The Sámi have long desired a public process to examine and expose the Nordic states’ colonial, assimilationist practices and policies, past and present, toward the Sámi people. This article considers the truth and reconciliation process in Finland, assessing it in light of recent legislative and other measures. Employing settler colonial theory, it argues that reconciliation, although seemingly progressive, signifies a continuation of colonialism unless the state terminates its current approach of overlooking Sámi rights. The article concludes with a discussion of (...) structural reconciliation and justice and considers some concrete measures for structural change in order for the reconciliation process to be valid and successful in Finland. (shrink)

This article addresses the conditions that are necessary for non-Indigenous people to learn from Indigenous people, more specifically from women and feminists. As non-Indigenous scholars, we first explore the challenges of epistemic dialogue through the example of Traditional Ecological Knowledge. From there, through the concept of mastery, we examine the social and ontological conditions under which settler subjectivities develop. As demonstrated by Julietta Singh and Val Plumwood, the logic of mastery—which has legitimated the oppression and exploitation of Indigenous peoples—has been (...) reproduced in academia, leaving almost no room for Indigenous knowledge and epistemes. In the same vein, Sámi scholar Rauna Kuokkanen reclaims and suggests the logic of the gift as a means to render academia more hospitable to Indigenous peoples and epistemes. In our view, reclaim as a concept-practice is a promising way to disrupt colonial, racist, and sexist power relations. Thus, we in turn propose to reclaim vulnerability as defined by Judith Butler in order to deconstruct masterful settler subjectivities and reconstruct relational ones instead. As theorized by Erinn Gilson, we propose epistemic vulnerability to imagine the conditions of our learning from Indigenous peoples and philosophies. (shrink)

Contents: IDEALIZATION, APPROXIMATION AND COUNTERFACTUALS IN THE STRUCTURALIST FRAMEWORK. Theo A.F. KUIPERS: The Refined Structure of Theories. C. ULISES and Reinhold STRAUB: Approximation and Idealization from the Structuralist Point of View. Ilkka A. KIESEPPÄ: A Note on the Structuralist Account of Approximation. C. ULISES MOULINES and Reinhold STRAUB: A Reply to Kieseppä. Wolfgang BALZER and Gerhard ZOUBEK: Structuralist Aspects of Idealization. Andoni IBARRA and Thomas MORMANN: Counterfactual Deformation and Idealization in a Structuralist Framework. Ilkka A. KIESEPPÄ: Assessing the Structuralist Theory (...) of Verisimilitude. IDEALIZATION, APPROXIMATION AND THEORY FORMATION. Leszek NOWAK: Remarks on the Nature of Galileo's Methodological Revolution. Ilkka NIINILUOTO: Approximation in Applied Science. Elke HEISE, Peter GERJETS and Rainer WESTERMANN: Idealized Action Phases. A Concise Rubicon Theory. Klaus G. TROITZSCH: Modelling, Simulation, and Structuralism. Veikko RANTALA and Tere VADÉN: Idealization in Cognitive Science. A Study in Counterfactual Correspondence. Matti SINTONEN and Mika KIIKERI: Idealization in Evolutionary Biology. Timo TUOMIVAARA: On Idealization in Ecology. Martti KUOKKANEN and Matti HÄYRY: Early Utilitarianism and Its Idealizations from a Systematic Point of View. IDEALIZATION, APPROXIMATION AND MEASUREMENT. Rainer WESTERMANN: Measurement-Theoretical Idealizations and Empirical Research Practice. Uwe KONERDING: Probability as an Idealization of Relative Frequency. A Case Study by Means of BTL-Model. Reinhard SUCK and Joachim WIENÖBST: The Empirical Claim of Probability Statements, Idealized Bernoulli Experiments and their Approximate Version. Pekka J. LAHTI: Idealizations in Quantum Theory of Measurement. (shrink)

This article examines parallels between the increasing mental burnout and environmental overshoot in the organisational context. The article argues that there is a particular philosophy of management that connects these two phenomena of overshoot and burnout, namely productivism. As there are boundaries in all ecological processes and systems, the productivist aim of having ever more output and growth is deemed absurd. It is proposed that productivity as a management philosophy not only leads to mental ill-health in organisations but also to (...) overshoot in the environment. The article concludes that productivism, which denies the limits in utilisation of humans and other natural resources, fits poorly with circular economy and sustainability. Hence, ecological management should be complemented with a more holistic and processual view of organizations, as well as have an aim of peaceful coexistence between all earthbound objects. This signifies acknowledging and caring for human and non-human needs both now and in future by applying the idea of moderation to production of goods and services. (shrink)

We analyse Hutto & Myin's three arguments against computationalism [Hutto, D., E. Myin, A. Peeters, and F. Zahnoun. Forthcoming. “The Cognitive Basis of Computation: Putting Computation In Its Place.” In The Routledge Handbook of the Computational Mind, edited by M. Sprevak, and M. Colombo. London: Routledge.; Hutto, D., and E. Myin. 2012. Radicalizing Enactivism: Basic Minds Without Content. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press; Hutto, D., and E. Myin. 2017. Evolving Enactivism: Basic Minds Meet Content. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press]. The Hard Problem (...) of Content targets computationalism that relies on semantic notion of computation, claiming that it cannot account for the natural origins of content. The Intentionality Problem is targeted against computationalism using non-semantic accounts of computation, arguing that it fails in explaining intentionality. Theion Problem claims that causal interaction between concrete physical processes and abstract computational properties is problematic. We argue that these a... (shrink)

The continuity thesis of the Poznań school threshold model of the growth of scientific knowledge is considered in the light of the example of Van der Waals' and Boyle-Mariotte's laws. It is argued - using both traditional logical means and the structuralist reconstruction of the example - that the continuity thesis does not hold. A distinction between 'a historical and a systematic point of view' is introduced and it is argued that the continuity thesis of the threshold model presupposes the (...) systematic point of view. However, looking at matters from the systematic point of view need not yield the original theory, looked at from the historical point of view. Applied to the case of Van der Waals/Boyle-Mariotte laws, it turns out that the latter law is not a true idealizing special case of the former, contrary to the continuity thesis. The structuralist analysis of the example indicates that Boyle-Mariotte's law is a false factual law from the historical point of view. However, viewed from the systematic point of view, Boyle-Mariotte's law turns out to be a law which is expandable, adding the relevant new concepts, to an idealized version of Van der Waals' law. This idealizing version of Van der Waal's law in turn is a structuralist specialization of the (general) Van der Waals' law. (shrink)

Fulfilling consumer expectations of corporate social responsibility can bring strategic advantage to firms. However, research on the topic is fragmented across disparate disciplines, and a comprehensive framework to connect CSR supply and demand is missing. As a result, firms often supply CSR that does not attract demand, as signified by pessimism about ethical consumerism in recent years and the inconclusive link between corporate financial and social performance. In this study, we propose a framework of strategic CSR management to define how (...) a company’s supply of CSR could meet consumer demand for ethical products by aligning managerial and consumer perspectives. We then investigate empirically whether such a strategic approach, which integrates potential demand in CSR management, would influence consumer choice of products with CSR components. Our hybrid choice modeling allows the inclusion of psychological biases caused by social desirability and cynicism to increase result validity. The findings support the explanatory power of the framework and reveal that consumers prefer some CSR elements while others adversely affect choices. This study advances the understanding of strategic CSR management and its impact on consumer choice and helps managers include the right mix of CSR characteristics in their products to satisfy ethical consumers. (shrink)

My thesis is that some methodological ideas of the Pozna school, i.e., the principles of idealization and concretization (factualization), and the correspondence principle can be represented rather successfully using the relations of theoretization and specialization of revised structuralism.Let n(i), t(j)> (i=1,...m, j=1,...k) denote the conceptual apparatus of a theory T, and a class M={} (i=1,...m, j=1,...k) the models of T. The n-components refer to the values of dependent variables and t-components to the values of independent variables of the theory. The (...) n- and t-components in turn represent appropriate concepts. Consider T * as a conceptual enrichment of T with concepts n(i *), t(j *)> (ii * or jj *) and models M *={D *, n(i *), t(j *)>}. If the classes M and M * are suitably related, then the situation illustrates both the case of the theoretization-relation of (revised) structuralism and of the factualization-principle of the Pozna school. (shrink)

In the present paper Cohen's and Lee's theory of social conformity and Festinger's theory of cognitive dissonance are first reconstructed according to a revised form of the so-called “structuralist theory-conception” developed by Sneed and Stegmüller with their collaborators. Then the two theories are conceptually correlated in the sense of a technical notion of conceptual correlation which can be shown to be an essential generalization of the theory-relations handled by the structuralist. It will turn out that there is no unique way (...) to connect these theories with each other. However, it is shown that two ontologically and conceptually different theories can be correlated. This in turn gives in principle an opportunity to compare critically these two theories given that the constructed conceptual correlation is sufficiently sound and that the theories are empirically testable to a sufficient extent. (shrink)

Inspired by the Catholic theologian Hans Küng, this book searches for a model for global ethics by analysing the contemporary philosophical discussion.

Inspired by the Catholic theologian Hans Küng, this book searches for a model for global ethics by analysing the contemporary philosophical discussion. It demonstrates that the Western model is unable to reckon with exclusivism and difference and presents an alternative model.

In this paper we shall show that structuralist constraints applied to moral idealizations, have applications in critical ethical argumentation. Moreover, we developed some systematic concepts which may be used to evaluate the relevance and adequacy of descriptions of moral problems relative to given idealizing moral perspectives. Finally, it is shown that any two moral perspectives are comparable via the Kemeny-Snell measure of distance of rankings.

The so-called integration problem concerning mechanistic and computational explanation asks how they are related to each other. One approach is that a computational explanation is a species of mechanistic explanation. According to this view, computational or mathematical descriptions are mechanism sketches or macroscopic descriptions that include computationally relevant and exclude computationally irrelevant physical properties. Some suggest that this results in a so-called single hierarchy view of physical computation, where computational or mathematical properties sit together in the same mechanistic hierarchy with (...) the implementational properties. This view can be contrasted with a separate hierarchy view, according to which computational and physical descriptions have their own hierarchies which are related to each other via a bridging implementation relation. The single hierarchy view has been criticized for downplaying the explanatory value of computational explanations and not being hospitable to multiple realization of cognitive processes. In this paper, I argue that the aforementioned criticisms fail, and there might be a deeper problem with the single hierarchy view, which is that the single hierarchy view might collapse into a separate hierarchy view. The kind of abstraction used by the single hierarchy view does not seem to grant mathematical or computational descriptions but only more stripped physical or implementational descriptions. (shrink)

Several case studies and theoretical reports indicate that the structuralist concept of a constraint has a central role in the reconstruction of physical theories. It is surprising that there is, in the literature, only little theoretical discussion on the relevance of constraints for the reconstruction of social scientific theories. Almost all structuralist reconstructions of social theorizing are vacuously constrained. Consequently, constraints are methodologically irrelevant.In this paper I try to show that there really exist constraint-type assumptions in mathematical modelling in the (...) social sciences. Methodologically constraints have exactly the same role in the context of social mathematical modelling as they have in physical theories. In typical cases of mathematical modelling in the social sciences, the related constraints work as empirical hypotheses and should be tested by statistical means. (shrink)

Descriptive abstraction means omission of information from descriptions of phenomena. In this paper, I introduce a distinction between vertical and horizontal descriptive abstraction. Vertical abstracts away levels of mechanism or organization, while horizontal abstracts away details within one level of organization. The distinction is implicit in parts of the literature, but it has received insufficient attention and gone mainly unnoticed. I suggest that the distinction can be used to clarify how computational descriptions are formed in some variants of the mechanistic (...) account of physical computation. Furthermore, I suggest that, if this suggestion is adopted, it can be used to resolve what I call abstraction, hierarchy, and generality problems raised against mechanistic account of physical computation. According to the abstraction problem, the mechanistic account of physical computation is conceptually confused in claiming that physical systems process computational, abstract properties. An existing solution distinguishes between descriptive and metaphysical abstraction, suggesting that the abstraction problem unnecessarily postulates metaphysically abstract entities. The solution has been criticized for leading to what I call hierarchy and generality problems: it results in two separate hierarchies, one physical and one computational, making it problematic both to account for the generality of computational descriptions and to specify how the two hierarchies are related to each other. Adopting the vertical-horizontal distinction and the view that computational descriptions are achieved by horizontal abstraction allows one to account for the generality of computational descriptions, and to form a single hierarchy in which there are no separate hierarchies in need of integration. (shrink)

Stress at work is a frequent subject of scientific research. In most of this, the unit of analysis has been the employee and his or her work stress. Historical, cultural and macro-contextual approaches have rarely been included in the analytical framework. In this study, we examined secular trends in scientific publications on work stress, and analysed how, over a period of 50 years, a new discursive, institutional, intellectual and subjective space has developed, in which questions related to workers’ diminished mental (...) energy became the centre of attention. Our interpretation links the occupational health debate to the broader historical and cultural processes that took place in western countries and work organizations in the period 1960–2011. Our quantitative analysis shows how the number of work stress publications rose steeply until the early 2000s and how the growth evened out and even started to decline in some data sources in the early 2010s. It would seem that work stress research is reaching its peak and that other conceptualizations in the domain of occupational health (e.g. resource-based views) are becoming more important. This historical study provides new insights regarding the nature of work stress and its links with societal changes for all those interested in the changing nature of health at work. (shrink)

The fundamental cognitive problem for active organisms is to decide what to do next in a changing environment. In this article, we analyze motor and action control in computational models that utilize reinforcement learning (RL) algorithms. In reinforcement learning, action control is governed by an action selection policy that maximizes the expected future reward in light of a predictive world model. In this paper we argue that RL provides a way to explicate the so-called action-oriented views of cognitive systems in (...) representational terms. (shrink)

According to radical enactivists, cognitive sciences should abandon the representational framework. Perceptuomotor cognition and action control are often provided as paradigmatic examples of nonrepresentational cognitive phenomena. In this article, we illustrate how motor and action control are studied in research that uses reinforcement learning algorithms. Crucially, this approach can be given a representational interpretation. Hence, reinforcement learning provides a way to explicate action-oriented views of cognitive systems in a representational way.

This paper deals with the connection between the Boyle-Mariotte-law and the Van der Waals-law from the perspective of the Structuralist Theory Conception as well as the Pragmatic Idealization Concept. It was inspired by an interesting paper by Martti Kuokkanen and Timo Tuomivaara, recently published in this journal.1 One result of the Kuokkanen-Tuomivaara-paper is that the Boyle-Mariotte-law is not an idealized law and therefore not an idealized special case of the Van der Waals-law, but that its models can be (...) expanded to the models of an idealized special case of the Van der Waals-law. From the perspective of idealized diachronic theory-elements and -nets the second part of this result shall be questioned. (shrink)

This paper takes up a recent challenge to mechanistic approaches to computational implementation, the view that computational implementation is best explicated within a mechanistic framework. The challenge, what has been labelled “the abstraction problem”, claims that one of MAC’s central pillars – medium independence – is deeply confused when applied to the question of computational implementation. The concern is that while it makes sense to say that computational processes are abstract (i.e. medium-independent), it makes considerably less sense to say that (...) they are also concrete processes of a mechanism. After outlining the problem and its effect on MAC, I examine a recent response from Kuokkanen and Rusanen [2018. “Making Too Many Enemies: Hutto and Myin’s Attack on Computationalism.” Philosophical Explorations 21 (2): 282–294. doi:10.1080/13869795.2018.1477980]. I argue that Kuokkanen and Rusanen’s response comes up short insofar as it makes problematic trade-offs among various desiderata we have for a theory of implementation. This leads to a general dilemma for MAC: either give up being an objective theory of implementation or concede the abstraction problem and so reintroduce triviality concerns. In response, I argue that conceiving of computations as abstracta rather than illata provides a way to avoid the proposed dilemma and articulate a notion of medium independence that addresses the abstraction problem. (shrink)

The mechanistic account of computation offers one promising and influential theory of computational implementation. The aim of this paper is to shore up its conceptual foundations by responding to several recent challenges. After outlining and responding to a recent proposal from Kuokkanen (2022a), I suggest that computational description should be conceptualised as a form of idealisation (selectively attending to modified subsets of model features) rather than abstraction (selectively attending to subsets of features within a target system). I argue that (...) this conceptualisation not only offers the best way of making sense of computational implementation, but also a way of resolving each of the outstanding challenges facing the mechanistic account. The idealisation view allows the mechanistic account to make sense of the omission process found in computational descriptions without leaving the relationship between physical and computational properties mysterious. (shrink)