The Nordic countries aim to have a unique place within the European and global health data economy. They have extensive nationally maintained and centralized health data records, as well as numerous biobanks where data from individuals can be connected based on personal identification numbers. Much of this phenomenon can be attributed to the emergence and development of the Nordic welfare state, where Nordic countries sought to systematically collect large amounts of population data to guide decision making and improve the health (...) and living conditions of the population. Recently, however, the so-called Nordic gold mine of data is being re-imagined in a wholly other context, where data and its ever-increasing logic of accumulation is seen as a driver for economic growth and private business development. This article explores the development of policies and strategies for health data economy in Denmark and Finland. We ask how nation states try to adjust and benefit from new pressures and opportunities to utilize their data resources in data markets. This raises questions of social sustainability in terms of states being producers, providers, and consumers of data. The data imaginaries related to emerging health data markets also provide insight into how a broad range of different data sources, ranging from hospital records and pharmacy prescriptions to biobank sample data, are brought together to enable “full-scale utilization” of health and welfare data. (shrink)

In this essay, I argue for a new analysis of Porphyry’s argument for justice in On abstinence. I aim to show that (i) in addition to being an inner order of soul, justice is attributed to external actions and (ii) justice of actions consists in refraining from harming harmless living creatures, including animals and plants. The relevant harm, I argue, consists in taking the lives of living creatures and taking products from them by force or without care. I contend that (...) Porphyry extends moral concern for others to all living creatures, but not merely on the basis of animal suffering. Finally, I argue that that the hierarchy of godlikeness in On abstinence does not support the subordination of moral concern for animals and plants to higher virtues of purity and theory. (shrink)

According to surveys and opinion polls, citizens in Nordic welfare societies have positive, supportive attitudes towards medical research and biobanking. In Finland, it was expected that this would result in the active biobank participation of patients and citizens. Indeed, public support has been rhetorically utilised as a unique societal factor and advantage in the promotion of Finnish biobanks, underlining the potential Finland offers for the international biomedical enterprise. In this paper, we critically analyse the use of notions such as ‘willing (...) population’ and ‘engaged people’ in the promotion and legitimation of biobanking. First, there is a seeming contradiction between positive attitudes and actual participation rates, as biobanks have faced unexpected challenges in participant recruitment during the first years of their operations. As a result, the concept of a willing population was redirected to problematise the necessity of informed consent. Second, we question whether it is even meaningful to assume the existence of an informed and engaged population with regard to biobanking. Therefore, we suggest that it is problematic to talk about a willing population at the same time as the relevance of the informed consent system is being questioned by biobank actors and policy makers. We analyse this tension in relation to existing data on Finnish people’s attitudes, pointing out that positive, supportive views do not directly transform into high participation rates; nor do they justify the claims of policy makers and biobank proponents that people are willing to participate, when in fact surveys report that people know very little about biobanks. (shrink)

The article examines Barthes’s A Lover’s Discourse (1977) in conjunction with du Maurier’s Trilby (1894) in order to present an argument about the similarities they share with the male masochistic fantasy as theorised by Deleuze in his Coldness and Cruelty (1989). Barthes’s insistence on the connection between art and love directs my approach. Trilby deals with love and aesthetics in the contexts of art, music, and narrative. The discourses of Trilby’s competing lovers over the same woman serve as a point (...) of comparison against which I read Barthes’s dramatisation of a lover’s discourse. I argue that Barthes’s lover shares a number of central discursive figures with the Deleuzian masochistic lover. I examine Barthes’s suggestion about the tension between the non-narrative discourse of love and the metalanguage of conventional love stories. I focus on those figures in a lover’s discourse that Barthes identifies as keeping this discourse from turning into a love story. My argument is that many of these figures are among the hallmarks of the masochistic fantasy. In particular the formula of disavowal safeguards the lover’s discourse, hindering it from turning into a conventional narrative about love. (shrink)

The article examines Barthes’s A Lover’s Discourse (1977) in conjunction with du Maurier’s Trilby (1894) in order to present an argument about the similarities they share with the male masochistic fantasy as theorised by Deleuze in his Coldness and Cruelty (1989). Barthes’s insistence on the connection between art and love directs my approach. Trilby deals with love and aesthetics in the contexts of art, music, and narrative. The discourses of Trilby’s competing lovers over the same woman serve as a point (...) of comparison against which I read Barthes’s dramatisation of a lover’s discourse. I argue that Barthes’s lover shares a number of central discursive figures with the Deleuzian masochistic lover. I examine Barthes’s suggestion about the tension between the non-narrative discourse of love and the metalanguage of conventional love stories. I focus on those figures in a lover’s discourse that Barthes identifies as keeping this discourse from turning into a love story. My argument is that many of these figures are among the hallmarks of the masochistic fantasy. In particular the formula of disavowal safeguards the lover’s discourse, hindering it from turning into a conventional narrative about love. (shrink)

ABSTRACT Public health authorities sometimes have to make decisions about the use of preventive medical measures—e.g. vaccination programmes—which could, if realised, save millions of lives, but could also kill a certain (small) number of those subjected to the measures. According to a rough‐and‐ready utilitarian calculation, such measures should be taken, but there are also possible objections to this view. A liberal objection to the use of mandatory preventive measures which might harm human beings is that people have a right to (...) decide for themselves whether or not they want to participate in the programme. A further objection is based on the claims that first, the authorities are directly killing those who die because of, say, vaccination programmes, and second, directly killing human beings is forbidden (since every human being has a right to live). The latter objection is discussed at length in the present paper. The validity of three doctrines, the doctrines of the double effect, of acts and omissions, and of killing and letting die, are considered with reference to the use of preventive measures, and found inapplicable. The objection is, however, refuted by comparing some hypothetical examples, and the initial utilitarian calculation is reinforced. (shrink)

One of the core issues in medical ethics has been and still is autonomy, people's right to make their own self-regarding choices in situations where more than one option is available. Depending on the case, these choices may be influenced by personal life history, one's ethical and other values, and one's future expectancies. A professional soccer player may risk an operation, which for a less athletic individual would represent an unnecessary risk that might jeopardize her ability to even walk. Saying (...) no to painkillers may sound irrational to those who do not see anything ennobling in avoidable suffering, and preferring homeopathic medicine to more evidence-based medicine may lead others to seriously doubt the logic of one's thinking. But although these situations may be difficult,1 they seldom lead to an impasse. Even if serious value conflicts emerge in these patient–medical personnel encounters, they can be overcome by the fact that, in Western countries, honoring patients' autonomy has been widely accepted as part of medical professionalism. (shrink)

Ethicists have for the past 20 years debated the possibility of using neurointerventions to improve intelligence and even moral capacities, and thereby create a safer society. Contributing to a recent debate concerning neurointerventions in criminal rehabilitation, Nicole Vincent and Elizabeth Shaw have separately discussed the possibility of responsibility enhancement. In their ethical analyses, enhancing a convict’s capacity responsibility may be permissible. Both Vincent and Shaw consider self-control to be one of the constituent mental capacities of capacity responsibility. In this paper, (...) we critically examine the promise of improving convicts’ capacity responsibility by neuroenhancements of self-control to see whether the special characteristics of the inmate population make a difference in the analyses. As improving self-control by means of neurointerventions seems plausible, we then ask whether it is or could be a justified measure in court rulings. We conclude that, even if there are cases in which neurointerventions were warranted in the context of the stated goals of the criminal court, i.e., decreasing recidivism and rehabilitating the offenders to the society, due to the range of individual variability in the constitution of self-control, the prescription of specific neurointerventions of self-control falls outside the scope of legitimate court rulings. (shrink)

_The Limits of Medical Paternalism_ defines and morally assesses paternalistic interventions, especially in the context of modern medicine and health care, particular emphasis is given to the analysis of the conceptual background of the paternalism issue. In this book an anti-paternalistic view is presented and defended.

The Limits of Medical Paternalism defines and morally assesses paternalistic interventions, especially in the context of modern medicine and health care, particular emphasis is given to the analysis of the conceptual background of the paternalism issue. In this book an anti-paternalistic view is presented and defended.

Today’s exponential advancement of information and communication technologies is reconfiguring participatory urban development practices. The use of digital technology implies new forms of decentralised governance, collaborative knowledge production, and social activism. The digital transformation has the potential to overcome shortcomings in citizen participation, make participatory processes more deliberative, and enable collaborative approaches for making cities. While digital tools such as digital mapping, e‐participation platforms, location‐based games, and social media offer new opportunities for the various actors and may act as a (...) catalyst for renegotiating urban space and collective goods, digitalisation can also perpetuate or even attenuate existing inequalities and exclusion. This editorial introduces the thematic issue “Citizen Participation, Digital Agency, and Urban Development” which focuses on the trajectories and (dis)continuities of citizen participation through digitalisation and elaborates this with examples from Europe and Asia on how the digital transformation impacts, challenges, or reproduces hegemonic power relations in urban development. (shrink)

The study of the ancient commentators has developed considerably over the past few decades, fueled by recent translations of their often daunting writings. This book offers the only concise, accessible general introduction currently available to the writings of the late ancient commentators on Aristotle and, to a lesser extent, Plato. Miira Tuominen provides a historical overview followed by a series of thematic chapters on epistemology, science and logic, physics, psychology, metaphysics, and ethics. In particular, she focuses on the writings (...) of Alexander of Aphrodisias, Themistius, Porphyry, Proclus, Philoponus, and Simplicius. Until recently, the late ancient commentators have been understood mainly as sources of information concerning the masters upon whose works they comment. This book offers new insights into their way of doing philosophy in their own right. (shrink)

ABSTRACTIn this paper, our purpose is to show what George Berkeley really said about ethics and the background conditions of religious life. The point is that true happiness is only possible in a religious sense; it means happiness in afterlife. The major threat to this is freethinking, or what we see as emerging enlightened modernism. His rather quixotic fix against freethinking shows the man as he is behind all the conventional panegyrics. He is a real Anglican soldier who anticipated but (...) never admitted a critical defeat in the most important of all battles. Interest in George Berkeley’s life’s work has been exceptionally selective. Yet his revolutionary immaterialism is only an early episode in his struggles towards a better society and religious life for all the people, regardless of their denomination. From this point of view, Alciphron is central. But he also develops his ethical ideas in his various minor writings, which have been largely overlooked. (shrink)

According to Alexander of Aphrodisias, our potential intellect is a purely receptive capacity. Alexander also claims that, in order for us to actualise our intellectual potentiality, the intellect needs to abstract what is intelligible from enmattered perceptible objects. Now a problem emerges: How is it possible for a purely receptive capacity to perform such an abstraction? It will be argued that even though Alexander's reaction to this question causes some tension in his theory, the philosophical motivation for it is a (...) sound one. Rather than a calculation of actualities and potentialities, the doctrine of receptivity is supposed to explain how human beings come to grasp universal aspects of reality in an accurate manner. (shrink)

In different countries responses to important bioethical issues are different, as exemplified by the attitudes towards the voluntary and active forms of medical euthanasia. But why is this the case? My suggestion is that the roots of the variety are, to a considerable degree, ideological. The most important present‐day political ideologies all have their roots in the prevailing doctrines of moral and social philosophy. In the paper these doctrines are outlined and the predicted response towards active voluntary euthanasia within each (...) model is sketched. The conclusion reached is that while it would in some countries be dangerous to allow euthanasia in the prevailing circumstances, the solution is not to hinder the legalization process but to alter the circumstances. (shrink)

In his book The Principles of Art Robin George Collingwood presents a theory of art as the expression of emotion. The connection between his view and the theories of the Italian neo-idealists Benedetto Croce and Giovanni Gentile is both well known and well documented. What seems to be less known, however, is the intellectual link R. G. Collingwood’s father, William Gershom Collingwood, formed between his son and John Ruskin, the great Victorian essayist, critic and reformer. There are some references in (...) the literature to the fact that W. G. Collingwood was Ruskin’s friend, pupil, assistant and private secretary, later on his intellectual interpreter and biographer. It has also been argued that since R. G. Collingwood was until the age of thirteen exclusively educated by his father, there must have been an educational link between Ruskin and the younger Collingwood. But when it has come to pointing out theoretical similarities between the aesthetic theories of Ruskin and Collingwood, philosophers of art have, by and large, kept a remarkably low profile. (shrink)

Abstract.The legitimate impact of common morality on legal restrictions has been continuously discussed within the Western philosophy of law since Lord Patrick Devlin in the late 1950s presented his moralistic arguments against some liberal conclusions drawn by the English Committee on Homosexual Offences and Prostitution in their public report. Devlin's arguments were subsequently identified and refuted by Richard Wollheim, H. L. A. Hart and Ronald Dworkin, but in a way that later provoked further argument. In particular the attack against anti‐moralistic (...) principles set forth by Simon Lee (1986) owes much to the rather naive liberalism represented by the opponents of Devlin. The battle over liberalism and moralism from the Hart‐Devlin debate to the present day is reviewed. In addition to the discussion of the philosophers mentioned above, a potential flaw in the argumentation of Joel Feinberg (1986) is considered. (shrink)

The relatively recent shift of family caregiving to the public market of service work raises questions about how to theorize paid caregiving. This article examines how to conceptualize child rearing when it is transferred to a paid worker. The gendered character of commodified caregiving is complicated by structural locations of race and class that define the employer-employee relationship. Previous discussions of paid child care work as emotionally meaningful work have been criticized as idealizations that mask the exploitative nature of the (...) work. Yet, emotional meaning is not simply a cover-up or an idealization of the labor; rather, it is an integral component of the work of caregiving, the practice of which is distorted by societal assumptions about gender and race. To better understand paid child care work, the significance of emotional meaning, as well as gender, race, and ethnic dimensions of paid child care work need to be explored. (shrink)

According to what one might call ‘indirect” forms of utilitarian thinking, the proper end of all human action is the greatest happiness of the greatest number of individuals, but due to the fallibility of moral agents this end cannot, and must not, be directly pursued. Instead, according to at least one version of the indirect theory, moral agents have a duty to act in conformity with a set of general rules which, in their turn, have been designed to promote the (...) greatest happiness of humankind. But acts which conform to such general rules can under exceptional circumstances occasion more suffering than happiness. This is clearly problematical to indirect utilitarians. If they follow the rules regardless of the evil consequences, it can be argued that they have abandoned the basic principles of utilitarianism. If, on the other hand, they refuse to follow the rules which normally promote the general good, their view can be seen to collapse into the direct form of the creed. (shrink)

Conviction Narrative Theory (CNT) is conceptually so multifaceted as to make critical evaluation difficult. It also omits one course of action: Active engagement with the world. Parsing the developmental and mechanistic processes within CNT would allow for a rigorous research programme to put the account under test. I propose a unifying account based on active inference.

Recent developments in biology have made it possible to acquire more and more precise information concerning our genetic makeup. There are four groups of people who may want to know about our genes. First, we ourselves can have an interest in being aware of own health status. Second, there are people who are genetically linked with us, and who can have an interest in the knowledge. Third, individuals with whom we have contracts and economic arrangements may have an interest in (...) knowing about our genetic makeup. Fourth, society as a whole can have an interest in the composition of our genes. As regards the question of motivation, the term 'should' can be interpreted in three ways. Prudentially speaking, to say that individuals should act in a certain manner is to say that the actions in question promote the long-term self-interest of these individuals. From the viewpoint of morality, we should do what is right and avoid doing what is wrong. When it comes to legal thinking, it is held in most liberal societies that grave other-regarding harm should be the primary justification for the use of coercion and constraint. In the paper, all these aspects are examined in more detail. (shrink)

In his book The Principles of Art Robin George Collingwood presents a theory of art as the expression of emotion. The connection between his view and the theories of the Italian neo-idealists Benedetto Croce and Giovanni Gentile is both well known and well documented. What seems to be less known, however, is the intellectual link R. G. Collingwood’s father, William Gershom Collingwood, formed between his son and John Ruskin, the great Victorian essayist, critic and reformer. There are some references in (...) the literature to the fact that W. G. Collingwood was Ruskin’s friend, pupil, assistant and private secretary, later on his intellectual interpreter and biographer. It has also been argued that since R. G. Collingwood was until the age of thirteen exclusively educated by his father, there must have been an educational link between Ruskin and the younger Collingwood. But when it has come to pointing out theoretical similarities between the aesthetic theories of Ruskin and Collingwood, philosophers of art have, by and large, kept a remarkably low profile. (shrink)