This special issue of Etikk i praksis features papers that articulate and discuss approaches and methodology that seek to make normative research activity and research output productive in contexts of ongoing societal and technological decision-making. The articles in various ways and to a varying degree exemplify and reflect on the methodology of the study of normativity in innovation.

ABSTRACTDepression is marked by rigid thinking and the inability to generate different and more positive views on the self. The current study conceptualises this a perspective-taking deficit, which is defined as a deficit in the ability to overcome one’s egocentrism. Previous research has demonstrated that individuals with depression are impaired in Theory of Mind reasoning and empathy – two social cognitions that involve cognitive and affective perspective-taking. Here, it was investigated whether these deficits generalise to visuo-spatial perspective-taking. To test this, (...) a convenience sample completed a test-battery including measures of cognitive and visuo-spatial perspective-taking and closely matched cognitive and visuo-spatial control tasks. The results showed that individuals exhibiting high levels of depressive symptoms were specifically impaired on both perspective-taking tasks but performed equally well on the cont... (shrink)

Profound transformations in the composition, performance and reception of modernist music have taken place in recent decades. This collection brings fresh perspectives to bear upon key questions surrounding the forms that musical modernism takes today, how modern music is performed and heard, and its relationship to earlier music. In sixteen chapters, leading figures in the field and emerging scholars examine modernist music from the inside, in terms of changing practices of composition, musical materials and overarching aesthetic principles, and from the (...) outside, in terms of the changing contextual frameworks in which musical modernism has taken place and been understood. Shaped by a 'rehearing' of modernist music, the picture that emerges redraws the map of musical modernism as a whole and presents a full-scale re-evaluation of what the modernist movement has all been about. (shrink)

Coming from a Nordic environment, professionally working in teacher education, both authors engaged in developmental work and research in the Uluguru mountains in Tanzania. The research is carried out in a community-based organization for vulnerable youth, Mgeta Orphan Education Foundation, which builds on principles of action learning and action research. We have followed and participated in the development of the organization since 2010, and this article builds on data gathered in 2016-17. We will show and discuss some of the transformations (...) we have witnessed, mainly in the older members. The transformations seem to have an emergent character, and we examine further factors we have seen as crucial for transforming the lives of the young people in the orphan education project. Surprisingly, duty was a factor coming forth in the data. The youth perceived duty in a relational way, mainly caused by inner motivation nurtured by the example of their coordinator, Solomon, and by facing the continuous, emergent need for assistance in their local communities. Less surprisingly, belonging transpired as a fundamental factor. Previously, we have analyzed the transformational learning among the youngsters, and identified a set of transformational tools. Building on the transformational tools, we have derived a model for Relational Transformation. Transformative action research is the approach we follow, and one aim of this article is to contribute to the understanding of the reciprocity of transformative processes in transformative research. (shrink)

I discuss three recent counterexamples to the transitivity of grounding due to Jonathan Schaffer. I argue that the counterexamples don’t work and draw some conclusions about the relationship between grounding and explanation.

Three nature images influence the environmental policies of major American corporations. Successively they are images of the (1) unfouled nest, (2) protected habitat, and (3) uncontaminated environment. Each contains unexpected surprises for its corporation, however. Polaroid, for example, does not foul its company precincts, but is now a Superfund Potentially Responsible Party for its deposited wastes in its home and neighboring states. This anomaly thus extends its unfouled-nest image to its dumpsites and beyond, but also implodes upon its workplace. Parallel (...) extensions and inversions affect Martin Marietta's favored image of the protected habitat and Union Carbide's of the uncontaminated environment. These are shown with references to Kant and to Aristotle, but a concluding moral compares further neglect of the full consequences of such images to Dante's allegorical Circles 4 and 5 of Hell. (shrink)

Fine (2012) is a pluralist about grounding. He holds that there are three fundamentally distinct notions of grounding: metaphysical, normative, and natural. Berker (2017) argues for monism on the grounds that the pluralist cannot account for certain principles describing how the distinct notions of grounding interact. This paper defends pluralism. By building on work by Fine (2010) and Litland (2015) I show how the pluralist can systematically account for Berker's interaction principles.

Habermas claims that the concept of ?communicative action? can be explained by illocutionary acts alone. It appears tó me that his explanation collapses into a sort of intentional theory (2[i]). Habermas maintains further that a speech act consists of three components which are ?correlated? to three worlds and to three validity claims. However, he also seems to mean that all worlds and validity claims are correlated to just one; the so?called propositional component. One consequence is that the propositional content, not (...) the illocutionary act, determines the main mode of at least some speech acts. Another is that the T as used in an expressive speech act will occur in the propositional part of the act and not, as claimed by Habermas, in the performative sentence (2[iii]). In 2(ii) two other problems concerning Habermas's view on the concept of ?I? ('the subject') are discussed. (shrink)

Through the twofold meaning of nature for man-rhythmically-of which he is a part and from which he is apart, the situations of psychosis and of ageing "cross over." In both are manifested the imperious sway of that nature of which we are a part: in the earlier half of life-largely-as psychosis, in the latter half of life through ageing. It is in the midst of the life-span, with the transition from predominant instinctuality to awareness of its recession, that psychosis and (...) ageing are disclosed as complementary perspectives, the vanishing point of the former toward the bodily birth of the individual, that of the latter toward the death of the individual body. Together they intimate the possibility of an individuality which can encompass the human meanings of both. In psychosis and ageing alike, the sway of that nature of which we are a part is coupled with a heightened awareness of our own nature as apart, in the former instance passively, with an accent on one's helplessness as mechanical mind, in the latter with the realization of one's own active part over and apart from the body. In psychosis the self is overwhelmed by that nature of which its body is a part as the latter's complexion is mediated by the world. In ageing the presence of the self stands out more clearly from the ebbing instinctuality with which it was earlier alloyed. To the negative defusion of instinctuality and individuality in psychosis corresponds the possibility of a positive separation in ageing. If in psychosis, "uprightness" , "eccentricity" , "being in the world over and beyond the world" , has been early flawed, ageing enables individuality to emerge in relief from the detritus of imperfect projects. "When gods die they become men, when men die they become gods." . While bodily membership in nature pervades emerging individuality in the first half of life, self-assumption of responsibility emerges with the discovery of ebbing instinctuality in the middle of life. The body as a hinge between nature of which we are a part and nature from which we are apart, and whose ambiguity is rhythmically reflective of the world and of self, now becomes apparent. With this the possibility of a "depth psychology" is reached, that is, a reopening of the archives of one's history for a commemorative rereading . This moment of discovery, traditionally conveyed in the analogical imagery of late summer and the Mediterranean experience of noon and afternoon, recurs throughout the opus of Freud, from his "Gradiva" essay , through "The Uncanny" to his "A Disturbance of Memory on the Acropolis" , with undertones both of psychotic derealization and of the purifying ordeal of ageing. (shrink)

Ethicists in and out of the profession have argued that a journalist's precept to report only the truth is deduced, say, from utilitarianism's appeal to social utility or Rawls' appeal to justice as fairness. The mistake in this is indicated by an argument that the physician owes his or her professional ethic to the human need for health and the lawyer's to the human need for justice. The journalist, therefore, may well owe his or her professional regard for truthful reporting (...) to everyone's need for news?a critical element in a democratic society. So, instead of basing journalistic ethics in the fashionable moral philosophies of the modern era, it is better to argue that it grows out of the special nature of the craft, as imbedded in a more venerable notion of self fulfilling social responsibility. (shrink)

How does vagueness interact with metaphysical modality and with restrictions of it, such as nomological modality? In particular, how do definiteness, necessity (understood as restricted in some way or not), and actuality interact? This paper proposes a model-theoretic framework for investigating the logic and semantics of that interaction. The framework is put forward in an ecumenical spirit: it is intended to be applicable to all theories of vagueness that express vagueness using a definiteness (or: determinacy) operator. We will show how (...) epistemicists, supervaluationists, and theorists of metaphysical vagueness like Barnes and Williams (2010) can interpret the framework.  We will also present a complete axiomatization of the logic we recommend to both epistemicists and local supervaluationists. . (shrink)

Philosophers of sport seem to have lived happily with the idea that the knowledge in sporting skills is knowing how. In traditional epistemology, knowing how does not qualify to be knowledge proper since knowledge is a question of whether a belief is true and justified. Unless knowing how is a special case of knowing that, it is not knowledge. The argument for such an identification arises saying that a former expert in tennis has tennis know-how, although she cannot perform skillfully. (...) If we do not need ability to perform a skill and still have know-how, it seems reasonable to say that know-how is a type of knowing that. With such a move, skills are perhaps not identical to know-how. Are we then left with the idea that there isn’t any knowledge in sporting skills? If we stick with the idea that a fine forehand is indeed an able forehand, the question of what knowledge skills contain remains. This article aims to discuss and shed light on issues related between knowledge, knowing h... (shrink)