The aim of this chapter is to discuss how a unified theory of technology could be forged philosophically, and suggest some implications for technology education. A post-phenomenological model of human-technology relations was employed as an analytical tool. It is concluded that both digital and analog technologies could be seen as technical artefacts with a dual nature and technologies of representation. The dual nature of technical artefacts, that is, the functional/intentional and physical dimensions of artefacts and systems, is reflected e.g. in (...) the abstract programming language in conjunction with a specification, which relates to a physical configuration. Representational technologies could include everything from simple control systems to computers to AI systems, and it would be possible to conceive of the concrete and abstract parts of these technologies as different components of their representational capacity; a component could either be seen as representing (concrete) or represented (abstract), but part of the same representational system that makes up the technology. In both these “dual” perspectives on technology, artefacts and systems could be viewed from a common point of view and may consist of both digital, analog, concrete, and abstract components that together make up the technology. One important implication for technology education is that teaching needs to involve both abstract and concrete technological components. When programming, for instance, students need to learn not only about the code or software in itself, but also about what digital technology does in terms of solving real-world problems and achieving technical purposes. (shrink)

In our world and our modern society, we have laws, ethics, morality, and religion that guide us, teaching us the basic principles of what is right and what is wrong, and what is good and what is bad. However, what would happen if all of these guides suddenly cease to exist? In Cormac McCarthy’s The Road, this is exactly what happens. The novel’s two main characters, a father and his son, try to survive in a world that has turned into (...) ravaged landscapes with people that will hunt others down, kill them and eat them. Through the story, the pair fight to survive, but also fight to maintain their ethical values and moral duties when everyone around them has abandoned those values. This thesis will thereby demonstrate the possibility of ethics in a post-apocalyptic world and analyse this by reference to consequentialism, deontology, and virtue ethics. Moreover, it will show the ways that The Road can be used to teach right and wrong and good and bad in upper-secondary school. (shrink)

Bibliometric research is an important tool for examining the scientific output of various fields of study. By conducting such research, it is possible to see how the influences of different people, ideologies and discoveries have affected the scientific discourse. One way of doing this is through topic modelling, which consists of organizing the words that are used within a set of text data into different topics. To the knowledge of the author, no topic modelling study of Swedish philosophy had previously (...) been conducted. For this reason, this study aimed to partially fill the gap by exploring the publications of one specific Swedish philosophical journal. Using Python, a topic model with 14 topics was created from the journal Filosofisk tidskrift. The change of these topics between the years 1980 and 2020 was examined. Specific attention was given to possible differences between analytic and Continental philosophy. To validate the results, an interview was also held with Fredrik Stjernberg, professor in theoretical philosophy. The results displayed a varied popularity and change for each topic. Too little Continental philosophy was discovered for a proper comparison, leading to the conclusion that Continental philosophy is not very influential in Swedish philosophical discourse. Future research should be conducted on peer-reviewed articles and be backed up by greater professional philosophical aid. (shrink)

Review essay of Infinite Mobilization, by Peter Sloterdijk, translated by Sandra Berjan, Cambridge, Polity, 2020, 240 pp., $24.95, ISBN: 978-1-509-51847-0.

Causal reasoning has become very important in the last few years in logic based action theories. In this article, we study how causal inference has been integrated and used in action theories. After presenting and discussing criteria considered as the most meaningful, we present four formalisms which are approaches to actions and causality and we try to situate each formalism in relation to the criteria.

We present several alternative classical logic axiomatisations of the Event Calculus, a narrative based formalism for reasoning about actions and change. We indicate the range of applicability and key characteristics of each alternative formulation.

We address the problem of formally proving high-level effect descriptions of actions from low-level operational definitions. Both descriptions are expressed in a logic of actions and change, with extensions for characterizing continuous change, discontinuities, the distinction between true and estimated values of state variables, and the distinction between success and failure of an action. Both descriptions also require the use of nonmonotonicity in the logic in question. The transition from operational definition to effect description furthermore involves the creation of a (...) closure with respect to the set of possible ways that the action can fail.We outline, by means of an example, how these issues can be addressed as an extension of existing results on logics of actions and change. (shrink)

We are currently witnessing a genuine proliferation of new feminist or pro-feminist work on posthumanities, in art and research, in Sweden as in other corners of the world. What matters most to me as a feminist scholar is the synergy and new conversations within feminist theory, and what they can do. Reinventing the humanities today can no longer signify the relaunching of a school of thought, style, or theory with a hegemonic vocation. It must entail the very recomposition of disciplinarity, (...) theory, and everyday doing. Feminist posthumanities testify not to any crisis of the content, rigor, or intellectual liveliness of the humanities and adjacent social sciences, but to its sociability in the more-than-human domains. Feminist posthumanities, with its mixed origin stories and foremothers, are to me the becoming minoritarian of collective academic insight, and it comes with both its perks, and setbacks. It is needed more now than ever, as we need communities that work together, across the ecologies and technologies of the postnatural condition we often simply call the Anthropocene. (shrink)

This paper argues that contemporary child and youth experiences of globalization call for retheorizing global justice around a new concept of empowered inclusion. The first part of the paper examines three case studies in globalization – child labour movements, child and youth migration, and young people’s organization around climate change – and shows how, in each case, young people, through their struggles against injustice, are simultaneously disempowered and empowered by their deep global interdependency. The second part proposes new theoretical advances (...) in global justice that better respond to child and youth experiences through a childist concept of the empowered inclusion of both children and other marginalized groups. And the third part advances some preliminary suggestions about how a more child-responsive conception of global power and justice might be operationalized in practice across global policies, institutions, and culture. (shrink)

Feminist technoscience and feminist phenomenology have seldom been brought into dialogue with each other, despite them sharing concerns with subjectivity and normativity, and despite both of them moving away from sharp subject-object distinctions. This is unfortunate. This article argues that, while differences between these strands need to be acknowledged, such differences should be put to productive use. The article discusses a case of school bullying, and suggests that bringing these analytic perspectives together enables and sharpens examinations of the role of (...) subjectification and subject positions for subjectivity in the phenomenological sense; affectivity within material-discursive entanglements and constellations of humans and things, and as connecting the body, things and the world in specific ways; and normativity as enacted, lived and embedded in perception. (shrink)

An essay on Robin Wagner-Pacifici's 'What Is and Event?'. The essay argues that Wagner-Pacifici's book offers a platform from which it again becomes possible to rethink the relationship between system and transformation, and that this is precisely what the human and social sciences need if they are to retain their ability to critically interpret the dense fabric of late capitalist society and culture – a society of the spectacle if there ever was one, a world from heel to head made (...) up by events. The essay assess Wagner-Pacifici's analytical apparatus of political semiosis, and it shows that aesthetics, and literary and visual interpretation, to a large extent explains why Wagner-Pacifici can make a tremendous contribution to a theory of political emergence. Finally, the essay argues that aesthetic theory offers an intersection where social theory and the theory of history may begin a new conversation about human agency, social change and historical experie. (shrink)

Several academic traditions have addressed epistemological objectivity and/or partisanship in the study of technoscientific controversies. On the one hand, positivist andrelativist scholars agree that the political commitments of the social researcher should notimpinge on scientific enquiry, while on the other hand, feminist and Marxist scholars notonly take stands in diverse technoscientific debates, but even claim their agendas to bemore credible than those of orthodox scientists. Such perspectives stress that all researchis partisan in one way or another because it involves questions (...) of who controls,manipulates, and establishes decisions, facts, and knowledge. With this in mind, it ispossible to identify different forms of partisan research including capture byparticipants, de facto and overt partisanship, and mercenary scholarship. These differentforms of partisan scholarship are characterised by differences in the motives underlyingepistemological choices of research topic and method, personal commitments to thefields studied, use of research findings in controversies, and positioning of results inwider debates. Two examples help to illustrate partisan scholarship: first, a study of newtechnologies for managing climate change ; andsecond, the construction of the new underground metro system in Athens and itsaccommodation of accessibility standards. Both cases entail partisan positions and raisesimilar concerns about the orthodox epistemological assumptions underpinningsociotechnical systems, especially when it comes to technoscientific controversies.Supporting STS partisan scholarship, therefore, enables greater social and democraticengagement with technoscientific development. (shrink)

This paper explores the ways in which boundaries of estrangement are produced in the academic literature assigned for courses on interculturality. As the existence of interculturality is dependent on the ascription of content to culture – since the notion, by definition, always involves more than one singular culture – this essay seeks to provide an answer to the question of what this literature, implicitly or otherwise, defines in terms of sameness vis-à-vis otherness, and thereby to chart the conditions for becoming (...) intercultural. This question is especially important because the self in interculturality has to be, in principle, generalizable: it should signify a position available for occupation by anybody with proper training in this approach. Starting from the assumption that different experiences, languages and identities, already intersect and are indeed already intercultural before being subjected to study under the auspices of ‘interculturality’ as an educational topic, the essay goes on to problematize the way in which interculturality tends to construe sameness and difference along national lines and does little to cater for multiple, as opposed to national, or other unified, identities. (shrink)

Before the trains of thought have been firmly laid down, we ask in this article about the very nature and histories of the speculative of the speculative-materialist turn. We do this from the intertwined interfaces of curious feminist materialisms, foregrounding sexual difference, post-positivist critique and posthumanist performativity such as is being done in various strands of feminist theory today. The question of speculation plays a constitutive role in feminist critique and in several new or neo-materialist traditions. In fact, many interesting (...) materialisms—Marxism, French feminism—can be named ‘speculative’. We argue that in spite of what the recent ‘speculative turn’ professes, speculative materialisms have a complex genealogy. Speculation functions transversally in a materialist genealogy -connecting the archive of feminist approaches in particular. In order to be able to imagine a different world we need to think through a stifled and sexually differentiated present from which a qualitative shift and political breakthrough can be formulated, and hopefully achieved. However, in what is currently called ‘speculative realism’ or ‘object-oriented ontologies’ neither speculation nor the speculative are reflected upon as a heritage from and alliance with feminist and politically materialist positions. What are the onto-epistemological stakes of this body of work? And what ethico-political horizons are drawn here? We stand speculative before such turn. (shrink)

Two well-studied closure operators for relations are based on existentially quantified conjunctive formulas, primitive positive definitions, and primitive positive formulas without existential quantification, quantifier-free primitive positive definitions definitions. Sets of relations closed under p.p. definitions are known as co-clones and sets of relations closed under q.f.p.p. definitions as weak partial co-clones. The latter do however have limited expressivity, and the corresponding lattice of strong partial clones is of uncountably infinite cardinality even for the Boolean domain. Hence, it is reasonable to (...) consider the expressiveness of p.p. definitions where only a small number of existentially quantified variables are allowed. In this article, we consider p.p. definitions allowing only polynomially many existentially quantified variables, and say that a co-clone closed under such definitions is polynomially closed, and otherwise superpolynomially closed. We investigate properties of polynomially closed co-clones and prove that if the corresponding clone contains a k-ary near-unanimity operation for k amp;gt;= 3, then the co-clone is polynomially closed, and if the clone does not contain a k-edge operation for any k amp;gt;= 2, then the co-clone is superpolynomially closed. For the Boolean domain we strengthen these results and prove a complete dichotomy theorem separating polynomially closed co-clones from superpolynomially closed co-clones. Using these results, we then proceed to investigate properties of strong partial clones corresponding to superpolynomially closed co-clones. We prove that if Gamma is a finite set of relations over an arbitrary finite domain such that the clone corresponding to Gamma is essentially unary, then the strong partial clone corresponding to Gamma is of infinite order and cannot be generated by a finite set of partial functions. (shrink)

In the wake of a steady flow of child migrants attempting to cross borders and states’ efforts to restrict immigration, various public controversies have arisen about the rights of asylum-seeking children. The ‘moral gap’ between the outcome of democratically enacted laws and the aim of controlling immigration, on the one hand, and public calls to protect the universal rights of asylum seeking children, on the other, have created a political challenge for Western democracies. This thesis sets out to examine two (...) particular settings in which norms about the rights of asylum-seeking children and immigration control have been established and contested over the years: the Swedish Migration Court of Appeal and Sweden’s largest morning paper, Dagens Nyheter. It combines empirically oriented analysis with theoretical enquiry, and it brings the issue of the rights of asylumseeking children into dialogue with the contemporary political-philosophical debate about membership, rights and borders. (shrink)

The Indiana Religious Freedom Restoration Act and its subsequent backlash serve as a case-study to raise ethical concerns both about the characterization of contemporary western liberal democracy as a political theory and a prevailing religious extremism acting as a legislative power within governments; Developing and reflecting on these issues this study will attempt to show a need to evaluate the moral principles attributed to modern political systems and the governmental delineation of power over individuals within a society. Applying Rawlsian concepts, (...) this study will show that laws such as the RFRA are representative of weak and superficial democracies that in most cases are actually centres of power, funded by corporations and organisations in direct conflict with liberal principles. (shrink)

The purpose of this paper is to investigate how ISs may be conceptualized from an individual, neurobiological perspective. The point of departure is the fact that brains evolved to control the activities of bodies in the world. Based on a number of theoretical contributions bordering between the neural and social realms, a novel IS conceptualization emerges as a dialectical unity of functional organs in the brain and the IT artifact. As a consequence, the IS is conceptualized as intrinsically associated with (...) the individual. I discuss implications of this position for epistemology, ontology, and representation, which are all fundamental aspects of IS research. In conclusion, I claim that a neurobiological perspective on IS has a great potential to advance the discussion of the nature of the IS. (shrink)

Uncontainable Life: A Biophilosophy of Bioart investigates the ways in which thinking through the contemporary hybrid artistico-scientific practices of bioart is a biophilosophical practice, one that contributes to a more nuanced understanding of life than we encounter in mainstream academic discourse. When examined from a Deleuzian feminist perspective and in dialogue with contemporary bioscience, bioartistic projects reveal the inadequacy of asking about life’s essence. They expose the enmeshment between the living and non-living, organic and inorganic, and, ultimately, life and death. (...) Instead of examining the defining criteria of life, bioartistic practices explore and enact life as processual, differential, and always already uncontainable, thus transcending preconceived material and conceptual boundaries. In this way, this doctoral thesis concentrates on the ontology of life as it emerges through the selected bioartworks: “semi-living” sculptures created by The Tissue Culture and Art Project and the performance May the Horse Live in Me by L’Art Orienté Objet. The hope is that such an ontology can enable future conceptualisations of an ethico-politics that avoids the anthropocentric logic dominant in the humanities and social sciences. (shrink)

In this article, we draw upon ‘After-ANT’ scholarship to generate openings for a shift from purely deconstructive studies of object organization to a more straightforward generation of concrete and specific alternative trajectories towards the future by way of ontological experimentation. Through careful empirical investigation of a mine and a landfill, and how these are enacted in practice in different topological registers, we show how mines and landfills are intertwined; enacted sometimes as similar and in other cases as different types of (...) objects, thus shaping the paths of becoming for those bundles of relations that become enacted as either a ‘mine object’ or a ‘landfill object’. Mapping these practices generates openings for interventions suggesting how things could be made different in some specificity; in this case, for example, the appreciation of what constitutes ‘natural resources’. The overarching purpose of this article is to intervene in current debates regarding the potential merits of drawing upon Object-Oriented Philosophy as an inspiration in critical organizational studies. While we are highly sympathetic to calls for more experimental object studies, we are hesitant towards Object-Oriented Philosophy as a source of inspiration due to its specific metaphysical underpinnings. To clarify what we find to be at stake here, we conclude the article by situating After-ANT in a wider landscape of thought, discussing the contrast between broadly pragmatist research approaches, such as After-ANT, and Object-Oriented Philosophy. Finally, we try to spell out how we believe this contrast reverberates upon how we understand the purpose and potential of critical social science. (shrink)

The city of Palitana, India, has become the first region known to legally install de facto meat bans, essentially making Palitana a vegetarian city by law. These legal steps seem to be the direct result of social pressure put on local legislators in the form of a mass hunger strike performed by local Jain monks. This thesis is aimed at discussing the background of this case, its connections to a broader general discussion of moral and ethical vegetarianism, and arguments in (...) favor of and against the legal installment of a meat ban in the Palitana case. It is concluded that although the meat ban is ideologically and theoretically speaking ethically justifiable and defensible it is in practice, at least in its current form, not ethically desirable. (shrink)

The article aims at reconstructing ontological, epistemological, and ethical frames of the posthumanist project, while drawing on the philosophies of Karen Barad, Deleuze and Guattari, and Donna Haraway. Only by defining such theoretical premises of the project one may be able to ask about and think a posthumanist collective and posthumanist politics.

The preschool is the first institutional context that Swedish children meet in their lives, and it therefore plays a very important role in the Swedish welfare state. As of 1998, preschools were part of the public school system and the first curriculum was then adopted. In the new curriculum for the preschool technology is emphasized as one of the most significant pedagogical areas to work with. In many countries the preschool age is seen as an important time for laying the (...) foundations for interest in and knowledge about technology, since it is believed that the children’s curiosity comes naturally. It is thus seen as a crucial age to get both boys and girls interested in technology. Although research on technology education in the preschool is lacking to a great extent, existing research largely confirms these views. The aim of this paper is to investigate how girls and boys explore and learn technology in free play in two Swedish preschools. The empirical study is inspired by an ethnographic approach and is based on qualitative data collected through observations and informal talk with children and teachers. Two preschools with children one to five years old were chosen for the study. Today’s society places high demands on the individual in terms of ability to acquire understanding of and knowledge about technology. One of the visions of the 2010 Governmental committee Teknikdelegationen was a Swedish society that provides all its citizens with the competence needed to understand, profit by and influence the development of an increasingly complex and technologically advanced society. Hence the committee emphasized that knowledge about technology must be disseminated early on, already in the preschool, and technology should be an important feature throughout the education system. A clear majority of Swedish children now attend the preschool, although it is not mandatory. The preschool is consequently the first institutional context that Swedish children meet in their lives, and it therefore plays a very important role in the Swedish welfare state. As of 1998, preschools were part of the public school system and the first curriculum was then adopted. In the new curriculum for the preschool technology is emphasized as one of the most significant pedagogical areas to work with. In many countries the preschool age is seen as an important time for laying the foundations for knowledge about and interest in technology, since it is believed that the children’s curiosity comes naturally. It is thus seen as a crucial age to get both boys and girls interested in technology. Although research on technology education in the preschool is lacking to a great extent, existing research largely confirms these views. The aim of this paper is to investigate how girls and boys explore and learn technology in free play in two Swedish preschools. The empirical study is inspired by an ethnographic approach and is based on qualitative data collected through observations and informal talk with children and teachers. Two preschools with children one to five years old were chosen for the study. (shrink)

In this thesis I scavenge the history of philosophy for answers to the question ‘How are claims to knowledge justified?’. I argue that Plato’s psychological doctrine of knowledge marks the starting point of a philosophical inquiry motivated by the possibility to discover foundations of knowledge through investigating the nature of mind. At the core of this inquiry lies the hypothesis that if the psychological mechanisms that govern the capacity for knowledge acquisition is fully understood, then answers will follow about why (...) judgements are true or false. The prospective result of the inquiry is a theory of universal epistemic justification which demarcates epistemically warranted beliefs from unwarranted beliefs. I suggest that there is a historically persistent case of cognitive dissonance within the epistemological enterprise — a tension between two of its central theses — which is caused by the persistence of the of the hitherto unsuccessful but ongoing quest for universal epistemic justification, and its inciting promises. The contradicting theses are those of certain justification (that one is justified in believing that p only if p is entailed by evidence) and proportional justification (that one is proportionally justified in believing that p to the extent that evidence makes p credible). I discuss the consequences of giving up one of the respective theses. I conclude that the thesis of certain justification cannot be given up unless an adequate theory of proportional justification is proposed, and that the legacy of searching for universal epistemic justification will continue unless epistemologists are able to construct one. (shrink)

This study is a contribution to the bioethical debate about new and possibly emerging reproductive technologies. Its point of departure is the intuition, which many people seem to share, that using such technologies to select non-disease traits – like sex and emotional stability - in yet unborn children is morally problematic, at least more so than using the technologies to avoid giving birth to children with severe genetic diseases, or attempting to shape the non-disease traits of already existing children by (...) environmental means, like education. The study employs philosophical analysis for the purpose of making this intuition intelligible and judging whether it is justified. Different ways in which the moral problems posed by reproductive technologies are often framed in bioethical debates are criticised as inadequate for this task. In particular, it is argued that the intuition cannot fully be made sense of in terms of harm to the children that such technologies help create. The study attempts to elaborate an alternative to that broadly consequentialist approach, by drawing on Martin Heidegger’s philosophy of technology, Hans Jonas’s ethics, and Aristotle’s practical philosophy, as it has been received and developed in the hermeneutical tradition. It is suggested that reproductive choices, unlike decisions for already born children, are characterised by a peculiar one-sidedness: the future child appears to the parents as something wholly theirs to decide about, not as a concrete other with whom they must interact in a responsive and attuned way. This is problematic because it means that such choices cannot call upon the particularised moral understanding only gained in interpersonal encounters. In particular, it makes them easily shaped by various tendencies, to which parents are always susceptible, to relate to children in instrumentalising ways, and at risk of reinforcing such tendencies. However, this does not mean that all uses of reproductive technologies are equally troubling. When selecting against severe disease the parents can rely on a widely shared illness experience to escape the dangers that one-sidedness involves. It is concluded that the intuition under discussion, thus explicated and in some ways qualified, makes sense morally. (shrink)

This thesis is an analysis of the use and definition of the concepts health, well-being and welfare within the field called “the science of animal health and welfare”. The materials used are a literature survey of the field, qualitative interviews with Swedish veterinary surgeons and a study of the concepts in legislation concerning animals in England, Germany and Sweden. The main emphasis has been on theoretical definitions explicitly stated in the different texts or in the interviews. Two ways of distinguishing (...) between animals are used: according to species and according to the role that animals have for humans. As a result it becomes salient whether the definitions have limits with regard to species or role. In the thesis a great number of definitions of the three concepts are interpreted, compared and criticised. As a result a limited number of definitions have been categorised and collected into clusters which fulfil minimal requirements of consistency and practicability. The analysis supports the use of all three concepts – health, well-being and welfare – since they are all needed for making crucial distinctions in the science of animal health and welfare. (shrink)

With pre-implantation genetic diagnosis (PGD), genetic testing and selective transfer of embryos is possible. In the future, germ-line gene therapy (GLGT) applied to embryos before implantation, in order to introduce missing genes or replace mutant ones, may be possible. The objective of this dissertation is to analyse moral aspects of these technologies, as described by eighteen British, Italian and Swedish gynaecologists and geneticists. The objective is systematised into three parts: research interviews and qualitative analysis, philosophical analysis, and elaboration of a (...) framework that supports the combination of analytic methods. PGD was described as positive since it enabled some couples at risk for a genetic disease to have a child without the disease. PGD was described as in different senses ‘better’ than methods for prenatal diagnosis and selective termination of pregnancy. It was also described as positive since it provided couples at risk with one more option, even if it did not result in the birth of a healthy child. However, interviewees were concerned about the difficulty of defining and evaluating genetic disease. They were also concerned about patients’ choices, and about exaggerated use or misuse. Whereas PGD gave rise to ambivalence in terms of how to understand, describe and evaluate it, GLGT was often described as unrealistic or undesirable. The results of the qualitative analysis are used in a philosophical analysis of the concepts of choice, autonomous choice, ambivalence, trust and ambivalence in trust relations. A set of distinct characteristics of each concept are elaborated. The results of the philosophical analysis are used in the discussion of the results of the qualitative analysis. The study shows that the technologies imply both ‘new’ ways to perform ‘old’ medical practices and ‘new’ practices. Old moral questions are reformulated. New moral questions are added. Against the background of this, the concept of genetic identity is discussed. Key words: empirical ethics, pre-implantation genetic diagnosis, germ-line gene therapy, qualitative research, philosophical analysis, medical progress, genetic disease, choice, autonomous choice, ambivalence, trust, genetic identity. (shrink)

In this study we examine the development of teachers’ subject-specific knowledge in technology during a design based research project. In the project a researcher collaborated with two primary school teachers in exploring their students’ learning of technology. Throughout the whole project, the teacher-researcher group worked in an iterative and systematic way to explore the students’ learning. The data draws from the groups’ meetings during the whole project. In order to study the potential learning that was taking place among the teacher (...) team during the course of the teaching project, Practical epistemology analysis was used. During the project the teachers’ expanding knowledge was based on needs of relations between their understanding of the object of learning and their previous teaching experiences, technical terms and real life examples. An important factor explaining the development of the teachers’ knowledge base was the discussion in the group focusing on different aspects, starting with formulating an object of learning, constructing the pre-test, identifying critical aspects and planning and revising lessons. Our study shows that it is possible for primary school teachers to significantly increase their knowledge base in technology and technology education through design-based teaching. (shrink)

With a focus on caring ethics, the aim of this study was to see if and how experienced nurses in care for the elderly described caring and whether they included any theoretical basis to their caring acts. Questions that guided the research were: Does ethical caring theory have any relevance in nurses clinical work? How do experienced nurses describe care in general, their intentions and motives in particular? In order to enter into the meanings of caring, a reflective lifeworld research (...) approach based on phenomenology was utilized. Eleven experienced nurses were interviewed and the resulting transcripts were analysed for meaning, The findings revealed caring as a seamless integration of different levels, or embodied moments, of knowledge. In caring that is understood as a practical, aesthetical and ethical field of force, there is room for "being", "becoming" and "doing". Theory and practice can and must intertwine to enable the caring goal of health as well-being. A conclusion that may be drawn from this study is that there is a potential for connecting ethical caring concepts and theories into practical everyday care. Nurses basic intentions for a care-giving profession, as well as hidden/forgotten theory and concepts, are viewed in this study as a possibility of turning from a pre-reflective state to a more conscious level. This study gives new nuances to the understanding that existence affects caring and caring affects existence, and contributes to the more general claim that it now is high time for ethical caring science theory to be visible and make a change in care. Highlighting the experience of existential caring intentionality, and relating the experience to theoretical caring substance, this study may contribute to the development of a more consciously ethical and individualized caring culture. (shrink)

The basic work for this book was carried out during the spring of 1989 in Edinburgh, where I had been granted a research position at The Institute for Advanced Studies in the Humanities. I should like to express here my indebtedness to the Institute for the opportunity thus afforded me. I should also like to say how very grateful I am for the stimulating conversations I had there with Professor Timothy Sprigge and Dr. Elizabeth Telfer. Dr. Telfers’s own treatise Happiness (...) has been a major influence on my view of the questions involved. The basic view of health and illness presented in this book is more fully set out in my On the Nature of Health. As in the case of my previous larger projects, I have received a great amount of support and may wise comments from Professor Ingmar Pörn, Helsinki. Three Danish experts – Anton Aggernaes, Erik Ostenfeld and Peter Sandøe – have made valuable comments. Professor Heng ten Have, Nijmegen, has improved my reading of the philosophy of Jeremy Bentham. I should also like to thank my colleagues at the Department of Health and Society, University of Linköping, for helping me to avoid a number of the pitfalls that can so easily stumble into when it comes to a treatise like this. Especially I should like to mentioned Per-Erik Liss, Ingemar Nordin and Bo Petersson, all three of whom have read and commented on the entire manuscript. A Swedish version of this book, Livskvalitet och hälsa, came out in 1991. I have been made quite a number of corrections and additions, one type of addition being replies to critical points made in reviews of the Swedish version. I should like to thank Malcolm Forbes for valuable help putting my English into publishable condition. Linköping, May 1993 Lennart Noredenfelt. (shrink)