Before WW2 Danish geologists had found traces of uranium in Greenland. But being squeezed from both sides in the escalating Cold War between East and West, in the first decade after WW2 the Danish government did not support expeditions to explore Greenland's potential uranium deposits. The situation changed abruptly after President Eisenhower's Atoms for Peace address in December 1953, as a result of which a Danish Atomic Energy Commission (AEK) was set up in early 1955. Besides building a large atomic (...) energy research facility (Risø) one of AEK's first initiatives was to support big scale uranium expeditions to South-West Greenland. The ultimate goal for the leaders of AEK was to liberate Denmark from its dependence on imported fossil fuels by developing Danish nuclear reactors, fuelled by natural uranium from Greenland. In the late 1960s, after more than a decade of uranium explorations, this was still a goal, albeit much more long term. For many reasons the hunt for uranium in Greenland after WW2 was unsuccessful, but the main ones were Danish sovereignty concerns, techno-scientific nationalism and devastating institutional clashes of interests. The present paper will explore these problems. (shrink)

Norton has recently argued that causation is merely a useful folk concept and that it fails to hold for some simple systems even in the supposed paradigm case of a causal physical theory – namely Newtonian mechanics. The purpose of this article is to argue against this devaluation of causality in physics. My main argument is that Norton’s alleged counterexample to causality within standard Newtonian physics fails to obey what I shall call the causal core of Newtonian mechanics. In particular, (...) I argue, Norton’s example is not in conformity with Newton’s first law. Moreover, Norton’s reformulation of this first law seems insufficient as a replacement for the original version since the notion of inertial frames in the resulting reformulated theory lacks a physical justification, and since an intelligible notion of time in Newtonian mechanics appears to be closely tied to Newton’s first law in its standard form. I will finally suggest how, given a plausible relationist account of time, the causal core of Newtonian mechanics may play a central role also in relativity and quantum theory. (shrink)

In this paper we return to Ronald Giere and his claim that history of science as a discipline cannot contribute to philosophy of science by providing, partial or whole, solutions to philosophical problems. Let us suppose that Giere was right. Would the implication be that there can be no genuine interdisciplinarity between the two disciplines? In answering this question it is first suggested that connections between disciplines can be formed around the transfer and sharing of problems ; and that this (...) is a viable alternative of how to understand the relationship between history and philosophy of science. Next we argue that this is sufficient for establishing a genuine form of interdisciplinarity between them. An example is presented—Lindley Darden’s book on theory change—that shows how philosophy of science can rely on history of science in this way. (shrink)

I Two Traditions. Scientific inquiry, seen in a very broad perspective, may be said to present two main aspects. One is the ascertaining and discovery of ...

IN 1959 and 1960 I gave the Gifford Lectures in the University of St. Andrews. The lectures were called 'Norms and Values, an Inquiry into the Conceptual Foundations of Morals and Legislation'. The present work is substantially the same as the content of the second series of lectures, then advertised under the not very adequate title 'Values'. It is my plan to publish a revised version of the content of the first series of lectures, called 'Norms', as a separate book. (...) The two works will be independent of one another. (shrink)

A set of moral problems known as The Trolley Dilemmas was presented to 3000 randomly selected inhabitants of the USA, Russia and China. It is shown that Chinese are significantly less prone to support utility-maximizing alternatives, as compared to the US and Russian respondents. A number of possible explanations, as well as methodological issues pertaining to the field of surveying moral judgment and moral disagreement, are discussed.

It is well known that Niels Bohr insisted on the necessity of classical concepts in the account of quantum phenomena. But there is little consensus concerning his reasons, and what he exactly meant by this. In this paper, I re-examine Bohr’s interpretation of quantum mechanics, and argue that the necessity of the classical can be seen as part of his response to the measurement problem. More generally, I attempt to clarify Bohr’s view on the classical/quantum divide, arguing that the relation (...) between the two theories is that of mutual dependence. An important element in this clarification consists in distinguishing Bohr’s idea of the wave function as symbolic from both a purely epistemic and an ontological interpretation. Together with new evidence concerning Bohr’s conception of the wave function collapse, this sets his interpretation apart from both standard versions of the Copenhagen interpretation, and from some of the reconstructions of his view found in the literature. I conclude with a few remarks on how Bohr’s ideas make much sense also when modern developments in quantum gravity and early universe cosmology are taken into account. (shrink)

Dad jokes, I argue, are a manifestation of a much older fatherly impulse to tease one’s children. On the surface, dad jokes are puns that are characterized by only violating a pragmatic norm and nothing else, which makes them lame and unfunny. Only violating a pragmatic norm and nothing else, however, is itself a violation of the norms of joke-telling, which makes dad jokes a type of anti-humor. Fathers may in turn seek to embarrass their children by purposively violating the (...) norms of joke-telling in this way, thus weaponizing the lame pun against their children as a type of good-natured teasing. Given their personality profile, it makes sense that fathers should be particularly prone to weap­onize dad jokes teasingly against their children like this, with the phenomenon bearing an illuminating resemblance to the rough-and-tumble play that fathers have engaged their children in since before the dawn of our species. (shrink)

A number of single- and dual-process theories provide competing explanations as to how reasoners evaluate conditional arguments. Some of these theories are typically linked to different instructions—namely deductive and inductive instructions. To assess whether responses under both instructions can be explained by a single process, or if they reflect two modes of conditional reasoning, we re-analysed four experiments that used both deductive and inductive instructions for conditional inference tasks. Our re-analysis provided evidence consistent with a single process. In two new (...) experiments we established a double dissociation of deductive and inductive instructions when validity and plausibility of conditional problems were pitted against each other. This indicates that at least two processes contribute to conditional reasoning. We conclude that single-process theories of conditional reasoning cannot explain the observed results. Theories that postulate at least two processes are needed to account for our findings. (shrink)

Recent metaphysics has seen a surge of interest in grounding—a relation of non-causal determination underlying a distinctive kind of explanation common in philosophy. In this article, I investigate the connection between grounding and another phenomenon of great interest to metaphysics: ontological dependence. There are interesting parallels between the two phenomena: for example, both are commonly invoked through the use of “dependence” terminology, and there is a great deal of overlap in the motivations typically appealed to when introducing them. I approach (...) the question of the relationship between grounding and ontological dependence through an investigation of their modal connections. I argue, firstly, that on the common assumption that grounding is factive, it can be shown that no known variety of rigid ontological dependence is either necessary or sufficient for grounding. I also offer some suggestions in support of the claim that this generalizes to every possible form of rigid ontological dependence. I then broaden the discussion by considering a non-factive conception of grounding, as well as by looking at forms of generic ontological dependence. I argue that there is at least one form of rigid ontological dependence that is sufficient for non-factive grounding, and that a form of generic dependence may be necessary both for factive and non-factive grounding. However, justifying even these fairly weak modal connections between grounding and ontological dependence turns out to require some quite specific and substantive assumptions about the two phenomena that have only rarely been discussed. (shrink)

A short review of some recent developments in the philosophy of physics is presented. I focus on themes which illustrate relations and points of common interest between philosophy of physics and three of its `neighboring' elds: Physics, metaphysics and general philosophy of science. The main examples discussed in these three `border areas' are decoherence and the interpretation of quantum mechanics; time in physics and metaphysics; and methodological issues surrounding the multiverse idea in modern cosmology.

This thesis explores whether the three standard value relations, “better than”, “worse than” and “equally as good”, exhaust the possibilities in which things can relate with respect to their value. Or more precisely, whether there are examples in which one of these relations is not instantiated. There are cases in which it is not obvious that one of these relations does obtain; these are referred to as “hard cases of comparison”. These hard cases of comparison become interesting, since if it (...) not the case that the standard three value relations obtains in these cases then the three standard relations do not exhaust the possibility of instantiated value relations. It is argued that for some of the hard cases of comparison, the standard relations determinately obtain. For some it is indeterminate, due to vagueness, which of the three relations obtains, but it is determinate that one of them obtains. Thereafter it is argued that the influential Collapsing Argument fails in ruling out other accounts of the hard cases of comparison. Since one cannot depend on the Collapsing Argument in order to conclude that all items are related by the standard three relations, the investigation continues. It is argued that none of the hard cases of comparison are cases of incomparability. Furthermore, none of them are cases of a fourth basic positive value relation such as “parity”. Consequently, for all the hard cases of comparison one of the standard value relations holds, although sometimes we do not know which one and sometimes it is indeterminate which one holds. This means that there is no reason to assume that one of the standard three value relations does not hold between items we are comparing. This is followed by a brief discussion about the normative consequences of this result. The thesis ends with four different appendices in which related topics are discussed. (shrink)

Clinical decisionmaking includes reasoning from prescientific or scientific theories, reasoning from uncontrolled or controlled experience, and reasoning based on empathic understanding and moral beliefe. The development of contemporary clinical thinking is discussed, and it is found that successive generations of medical practitioners have had different views of the rationality and relative importance of these modes of reasoning: that which is considered rational by one generation of doctors is sometimes denounced by the next. The author's book, Rational Diagnosis and Treatment , (...) which is an example of clinical thinking in the 1960s and early 70s, is used to illustrate one particular view of clinical decisionmaking. Keywords: rational, clinical decisionmaking, biological theory, controlled clinical studies, empathic understanding, ethical reasoning CiteULike Connotea Del.icio.us What's this? (shrink)

Incommensurability is the impossibility to determine how two options relate to each other in terms of conventional comparative relations. This book features new research on incommensurability from philosophers who have shaped the field into what it is today, including John Broome, Ruth Chang and Wlodek Rabinowicz. The book covers four aspects relating to incommensurability. In the first part, the contributors synthesize research on the competing views of how to best explain incommensurability. Part II illustrates how incommensurability can help us deal (...) with seemingly insurmountable problems in ethical theory and population ethics. The contributors address the Repugnant Conclusion, the Mere Addition Paradox and so-called Spectrum Arguments. The chapters in Part III outline and summarize problems caused by incommensurability for decision theory. Finally, Part IV tackles topics related to risk, uncertainty and incommensurability. Value Incommensurability: Ethics, Risk, and Decision-Making will be of interest to researchers and advanced students working in ethical theory, decision theory, action theory, and philosophy of economics. (shrink)

Little is known about when corporate social responsibility (CSR) leads to a sustainability case (i.e., to improvements in environmental and social performance). Building on various forms of decoupling, we develop a theoretical framework for examining pathways from institutional pressures through CSR management to sustainability performance. To empirically identify such pathways, we apply fuzzy-set qualitative comparative analysis (fsQCA) to an extensive dataset from 19 large companies. We discover that different pathways are associated with environmental and social performance (non)improvements, and that pathways (...) to success and failure are for the most part not symmetrical. We identify two pathways to improved environmental performance: an exogenous and an endogenous one. We find two pathways to improved social performance that both involve integrating social responsibility into the core business. Pathways to nonimprovements are multiple, suggesting that failure can occur in a number of ways, while there are only a few pathways to sustainability performance improvements. (shrink)

By analyzing the meaning of time I argue, without endorsing operationalism, that time is necessarily related to physical systems which can serve as clocks. This leads to a version of relationism about time which entails that there is no time 'before' the universe. Three notions of metaphysical 'time' (associated, respectively, with time as a mathematical concept, substantivalism, and modal relationism) which might support the idea of time 'before' the universe are discussed. I argue that there are no good reasons to (...) believe that metaphysical 'time' can be identified with what we ordinarily call time. I also briefly review and criticize the idea of time 'before' the big bang, associated with some recent speculative models in modern cosmology, and I argue that if the big bang model is a (roughly) correct description of our universe, then the best current answer to the question in the title is that time did have a beginning. (shrink)

This is a review of contemporary philosophical discussions of population policies. The focus is on normative justification, and the main question is whether population policies can be ethically justified. Although few analytical philosophers have directly addressed this question – it has been discussed more in other academic fields – many arguments and considerations can be placed in the analytical philosophical discourse. This article offers a comprehensive review and analysis of ethically relevant aspects of population policies evaluated on the basis of (...) the main ethical theories. This analysis is preceded by a brief historical contextualisation of when and how population policies became ethically contentious and how this relates to philosophical debates in environmental ethics, population ethics and political philosophy. The article also includes a conceptual analysis of population policies in which the empirical intricacies around individual fertility decisions are sorted out and the different ways in which they can be affected are categorised in a taxonomy which highlight the most relevant ethical aspects of population policies. The ethical analysis shows that while population policies can be justified on the basis of most ethical theories, it all depends on what prior assumptions are made about what is at stake. (shrink)

In 1997 John Broome presented the Collapsing Argument that was meant to establish that non-conventional comparative relations cannot exist. Broome's argument has faced a lot of scrutiny and a certain type of counterexample has been used to undermine it. Most of the counterexamples focus on the Collapsing Principle which plays a central role in Broome's argument. In this article we will take a closer look at the most common type of counterexample and propose how to adjust the Collapsing Principle in (...) order to avoid objections based on these counterexamples. We argue that a weaker version of the Collapsing Principle is not susceptible to the classical counterexamples. Furthermore, after an explorative discussion about the intuitions behind the original principle, we show that this weaker formulation is at least as intuitive as the principle suggested by Broome. (shrink)

During the last three decades, there has been a growing realization among physicists and cosmologists that the relation between particle physics and cosmology may constitute yet another successful example of the unity of science. However, there are important conceptual problems in the unification of the two disciplines, e.g. in connection with the cosmological constant and the conjecture of inflation. The present article will outline some of these problems, and argue that the victory for the unity of science in the context (...) of cosmology and particle physics is still far from obvious. (shrink)

Flowers are a common element in Danish funerals. Drawing on fieldnotes, interviews and survey data on funeral practices in the Evangelical Lutheran Church of Denmark as well as theories of ritualization, meaning-making and practices, this article shows that flowers are not only a sine qua non in the funerals but are also used to make them more personal and to produce and reproduce social relations. Additionally, flowers are material objects and acquire their social meaning in the right ceremonial context. Outside (...) this context they have no inherent meaning and might even obstruct the ceremony because, as physical objects, they have to be put somewhere in ceremonial space. Paradoxically, flowers are ubiquitous yet invisible. (shrink)

Volume 22, Issue 3-4, November - December 2023.

According to a standard account of incomparability, two value bearers are incomparable if it is false that there holds a positive value relation between them. Due to the vagueness of the comparative predicates it may also be indeterminate as to which relation that holds - for each relation it is neither true nor false that it holds. John Broome has argued that indeterminacy cannot coexist with incomparability and since there seems to exist indeterminacy there cannot exist incomparability. At the core (...) of his argument lies the collapsing principle. There are several arguments against this principle; Erik Carlson has advanced most of these. In this paper two strategies in dealing with these arguments are discussed. One strategy is to deny the existence of a certain kind of properties; another strategy that has been advanced by Christian Constantinescu is to restrict the collapsing principle. In the paper it is argued that the first of these strategies is the most promising strategy. A novel argument in favour of this strategy is presented and several objections to the strategy are rebutted. Finally it is concluded that, even though this strategy deals with most objections, without a better argument in favour of the principle the debate seems to run into a stalemate. (shrink)

Recently a lot has been written on the topic of value incomparability. While there is disagreement on how we are to understand incomparability, most seem to accept Ruth Chang's claim that all comparisons must proceed in some specific respect. Call this the Requirement for Specification. Interestingly, even though most seem to accept this requirement, next to nothing has been written on it. In this paper I focus on the requirement and discuss two different but related topics. First, an important observation (...) is made: as it turns out, the requirement plays an important explanatory role for the thesis that incomparability is to be understood in terms of vagueness. Second, I consider what is entailed by the Requirement for Specification. There is a general worry that the requirement entails that there is no such thing as goodness simpliciter. The line of thought is that if we always must specify in which way something is e.g., better than something else, then perhaps things cannot be better simpliciter. And if there is no such thing as betterness-simpliciter, then can there be such a thing as goodness simpliciter? Finally, I consider how an answer to this question affects the view that incomparability is vagueness. (shrink)

This article explores the concept of metaphysically opaque grounding, a largely neglected form of metaphysical grounding that challenges the commonly held assumptions that grounding is an especially intimate and powerful connection between facts and that it is necessarily connected with the essences of things. I provide a definition of opaque grounding, identify some interesting philosophical views that are committed to it, and explore some consequences for the general theory of grounding. Finally, I briefly address some natural initial doubts about opaque (...) grounding and find them unwarranted. The upshot is that the notion deserves more attention than it has previously received. (shrink)

This paper investigates some of the philosophical and conceptual issues raised by the search for a quantum theory of gravity. It is critically discussed whether such a theory is necessary in the first place, and how much would be accomplished if it is eventually constructed. I argue that the motivations behind, and expectations to, a theory of quantum gravity are entangled with central themes in the philosophy of science, in particular unification, reductionism, and the interpretation of quantum mechanics. I further (...) argue that there are —contrary to claims made on behalf of string theory— no good reasons to think that a quantum theory of gravity, if constructed, will provide a theory of everything, that is, a fundamental theory from which all physics in principle can be derived. (shrink)

Hull et al.'s construction of operant learning as an instance of selection gives rise to problems that weaken this application of selection theory beyond acceptable limits. We point out that most fundamental is a disregard for the need to include multiple concurrent replicators in any definition of selection and indicate how this problem may be solved.

This chapter is devoted to discussions about the nature of experiments in mathematics during the formative period of experimental mathematics and to a quantitative and qualitative analysis of the journal Experimental Mathematics founded in 1992. Particular attention is paid to interpret the roles of experiment and observation in the mathematical practices surrounding Experimental Mathematics.

According to Ruth Chang the three standard positive value relations: “better than”, “worse than” and “equally good” do not fully exhaust the conceptual space for positive value relations. According to her, there is room for a fourth positive value relation, which she calls “parity”. Her argument for parity comes in three parts. First, she argues that there are items that are not related by the standard three value relations. Second, that these items are not incomparable, and third, that the phenomena (...) she has focused on are not due to the vagueness of the comparative predicates. This paper focuses on the second part of the argument and an objection is presented. By assuming the Small Unidimensional Difference Principle, which is a key premise for the second part of the argument, Chang’s argument could be accused of begging the question. More so, by assuming this principle, the space for incomparability gets severely limited. If these worries are justified, then Chang’s argument for parity as a fourth form of comparability is unsuccessful. (shrink)

Why is democracy good, or preferable to other systems of governance and political decision-making? Democracy has been argued to incorporate or promote central values, such as equality or freedom. On the other hand, many contemporary defenses of democracy have relied on arguments that attempt to show that democracy promotes or enables some second-order good, such as the validity, justification or legitimacy of political decision-making. Recent decades have seen the rise of epistemic arguments for democracy that belong to this latter type. (...) For example, David Estlund has proposed that democracy is epistemically preferable among the societal arrangements that could be acceptable to all citizens. In turn... (shrink)

Scientific realism is a critical target of anti-representationalists such as Richard Rorty and Huw Price, who have questioned the very possibility of providing a satisfactory argument for realism or any other ontological position. I will argue that there is a viable form of realism which not only withstands this criticism but is vindicated on the antirepresentationalists’ own grounds. This realist position, largely drawn from the notion of the scientific method developed by the founder of philosophical pragmatism, Charles S. Peirce, will (...) further be compared with the accounts of truth and objectivity proposed by the contemporary pragmatists, Rorty, Price, and Robert B. Brandom. (shrink)

This study examined 4-year-olds’ problem-solving under different social conditions. Children had to use water in order to extract a buoyant object from a narrow tube. When faced with the problem ‘cold’ without cues, nearly all children were unsuccessful. But when a solution-suggesting video was pedagogically delivered prior to the task, most children succeeded. Showing children the same video in a non-pedagogical manner did not lift their performance above baseline and was less effective than framing it pedagogically. The findings support ideas (...) central to natural pedagogy, 148–153, 2009). They also challenge the Cultural Intelligence hypothesis, according to which only humans’ social, but not their physical, cognition differs qualitatively from that of great apes. A more radical, transformative variant of the Cultural Intelligence hypothesis is suggested according to which humans’ physical cognition is shaped by their social nature and must therefore be recognized as equally distinctive as their social cognition. (shrink)

Changes in social framework conditions, accelerated by globalization or political inventions, have created new societal demands and requirements on companies. The concept of corporate social responsibility is often considered a potential tool for meeting societal demands and criticism as a company voluntarily takes responsibility for society. The spotlight of public attention has only recently come to focus on agribusiness-related aspects of CSR. It is therefore the objective of this paper to provide an overview and a critical examination of the current (...) state of research into CSR in agribusiness from different perspectives. Upon that this paper goals to define CSR special cases in agribusiness and derive implications for further research. CSR in agribusiness is a multi-dimensional and complex concept, which is sensitive to ongoing exchange processes between companies and stakeholders. We conclude with the special position of CSR in agribusiness and that future research should focus on adding value to industry-specific CSR aspects in the general CSR framework borrowed from management literature. Explorative fieldwork such as expert interviews with different stakeholders might be suitable for gaining insights into agribusiness-specific aspects of CSR in firms. (shrink)