes. (shrink)

The purpose of this article is to discuss reconciliation in workplace bullying contexts. Bullying is a complex and subtle phenomenon that appears in multilayered workplace contexts, which makes reconciliation a controversial issue. What might reconciliation mean in escalated and deeply harmful bullying processes in ordinary workplaces? By discussing this question, I also address the urgent ethical question of justice and the distribution of responsibilities in reconciliatory processes. Drawing from previous research on bullying interventions, primarily focusing on the views of interventions (...) by HR professionals, I trace underlying assumptions about reconciliation and the human beings involved. These tend to be derived from endeavors for financial gain and virtues like efficiency and predictability. As an alternative frame to an individualist approach that seem to be silently operative in the intervention discourse, I seek to explore the ontological imagery of the social body. From there, I elaborate on potential implications of what reconciliation could mean in a workplace bullying context. Resisting the efficiency and predictability of fixed procedures, I suggest organic, social restorative processes of renarration, responsibility, and grace, from within which reconciliation may appear as one among other potential outcomes. (shrink)

Aus dem Inhalt: Views from the North: Hans Petter Graver: Law, Justice and the State: Nordic Perspectives u Jacob Dahl Rendtorff: The Danish Welfare State: Philosophical Ideals and Systemic Reality u Sigri!Dur *orgeirsdottir: Feminist Ethics and Feminist Politics u Kuellike Lengi: The Situation of Human Rights in Estonia u Einar Palsson: Pythagoras and Early Icelandic Law u Law, Discourse and Rationality: Mats Flodin: Internal and External Rationality of Legal Systems u Logi Gunnarsson: A Discourse About Discourse u Hjordi!s Hakonardottir: Legal (...) Language: A Tool of Justice u Ghita Holmstrom-Hintikka: On the Use of Expert Witness in Legal Reasoning and Inquiry u Law, State and Nation: Agust H. Ing*orsson: Democracy, Bureaucracy and Marginalization of the State u Aleksander Peczenik: Law-State, Legal Certainty and Legitimacy of Law u Ove K. Pedersen/Sverre Raffnsoe: Reorganizing Society u Juha Raikka: Mill on National Sentiment u Pall Skulason: Concepts of the State and Classes of Value u Problems of Law and Rights: Britt-Mari Blegvad: How to Cope With Uncertainty: Trust and Law u Jon Wetlesen: Animal Rights or Human Duties?. (shrink)

The aim of this paper is to provide a case for the double-halfer position in the sleeping beauty. This case relies on the use of the so-called imaging rule for probabilistic dynamics as a substitute for conditionalization. It is argued that the imaging rule is the appropriate one for dealing with belief change in sleeping beauty and that under natural assumptions, this rule results in the double-halfer position.

Modern social orders are legitimized by the ideal of freedom. Most conceptions of this ideal are theorized against the backdrop of nature understood as governed by its own laws beyond the realm of the social. However, such an understanding of nature is now being challenged by the ‘Anthropocene’ hypothesis. This article investigates the consequences of this hypothesis for freedom as an ideal legitimizing social order. We begin by discussing the conception of legitimation, after which we examine three classical notions of (...) freedom (developed by Hobbes, Kant, and Hegel), in light of the Anthropocene. Following our claim that these notions all have severe weaknesses in view of the Anthropocene, we argue that modern social orders are facing a new legitimation crisis. Such a crisis, we suggest, involves a ‘brutalization of social conflicts’, which under the conditions of the Anthropocene assumes the form of geo-social conflict. (shrink)

This paper investigates some epistemic properties that distinguish understanding from knowledge. In particular, the focus is on how to spell out the notion of grasping the relationships between propositions that constitute objectual understanding: what kind of epistemic access is required for grasping to occur and to what extent is the act of grasping voluntary? A modest form of access is suggested as an answer to the first question and a largely negative answer to the second. The worry that my suggestion (...) is too permissive in crediting subjects with understanding is addressed. The results are then finally briefly contrasted to Ernest Sosa’s notion of knowing full well where one contrast precisely concerns the voluntary character of the respective epistemic states. (shrink)

In this book these opposing views are presented, critically discussed, and replaced with a badly needed conciliatory model of science and religion.Written by ...

This paper proposes a new externalist account of defeaters, in terms of reliable indicators, as an integral part of a unified externalist account of warrant and defeat. It is argued that posing externalist conditions on warrant, but internalist conditions on defeat lead to undesirable tensions. The proposal is contrasted to some rival accounts and then tested on some widely discussed cases, like the airport case. Misleading defeaters, where Laurence BonJour’s reliable clairvoyants serve as examples, also receive treatment, partly because they (...) illustrate how internalist constraints are inserted into the set up of the problem and therefore unduly constrain the domain of satisfactory solutions. Lastly, the proposal is defended against some objections. Firstly, that by posing externalist conditions on defeat, the account becomes too open. Secondly, that an externalist account fails to take into account the epistemic assessments of our fellows in the epistemic practice of forming beliefs and making epistemic claims, which can be based on accessible warrant only. (shrink)

Contemporary decision theory places crucial emphasis on a family of mathematical results called representation theorems, which relate criteria for evaluating the available options to axioms pertaining to the decision-maker’s preferences. Various claims have been made concerning the reasons for the importance of these results. The goal of this article is to assess their semantic role: representation theorems are purported to provide definitions of the decision-theoretic concepts involved in the evaluation criteria. In particular, this claim shall be examined from the perspective (...) of philosophical theories of the meaning of theoretical terms. (shrink)

Ever since their invention, photographic images have often been thought to be a special kind of image. Often, photography has been claimed to be a particularly realistic medium. At other times, photographs are said to be epistemically superior to other types of image. Yet another way in which photographs apparently are special is that our subjective experience of looking at photographs seems very different from our experience of looking at other types of image, such as paintings and drawings. While the (...) other seemingly distinctive aspects of photography have been quite thoroughly discussed in the literature, theories of the experience of photography, or in other words, theories of its special phenomenology, are less common. To be sure, the phenomenon has often been pointed out and described, but explanations of the phenomenology of photography are rare. In this essay, I attempt an explanation of at least part of the phenomenology of photography by appealing to the idea, borrowed from André Bazin, that a photograph is a certain kind of trace. Along the way, it is also argued that Kendall Walton's so called “transparency thesis” cannot give a plausible explanation of the phenomenology associated with looking at photographs. (shrink)

In this article, I call into question the relevance of emergence theories as presently used by thinkers in the science–religion discussion. Specifically, I discuss theories of emergence that have been used by both religious naturalists and proponents of panentheism. I argue for the following conclusions: (1) If we take the background theory to be metaphysical realism, then there seems to be no positive connection between the reality of emergent properties and the validity of providing reality with a religious interpretation, though (...) one could perhaps construe an argument for the positive ontological status of emergence as a negative case for a religious worldview. (2) To be considered more plausible, religious naturalism should interpret religious discourse from the perspective of pragmatic realism. (3) Panentheistic models of divine causality are unable to avoid ontological dualism. (4) It is not obvious that emergent phenomena and/or properties are nonreducible in the ontological sense of the terms; indeed, the tension between weak and strong emergence makes it difficult for the emergentist to make ontological judgments. My general conclusion is that the concept of emergence has little metaphysical significance in the dialogue between science and theology. (shrink)

Provides a robust theoretical and methodological framework for researching of resistance and social change.

abstract Individuals tend to change their behaviour as a response to insurance. Such behavioural responses to insurance are commonly seen as ethically and morally problematic. This is especially true of effects on behaviour from social insurance. These effects have been seen as an ethical problem, associated with irresponsibility, fraud and an immoral character. This article discusses the relevance of four different types of reasons for claims that behavioural responses to social insurance are immoral. These reasons are independent reasons con‐tract related (...) reasons reasons related to fraud and reasons related to justice. I argue that reasons related to justice are most relevant, but that this type of reason does not render the individual morally blameworthy. Hence, insofar as behavioural responses to social insurance are an ethical problem it is a problem that concerns the institution, i.e. what incentives social insurance exhibits, rather than the individual, i.e. the morality of the individual responding to it. Insofar as behavioural responses to social insurance are an ethical problem it is a problem for political philosophy rather than individual ethics. (shrink)

Dans un environnement organisationnel instable et concurrentiel, l'usage des outils de groupware serait tributaire de la convergence entre, d'une part, les formes de communication permises par ces outils et, d'autre part, les stratégies relationnelles mises en oeuvre pour développer la confiance entre les acteurs. Les pratiques de collaboration qui font appel aux technologies informatiques de travail en groupe dépendraient alors de cette logique d'usage. Une recherche empirique, réalisée dans des entreprises et des centres de recherche de la Silicon Valley, conforte (...) ces hypothèses.In a changing and competitive organizational environment, the use of groupware tools seems to rely on the convergence of the communication allowed by these tools and the relational strategies necessary to develop trust. Consequently, computer supported collaborative practices would depend on this logic of use. Empirical research realised in firms and in research centres in Silicon Valley tends to confirm these hypotheses. (shrink)

This paper provides a survey of contemporary religious naturalism. It presents reductive and non‐reductive versions of religious naturalism, and some arguments in favour of this naturalistic perspective. Finally, it discusses three crucial demarcation issues that contemporary religious naturalism faces.

Means of transportation are changing through advances in automation. One issue to be considered in this development is public opinion regarding these systems, yet existing studies of automated transportation do not provide theoretical or methodological means for exploring public imagination, even though this would be relevant in exploring public acceptance of future technologies. Applied for studying public views on a future automated metro system, a method was devised that includes quantitative and qualitative analysis of media and questionnaire data. Although supportive (...) arguments dominated media discussion, people’s attitudes were negative. The two most prominent models of media influence, repetition and cultural resonance, could not fully explain the results; therefore, public imagination, which reflected daily experiences and science fiction, was explored with reference to social representations literature. It is suggested in general that public imagination, along with media discourses and societal settings that contribute to explanations, should be considered in the design and study of automated systems. It is also discussed that the social representations approach could be beneficial for media frame studies by providing explications as to why certain frames might have or lack cultural resonance. (shrink)

Ansel Adams pointed to an analogy between photography and music, in particular to similarities between, on the one hand, negatives and prints in photography, and, on the other hand, scores and performances in classical music. Dawn M. Wilson uses her ‘multi-stage view’ of photography to (among other things) make the analogy more precise. She also invites others to expand on the analogy. In this piece I do so by, first, discussing darkness in photography and silence in music; and, second, covers (...) or versions in music and in photography. (shrink)

There is a growing literature on how scientific experts understand risk of technology related to their disciplinary field. Previous research shows that experts have different understandings and perspectives depending on disciplinary culture, organizational affiliation, and how they more broadly look upon their role in society. From a practice-based perspective on risk management as a bottom-up activity embedded in work place routines and everyday interactions, we look, through an ethnographic lens, at the laboratory life of nanoscientists. In the USA and Sweden, (...) two categories of nanoscientists have been studied: upstream scientists who are mainly electrical and physical engineers and downstream scientists who are toxicologists, often with a more multidisciplinary background, including physics, chemistry, biology, and engineering. The results show that although the two groups of scientists share the same norms of appropriate laboratory conduct to promote safety and good science practice, they have very different perspectives on risk with nanomaterials. Upstream scientists downplay risk; they emphasize the innovative potential of the new materials to which they express an affectionate and personalized stance. The downstream scientists, instead, focus on the uncertainties and unpredictability of nanomaterials and they see some materials as potentially highly dangerous. The results highlight the ambiguous and complex role of scientific experts in policy processes about the risk and regulation of nanotechnology. (shrink)

Both evolutionary theory and Christian faith have a number of things to say about human beings. Evolutionists claim that humans are animals with a bipedal walk, an erect posture, and a large brain, while Christians maintain that, like everything else, human beings are created by God, but that, in contrast to other things on earth, we humans are also created in the image of God. This much is clear, but do either evolutionists or Christians also claim that there is such (...) a thing as a human nature? Or, even if evolutionary theory and Christian faith do not say so explicitly, should we nevertheless assume that they embrace such a view implicitly? In this essay, I argue that we should give an affirmative answer to these questions. I also try to clarify more precisely what it means to say that something has a nature. (shrink)

This chapter proposes a version of epistemic contextualism, called inferentialist contextualism, as a promising research program within African epistemology. My suggestion should be seen against the background of the earlier debate between the seemingly incompatible positions of universalism and particularism. Whilst universalism has been charged with not allowing for diversity, of forcing African culture into the Procrustean bed of Western thought, particularism seems to block cross-cultural dialogue. A compromise is therefore called for. I argue that inferentialist contextualism can fill this (...) need. One promising feature is that whilst traditional epistemology always places the burden of justification on the subject of knowledge, inferentialist contextualism distinguishes between three different contexts: except for the traditional one, a second where the burden of proof is shared by both the subject and any fellow who might challenge the belief and a third context where the burden lies solely on the inquiring fellow. The notion of default entitlement depicts beliefs falling within this third context and will be elaborated in some detail here. I argue that inferential contextualism permits greater contextual variety than traditional epistemology without collapsing into relativism. (shrink)

This study analyses a Christic vision perceived by a woman during a radiotherapy session for her cervical cancer. A detailed description of the vision is presented based on a photographic documentation of the radiotherapy room, a painting of the vision made by the visionary herself and narratives retold two weeks after the vision, and again, one year later. Perceptual, social, and psychodynamic psychological theories are used to analyze the psychological prerequisites of the vision. It is shown that the vision is, (...) in psychological terms, an illusion rather than a hallucination. Different possible origin mechanisms to the vision are discussed as well as why the vision is attributed to Jesus. The psychological function of the vision is analyzed with regard to the visionary’s religious behaviour and the role of this experience in coping with the cancer disease. It is argued that the visionary’s religious commitment is being strengthened and that the vision functions as a catalyst for previously-formed religious coping mechanisms. It also initiates at least one new kind of religious coping mechanism in the visionary’s coping system. A critical discussion of research methods concerning narratives of religious experiences is presented in the light of the results of the analyses undertaken in this paper where some problems with in-depth interviews conducted at one point in time are is highlighted. This kind of data collection appears more fragile when attempting to explain a phenomenon in terms of cause and events than when trying to understand a phenomenon. (shrink)

In the current discussion on epistemic value, several philosophers argue that understanding enjoys higher epistemological significance and epistemic value than knowledge—the epistemic state the epistemological tradition has been preoccupied with. By noting a tension between the necessary conditions for understanding in the perhaps most prominent of these philosophers, Jonathan Kvanvig, this paper disputes the higher epistemological relevance of understanding. At the end, on the basis of the results of the previous sections, some alternative comparative contrasts between knowledge and understanding are (...) briefly explored, including one in which an analogue to the KK-principle for knowledge, the “UU-principle”, does not hold for a different reason than that for which the former principle fails. (shrink)

ABSTRACTThis article explains the implications and benefits of founding transdisciplinary collaborations of knowledge production in critical realism. We call such equal partnerships of researchers and practitioners knowledge alliances. Drawing on the distinction between the referent to which we refer and our references, we show that practitioners can contribute to the process of knowledge production by providing access to referents and producing references but also by achieving societal relevance. In order to accomplish excellence, knowledge production should be organized in ways that (...) engage different types of knowledge in a constructive interplay and use the respective strong points of researchers and practitioners. Abduction and retroduction, two modes of inference vital to critical realism, are particularly inclined to benefit from involving practitioners in knowledge production. We call such an approach potential-oriented and put... (shrink)

Over the lifetime of Conversation Analysis (CA), scholars have discovered many systems of action organisation (machineries) describing how conversational turns occur, what actions are expected, and how intersubjectivity in conversation is maintained. However, when John Heritage proposed a new machinery that examines the knowledge orientation of participants in interactions, a debate broke out between conversation analysts in which Michael Lynch and his colleagues in radical ethnomethodology descend upon on epistemics. The controversy begins with Lynch accusing Heritage of cognitivism and the (...) extra-situational nature of epistemics, while research on ethnomethodology and conversation analysis has traditionally focused on situated action. The discussion of epistemics points to an internal tension in CA as to where the boundaries of situations lie and what, therefore, can be the focus of CA. This article reactualises the problem of situationality in CA by analysing the arguments in the debate on epistemics. The authors show that epistemics and the debates surrounding it constitute a serious test for CA, revealing a conceptual problem that has hitherto been obscured - the relation and potential hierarchy of different machineries. Turning to the origins of the concept of situationality in the writings of Goffman and Sacks, the authors demonstrate that for opposing sides, the localisation of phenomena within situations is an analytical decision about what can be seen in empirical data. In contrast, distinguishing between the position of the analyst and the participant in the interaction shifts the analyst's attention to how the machineries become relevant to the interactants, that is, how their omnirelevance is realised. The authors argue that this is a more productive formulation of the question than that of the boundaries of the situation. (shrink)

The present paper focuses on the nurse–patient relationship in forensic psychiatric care. From research in the field six categories of nurse–patient interactions are identified: ‘building and sustaining relationships’, ‘supportive/encouraging interactions’, ‘social skills training’, ‘reality orientation’, ‘reflective interactions’ and ‘practical skills training’. The content of each category of interaction in the context of forensic psychiatric care is described. A conceptual model is presented together with an empirical, philosophical and theoretical foundation for the use of verbal and social interactions in nurse–patient interactions (...) in forensic psychiatric nursing care. The implications and possible uses of the model in the practical field of forensic psychiatric care are discussed. (shrink)

What is it to see something in a picture? Most accounts of pictorial experience—or, to use Richard Wollheim’s term, ‘seeing-in’—seek, in various ways, to explain it in terms of how pictures somehow display the looks of things. However, some ‘things’ that we apparently see in pictures do not display any ‘look.’ In particular, most pictures depict empty space, but empty space does not seem to display any ‘look’—at least not in the way material objects do. How do we see it (...) in pictures, if we do? In this chapter, I offer an account of pictorial perception of empty space by elaborating on Wollheim’s claim that ‘seeing-in’ is permeable to thought. I end by pointing to the aesthetic relevance of seeing—or not seeing—empty space in pictures. (shrink)

This paper will argue that panentheism fails to avoid ontological dualism, and that the naturalistic assumption being employed in panentheism undermines the idea of God acting in physical reality. Moreover, given panentheism’s lack of success with respect to avoiding dualism, it becomes unclear to what extent panentheism represents a naturalistic approach in the dialogue between science and religion.

This study addresses the Bible as a coping tool in a sample of Swedish practising Christians living with cancer, gathered through a qualitative, in-depth interview study, on religious experiences and expressions that serve in the process of coping with a life situation changed by the disease. Through content analyses, and case studies combining tools from Pargament’s coping theory with, above all, role theory, it is shown that the Bible is a part of the coping process for approximately half of the (...) informants. Furthermore, the Bible plays very different roles in the coping process, even for one single person. In the analyzed material, two different ways of using the Bible in the coping process occurs: Biblical passages as bearer of meaning for the informants, and the actual reading as such of the Bible. The former with two different functions in the coping process: (a) in the Biblical passages, see a direct appeal from God to the individual on a personal level and (b) a specific character in a Bible passage serves as an object of identification for the informant. In the coping process, the Bible provides coping tools for the identified coping methods meditative reading, role taking, and (re)interpretation of biblical passages (motivated by a religious tradition). As such, it mainly serves within the framework of the preserving comprehensive coping method. It is also shown that there are changes in the use of the Bible in connection with the changed life situation, as a result of the disease. (shrink)

The world is in constant flux—this handy book helps make sense of it. From business cycles to budding trends, models make sense of a world that never stops spinning. The Change Book delivers 52 simple and effective models—each with a visual component—about how change happens. Drawing on myth-busting theories and breakthrough discoveries from thinkers of all stripes, Mikael Krogerus and Roman Tschäppeler, authors of the international bestseller The Decision Book, apply their characteristic wit and knack for the succinct to (...) show what fuels the internet, why empires rise and fall, and why change hurts—but ultimately helps us grow. Whether you’re starting a new job, lobbying for a cause, or wondering how Jesus would invest, The Change Book is your clever guide through transformations in business, culture, technology, relationships, and more. (shrink)

This study addresses the psychological functions of physical religious objects in religious coping by presenting case studies on the use of prayer cloths. The cases are selected from a qualitative, in-depth interview study among Swedish practising Christians suffering from cancer, on religious experiences and expressions that serve in the process of coping with a life situation changed by the disease. It is argued that current psychological theories on coping and religion lack tools for understanding the role of physical religious objects (...) in the process of religious coping. A theoretical framework that remedies this problem is suggested and applied to the case studies. The key feature of the theoretical framework is that it modifies and extends the coping theory of Kenneth Pargament by drawing on resources from object relations theory, especially the concept of “transitional object”. The results suggests that the creation and/or handling of transitional objects is a reconstructing or preserving coping method, and that prayer cloths function as transitional objects when they facilitate transition/movement between the inner subjective world and the outer objective world by being charged with significance, and function as a coping tool for conserving this significance. (shrink)