The author would like to thank Karen Offen, David Nye and her husband Johannes Pedersen for helpful criticisms they offered of an earlier draft of this essay.

(1999). Love, politics, and the Victorians: Liberal feminism and the politics of social integration. The European Legacy: Vol. 4, Ideas and Beliefs of the Victorians, pp. 42-57.

In an essay recently published in this journal, Branden Fitelson argues that a variant of Miller’s argument for the language dependence of the accuracy of predictions can be applied to Joyce’s notion of accuracy of credences formulated in terms of scoring rules, resulting in a general potential problem for Joyce’s argument for probabilism. We argue that no relevant problem of the sort Fitelson supposes arises since his main theorem and his supporting arguments presuppose the validity of nonlinear transformations (...) of credence functions that Joyce’s theory, charitably construed, would identify as invalid on the basis of the principle of simple dominance. (shrink)

A common objection to paternalism concerns its expressive content. Many reject paternalistic policies and actions on the ground that they arguably involve insulting expressions of disrespect toward those subjected to them. The paper challenges this view. It argues that refraining from acting paternalistically can be disrespectful. Specifically, the paper argues that there is a relevant way in which A disregards the moral worth of B if A stands idly by when B is about to act very imprudently. If true, treating (...) others with equal respect and concern, as relational egalitarians and others rightly ask us to do, will somewhat surprisingly sometimes involve treating them paternalistically. (shrink)

This is the introduction to Moretti, Luca and Nikolaj Pedersen (eds), Non-Evidentialist Epistemology. Brill. Contributors: N. Ashton, A. Coliva, J. Kim, K. McCain, A. Meylan, L. Moretti, S. Moruzzi, J. Ohlorst, N. Pedersen, T. Piazza, L. Zanetti.

In "A Serpentine Gesture": John Ashbery's Poetry and Phenomenology Elisabeth W. Joyce examines John Ashbery's poetry through the lens of Maurice Merleau-Ponty's conception of phenomenology. For Merleau-Ponty, perception is a process through which people reach outside of themselves for sensory information, map that experiential information against what they have previously encountered and what is culturally inculcated in them, and articulate shifts in their internal repositories through encounters with new material. Joyce argues that this process reflects Ashbery's classic statement (...) of poetry being the "experience of experience." Through incisive close readings of Ashbery's poems, Joyce examines how he explores this process of continual reverberation between what is sensed and what is considered about that sensation and, ultimately, how he renders these perceptions into the 'serpentine gesture' of language. (shrink)

In his book Autonomous Knowledge J. Adam Carter argues that the possibility of radical cognitive enhancement shows the need for epistemology to be significantly updated. Reflection on the possibility of such enhancement shows that doxastic autonomy matters. If a belief fails to be autonomous, it cannot qualify as knowledge. Sects. 1-3 of this paper introduce the key components of Carter's autonomy framework and his considerations on the value of knowledge (including his proposed solution to the value problem, i.e. the challenge (...) of accounting for why knowledge has greater value than any of its proper parts). Sects. 4-7 offer a critical appraisal of Carter's framework. We are not convinced that Carter has succeeded in showing that there is an autonomous belief condition on knowledge. In this paper, however, we shall not engage with this issue. Instead, for the sake of our critical discussion, we shall assume that autonomous belief is a condition on knowledge and engage Carter on a cluster of issues concerning axiology. (shrink)

The objective of this paper is to examine the relationship between business model innovation, corporate sustainability, and the underlying organisational values. Moreover, the paper examines how the three dimensions correlate with corporate financial performance. It is concluded that companies with innovative business models are more likely to address corporate sustainability and that business model innovation and corporate sustainability alike are typically found in organisations rooted in values of flexibility and discretion. Business model innovation and corporate sustainability thus seem to have (...) their origin in the fundamental principles guiding the organisation. In addition, the study also finds a positive relationship between the core organisational values and financial performance. The analysis of the paper is based on survey responses from 492 managers within the Swedish fashion industry. (shrink)

It is undeniable that computer technology has had a major impact on how we engage enquiry. We use computer devices to store information that helps us in our daily lives—just think of the contacts on your phone and whatever calendar app you might use to keep track of your schedule. Furthermore, people enjoy easy and quick access to a wide range of reliable online resources such as Nature, Reuters, and Encyclopedia Britannica through their laptops or smartphones. Powerful search engines such (...) as Google open up the door to swaths of information, enabling people easily to acquire a wide range of true beliefs through reliable means about all kinds of subject matters. However, what is the status of such true beliefs? In particular, once beliefs cease to be occurrent, do we still have non-occurrent beliefs, and, if true and reliably sustained, do they still qualify as knowledge? If they do, we would have cases of extended belief and knowledge, as these computer devices go beyond onboard capacities such as perception and memory. However, unlike our beliefs and desires, many information-storing apps and resources do not have the capacity automatically to “update” their information in light of new information. Moreover, wouldn’t extended belief and knowledge lead to massive cognitive bloat—an unpalatable explosion of belief and knowledge completely detached from an ability naturally to recall the relevant information? It would seem so given the wide variety of storage repositories and devices at one’s fingertips. Doesn’t cognitive bloat threaten to undermine the notion of expertise? Is it really possible to become an expert on a given topic by simply and easily looking up information via one’s smartphone and saving it? And where, now, would we place cognitive effort—steps taken by individuals to commit details to memory, to apply knowledge, to deliberate, and to assess and reflect? In “Extended Knowledge Overextended?”, Nikolaj Jang Lee Linding Pedersen and Jens Christian Bjerring offer a comprehensive discussion of extended belief and knowledge. They criticize two recent attempts to mitigate concerns about cognitive bloat by arguing that their effectiveness is contingent on the current state of technology—in particular, the fact that computer devices are currently external to us. However, if computer devices seamlessly integrated with our own onboard capacities—the so-called neuromedia—become reality, it may be much more difficult to resist extended belief and knowledge and, with them, massive cognitive bloat. (shrink)

The relative merits and demerits of historically prominent views such as the correspondence theory, coherentism, pragmatism, verificationism, and instrumentalism have been subject to much attention in the truth literature and have fueled the long-lived debate over which of these views is the most plausible one. While diverging in their specific philosophical commitments, adherents of these historically prominent views agree in at least one fundamental respect. They are all alethic monists. They all endorse the thesis that there is only one property (...) in virtue of which propositions can be true, and so, in this sense, take truth to be one. The truth pluralist, on the other hand, rejects this idea. There are several properties in virtue of which propositions can be true. The literature on truth pluralism has been growing steadily for the past twenty years. This volume, however, is the first of its kind—the first collection of papers focused specifically on pluralism about truth. Part I is dedicated to the development, investigation, and critical discussion of different forms of pluralism. An additional reason to look at truth pluralism with interest is the significant connections it bears to other debates in the truth literature—the debates concerning traditional theories of truth and the deflationism/inflationism divide being cases in hand. Parts II and III of the volume connect truth pluralism to these two debates. (shrink)

Sustainability challenges typically occur across sectoral boundaries, calling the state, market, and civil society to action. Although consensus exists on the merits of cross-sector collaboration, our understanding of whether and how it can create value for various, collaborating stakeholders is still limited. This special issue focuses on how new combined knowledge on cross-sector collaboration and business models for sustainability can inform the academic and practitioner debates about sustainability challenges and solutions. We discuss how cross-sector collaboration can play an important role (...) for the transition to new and potentially sustainability-driven business models given that value creation, delivery, and capture of organizations are intimately related to the collaborative ties with their stakeholders. Sustainable alternatives to conventional business models tend to adopt a more holistic perspective of business by broadening the spectrum of solutions and stakeholders and, when aligned with cross-sector collaboration, can contribute new ways of addressing the wicked sustainability problems humanity faces. (shrink)

Here is a well-known thought about truth: Truth consists in correspondence with reality. A sentence is true just in case what it says corresponds with how the world is. Theories of truth that incorporate this thought are naturally regarded as robust or “heavyweight”. Truth is to be understood in a realist fashion. The world decides what is true and what is not. A recent incarnation of the correspondence view is found in truth-maker theories, whose adherents maintain that truths are true (...) in virtue of there being something – a truth-maker – in the world that makes them so.2. (shrink)

Background: A fair distribution of healthcare services for older patients is an important challenge, but qualitative research exploring clinicians’ consideration in daily clinical prioritisation in healthcare services for the aged is scarce.Objectives: To explore what kind of criteria, values, and other relevant considerations are important in clinical prioritisations in healthcare services for older patients.Design: A semi-structured interview-guide was used to interview 45 clinicians working with older patients. The interviews were analysed qualitatively using hermeneutical content analysis and template organising style.Participants: 20 (...) physicians and 25 nurses working in public hospitals and nursing homes in different parts of Norway.Results and interpretations: Important dilemmas relate to under-provision of community care and comprehensive approaches, and over-utilisation of certain specialised services. Overt ageism is generally not reported, but the healthcare services for the aged seem to be inadequate due to more subtle processes, for example, dominating considerations and ideals and operating conditions that do not pay sufficient attention to older patients’ needs and considerations of justice. Clinical prioritisations are described as being dominated by adapting traditional biomedical approaches to the operating conditions. Many of the clinicians indicate that there is a potential for improving end of life decisions and for reducing exaggerated use of life-prolonging treatment and hospitalisations.Conclusion: The interviews in this study indicate that considerations of justice and patients’ perspectives should be given more attention to strike a balance between specialised medical approaches and more general and comprehensive approaches in healthcare services for older patients. (shrink)

The norm of assertion, to be in force, is a social norm. What is the content of our social norm of assertion? Various linguistic arguments purport to show that to assert is to represent oneself as knowing. But to represent oneself as knowing does not entail that assertion is governed by a knowledge norm. At best these linguistic arguments provide indirect support for a knowledge norm. Furthermore, there are alternative, non-normative explanations for the linguistic data (as in recent work from (...) Van Elswyk). Direct arguments would rely on normative judgments about the permissibility or impermissibility of assertions with and without the speaker knowing the content asserted. John Turri's work experimental results purport to show that our norm of assertion is factive, and probably knowledge. But as a number of recent experimentalists (Kneer, Reuter and Broessel, Marsili and Wiegmann) have shown, Turri's results rely on the problemmatic use of 'should' as in 'Maria should assert that she owns a 1990 watch.' Correcting for this, these experimentalists provide strong evidence that our norm of assertion is not factive. The standard reply to evidence like this from the assertion of unlucky falsehoods is the excuse maneuver. But Marsili and Wiegmann, following Turri's protocol for testing for excuse validation, show that participants who judge that assertions unlucky falsehoods are permissible are not guilty of excuse validation. Given our current understanding of the experimental evidence, knowledge is not our norm of assertion. (shrink)

A tribute to vision boards evaluates their creative, motivational, and inspirational role in providing visual life and career maps for famous and everyday ...

Using survey responses from 400 fashion companies in Denmark, Norway, Sweden, Finland, and Iceland, we examine the diversity of strategic responses to institutional pressures for corporate social responsibility within the Nordic fashion industry. We also develop and test a new model of strategic responses to institutional pressures that encompasses both resistance and opportunity-seeking behaviour. Our results suggest that it is inconsistent pressures within, rather than between, stakeholder groups that shape strategic responses to CSR pressures and that increasing pressures stimulates opportunity-seeking (...) at the expense of compliance. (shrink)

In this article, I critically assess Hélène Landemore's new model of Open Democracy, asking whether it requires of citizens to blindly defer to the decisions of the mini-public. To address this question, I, first, discuss three institutional mechanisms in Open Democracy, all of which can be read to grant citizens democratic control. I argue that neither the capacity to authorize the selection mechanism (random sortition), nor the lottocratic conception of political equality, nor the self-selection mechanisms of Landemore's model deliver the (...) form of control that would insulate Open Democracy from the charge of blind deference. I then discuss the direct democracy mechanisms that Landemore incorporates into her model. Although these devices grant citizens control and, by extension, offer the resources for repudiating the charge of blind deference, they also, I argue, subvert the logic of Landemore's lottocratic model, rendering Open Democracy predictably unstable. Given the deliberative asymmetries between the mini-public and the citizenry, a high frequency of bottom-up challenges is to be expected that would throw the whole system into jeopardy. Thus, the challenge for lottocrats is to show how democratic control can be achieved in a lottocratic system without undermining the benefits of the legislature by lot. (shrink)

Including empirical examples and theoretical clarifications on many of the analytical issues raised in his recently published Down to Earth, this conversation with Bruno Latour and his collaborator, Danish sociologist Nikolaj Schultz, offers key insights into Latour’s recent and ongoing work. Revolving around questions on political ecology and social theory in our ‘New Climatic Regime’, Latour argues that in order to have politics you need a land and you need a people. This interview present reflections on such politics, such land (...) and such people, and it ends with a call for a sociology that takes up the task of connecting the three by investigating what he and Schultz call ‘geo-social classes’. The interview was conducted by Jakob Stein in Paris in November 2018. (shrink)

The stakeholder approach has become a popular perspective in mainstream management and the corporate social responsibility (CSR) literature. However, it remains an open question as to how real-life managers actually view stakeholders and what rationales and logics are used for explaining the relationship between the firm and its constituencies. This article examines whom managers in multinational corporations (MNCs) consider to be their important stakeholders, and how they describe the societal responsibilities towards these groups and individuals. It is concluded that managers (...) still tend to hold a rather narrow (managerial) view of the firm and generally give priority to stakeholder groups who are directly involved in the firm's core transformation system. The conclusions are derived from interview and survey data from 647 managers in four MNCs. The paper is based on data collected as part of project RESPONSE: a European Union- and corporate-funded initiative on CSR. (shrink)

This article examines Swedish, Danish and Norwegian governments’ participation in the European Return Platform for Unaccompanied Minors project and its failed attempts to deport unaccompanied minors to Afghanistan. It argues that ERPUM is an interesting and urgent case of a “deportation corridor”, and suggests that this framework can benefit from analysis through normative and applied ethics and in particular discussions of feasibility constraints. It therefore identifies and critically assesses two nationalistic arguments for deportation common in Nordic politics, based on appeals (...) credibility and humanitarianism. Considering the growth of nationalistic immigration policies in Nordic states, the article turns the usual discussions of feasibility on its head by showing that not only cosmopolitan, but also nationalistic ethics must face up to charges of lacking realism. More specifically, it argues that the case of ERPUM illustrates how nationalistic deportation ethics can rely on inconsistent normative and erroneous empirical assumptions, which can be criticized for their arbitrariness, ideological grounding and lacking feasibility. (shrink)