The critical and polemic receptions of the work of Loïc Wacquant has been extensive, but to a large extent focused on specific works and colored by professional specialty, that is, in a word: fragmented. In counteracting that fragmented response, the article sheds light on the undercurrents in Wacquant’s works by stressing four prominent and consistent features: his heritage from Bourdieu; his emphasis on and constant practice of theory ; the distinct ethos with which he addresses political sociology ; and finally, (...) the persistent and ubiquitous critique of everything in existence – a thematic indicator permeating each and every one of his works. Thus the article proposes a unifying reading of Wacquant as an interpretation advocating revitalization of a critical social science. (shrink)

This paper has been published in 2015 in Environment and Planning D, 33 : p. 1080–1097. It is freely available from Copenhagen Business School. We thank the authors for the permission to reproduce it here.: This paper explores the relationship between bodily rhythms and market rhythms in two distinctly different financial market configurations, namely the open-outcry pit and present-day high-frequency trading. Drawing on Henri - Management et Business – Nouvel article.

Machine learning models are becoming increasingly prevalent in algorithmic trading and investment management. The spread of machine learning in finance challenges existing practices of modelling and model use and creates a demand for practical solutions for how to manage the complexity pertaining to these techniques. Drawing on interviews with quants applying machine learning techniques to financial problems, the article examines how these people manage model complexity in the process of devising machine learning-powered trading algorithms. The analysis shows that machine learning (...) quants use Ockham’s razor – things should not be multiplied without necessity – as a heuristic tool to prevent excess model complexity and secure a certain level of human control and interpretability in the modelling process. I argue that understanding the way quants handle the complexity of learning models is a key to grasping the transformation of the human’s role in contemporary data and model-driven finance. The study contributes to social studies of finance research on the human–model interplay by exploring it in the context of machine learning model use. (shrink)

This paper explores how calculative cultures shape perceptions of models and practices of model use in the financial industry. A calculative culture comprises a specific set of practices and norms concerning data and model use in an organizational setting. Drawing on interviews with model users working in algorithmic securities trading, I argue that the introduction of complex machine-learning models changes the dynamics in calculative cultures, which leads to a displacement of human judgment in quantitative finance. In this paper, I distinguish (...) between three calculative cultures: an idealistic culture of undivided trust in models, a pragmatic culture of skepticism toward model accuracy, and a pragmatic idealist culture of early stage skepticism and implementation and production-phase idealism. Based on the empirical material, the analysis engages with examples of each of the three calculative cultures. The study contributes to the social studies of finance and science and technology studies more broadly by showing how perceptions of models shape and are shaped through model work in data-intensive, computerized finance. (shrink)

Since its inception in the late 1970s, behavioural economics has gone from being an outlier to a widely recognized yet still contested subset of the economic sciences. One of the basic arguments in behavioural economics is that a more realistic psychology ought to inform economic theories. While the history of behavioural economics is often portrayed and articulated as spanning no more than a few decades, the practice of utilizing ideas from psychology to rethink theories of economics is over a century (...) old. In the first three decades of the 20th century, several mostly American economists made efforts to refine fundamental economic assumptions by introducing ideas from psychology into economic thinking. In an echo of contemporary discussions in behavioural economics, the ambition of these psychology-keen economists was to strengthen the empirical accuracy of the fundamental assumptions of economic theory. In this article, we trace, examine, and discuss arguments for and against complementing economic theorizing with insights from psychology, as found in economic literature published between 1900 and 1930. The historical analysis sheds light on issues and challenges associated with the endeavour to improve one discipline’s theories by introducing ideas from another, and we argue that these are issues and challenges that behavioural economists continue to face today. (shrink)

Policy discussions and corporate strategies on machine learning are increasingly championing data reuse as a key element in digital transformations. These aspirations are often coupled with a focus on responsibility, ethics and transparency, as well as emergent forms of regulation that seek to set demands for corporate conduct and the protection of civic rights. And the Protective measures include methods of traceability and assessments of ‘good’ and ‘bad’ datasets and algorithms that are considered to be traceable, stable and contained. However, (...) these ways of thinking about both technology and ethics obscure a fundamental issue, namely that machine learning systems entangle data, algorithms and more-than-human environments in ways that challenge a well-defined separation. This article investigates the fundamental fallacy of most data reuse strategies as well as their regulation and mitigation strategies that data can somehow be followed, contained and controlled in machine learning processes. Instead, the article argues that we need to understand the reuse of data as an inherently entangled phenomenon. To examine this tension between the discursive regimes and the realities of data reuse, we advance the notion of reuse entanglements as an analytical lens. The main contribution of the article is the conceptualization of reuse that places entanglements at its core and the articulation of its relevance using empirical illustrations. This is important, we argue, for our understanding of the nature of data and algorithms, for the practical uses of data and algorithms and our attitudes regarding ethics, responsibility and regulation. (shrink)

The heart has a high‐metabolic rate, and its “around‐the‐clock” vital role to sustain life sets it apart in a regenerative setting from other organs and appendages. The landscape of vertebrate species known to perform intrinsic heart regeneration is strongly biased toward ectotherms—for example, fish, salamanders, and embryonic/neonatal ectothermic mammals. It is hypothesized that intrinsic heart regeneration is exclusively limited to the low‐metabolic hearts of ectotherms. The biomedical field of regenerative medicine seeks to devise biologically inspired regenerative therapies to diseased human (...) hearts. Falsification of the ectothermy dependency for heart regeneration hypothesis may be a crucial prerequisite to meaningfully seek inspiration in established ectothermic regenerative animal models. Otherwise, engineering approaches to construct artificial heart components may constitute a more viable path toward regenerative therapies. A more strict definition of regenerative phenomena is generated and several testable sub‐hypotheses and experimental avenues are put forward to elucidate the link between heart regeneration and metabolism. Also see the video abstract here https://youtu.be/fZcanaOT5z8. (shrink)

Social media commentary, satellite imagery and GPS data are a part of ‘alternative data’, that is, data that originate outside of the standard repertoire of market data but are considered useful for predicting stock prices, detecting different risk exposures and discovering new price movement indicators. With the availability of sophisticated machine-learning analytics tools, alternative data are gaining traction within the investment management and algorithmic trading industries. Drawing on interviews with people working in investment management and algorithmic trading firms utilizing alternative (...) data, as well as firms providing and sourcing such data, we emphasize social media-based sentiment analytics as one manifestation of how alternative data are deployed for stock price prediction purposes. This demonstrates both how sentiment analytics are developed and subsequently utilized by investment management firms. We argue that ‘alternative data’ are an open-ended placeholder for every data source potentially relevant for investment management purposes and harnessing these disparate data sources requires certain standardization efforts by different market participants. Besides showing how market participants understand and use alternative data, we demonstrate that alternative data often undergo processes of prospecting and assetization. We further contend that the widespread embracement of alternative data in investment management and trading encourages a financialization process at the data level which raises new governance issues. (shrink)

This article examines the historically contentious relationship between the financial market and the public as discussed in academic literature, financial journalism and prescriptive how-to invest handbooks during the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Although financial markets thrive off active public participation, speculating at stock and commodity exchanges has been a sanctioned ritual reserved for a privileged minority. We argue that the financial establishment’s intent to control market access through financial entry-barriers (such as exchange membership fees and margin requirements) has (...) been part of a bigger story we need to understand: a history of delegitimating uninitiated ‘lay speculators’ through the construction of exclusionary narratives about unfit amateur investors and morally corrupt publics. We conceptualize this process as an ongoing and delicate boundary-making exercise contributing to a market participation discourse that has been characterized by a set of reductive binaries, such as those of insider–outsider, professional–amateur and speculator–gambler. We show, however, that attempts to delineate popular participation in financial markets through these binaries have been complicated by the idea that besides being a force of market instability and collective irrationality, the public was a largely untapped source of liquidity. We argue that today’s discourse on public participation in financial markets resuscitates these simplified narratives and propose a more nuanced view of non-professional market participants being both destabilizers and liquidity-providers. (shrink)

This paper outlines a procedure for assessing the quality of failure explanations in engineering failure analysis. The procedure structures the information contained in explanations such that it enables to find weak points, to compare competing explanations, and to provide redesign recommendations. These features make the procedure a good asset for critical reflection on some areas of the engineering practice of failure analysis and redesign. The procedure structures relevant information contained in an explanation by means of structural equations so as to (...) make the relations between key elements more salient. Once structured, the information is examined on its potential to track counterfactual dependencies by offering answers to relevant what-if-things-had-been-different questions. This criterion for explanatory goodness derives from the philosophy of science literature on scientific explanation. The procedure is illustrated by applying it to two case studies, one on Failure Analysis in Mechanical Engineering (a broken vehicle shaft) and one on Failure Analysis in Civil Engineering (a collapse in a convention center). The procedure offers failure analysts a practical tool for critical reflection on some areas of their practice while offering a deeper understanding of the workings of failure analysis (framing it as an explanatory practice). It, therefore, allows to improve certain aspects of the explanatory practices of failure analysis and redesign, but it also offers a theoretical perspective that can clarify important features of these practices. Given the programmatic nature of the procedure and its object (assessing and refining explanations), it extends work on the domain of computational argumentation. (shrink)

New perspective on Heisenberg's interpretation of quantum mechanics for researchers and graduate students in the history and philosophy of physics.

The present study focuses on meeting online strangers face-to-face. This activity represents one of the least prevalent but also most feared online risks for youth. Due to the low number of youth experiencing upsetting meetings and the dominance of quantitative research designs in the area, the current state of knowledge does not provide a clear view of what happens at meetings that youths find upsetting. The aim of the present study is to enrich knowledge in this area by exploring such (...) upsetting experiences in more depth by using qualitative methodology. Based on 14 interviews with Czech girls aged 15 to 18, who reported upsetting meetings with online strangers, the study identifies the discrepancy between expectations and reality as the core reason for these negative feelings. There were several reasons for this discrepancy: different developmental phases, related different experiences with romantic relationships, and exaggeration of impressions formed online. (shrink)

What is the best way of assessing the extent to which people are aware of a stimulus? Here, using a masked visual identification task, we compared three measures of subjective awareness: The Perceptual Awareness Scale , through which participants are asked to rate the clarity of their visual experience; confidence ratings , through which participants express their confidence in their identification decisions, and Post-decision wagering , in which participants place a monetary wager on their decisions. We conducted detailed explorations of (...) the relationships between awareness and identification performance, looking to determine which scale best correlates with performance, and whether we can detect performance in the absence of awareness and how the scales differ from each other in terms of revealing such unconscious processing. Based on these findings we discuss whether perceptual awareness should be considered graded or dichotomous. Results showed that PAS showed a much stronger performance-awareness correlation than either CR or PDW, particularly for low stimulus intensities. In general, all scales indicated above-chance performance when participants claimed not to have seen anything. However, such above-chance performance only showed when we also observed a correlation between awareness and performance. Thus PAS seems to be the most exhaustive measure of awareness, and we find support for above-chance performance in the absence of subjective awareness, but such unconscious knowledge only contributes to performance when we observe conscious knowledge as well. Similarities and differences between scales are discussed in the light of consciousness theories and response strategies. (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)

It has become increasingly common for philosophers to distinguish between objective and subjective rightness, and there has been much discussion recently about what an adequate theory of subjective rightness looks like. In this article, I propose a new theory of subjective rightness. According to it, an action is subjectively right if and only if it minimizes expected objective wrongness. I explain this theory in detail and argue that it avoids many of the problems that other theories of subjective rightness face. (...) I end by responding to some objections. (shrink)

This paper discusses trust between stakeholders, with special emphasis on a new theory from the social sciences and ends up by focusing on a multidimensional dilemma between trust and control. Harald Grimen, an influential philosopher, social scientist and ethicist in Norway, defined trust as a communicative action between a trust-giver and a trust-receiver, characterized by the giver taking few precautions. This first part of his theory provides the basis for a specified interpretation of trust as a collective undertaking among stakeholders (...) in modern organizations, such as financial companies, constituting chains of trust. The phenomenon of cooperation is fundamental in such chains. Grimen’s theoretical focus on trust as a single action, and on the chain of cooperation as several interconnected actions, represents a corrective to the psychological and individualistic profile of mainstream research on trust and converges toward principal-agent theories. The paper uses Grimen’s theory to work out a hypothesis about a chain of trust between stakeholders in the financial industry, promoting a multi-efficient cooperation between them. The multi-efficiency of chains of trust is also discussed in connection with the risk of violating different ethical norms. The risk brings to focus the corresponding need for chains of control as a means to reduce the risk of violations of norms. But the chain of control has not only this advantage, but also a disadvantage. The inefficiency of chains of control is a severe hindrance to the efficiency of the chain of trust, even if it reduces the risk of violation of norms. The paper ends by underscoring a multidimensional dilemma typical for cooperation between stakeholders in modern organizations, i.e. the fundamental dilemma between the advantages and disadvantages of both chains of trust and chains of control. (shrink)

Despite a long history of researchers who combine phenomenology with qualitative or quantitative methods, there are only few examples of working with a phenomenological mixed method—a method where phenomenology informs both qualitative and quantitative data generation, analysis, and interpretation. Researchers have argued that in working with a phenomenological mixed method, there should be mutual constraint and enlightenment between the qualitative and quantitative methods for studying consciousness. In this article, we discuss what a framework for phenomenological mixed methods could look like (...) and we aim to provide guidance of how to work within such framework. We are inspired by resources coming from research in mixed methods and existing examples of phenomenological mixed-method research. We also present three cases of phenomenological mixed methods where we study complex social phenomena and discuss the process of how we conducted the studies. From both the research inspiration and our own studies, we depict the landscape of possibilities available for those interested in mixing phenomenology with qualitative and quantitative methods, as well as the challenges and common pitfalls that researchers face. To navigate in this landscape, we develop a three-fold structure, focusing on the phenomenological frame, the phenomenologically informed generation of qualitative and quantitative data, and the phenomenologically informed analysis and interpretation of data. (shrink)

The paper addresses an understudied but highly relevant group of people within corporate organizations and society in general—the marginalized—as well as their narration, and criticism, of personal lived experiences of marginalization in business. They are conventionally perceived to lack traditional forms of power such as public influence, formal authority, education, money, and political positions; however, they still possess the resources to impact their situations, their circumstances, and the structures that determine their situations. Business ethics researchers seldom consider marginalized people’s voices (...) and experiences as resources to understand their lives, as demonstrated through a review of 7500 articles published in the Journal of Business Ethics and Business Ethics Quarterly (2000–2019). Only 78 studies included aspects of marginalized groups. 69 of those studies discussed the topic of marginalized groups of people, but without integrating their explicit voices into the text. Only 9 of the 78 articles featured marginalized people’s explicit voices about their marginalization experiences incorporated into the text as a source for exploration. None of the identified studies discussed the potential for theorizing based on such voices. This paper contributes to business ethics theory by developing four theoretical possibilities vis-à-vis the critical voices of marginalized people’s experiences in business: (a) marginalized theory on critical agency and freedom of speech; (b) the gatekeeping role of academia; (c) primary sources; and (d) a participative perspective. Discussing the theoretical potential of quoting the above voices can enrich business ethics research in terms of the theoretical understanding of marginalized groups in business. (shrink)

During recent decades various researchers from health and social sciences have been debating what it means for a person to be disabled. A rather overlooked approach has developed alongside this debate, primarily inspired by the philosophical tradition called phenomenology. This paper develops a phenomenological model of disability by arguing for a different methodological and conceptual framework from that used by the existing phenomenological approach. The existing approach is developed from the phenomenology of illness, but the paper illustrates how the case (...) of congenital disabilities, looking at the congenital disorder called cerebral palsy (CP), presents a fundamental problem for the approach. In order to understand such congenital cases as CP, the experience of disability is described as being gradually different from, rather than a disruption of, the experience of being abled, and it is argued that the experience of disability is complex and dynamically influenced by both intrinsic and extrinsic factors. Different experiential aspects of disability— pre-reflective, attuned and reflective aspects—are described, demonstrating that the experience of disability comes in different degrees. Overall, this paper contributes to the debates about disability by further describing the personal aspects and experience of persons living with disabilities. (shrink)

In this paper, I motivate and defend the distinction between an objective and a subjective moral sense of “ought.” I begin by looking at the standard way the distinction is motivated, namely by appealing to relatively simple cases where an agent does something she thinks is best, but her action has a tragic outcome. I argue that these cases fail to do the job—the intuitions they elicit can be explained without having to distinguish between different senses of “ought.” However, these (...) cases are on the right track—I argue that more sophisticated versions of the cases provide strong motivation for the distinction. I then discuss two important problems for the distinction: the “which ‘ought’ is more important?” problem, and the “annoying profusion of ‘oughts’” problem. I argue that each of these problems can be solved in several different ways. (shrink)

Gilles de la Tourette syndrome (TS) is a childhood neuropsychiatric disorder characterised by the presence of motor and vocal tics. Patients with malignant TS experience severe disease sequelae; risking morbidity and mortality due to tics, self-harm, psychiatric comorbidities and suicide. By definition, those cases termed ‘malignant’ are refractory to all conventional psychiatric and pharmacological regimens. In these instances, deep brain stimulation (DBS) may be efficacious. Current 2015 guidelines recommend a 6-month period absent of suicidal ideation before DBS is offered to (...) patients with TS. We therefore wondered whether it may be ethically justifiable to offer DBS to a minor with malignant TS. We begin with a discussion of non-maleficence and beneficence. New evidence suggests that suicide risk in young patients with TS has been underestimated. In turn, DBS may represent an invaluable opportunity for children with malignant TS to secure future safety, independence and fulfilment. Postponing treatment is associated with additional risks. Ultimately, we assert this unique risk-benefit calculus justifies offering DBS to paediatric patients with malignant TS. A multidisciplinary team of clinicians must determine whether DBS is in the best interest of their individual patients. We conclude with a suggestion for future TS-DBS guidelines regarding suicidal ideation. The importance of informed consent and assent is underscored. (shrink)

In this paper we investigate how inference to the best explanation (IBE) works in engineering science, focussing on the context of malfunction explanation. While IBE has gotten a lot of attention in the philosophy of science literature, few, if any, philosophical work has focussed on IBE in engineering science practice. We first show that IBE in engineering science has a similar structure as IBE in other scientific domains in the sense that in both settings IBE hinges on the weighing of (...) explanatory virtues. We then proceed to show that, due to the intimate connection between explanation and redesign in engineering science, there is a further engineering domain-specific virtue in terms of which engineering malfunction explanations are evaluated, viz. the virtue of redesign utility. This virtue entails that the explanatory information offered by a malfunction explanation should be instrumental in predicting counterfactual dependencies in redesigned systems. We illustrate and elaborate these points in terms of a number of engineering examples, focussing in particular on the 2009 crash of Air France Flight 447. Our extension of analyses of IBE and explanation to engineering science practice offers new insights by identifying a new explanatory virtue in malfunction explanation: redesign utility. (shrink)

This paper presents a critical analysis of Tamar Szabó Gendler’s view of thought experiments, with the aim of developing further a constructivist epistemology of thought experiments in science. While the execution of a thought experiment cannot be reduced to standard forms of inductive and deductive inference, in the process of working though a thought experiment, a logical argument does emerge and take shape. Taking Gendler’s work as a point of departure, I argue that performing a thought experiment involves a process (...) of self-interrogation, in which we are compelled to reflect on our pre-existing knowledge of the world. In doing so, we are forced to make judgments about what assumptions we see as relevant and how they apply to an imaginary scenario. This brings to light the extent to which certain forms of skill, beyond the ability to make valid logical inferences, are necessary to execute a thought experiment well. (shrink)

Laguna Lake, the largest lake in the Philippines, supplies Manila's dense urban region with fish and water while operating as a sink for its stormflows and wastes. Transforming the lake to deliver these multiple urban ecological functions, however, has generated resource conflicts and contradictions that unfold unevenly across space. In Urban Ecologies on the Edge, Kristian Karlo Saguin tracks the politics of resource flows and unpacks the narratives of Laguna Lake as Manila's resource frontier. Provisioning the city and keeping (...) it safe from floods are both frontier-making processes that bring together contested socioecological imaginaries, practices, and relations. Combining fieldwork and historical accounts, Saguin demonstrates how people--powerful and marginalized--interact with the state and the environment to produce the unequal landscapes of urbanization at and beyond the city's edge. (shrink)

When consciousness is examined using subjective ratings, the extent to which processing is conscious or unconscious is often estimated by calculating task performance at the subjective threshold or by calculating the correlation between accuracy and awareness. However, both these methods have certain limitations. In the present article, we propose describing task accuracy and awareness as functions of stimulus intensity as suggested by Koch and Preuschoff . The estimated lag between the curves describes how much stimulus intensity must increase for awareness (...) to change proportionally as much as accuracy and the slopes of the curves are used to assess how fast accuracy and awareness increases and whether awareness is dichotomous. The method is successfully employed to assess consciousness characteristics on data from four different awareness scales. (shrink)

According to the standard view, the so-called ‘Copenhagen interpretation’ of quantum mechanics originated in discussions between Bohr and Heisenberg in 1927, and was defended by Bohr in his classic debate with Einstein. Yet recent scholarship has shown Bohr’s views were never widely accepted, let alone properly understood, by his contemporaries, many of whom held divergent views of the ‘Copenhagen orthodoxy’. This paper examines how the ‘myth of the Copenhagen interpretation’ was constructed by situating it in the context of Soviet Marxist (...) critique of quantum mechanics in the 1950s and the response by physicists such as Heisenberg and Rosenfeld. (shrink)

In recent decades there has been increasing demand for and considerable efforts to conduct cross-disciplinary research. However, assessment of research quality in such endeavours still is often based on mono-disciplinary criteria and not seldom carried out by reviewers without strong cross-disciplinary experience. The authors suggest a two-pronged approach to cross-disciplinary research evaluation. One part should comprise an individual review of all the disciplines involved based on their mono-disciplinary sets of criteria. The other part should be a separate evaluation of the (...) cross-disciplinary aspects based on the review of “problem formulation”, “integration and scope of the disciplines”, “parts and the whole”, “practical managerial aspects” and “the applied aspects”. The pros and cons of implementing this approach in a stepwise manner or simultaneously is discussed. It is suggested that funding agencies develop more fair sets of review procedures for cross-disciplinary research and show willingness to allocate extra funds and time to such forms of research that sometimes are regarded as relatively more “risky” than conventional mono-disciplinary types. (shrink)

W. D. Ross is commonly considered to be a generalist about prima facie duty but a particularist about absolute duty. That is, many philosophers hold that Ross accepts that there are true moral principles involving prima facie duty but denies that there are any true moral principles involving absolute duty. I agree with the former claim: Ross surely accepts prima facie moral principles. However, in this paper, I challenge the latter claim. Ross, I argue, is no more a particularist about (...) absolute duty than a utilitarian or a Kantian is. While this conclusion is interesting in its own right, it is also important, I argue, because it prevents us from overlooking Ross's criterion of moral obligation and because it may have implications on the broader debate between particularists and generalists. (shrink)

Comparison of behavioural measures of consciousness has attracted much attention recently. In a recent article, Szczepanowski et al. conclude that confidence ratings predict accuracy better than both the perceptual awareness scale and post-decision wagering when using stimuli with emotional content . Although we find the study interesting, we disagree with the conclusion that CR is superior to PAS because of two methodological issues. First, the conclusion is not based on a formal test. We performed this test and found no evidence (...) that CR predicted accuracy better than PAS . Second, Szczepanowski et al. used the present version of PAS in a manner somewhat different from how it was originally intended, and the participants may not have been adequately instructed. We end our commentary with a set of recommendations for future studies using PAS. (shrink)

After the cultural explosion of Web 2.0, digital culture reveals an apparently semiotic paradox associated with the incredibly widespread use of images of faces, while at the same time the reason to trust in the authenticity of these faces is constantly declining. This is because graphic technology has made the sophisticated manipulation of images both possible and easy. After a review of the existing semiotic models and considerations of trust, I am proposing a new approach which emphasizes the value-generating properties (...) of trust by analogy with the money sign, seen as “trust inscribed”. Research from the neurosciences supports the hypothesis that the trustworthiness of the face is judged pre-reflexively and primordially. This, therefore, means that a trustworthy face is a premise for more successful communication than an untrustworthy one, notwithstanding the object of discussion and the cultural context. An example concerning social media influencers serves to show that in the internet-dominated globalizing culture, trustworthy faces are a multipurpose communicative asset that makes a difference. (shrink)

In this article I will describe the main elements of the Norwegian press’s moral confrontation with the Government Pension Fund’s ethical investment management when it was in an introductory phase in early 2005, with special emphasis on one newspaper, Stavanger Aftenblad. The press criticized the fund’s fresh investment profile and intended exclusionary practice before it had really started in earnest. Then I will focus on how the press’s unilateral criticism of the fund’s investment practice at the time overshadowed a discussion (...) of any defects in the ethical principles for investment. And I will focus on the press’s lack of distinguishing between information and sensation. In conclusion I point out that in 2006 the press has abandoned its critical stance from 2005 and has now a tendency to idealize the fund’s exclusionary practice and the underlying principles. (shrink)

The aim of this paper is to consider whether some seats in a democratically elected legislative assembly ought to be reserved for representatives of future generations. In order to examine this question, I will propose a new democratic model for representing posterity. It is argued that this model has several advantages compared with a model for the democratic representation of future people previously suggested by Andrew Dobson. Nevertheless, the democratic model that I propose confronts at least two difficult problems. First, (...) it faces insoluble problems of representative legitimacy. Second, one might question whether this model provides a reasonably effective way to represent future interests compared with existing representative democratic institutions. Despite such problems, it is argued that political representation of posterity can be defended on the basis of fundamental ideas and ideals in recent theory of deliberative democracy. The first reason for this is that in a number of cases democratic decisions cannot be regarded as normatively legitimate from the point of view of deliberative democracy, unless posterity is given a voice. The second reason is that representation of posterity can contribute to more rational and impartial deliberations and decisions in legislative assemblies. (shrink)

The purpose of this article is to consider the question of whether democratic legitimacy requires viewpoint neutrality with regard to political speech – including extremist political speech, such as hate speech. The starting point of my discussion is Jeremy Waldron’s negative answer to this question. He argues that it is permissible for liberal democracies to ban certain extremist viewpoints – such as vituperative hate speech – because such viewpoint-based restrictions protect the dignity of persons and a social and moral environment (...) of mutual respect. According to Waldron, well-drafted narrow hate speech bans are not democratically illegitimate, and they do not undermine systemic democratic legitimacy – that is, the legitimacy of a democratic political system. In contrast to Waldron, I will argue that democratic legitimacy requires viewpoint neutrality to respect persons as thinking agents. I will defend a civil libertarian doctrine of viewpoint neutrality, and this doctrine requires that citizens in liberal democracies ought to have a legal free speech right to do moral wrong – that is, a legal right to express and defend any political viewpoint or idea, even if it is morally wrong to express, or expose others to, such views. It will be argued that any viewpoint-based restriction on public discourse is democratically illegitimate, and that such restrictions undermine systemic democratic legitimacy. (shrink)