This article studies the Islamic State's only remaining periodical, Al-Naba, identifying the most common tropes and patterns in the periodical's Sub-Saharan Africa coverage, and on Mozambique in particular. The Islamic State's increasingly important coverage of Africa focuses on terror attacks, military campaigns and on the fight against Christianity. However, it also employs more traditional anti-colonial arguments that have been used by other, more accepted, political actors during the struggle for decolonisation. Al-Naba also functions as a 'shamer' of non-African Muslims, to (...) get them to join jihad by pointing to the African successes of the organisation and set these successes up as examples to be followed. In this sense, the article illustrates how African jihadist branches can have global agency. (shrink)

Technology is increasingly subject of attention from philosophers. Philosophical reflection on technology exhibits a wide and at times bewildering array of approaches and modes of thought. This volume brings to light the development of three schools in the philosophy of technology. Based on thorough introductions to Karl Marx', Martin Heidegger's and John Dewey's thought about technology, the volume offers an in-depth account of the way thinkers in the critical, the phenomenological and the pragmatic schools have respond to issues and challenges (...) raised by the works of the founders of these schools. Technologies in almost any aspect of human life is potentially subject of philosophical treatment. To offer a focused demonstration of key arguments and insights, the presentation of each school is concluded with a contribution to discussions of educational technologies. In addition to philosophers seeking a valuable and clear structuring of a still burgeoning field, the volume is of interest to those working with educational philosophy and value sensitive design. „Stig Børsen Hansen’s book is a must for all interested in understanding the development of the philosophy of technology and the relation of thoughts of thinkers that have shaped the area. The author presents a new and refreshing take on the ideas from Marx to Marcuse, from Dewey to Latour, and Heidegger to Borgmann. It will engage and hopefully provoke." Dr. Jan Kyrre Berg Friis, University of Copenhagen. (shrink)

Abstract: This paper explores the relevance of themes from Wittgenstein's Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus to the ongoing discussion of metaphysical nihilism. I set out by showing how metaphysical nihilism is of paramount importance for cosmological arguments. Metaphysical nihilism is the position that there might have been nothing. Two conflicting intuitions emerge from a survey of discussions of metaphysical nihilism: Firstly, that metaphysical nihilism is true, and secondly, that formulations of the position are somehow unclear or nonsensical. By considering formalizations of philosophical language, (...) the second intuition is sharpened, while the first intuition is given expression through the Tractarian distinction between what is said and what is shown by our symbolism. I conclude by exploring and rejecting objections to making metaphysical nihilism a scientific, rather than a philosophical question. (shrink)

This book explores two questions that are integral to the question of the existence of God. The first question concerns the meaning of "existence" and the second concerns the meaning of "God". Regarding the first question, this book motivates, presents and defends the meta-ontology found in Gottlob Frege's writings and defended by Michael Dummett, Crispin Wright and Bob Hale. Frege's approach to questions of existence has mainly found use in connection with abstract objects such as numbers. This is one of (...) the first studies to systematically present Fregean meta-ontology and apply it to theology. Frege's meta-ontology is informed by his context principle. According to this, logico-syntactic notions such as "singular term" and "predicate" are pivotal to questions of what exists. These notions serve to throw light on the second question. Through thorough engagement with Old as well and New Testament texts, the book shows how Frege's logico-syntactic notions are of crucial importance when seeking to understand the meaning and use of "God". To complete the defence of Fregean meta-ontology, the book concludes by pointing to important differences between the otherwise closely associated concepts of an object found in Wittgenstein's Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus and Frege's writings. (shrink)

The first section of this paper introduces talk about absolutely everything -- the world as a totality -- as an integral element in the project of natural theology, as it has been presented by Fergus Kerr and Denys Turner respectively. The following section presents talk about the world as a totality of facts as a theme in philosophical logic and outlines a problem it has given rise to there. After confronting the solution originally suggested by Bertrand Russell and defended by (...) David Armstrong, the paper points to key elements of the solution presented by Wittgenstein in Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus. I show how Wittgenstein’s answer to the question of unrestricted quantification draws on his notion of showing and the inexpressible. Against this background, the concluding section draws attention to an important difference in ambition between Kerr’s and Turner’s description of the prospects for natural theology. (shrink)

This article sets out by distinguishing Wittgenstein’s own views in the philosophy of religion from a school of thought in the philosophy of religion that relies on later Wittgenstein’s philosophy of language. After a survey of distinguishing features of Wittgenstein’s later philosophy, the third section explores Wittgenstein’s treatment of Frazer’s account of magic among primitive peoples. The following section offers an account of Wittgensteinian philosophy of religion, including the use of the notions of a language game and superstition. I conclude (...) by criticizing a very influential argument of Wittgenstein’s to the effect that the meaning of words like ‘belief’ and ‘object’ varies from context to context without having any one thing in common. (shrink)

This paper explores the relevance of Wittgenstein’s early work for treatments of religion. The first section briefly outlines some different interpretive possibilities with respect to early Wittgenstein’s thinking. The following section explores the idea that what is important about early Wittgenstein’s work resides not in the meaning of the text as such, but in elements of his Jewish heritage. The third section outlines the immediate task that is undertaken in the body of the TLP. Central notions are those of mysticism (...) and logical form and the two concluding sections explore how these notions play a role in treatments of religion. This they do either by exhibiting parallels between themes in theology and themes in logic, or they do so by playing a role in assessing cosmological arguments in the philosophy of religion. (shrink)

Stig Kanger made important contributions to logic and formal philosophy. Kanger's most original achievements were in the areas of general proof theory, the semantics of modal and deontic logic, and the logical analysis of the concept of rights. But he contributed significantly to action theory, preference logic and the theory of measurement as well. This is the second of two volumes dedicated to the work of Stig Kanger. The first volume is a complete collection of Kanger's philosophical papers. (...) The present volume contains critical essays on the various aspects of Kanger's work as well as some biographical sketches. Lennart Åqvist, Jan Berg, Brian Chellas, Anatoli Degtyarev, Lars Gustafsson, Sören Halldén, Kaj Børge Hansen, Sven Ove Hansson, Risto Hilpinen, Jaakko Hintikka, Ghita Holmström-Hintikka, Lars Lindahl, Sten Lindström, Ingmar Pörn, Dag Prawitz, Wlodek Rabinowicz, Krister Segerberg, Amartya Sen, Sören Stenlund, Göran Sundholm, and Andrei Voronkov have contributed to this volume. (shrink)

Organizational learning can be described as a transfer of individuals’ cognitive mental models to shared mental models. Employees, seeking the same colleagues for advice, are structurally equivalent, and the aim of the paper is to study if the concept can act as a conduit for organizational learning. It is argued that the mimicking of colleagues’ advice seeking structures will induce structural equivalence and transfer the accuracy of individuals’ cognitive mental models to shared mental models. Taking a dyadic level of analysis (...) authors revisit a classical case and present novel data analyses.The empirical results indicate that the mimicking of advice seeking structures can alter cognitive accuracy. It is discussed the findings’ implications for organization learning theory and practice, addressed the study’s limitations, and suggested avenues for future research. (shrink)

Research communication in interdisciplinary research projects requires a way of demarcation of theory and knowledge that is easy to communicate, is inconsequential for the framework of concepts, results, and procedures within existing scientific disciplines, and abstains from trying to resolve the dispute between (neo)positivists and constructivists. A simple way of demarcation starts from the notion of language-independent and language-dependent reality. Currently, what passes for knowledge (“news”) and myth (“fake news”) depends, besides on sheer volume and frequency of the messages, increasingly (...) on the internal consistency of (computer) language-dependent reality and decreasingly on language-independent reality. All language is instruction, and knowledge is to know which instructions (that is, theory) are predictive of a result, state, or situation in language-independent reality. Any theory that doesn’t reduce outcome space, or contains one or more empirically/physically impossible instructions, or produces wrong predictions, or falls short of demonstration is not knowledge. (shrink)

In the work of both Ludwik Fleck and Thomas Kuhn the scientific literature plays important roles for stability and change of scientific phenomenal worlds. In this article we shall introduce the analyses of scientific literature provided by Fleck and Kuhn, respectively. From this background we shall discuss the problem of how divergent thinking can emerge in a dogmatic atmosphere. We shall argue that in their accounts of the factors inducing changes of scientific phenomenal worlds Fleck and Kuhn offer substantially different (...) approaches, and we shall discuss in which respects their approaches may be compatible. (shrink)

`Proto-idea' was a central concept in the thinking of the Polish microbiologist and philosopher of science Ludwik Fleck (1896–1961). Based on studies of the origin of the modern concept of syphilis, Fleck claimed that many established scientific facts are best understood as interpretations of pre scientific, somewhat hazy `proto-ideas' in the framework of a certain `thought-style'. As an example,Fleck saw the modern knowledge of infection as an interpretation of the ancient proto-idea of diseases as caused by minute `animalcules'. However, the (...) epistemological aspects of the concept of proto-ideas have only been sparsely developed and discussed by Fleck and his critics. This paper attempts to bridge the gap. Firstly, I reconstruct the concept of proto-ideasin the context of Fleck's constructivist theory of knowledge. Secondly, I illustrate the relation between Fleck's concept of proto-ideas and his nominalist view on medical taxonomy. Finally, I discuss four philosophical problems implied by Fleck's concept of proto-ideas: (a) the problem of combining two conflicting perspectives on the history of science (b) the problem of accounting for the notion of` continuity' within a non realist theory of knowledge (c) the problem of ascribing no truth-content to proto-ideas, and (d) the problem concerning the non-neutrality of the analyst's viewpoint. (shrink)

The analysis of contemporary socio-technical processes can benefit greatly, methodologically speaking, from considering past processes and solutions. Obviously, all technological projects have a prehistory upon which they depend to a certain extent. In some cases, the prehistory might even take on the shape of a translation terrain, which technical experts employ explicitly to sidestep inexperienced nonexperts. Also, mechanisms that can best be described as a pied piper detour, rather than as an obligatory passage point, are relied on by technical experts (...) who want to exclude the views and participation of nonexperts for themselves to assume a dominating position in the Machiavellian tradition. The relevance and operation of these socio-technical mechanisms were amply illustrated in the Norwegian town of Fredrikstad, where plans for establishing an IT highway project—a digital city concept developed and supported by users —came to nothing after technical experts intervened in the shape of a mediating agency and introduced their own scenarios. (shrink)

The content of this book is essentially one argument. The aim of this book is to consider the breakdown of a certain world view during the twentieth century. This is mirrored in the treatment of both science and philosophy. As these form the foundation for the human position in the world, a major reorganization of the body of knowledge had to take place. Bohr and Wittgenstein have been chosen as the main actors to represent this revision. Each one had to (...) replace apparent order and certainty by an understanding based on limited concepts in constant flux. The conclusion is that the modern synthesis is far from satisfactory. By leaving the story unfinished in its present state, the book hopes to provoke a renewal of the discussion and the eventual emergence of a reformed clarity and understanding. Reality is to be left as it is, but the human mind is also to be left as it is. The problem is to find a way to effect a harmonious combination of these. (shrink)

We consider the concept of entanglement for pure cases of finite dimensional state spaces. The criterion of unentangled states is related to demanding rank one of an associated eigenvalue problem. In addition to the conventional procedure based on the Schmidt decomposition, we devise a method based on the spectral resolution of unsymmetric matrices. In particular, we consider the case when all eigenvalues are zero, and find that the method still works.

Previous studies of auditory expectation have focused on the expectedness perceived by listeners retrospectively in response to events. In contrast, this research examines predictive uncertainty —a property of listeners' prospective state of expectation prior to the onset of an event. We examine the information-theoretic concept of Shannon entropy as a model of predictive uncertainty in music cognition. This is motivated by the Statistical Learning Hypothesis, which proposes that schematic expectations reflect probabilistic relationships between sensory events learned implicitly through exposure. Using (...) probability estimates from an unsupervised, variable-order Markov model, 12 melodic contexts high in entropy and 12 melodic contexts low in entropy were selected from two musical repertoires differing in structural complexity (simple and complex). Musicians and non-musicians listened to the stimuli and provided explicit judgments of perceived uncertainty (explicit uncertainty). We also examined an indirect measure of uncertainty computed as the entropy of expectedness distributions obtained using a classical probe-tone paradigm where listeners rated the perceived expectedness of the final note in a melodic sequence (inferred uncertainty). Finally, we simulate listeners' perception of expectedness and uncertainty using computational models of auditory expectation. A detailed model comparison indicates which model parameters maximize fit to the data and how they compare to existing models in the literature. The results show that listeners experience greater uncertainty in high-entropy musical contexts than low-entropy contexts. This effect is particularly apparent for inferred uncertainty and is stronger in musicians than non-musicians. Consistent with the Statistical Learning Hypothesis, the results suggest that increased domain-relevant training is associated with an increasingly accurate cognitive model of probabilistic structure in music. (shrink)

In this article we refine the design ofcontext shifting experiments, which play a central role in contextualist debates, and we subject a large number of scenarios involving different types of expressions of interest to contextualists, including ‘know’ and color adjectives like ‘green’, to experimental investigation. Our experiment (i) reveals an effect of changing contexts on the evaluation of uses of the sentences that we examine, thereby overturning the absence of results reported in previous experimental studies (so‐callednull results), (ii) uncovers evidence (...) for a ‘truth bias' in favor of positive over negative sentences, and (iii) reveals previously unnoticed distinctions between the strength of the contextual effects displayed by scenarios involving knowledge ascriptions and scenarios concerning color and other miscellaneous scenarios. (shrink)

During the past decades, research collaboration between researchers from different disciplines has become more frequent. However, there is a need to look into the generic modalities and challenges. The article explores a series of potential obstructions to cross-disciplinary collaboration of methodological and epistemological nature. Furthermore, a number of contextual, inhibiting factors are outlined. As means of overcoming the obstacles, the importance of mutual knowledge, allocation of adequate time and conducive research management is emphasised. New teams may benefit from tutoring by (...) facilitators, who can help to make problem areas explicit and negotiate solutions. Owing to the training background of the author, most of the examples are drawn from the interface between biomedicine/natural science and applied medical anthropology. However, the issues raised basically apply to all sorts of cross-disciplinary research collaboration in various combinations. (shrink)

Existing research on the formation of employee ethical climate perceptions focuses mainly on organization characteristics as antecedents, and although other constructs have been considered, these constructs have typically been studied in isolation. Thus, our understanding of the context in which ethical climate perceptions develop is incomplete. To address this limitation, we build upon the work of Rupp to develop and test a multi-experience model of ethical climate which links aspects of the corporate social responsibility, ethics, justice, and trust literatures and (...) helps to explain how employees’ ethical climate perceptions form. We argue that in forming ethical climate perceptions, employees consider the actions or characteristics of a complex web of actors. Specifically, we propose that employees look outward at how communities are impacted by their organization’s actions, upward to make inferences about the ethicality of leaders in their organizations, and inward at their own propensity to trust others as they form their perceptions. Using a multiple-wave field study conducted at a privately held US corporation, we find substantial evidence in support of our model. (shrink)

Purpose: There is a widespread recognition that biomedical explanations offer benefits to those diagnosed with a mental disorder. Recent research points out that such explanations may nevertheless have stigmatizing effects. In this study, this ‘mixed blessing’ account of biomedical explanations is investigated in a case of philosophical interest: Tourette Syndrome. Method: We conducted a vignette survey with 221 participants in which we first assessed quantitative attributions of blame as well as the desire for social distance for behavior associated with Tourette (...) Syndrome. Results: In our study, it is confirmed that in the case of biomedical explanations, less blame is attributed than in the case of psychosocial explanations. When presented with a mixed explanation stressing an entanglement of biological and psychosocial factors this did not increase blame attribution. The desire for social distance is unaffected by the type of explanation but the participants’ free text feedback indicates this might obfuscate an underlying dilemma between stigma and blame revealed in recent research. Conclusion: There seems to be potential for blame reduction in explanations where biological and psychosocial factors are entangled. However, dynamic, ‘epigenetic’, explanations require further qualitative research to be performed as well as a philosophical framework to account for the ‘mixed blessings’ account. (shrink)

As moral injury is a still-emerging concept within the area of military mental health, prevalence estimates for moral injury and its precursor, potentially morally injurious events (PMIEs), remain unknown for many of the world’s militaries. The present study sought to estimate the prevalence of PMIEs in the Canadian Armed Forces (CAF), using data collected from CAF personnel deployed to Afghanistan, via logistic regressions controlling for relevant sociodemographic, military, and deployment characteristics. Analyses revealed that over 65% of CAF members reported exposure (...) to at least one event that would be considered a PMIE. The most commonly PMIEs individuals reported included seeing ill or injured women and children they were unable to help (48.4%), being unable to distinguish between combatants and non-combatants (43.6%), and finding themselves in a threatening situation where they were unable to respond due to the rules of engagement under which they were required to operate (35.4%). These findings provide support for both the presence of exposure to PMIEs in CAF members and the need for formal longitudinal data collection regarding PMIE exposure and moral injury development. (shrink)