Using multi-modal Conversation Analysis, this article demonstrates how teenage boys end assessments of social experiences with insults. When they participate in social activities, teenagers — as everybody else — routinely make assessments through which they produce social organization and create alignments. This article, however, analyzes structures of assessments that are contested in a counter-positional action. It will be demonstrated how the teenage boys end these challenged-assessment sequences through ‘insults’. A feature of these insults is that the conversationalists ‘go mental’, that (...) is, they question the ‘mental’ abilities and competences of their co-participant and thereby exclude him from the status of being a competent member of the group. In and through such conduct, the participants make the social function as well as the risks of assessing explicit: as competent members of a social group they are being held accountable for having claimed knowledge of the assessed target and may on these grounds be excommunicated as someone who does not understand social life. (shrink)

For some customers, the corona pandemic has turned e-shopping into a fine alternative to shopping in brick-and-mortar shops. For other customers in quarantine e-shopping is the only alternative. The long-lasting pandemic, however, has reminded us of the importance of social contacts and interactions – even if it’s just to go the supermarket to ‘mingle’. This paper investigates what ‘mingle’ means when shopping in physical self-service shops amongst unacquainted others in Denmark. It describes customers’ practice of doing self-service by organizing interaction (...) to minimize social involvement. It shows how they, as a matter of fact, co-ordinate their conduct in ways that hampers possibilities for engaging in even small ‘ritual’ exchanges of talk. The paper draws upon a corpus of video recordings of customers’ self-service practices in shops in Denmark. In addition, the customers’ gaze was recorded with the mobile Tobii Pro X3 eye tracker. The study falls within the realm of ethnomethodological and conversation analytic studies of multimodal interaction. It concludes that self-service is achieved through co-present customers’ tacit coordination of multimodal actions in social interaction and that their practices work to achieve ‘effortlessly’ and ‘spontaneously’ being, getting, and staying out of the way, which seems to be an ideal for self-service shopping. Talk and moreover having a conversation seems to be an impediment to it. (shrink)

This article presents a study of how co-present individuals work out the nature of embodied engagement and disengagement displays by individuals with dementia in a Danish public care facility. Research has found that moderate to severe dementia may result, for example, in a lack of social engagement, apathy and problems in maintaining conversations. Research has, however, also found that co-present individuals indicate their right to unavailability for social interaction. This is accomplished through details of embodied and multimodal conduct such as (...) gaze behavior, which includes practices of glancing and gazing at co-present individuals or practices of gazing into space. These practices may coincide with indications of ‘lack of social engagement’ and ‘apathy’. This study falls within the framework of ethnomethodology and employs multimodal conversation analytic methods to show how co-present individuals monitor residents’ displays of engagement and disengagement, primarily gaze behavior and how they respond to them. The study is based on 20 hours of video-recordings. (shrink)

Person‐specific evidence was developed as a grounded theory by analyzing 20 selected case descriptions from interventions using the guided self‐determination method with people with various long‐term health conditions. It explains the mechanisms of mobilizing relational capacity by including person‐specific evidence in shared decision‐making. Person‐specific self‐insight was the first step, achieved as individuals completed reflection sheets enabling them to clarify their personal values and identify actions or omissions related to self‐management challenges. This step paved the way for sharing these insights and (...) challenges in a relationship with a supportive health professional, who could then rely on person‐specific evidence instead of assumptions or a narrow disease perspective for shared decision‐making. Trust in the evidence encouraged the supportive health professional to transfer it to the interdisciplinary team. Person‐specific evidence then enhanced the ability of team members to apply general evidence in a meaningful way. The increased openness achieved by individuals through these steps enabled them to eventually share their new self‐insights in daily life with other people, decreasing loneliness they experienced in self‐management. Relational capacity, the core of the theory, is mobilized in both people with long‐term health conditions and healthcare professionals. Further research on person‐specific evidence and relational capacity in healthcare is recommended. (shrink)

Unlike the bulk of electronic media the computer game or video game is a distinctly gendered medium. All investigations confirm that we are dealing with a medium which almost exclusively appeals to and is used by, boys and young men. Therefore, the video games and computer games are very suited for investigating the form of entertainment, the pleasure, that appeals to men, i.e. the specific ‘masculine pleasure’.The paper deals with questions such as: What do computer games mean? What does violence (...) in computer games signify? Why do computer games, especially the violent ones, mean something special to a certain group of men? These questions are discussed from the perspective of semiotics, media and control studies.Finally, the paper discusses the connections between women and the male dominated video games, and attempts to explain why, nevertheless, some girls and women do play these games. (shrink)

Abstract:Cities are increasingly faced with the impact of shocks or stresses, and the built environment is forced to respond to these changes in a resilient way. Especially urban waterfronts are faced with constant social, spatial and economic transformation. Centuries ago developed as industrial land, the waterfronts of New York City have since gone through extensive transformation processes and have resulted in complex, hybrid, and sequenced urban areas with a large mix of social, spatial and economic activities and conditions. However, twenty-first-century (...) waterfront redevelopment seems to replace these areas with more homogeneous and ‘clean’ masterplans that answer to the pressing residential and recreational market, but forgo the social and economic complexity and do not anticipate future changes in the existing environment. This paper looks at how urban waterfronts respond to the inevitable changes of the future, and compares how new urban waterfront redevelopments function in comparison to the initial post-industrial complex waterfronts. The paper investigates the resilience of homogeneous compared to heterogeneous waterfronts, and raises the question if there should be an alternative approach of tackling post-industrial waterfronts, answering to their urgent need of redevelopment while simultaneously considering its modularity and complexity on spatial, social, environmental and economic level. (shrink)

The paper addresses issues of scientific conduct regarding relations between science and the media, relations between scientists and journalists, and attitudes towards the public at large. In the large and increasing body of literature on scientific conduct and misconduct, these issues seem underexposed as ethical challenges. Consequently, individual scientists here tend to be left alone with problems and dilemmas, with no guidance for good conduct. Ideas are presented about how to make up for this omission. Using a practical, ethical approach, (...) the paper attempts to identify ways scientists might deal with ethical public relations issues, guided by a norm or maxim of openness. Drawing on and rethinking the CUDOS codification of the scientific ethos, as it was worked out by Robert K. Merton in 1942, we propose that this, which is echoed in current codifications of norms for good scientific conduct, contains a tacit maxim of openness which may naturally be extended to cover the public relations of science. Discussing openness as access, accountability, transparency and receptiveness, the argumentation concentrates on the possible prevention of misconduct with respect to, on the one hand, sins of omission—withholding important information from the public—and, on the other hand, abuses of the authority of science in order to gain publicity. Statements from interviews with scientists are used to illustrate how scientists might view the relevance of the issues raised. (shrink)

Abstract.Mandatory risk assessment is intended to reassure concerned citizens and introduce reason into the heated European controversies on genetically modified crops and food. The authors, examining a case of risk assessment of genetically modified oilseed rape, claim that the new European legislation on risk assessment does nothing of the sort and is not likely to present an escape from the international deadlock on the use of genetic modification in agriculture and food production. The new legislation is likely to stimulate the (...) kind of emotive reactions it was intended to prevent. In risk assessment exercises, scientific uncertainty is turned into risk, expressed in facts and figures. Paradoxically, this conveys an impression of certainty, while value-disagreement and conflicts of interest remain hidden below the surface of factuality. Public dialogue and negotiation along these lines are rendered impossible. The only option left to critics is to resort to claims of fear and to call for new risk assessments to be performed, on and on again. Science is allowing itself to be abused by accepting the burden of proof in matters more suited to reflection and negotiation. The specific challenge to science would be to take care of itself – rethinking the role and the limitations of science in a social context, and, thereby gaining the strength to fulfill this role and to enter into dialogue with the rest of society. Scientific communities appear to be obvious candidates for prompting reflection and dialogue on this issue. (shrink)

We investigate the value of persons. Our primary goal is to chart a path from equal and extreme value to infinite value. We advance two arguments. Each argument offers a reason to think that equal and extreme value are best accounted for if we are infinitely valuable. We then raise some difficult but fruitful questions about the possible grounds or sources of our infinite value, if we indeed have such value.

Bokanmeldelse av > Forfattere: Simonsen, M. M., Rølsåsen, T., Eckbo, N., Dale, R. F., Barder, O. H. E. og Fjeldaas, E. Utgitt: Bergen, Fagbokforlaget. År: 2020. Sidetall: 134.

Journal of Political Philosophy, EarlyView.

The community has legislatively conferred on external auditors a special but lucrative responsibility to provide fair and independent opinions about management''s preparation of company financial statements. In return, auditors are obliged by professional standards to act with integrity, independently and in the public interest. This study examined 174 auditors'' predisposition to provide just and fair judgements, using Kohlberg''s theory of developmental moral reasoning, one of the most widely accepted theories in justice psychology. Respondents came from five international audit firms in (...) Copenhagen. Results indicated that auditors with pre-conventional or low level of just reasoning or comprised 64 respondents, the largest group in the sample. The pre-conventional level suggests that people will act in their own self-interest and do the right only to avoid punishment. Pre-conventional auditors have the ability to "do deals", advantageous for business. When faced with an ethical crisis, however, auditors as this level will tend to focus on their own needs at the expense of others. The post-conventional or mid level of just reasoning comprised 59 auditors, second largest group in the sample. This level indicates that these auditors have the predisposition to act fairly on principal, particularly when faced with an ethical crisis. The conventional level or mid-just reasoning consisted of 51 auditors. People with a conventional level of just reasoning believe in law and order, the maintenance of the status quo, however they tend not to be critical of laws, nor authority even if those laws and authority are unjust or evil. (shrink)

The shift from print to screen has bodily effects on how we read. We distinguish two dimensions of embodied reading: the spatio-temporal and the imaginary. The former relates to what the body does during the act of reading and the latter relates to the role of the body in the imagined scenarios we create from what we read. At the level of neurons, these two dimensions are related to how we make sense of the world. From this perspective, we explain (...) how the bodily activity of reading changes from print to screen. Our focus is on the decreased material anchoring of memories. (shrink)

This paper argues that Foucault’s genealogy of racism deserves appreciation due to the highly original concept of racism as biopolitical government. Modern racism, according to Foucault, is not merely an irrational prejudice, a form of socio-political discrimination, or an ideological motive in a political doctrine; rather, it is a form of government that is designed to manage a population. The paper seeks to advance this argument by reconstructing Foucault’s unfinished project of a genealogy of racism. Initially, the paper situates the (...) genealogy of racism within the context of Foucault’s work. It belongs to a period of transition between the mature and the late part of Foucault’s work, more specifically a period of transition from discipline to governmentality. The paper proceeds by reading closely key passages from the 1976 lectures at Collège de France in which Foucault proposes to rethink racism as a form of biopolitical government. While Foucault’s genealogy of racism remains an incomplete project, lacking for example any substantial treatment of European colonialism, the paper proposes to expand the Foucauldian analysis by linking it to the pan-German discourse between 1890 and 1914. Finally, the paper reflects on some of the implications of the Foucauldian analysis, in particular attempts to understand and counter contemporary forms of racism. Foucault’s genealogy of racism, in short, shows us the constructedness of our racialized world and challenges us to develop new and more effective strategies to change it. (shrink)

In this essay I consider the normative implications of the notion of reasonability for the construction of an idea of public reason that is cosmopolitan in scope. First, I consider the argument for the distinction between reason and reasonability in the work of Sibley and Rawls. Second, I evaluate the normative implications of reasonability through a consideration of Korsgaard's recent work. Third, I argue for a notion of reasonability that moves us beyond a Kantian concept of autonomy through a consideration (...) of the relationship between reasonability and judgment vis-à-vis Arendt's work on Kant's Third Critique. Finally, I argue for a cosmopolitan appropriation of the notion of reasonability based on Kant's notion of the aesthetic idea. The latter argument relaxes the bonds of public reason, moving us beyond the domain of ethnocentricism. (shrink)

In National Responsibility and Global Justice, David Miller defends the view that a member of a nation can be collectively responsible for an outcome despite the fact that: (i) she did not control it; (ii) she actively opposed those of her nation’s policies that produced the outcome; and (iii) actively opposing the relevant policy was costly for her. I argue that Miller’s arguments in favor of this strong externalist view about responsibility and control are insufficient. Specifically, I show that Miller’s (...) two models of synchronic collective responsibility*the like-minded group model and the cooperative practice model*ground neither synchronic nor diachronic national responsibility, nor apply in the case of nations generally speaking. Keywords: collective responsibility; David Miller; nations; historical responsibility; national responsibility (Published: 19 May 2009) Citation: Ethics & Global Politics, Vol. 2, No. 2, 2009, pp. 109-130. DOI: 10.3402/egp.v2i2.1935. (shrink)

Necessary Existence breaks ground on one of the deepest questions anyone ever asks: why is there anything? Pruss and Rasmussen present an original defence of the hypothesis that there is a necessarily existing being capable of providing an ultimate foundation for the existence of all things.

For quite some time now philosophers have stressed the need to distinguish between explanatory (motivating) reasons and justifying (good) reasons. The distinction is often illustrated with an example of someone doing something that is intended to strike the reader or listener, at least at the outset, as incomprehensible. The story of Abraham on Mount Moriah, who decided to sacrifice his son, Isaac, illustrates this pattern. Killing one’s own child is a horrific thing to do, and it is hard to understand (...) what would drive a parent to do such a thing. But once we are informed that Abraham actually believed God had told him to do so, we can see (allegedly) that there is at least an explanation of why he decided to kill his son. In the eyes of most people the planned act remains awful. But once we assume that Abraham was mistaken (say, because the best explanation in this case need not postulate the existence of God), we can see that his decision to kill his son is not a response to a normative good reason.1 So in a few lines we have outlined two reason notions: explanatory and normative (good) reasons. Cases like this afford an intuitive grasp of the distinction between explanatory and normative reasons — the difference between what explains Abraham’s motivation and behaviour and the good or bad reasons that apply to him. However, more recently (see e.g. Dancy 2000) the picture such cases present has been supplemented, or perhaps even corrected. There is a further feature of the Abrahamic story that needs to be teased out — one that gives a finer-grained understanding of what is going on than that provided by talk of the agent’s explanatory reasons. I share this view, and so what I will be doing in this paper is mainly to underline the need to dig a bit deeper. Motivation, as I shall argue, comes in different forms . (shrink)

It is impermissible to violate a constraint, even if by doing so a greater number of violations of the very same constraint were to be prevented. Most find this puzzling. But what makes the impermissibility of such minimizing violations puzzling? This article discusses some recent answers to this question. The article's first aim is to make clear in what way these answers differ. The second aim is to evaluate the answers, along with Kamm's and Nagel's proposed solutions of what they (...) see as the puzzle of constraints. The main thesis of the article is this: because defenders of constraints are not committed to any conception of valuable states of affairs, constraints do not conflict with maximizing rationality; but neither can they be accounted for in terms of impersonal values. (shrink)

Against arguments that suggest that Rawls’s notion of reasonability is ‘obscure’ and ‘unclear’ I argue in this essay that the idea of reasonability in the later Rawls can be defended in three ways. First, it can be shown that reasonability is fundamental to the architectonic of the later work. Reasonability, and the subordination of reason to reasonability, is fundamental to the later (post-1980) writings. Second, it can be shown that reasonability is not necessarily a vague term as many have claimed. (...) Third, it can be shown that reasonability is fundamental to what Rawls calls the three major new ideas of Political Liberalism: overlapping consensus; the reconception of the priority of the right over the good; and the idea of public reason. (shrink)

Over the last twenty years, many political philosophers have rejected the idea that justice is fundamentally about distribution. Rather, justice is about social relations, and the so-called distributive paradigm should be replaced by a new relational paradigm. Kasper Lippert-Rasmussen seeks to describe, refine, and assess these thoughts and to propose a comprehensive form of egalitarianism which includes central elements from both relational and distributive paradigms. He shows why many of the challenges that luck egalitarianism faces reappear, once we try (...) to specify relational egalitarianism more fully. His discussion advances understanding of the nature of the relational ideal, and introduces new conceptual tools for understanding it and for exploring the important question of why it is desirable in the first place to relate as equals. Even severe critics of the distributive understanding of justice will find that this book casts important new light on the ideal to which they subscribe. (shrink)

The ‘buck-passing’ account equates the value of an object with the existence of reasons to favour it. As we argued in an earlier paper, this analysis faces the ‘wrong kind of reasons’ problem: there may be reasons for pro-attitudes towards worthless objects, in particular if it is the pro-attitudes, rather than their objects, that are valuable. Jonas Olson has recently suggested how to resolve this difficulty: a reason to favour an object is of the right kind only if its formulation (...) does not involve any reference to the attitudes for which it provides a reason. We argue that despite its merits, Olson's solution is unsatisfactory. We go on to suggest that the buck-passing account might be acceptable even if the problem in question turns out to be insoluble. (shrink)

This book addresses these three issues: What is discrimination?; What makes it wrong?; What should be done about wrongful discrimination? It argues: that there are different concepts of discrimination; that discrimination is not always morally wrong and that when it is, it is so primarily because of its harmful effects.

Kasper Lippert-Rasmussen tackles all the major questions concerning luck egalitarianism, providing deep, penetrating and original discussion of recent academic discourses on distributive justice as well as responses to some of the main objections in the literature. It offers a new answer to the “Why equality?” and “Equality of what?” questions, and provides a robust luck egalitarian response to the recent criticisms of luck egalitarianism by social relations egalitarians. This systematic, theoretical introduction illustrates the broader picture of distributive justice and (...) enables the reader to understand the core intuitions underlying, or conflicting with, luck egalitarianism. (shrink)

This paper discusses aspects of the relationship between the scientific community and the public at large. Inspired by the European public debate on genetically modified crops and food, ethical challenges to the scientific community are highlighted. This is done by a discussion of changes that are likely to occur to journalistic attitudes – mirroring changing attitudes in the wider society – towards science and scientific researchers. Two journalistic conventions – those of science transmission and of investigative journalism – are presented (...) and discussed in relation to the present drive towards commercialization within the world of science: how are journalists from these different schools of thought likely to respond to the trend of commercialization? Likely journalistic reactions could, while maintaining the authority of the scientific method, be expected to undermine public trust in scientists. In the long term, this may lead to an erosion of the idea of knowledge as something that cannot simply be reduced to the outcome of negotiation between stakeholders. It is argued that science is likely to be depicted as a fallen angel. This may be countered, it is posited, by science turning human, by recognizing its membership of society, and by recognizing that such membership entails more than just commercial relations. To rethink its relationship with the public at large – and, in particular, to rethink the ideal of disinterested science – is an ethical challenge facing the scientific community. (shrink)

Relational egalitarianism says that moral equals should relate as equals. We explore how moral unequals should relate.

The all-affected principle is a widely accepted solution to the problem of constituting the demos. Despite its popularity, a basic question in relation to the principle has not received much attention: why does the fact that an individual is affected by a certain decision ground a right to inclusion in democratic decision-making about that matter? An answer to this question must include a reason that explains why an affected individual should be included because she is affected. We identify three such (...) reasons in the literature – to wit, interest protection, self-government and welfare – and show why they all fail. We then propose two alternative reasons, equal relations and fairness, and show why they are also deficient. Surprisingly, the all-affected principle then appears groundless, which supports withholding belief in the all-affected principle or(/and) investing future research in identifying the thus-far unidentified reason why being affected grounds a claim to inclusion. (shrink)

Philosophers analyzing standing to blame have argued that in view of a blamer’s own fault she can lack standing to blame another for an act even if the act is blameworthy and that standingless, hypocritical blame is pro tanto morally wrongful. The bearing of these conclusions on standing to praise is yet to receive the attention it deserves. I defend two claims. The first is the conditional claim that if and are true, so are and. The latter are: a praiser (...) can lack the standing to praise herself for an act even if that act is praiseworthy and standingless, hypocritical praise is pro tanto morally wrongful. So I am suggesting that facts about standing to blame reflect more general facts about standing to hold responsible. The second is the claim that and are true. (shrink)

In this book Kasper Lippert-Rasmussen address the complexities of his question "Is affirmative action morally justifiable?" by analyzing the prevailing contemporary arguments both for and against affirmative action. The book applies current political philosophy to demonstrate that arguments on both sides justify different conclusions given different specific cases, though it ultimately does argue in favor of affirmative action based on the relative strength and significance of the anti-discrimination- and equality of opportunity-based positions.

This article conceptualizes contemporary geopolitical violence in the Arctic through a semiotic register. Different living beings perceive different things, and these differences amount to different worlds, not merely different worldviews. Building on Eduardo Kohn’s reading of the semiotics of Charles Sanders Peirce, and theorists of biosemiotics and ecosemiotics, the article analyses how signs in and between living organisms and their environments are political matters of life and death. Via the themes of invisibility, colors, and snow, the article traces semiotic relations (...) between different living beings and their Arctic ecologies to weave a semiotic understanding of contemporary geopolitical violence in the Arctic and the role of climate change therein. The article defines the violence of climate change as a violence of not being able to recognize oneself, and builds on Eduardo Viveiros de Castro’s concept of multinaturalism to explain what it means that one world ruins other worlds. (shrink)

We develop a new puzzle concerning a material being's relationship to the smallest parts of the material world. In particular, we investigate how a being could be responsible for anything if its be...

It is commonly believed that blamees can dismiss hypocritical blame on the ground that the hypocrite has no standing to blame their target. Many believe that the feature of hypocritical blame that undermines standing to blame is that it involves an implicit denial of the moral equality of persons. After all, the hypocrite treats herself better than her blamee for no good reason. In the light of the complement to hypocrites and a comparison of hypocritical and non-hypocritical blamers subscribing to (...) hierarchical moral norms, I show why we must reject the moral equality account of the hypocrite’s lack of standing to blame. (shrink)

The contributors to the volume are: Richard Arneson, Linda Barclay, Thomas Christiano, Nils Holtug, Susan Hurley, Kasper Lippert-Rasmussen, Dennis McKerlie, ...

Many have thought that there is a problem with causal commerce between immaterial souls and material bodies. In Physicalism or Something Near Enough, Jaegwon Kim attempts to spell out that problem. Rather than merely posing a question or raising a mystery for defenders of substance dualism to answer or address, he offers a compelling argument for the conclusion that immaterial souls cannot causally interact with material bodies. We offer a reconstruction of that argument that hinges on two premises: Kim’s Dictum (...) and the Nowhere Man principle. Kim’s Dictum says that causation requires a spatial relation. Nowhere Man says that souls can’t be in space. By our lights, both premises can be called into question. We’ll begin our evaluation of the argument by pointing out some consequences of Kim’s Dictum. For some, these will be costs. We will then present two defeaters for Kim’s Dictum and a critical analysis of Kim’s case for Nowhere Man. The upshot is that Kim’s argument against substance dualism fails. (shrink)