In this paper I suggest that we should identify panentheism on a scale, with deism at one extreme and pantheism at the other. The surprising outcome of the analysis is that many of the things which in the philosophical and theological debate are simply taken for granted as distinguishing panentheism from traditional theism turn out to be possible extension claims rather than core doctrines of these different conceptions of God. Nevertheless, I maintain that it remains possible to draw a line (...) between them. It is also emphasized that the greatest challenge many panentheists face is to give a convincing argument why we should think that God’s power can never be coercive, but must always be persuasive. The good news is that there is nothing in panentheism that requires that we must accept this particular doctrine. (shrink)

In this article I try to define more precisely what scientism is and how it is related to a traditional religion such as Christianity. By first examining the writing of a number of contemporary natural scientists (Francis Crick, Richard Dawkins, Stephen Hawking, Carl Sagan and Edward O. Wilson), I show that the concept can be given numerous different meanings. I propose and defend a distinction between epistemic, rationalistic, ontological, axiological and redemptive scientism and it is also explained why we should (...) not directly identify scientism with scientific materialism or scientific naturalism. (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)

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)

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)

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)

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.

Law and the Formation of Modern Europe explores processes of legal construction in both the national and supranational domains, and it provides an overview of the modern European legal order. In its supranational focus, it examines the sociological pressures which have given rise to European public law, the national origins of key transnational legal institutions and the elite motivations driving the formation of European law. In its national focus, it addresses legal questions and problems which have assumed importance in parallel (...) fashion in different national societies, and which have shaped European law more indirectly. Examples of this are the post-1914 transformation of classical private law, the rise of corporatism, the legal response to the post-1945 legacy of authoritarianism, the emergence of human rights law and the growth of judicial review. This two-level sociological approach to European law results in unique insights into the dynamics of national and supranational legal formation. (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)

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)

The aim of this article is to explore where and why religious naturalism differs from its rivals, and also to consider some of the challenges religious naturalism faces. I argue that religious naturalism is best conceived as a reaction against both theists who are religious and naturalists who are atheists: the best option is taken to be a naturalist who is religious. Nevertheless, it is quite difficult to say more exactly what claims the view contains. In fact, it is argued, (...) three forms of religious naturalism must be distinguished and contrasted with their rivals, which are taken to be non-religious naturalism, scientific naturalism, theism (including panentheism), divine transcendentalism, religious agnosticism, and religious relativism. (shrink)

It is often assumed that there is a hard line between theistic evolution (TE) and intelligent design (ID). Many theistic evolutionists subscribe to the idea that God only acts through natural processes, as opposed to the ID assertion that God, at certain points in natural history, has acted in a direct manner; directly causing particular features of the world. In this article, I argue that theistic evolutionists subscribe to what might be called Natural Divine Causation (NDC). NDC does not merely (...) provide a nonsupernaturalist and noninterventionist model of divine action, it provides a line of demarcation between TE and ID. I make the critique that NDC is philosophically untenable and argue, consequently, that the line between TE and ID is blurred. (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)

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

I address the issue of whether differences in ethical theory have any relevance for the practical issues of environmental management and policy making. Norton’s answer, expressed as a convergence hypothesis, is that environmentalists are evolving toward a consensus in policy even though they remain divided regarding basic values. I suggest that there are good reasons for rejecting Norton’s position.I elaborate on these reasons, first, by distinguishing between different forms of anthropocentrism and nonanthropocentrism, second, by contrasting the different goals that anthropocentrists, (...) biocentrists, and ecocentrists set up for environmental policy making, and, lastly, by identifying three important policy areas (population growth, wilderness preservation, and wildlife management) where differences in basic values generate divergent policies. (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 essay, I maintain that although atheism, minimally construed, consists simply of the belief that there is no God or gods, atheists must embrace a secular worldview of one kind or another. Since they cannot be without a worldview, atheists must develop an alternative to the religious, especially the theistic, worldviews which they, by implication, reject. Further, I argue that there are, at the very least, two options available to atheists and that these should not be conflated or treated (...) as one and the same. The two options that I explore and distinguish are scientism and secular humanism. I also maintain that the things that might count as good grounds for or against secular or religious worldviews are shaped significantly by whether atheists embrace scientism or secular humanism. (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)

This book approaches post-truth and relativism in a multidisciplinary fashion. Researchers from astrophysics, philosophy, psychology, media studies, religious studies, anthropology, social epistemology and sociology discuss and analyse the impact of relativism and post-truth both within the academy and in society at large. The motivation for this multidisciplinary approach is that relativism and post-truth are multifaceted phenomena with complex histories that have played out differently in different areas of society and different academic disciplines. There is hence a multitude of ways in (...) which to use and understand the concepts and the phenomena to which they refer, and a multitude of critiques and defenses as well. No single volume can capture the ongoing discussions in different areas in all their complexity, but the different chapters of the book can function as exemplifications of the ramifications these phenomena have had. (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.

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.

Mikael Stenmark examines four models of rationality and argues for a discussion of rationality that takes into account the function and aim of such human practices as science and religion.

In this article, I defend my previous argument that natural divine causation suffers under the problem of causal overdetermination and that it cannot serve as a line of demarcation between theistic evolution (TE) and intelligent design (ID). I do this in light of Christoffer Skogholt's critique of my article. I argue that Skogholt underestimates the naturalistic ambitions of some current thinkers in TE and fails, therefore, to adequately respond to my main argument. I also outline how partial causation better serves (...) as a model for the relationship between God's providence and evolution. (shrink)

In The Blank Slate: The Modern Denial of Human Nature , Steven Pinker maintains that at present there are three competing views of human nature—a Christian theory, a "blank slate" theory (what I call a social constructivist theory), and a Darwinian theory—and that the last of these will triumph in the end. I argue that neither the outcome of such competition nor the particular content of these theories is as clear as Pinker believes. In this essay I take a critical (...) as well as a constructive look at the challenge presented by a Darwinian theory of human nature—a challenge to the social sciences and the humanities and also to theology and more specifically to a Christian understanding of human nature. (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)

There exists a significant disparity within society between individuals in terms of intelligence. While intelligence varies naturally throughout society, the extent to which this impacts on the life opportunities it affords to each individual is greatly undervalued. Intelligence appears to have a prominent effect over a broad range of social and economic life outcomes. Many key determinants of well-being correlate highly with the results of IQ tests, and other measures of intelligence, and an IQ of 75 is generally accepted as (...) the most important threshold in modern life. The ability to enhance our cognitive capacities offers an exciting opportunity to correct disabling natural variation and inequality in intelligence. Pharmaceutical cognitive enhancers, such as modafinil and methylphenidate, have been shown to have the capacity to enhance cognition in normal, healthy individuals. Perhaps of most relevance is the presence of an ‘inverted U effect’ for most pharmaceutical cognitive enhancers, whereby the degree of enhancement increases as intelligence levels deviate further below the mean. Although enhancement, including cognitive enhancement, has been much debated recently, we argue that there are egalitarian reasons to enhance individuals with low but normal intelligence. Under egalitarianism, cognitive enhancement has the potential to reduce opportunity inequality and contribute to relative income and welfare equality in the lower, normal intelligence subgroup. Cognitive enhancement use is justifiable under prioritarianism through various means of distribution; selective access to the lower, normal intelligence subgroup, universal access, or paradoxically through access primarily to the average and above average intelligence subgroups. Similarly, an aggregate increase in social well-being is achieved through similar means of distribution under utilitarianism. In addition, the use of cognitive enhancement within the lower, normal intelligence subgroup negates, or at the very least minimises, several common objections to cognitive enhancement. Subsequently, this paper demonstrates that there is a compelling case for cognitive enhancement use in individuals with lower, normal intelligence. (shrink)

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)

Understanding has received growing interest from epistemologists in recent years, but no consensus regarding its epistemic properties has yet been reached. This paper extracts, but also rejects, candidates of epistemic properties for construing an epistemological model of understanding from the writings of epistemologists participating in the current discussion surrounding that state. On the basis of these results, a suggestion is put forward according to which understanding is a non-basic epistemic state of warrant rather than knowledge. It is argued that this (...) move provides a satisfactory conciliatory answer to the central question whether understanding is a factive epistemic state. Some differences between understanding and knowledge are recorded along the way: for instance, that in contrast to knowledge, understanding does not require belief and that, even though neither knowledge nor understanding iterates, so that a subject can both know without knowing that she knows, as well as understanding without understanding that she understands, the reasons for the failure is different. (shrink)

In this comment-response Mikael Lindfelt makes some suggestions to how one could develop the argument for witnessing as experiencing meaningfulness in life as put forward by Nicole Note and Emilie Van Deale. While being positive to the main phenomenological approach, and especially the dialectical relational aspect of the phenomenological argument, Lindfelt uses Alain Badiou’s talk of Event in trying both to develop the phenomenological argument and to point out some idealistic tendencies in the line of the argument. Lindfelt suggests (...) that the aspect of uniqueness in the relational experience of the other should be taken to more radically than suggested by Note and Van Deale. By pointing out the dialectical fragility of the Event of witnessing Lindfelt is arguing for that the concept of respect could be more utilized in arguing for the experience of meaning seen as a gift. (shrink)

This article presents a sociological perspective that suggests that technology should be seen as a means for groups to retain or rearrange social relations. Claiming, first, that the sociotechnical systems approach in technology-and-society studies often tend to bring out harmony and cooperation as an ideal and, second, that central social construc tivists tend to interpret closure and stabilization processes in terms of consensus, this article, instead, argues that technology should be regarded as the outcome of conflicting interests and ideas. To (...) make the perspective plausible, a number of analytic concepts are put forth and illustrated, some case studies are reinterpreted in conflict language, and a few tentative research hypotheses are formulated. (shrink)

This study of three different approaches to social structure finds Pleasants’s ideas for the use of different concepts of social structure intriguing but based on an untenable view about the possibility to discern an empirical modality. Porpora’s approach is based on the idea that the relational concept of social structure cannot be bypassed, ontologically speaking. Easton’s idea is to apply the two relational concepts of higher-order and lower-order structure. Relational structures are also salient in the specific scholarly debate studied, which (...) strengthens the idea that it is this concept of social structure that we primarily should focus on. (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)