In the original publication, the article title has been published incorrectly. Now the same has been corrected in this correction.

This is a response to a short communication on our research presented in Solbrække et al. :89–103, 2017), which raises a series of serious allegations. Our article explored the rise of ‘the breast cancer gene’ as a field of medical, cultural and personal knowledge. We used the concept biological citizenship to elucidate representations of, and experiences with, hereditary breast cancer in a Norwegian context, addressing a research deficit. In our response to Møller and Hovig’s :239–242, 2018a) opinionated piece, we start (...) by questioning on which scientific grounds they base their knowledge claims and situate their criticism in a pre-determined positivist script, which exposes their incompetency when it comes to establishing a useful critique of our research. We tie this to an attitude of scientific supremacy, which reduces the complexity and specificity of different knowledges into a clichéd divide between ‘hard evidence’ and ‘fiction’—presented in a predictable narrative which seeks to establish research protagonists and antagonists. We elaborate on the rationale of our qualitative approach to analyzing and interpreting situated and mediated aspects of BRCA 1/2. We counter claims that our research does harm to patients. We refer to a medical scandal emerging from Norway where 21 women were wrongfully diagnosed and surgically treated for a mis-interpreted cancer gene mutation. In conclusion, we stand by the integrity of our research as reported in the original paper. Scientific supremacy and pre-scripted criticism impose considerable obstacles for the possibility of establishing interdisciplinary dialogue across knowledge paradigms in health care and medicine. We therefore urge readers to reflect on how we can establish and sustain ethically careful and truthful dialogue—without doing violence to epistemological differences—to protect and advance the interdisciplinarity that constitutes the journal’s scope. (shrink)

On childhood, childhood culture and child perspective in a cross-cultural frame of reference.

This paper takes its point of departure in an article by Stevens [Stevens, B.: 1994, Journal of Business Ethics 54, 163–171], in which she identified a lack of knowledge regarding how corporate codes of ethics are communicated and affect behavior in organizations. Taking heed of this suggested gap, we review studies on corporate codes of ethics with an empirical content, published since 1994. The conclusion of the review is that we still lack knowledge on how codes work, how they are (...) communicated and how they are transformed inside organizations. Stevens’ plea could even be extended, arguing that the knowledge gap might be of even more significance than in the mid-1990s. Some directions for how this situation can be approached in future studies are outlined in the paper. (shrink)

Willensfreiheit wird bestritten, weil sich der Begriff nicht logisch konsistent definieren lässt und weil inzwischen auch neurobiologische Anhaltspunkte gegen ihre Existenz sprechen. Anders als in der biblisch-reformatorischen Tradition gehört die Willensfreiheit aber zum Kern des aufgeklärten Menschenbildes. Und auch in der Theologie scheint die Bestreitung der Willensfreiheit unweigerlich auf die Lehre von der doppelten Prädestination hinauszulaufen, so dass seit Pietismus und Aufklärung auch die evangelische Theologie ihrem Ursprung untreu wurde. In dem Buch werden die Perspektiven der Philosophie, Neurobiologie und Theologie (...) zum Thema Willensfreiheit zusammengeführt. Die Argumente und Befunde gegen Willensfreiheit sind weit stärker als die zu ihren Gunsten. Deswegen existieren bislang nur Positionen, die den Determinismus akzeptieren, oder solche, die aus der Negation des Determinismus doch noch eine Möglichkeit für Willensfreiheit im menschlichen Gehirn zu finden hoffen. Die Studie geht einen völlig neuen Weg, indem sie den Determinismus der Aussenwelt bestreitet, und dies im Anschluss an die erkenntnistheoretischen Debatten über das Wesen des Quantenindeterminismus. Dabei wird aber gerade kein freier Wille postuliert, sondern ein Konzept aktiver Lebensführung entwickelt, in dem Bildung zur Verwirklichung von vorgenommenen Zielen eine besondere Rolle spielt."-- Back cover. (shrink)

Organizational changes are common in elder care today. Such changes affect caregivers, who are essential to providing good quality care. The aim of the present study was to illuminate caregivers’ experiences of working in elder care while under threat of organizational change and termination notice. Qualitative content analysis was used to examine interview data from 11 caregivers. Interviews were conducted at three occasions during a two‐year period. The findings show a transition in their experiences from ‘having a professional identity and (...) self‐confidence’, to ‘being a professional in a threatening situation caused by someone else’ and to ‘struggling to adapt to a changed working environment as a person and a professional’. The caregivers experienced a loss of pride and satisfaction. Previous literature indicates that this may have consequences for the quality of care and that employees may be at risk of negative health effects. However, the caregivers continued to struggle, doing their best to complete their duties. The study has implications for high‐level decision‐makers, managers and caregivers in similar work–life situations in that it deals with factors that facilitate or impede similar transitions. (shrink)

In this discussion, Steve Fuller’s book Dissent over Descent is criticized mainly because he draws conclusions from wishful thinking and uses ancient and medieval scientists as well as theologians in his efforts to invalidate the theory of evolution. He is also criticized for drawing universal conclusions from a Eurocentric version of history. If science and technology studies is to regain its reputation, its representatives have to use relevant statements and argue more rationally.

Ideology often has been regarded by sociologists as an elusive and muddy concept. We believe that the understanding of this core concept can be improved by the use of constructs drawn from a pragmatic, interactionist perspective. We argue specifically that 1) ideologies are based on a set of relatively simple metaphors and images to which people respond on the basis of their shared experience and expectations; 2) ideologies are not purely cognitive, but depend principally on emotional responses; 3) ideologies are (...) presented at such times and in such ways as to enhance the public impression of presenters and/or adherents; ideological enactment is fundamentally dramaturgical and interactional; and 4) ideologies are linked to groups and to the relationships between groups, which in turn depend on a set of resources in order to enact ideologies effectively. Ideologies are symbolic, affective, behavioral, and relational. In focusing on these themes, we avoid some overabstract conceptions of ideology that are endemic in social scientific literature. Instead we emphasize how ideologies can be linked to lived experience and to social interaction-a microsociological grounding of ideology. To understand the dynamics of ideology we examine ideologies about the environment, drawing from an ethnographic investigation of amateur mushroom collectors. (shrink)

Ethics committees in Catholic health care are responsible for con­sultation, education, and policy development and review. Historically, ethics committees were reactive and had no articulated goals. This article argues that the essential goals of Catholic ethics committees are (1) to promote the human dignity of patients and staff; (2) to promote the common good; (3) to promote institutional identity, integrity, and ethical climate; and (4) to improve quality of care. These goals are most effectively met when ethics committees are proactive (...) and integrated in the institution, embrace systems thinking, and utilize professional ethicists locally or regionally. (shrink)

Luminance and color are strong and self-sufficient cues to pictorial depth in visual scenes and images. The present study investigates the conditions Under which luminance or color either strengthens or overrides geometric depth cues. We investigated how luminance contrasts associated with color contrast interact with relative height in the visual field, partial occlusion, and interposition in determining the probability that a given figure is perceived as ‘‘nearer’’ than another. Latencies of ‘‘near’’ responses were analyzed to test for effects of attentional (...) selection. Figures in a pair were supported by luminance contrast or isoluminant color contrast and combined with one of the three geometric cues. The results of Experiment 1 show that luminance contrasts associated with hue, when it does not interact with other hues, produces the same effects as achromatic luminance contrasts: The probability of‘‘near’’ increases with luminance contrast while the latencies for ‘‘near’’ responses decrease. Partial occlusion is found to be a strong enough pictorial cue to support a weaker red luminance contrast. Interposition cues lose out against cues of spatial position and partial occlusion. The results of Experiment 2, with isoluminant displays of varying color contrast, reveal that red color contrast on a light background supported by any of the three geometric cues wins over green or white supported by any of the three geometric cues. On a dark background, red color contrast supported by the interposition cue loses out against green or white color contrast supported by partial occlusion. These findings reveal that color is not an independent depth cue, but is strongly influenced by luminance contrast and stimulus geometry. Systematically shorter response latencies for stronger ‘‘near’’ percepts demonstrate that selective visual attention reliably detects the most likely depth cue combination in a given configuration. (shrink)

In 1976 an interdisciplinary study on risks and risk evaluations was inaugurated in Sweden and was sponsored by the Committee for Future-oriented Research. One of the basic assumptions of the Swedish risk project was that modern society has created “new, increasingly complicated and large-scale technical systems.” It also assumed that “large systems are economically efficient, but vulnerable and therefore create risks.” A third assumption was that “the ever rising standard of living is purchased at the cost of certain additional risks.” (...) The perspective of the project was thus markedly historically oriented. (shrink)

This article seeks to defend and develop a stakeholder pragmatism advanced in some of the work by Edward Freeman and colleagues. By positioning stakeholder pragmatism more in line with the democratic and ethical base in American pragmatism (as developed by William James, John Dewey and Richard Rorty), the article sets forth a fallibilistic stakeholder pragmatism that seeks to be more useful to companies by expanding the ways in which value is and can be created in a contingent world. A dialogue (...) between a defence company and peace and arbitration society is used to illustrate the main plot of this article. (shrink)

In this collection, philosophers, social psychologists, and social scientists approach contemporary social reality from the viewpoint of solidarity. They examine the nature of solidarity and explore its normative and explanatory potential.

In this article, we focus on the cross-cultural aspects of the implementation of an American company's code of ethics into its Swedish subsidiary. We identify the cross-cultural stories that the receivers in the subsidiary use when trying to explain the parent's code and conceptualize these stories as part of an emerging narrative of national belonging and differences. The receivers resisted the code by amplifying the importance of national identity. Rather than stimulating a discussion on ethics that might have strengthened the (...) ties between the parent and the subsidiary, the outcome of the code implementation had the opposite effect. The article concludes by stressing the process of implementing codes across cultures rather than code content. (shrink)

Ontologies are the prime way of organizing data in the Semantic Web. Often, it is necessary to combine several, independently developed ontologies to obtain a complete representation of a domain of interest. The complementarity of existing ontologies can be leveraged by merging them. Existing approaches for ontology merging mostly implement a binary merge. However, with the growing number and size of relevant ontologies across domains, scalability becomes a central challenge. A multi-ontology merging technique offers a potential solution to this problem. (...) We present Co Merger, a scalable multiple ontologies merging method. It takes as input a set of source ontologies and existing mappings across them and generates a merged ontology. For efficient processing, rather than successively merging complete ontologies pairwise, we group related concepts across ontologies into partitions and merge first within and then across those partitions. In both steps, user-specified subsets of generic merge requirements (GMRs) are taken into account and used to optimize outputs. The experimental results on well-known datasets confirm the feasibility of our approach and demonstrate its superiority over binary strategies. A prototypical implementation is freely accessible through a live web portal. (shrink)

Les questions de communication sont au coeur des «perceptions du risque» car la grande majorité des risques ne seraient connus que de ceux qui l'expérimentent n'eut été les médias. Le champ historiquement individualiste de la «perception du risque» a manifesté peu d'intérêt pour le contenu des mass media et leur rôle dans la construction d'une pensée sur le risque. Bien au contraire, le processus de «l'information» sur le risque était situé dans la pensée individuelle, la question centrale étant: pourquoi certains (...) risques sont-ils grossis par les individus tandis que d'autres sont minimisés? Les médias jouent un rôle essentiel dans l'amplification de certains risques et les récepteurs de l'information sont considérés comme passifs devant les stimuli médiatiques. Il faut en fait nuancer l'approche pour saisir la dimension profonde de l'appréhension du risque. En passant de la notion de «perception du risque» à celle de «représentation du risque», on peut davantage cerner les liens entre médias et pensée profonde.Issues of communication lie at the heart of "risk perception" since the vast majority of risks would be known to only those who experience them were it not for the mass media. The historically individualist field of "risk perception" has tended to pay little attention to the contents of the mass media and the role these played in constructing risk-related thinking. Rather, the processing of risk "information" was situated within individual’s minds with the central question being: why are some risks overplayed by certain individuals while others more serious risks are underplayed? The media are seen to play a major role in the amplification of certain risks with those who receive such information being viewed as rather passive followers of media signals. The starting point of this paper is the need for a more nuanced approach to the lay dimension of the apprehension of risks. The paper outlines how a shift from "risk perception" to "risk representation" highlights the links between media and lay thinking. (shrink)

Le mouvement skinhead se compose de deux entités : les skinheads racistes-nationalistes et les skinheads antiracistes. S’inspirant des théories psychosociologiques relatives aux représentations sociales et aux minorités actives proposées par Serge Moscovici , il décrit les styles de comportement précis de chaque groupe skin, leurs divergences et leurs ressemblances, et analyse la façon dont la société, aidée par les media, ne retient qu’une seule représentation sociale, celle des skinheads nationalistes. Malgré l’univocité de la représentation, ce qui ressort de 19 entretiens (...) avec les skinheads, c’est l’idée de pluralité identitaire combinée à un ancrage urbain très important.The skinhead movement is divided into two groups : the racist-nationalist skinheads and the antiracist skinheads. Taking into account the social-psychological theories of social representations and active minorities, proposed by Serge Moscovici , it describes the styles of behavior of each skin group, their divergences and resemblances and analyses how society, with the help of the media, has built only one social representation of the nationalist skinheads. In spite of this univocal representation, what is underlined through the nineteen interviews with skinheads is a form of plural identity linked to a strong urban anchoring. (shrink)

Les fondements théoriques d'une analyse des activités dans les discours professionnels illustrée par des données issues de rencontres en conseil génétique sont présentés ici. En prenant l'activité comme unité de base de l'action, je me réfère rapidement à «l'activité théorique» proposée par Leontyev, rajoutant les notions de «jeux de langage» de Wittgenstein et de «types d'activités» de Levinson. L'activité d'analyse dans les discours professionnels doit aller au-delà du seul codage des instances de l'usage du langage et doit s'orienter vers la (...) compréhension d'une écologie spécifique de l'activité, incluant les dimensions relationnelles et de rôles des participants présents ou absents. Cette interprétation peut s'analyser en considérant le cadre thématique et interactionnel d'une situation donnée grâce à la prise en compte des propriétés structurelles et relationnelles dans l'usage du langage.In this paper I present a theoretical basis for activity analysis in professional discourse settings followed by an illustration of data from the genetic counseling encounters. By taking activity as the basic unit of action, I briefly draw on "activity theory" as proposed by Leontyev, supplemented by Wittgenstein's notion of "language games" and Levinson's notion of "activity types". I argue that activity analysis in the professional discourse settings has to go beyond mere coding of instances of language use towards an interpretive understanding of the activity-specific ecology, including the role-relational dimensions of co-present and absent participants. Such an interpretive task can be achieved through thematic and interactional mapping of a given encounter by taking into consideration the structural and relational properties situated language use. (shrink)

In this article we study linear temporal logics with team semantics that are novel logics for defining hyperproperties. We define Kamp-type translations of these logics into fragments of first-order team logic and second-order logic. We also characterize the expressive power and the complexity of model-checking and satisfiability of team logic and second-order logic by relating them to second- and third-order arithmetic. Our results set in a larger context the recent results of Lück showing that the extension of TeamLTL by the (...) Boolean negation is highly undecidable under the so-called synchronous semantics. We also study stutter-invariant fragments of extensions of TeamLTL. (shrink)

In this paper, we describe a semiotic programme that proposes an alternative conceptual framework to understand the moral positionalities that people have in socio-material space. The study amalgamates moral character and signs and signification through a discussion of moral choice and value acts in an existential semiotic framework, as laid out by Eero Tarasti. The programme was triggered by a lived experience in a non-place, yielding the concept of semiotic space awareness – i.e., the value acts that work as signs (...) of moral character in people’s socio-material space. It is the moral positioning of a subject in the socio-material and semiotic space in relation to other subjects. People’s positionalities primarily take place in the socio-material space, and the dimensions we discuss focus on how value acts are produced and interpreted in space and place. Our aim is to take the approach used in, e.g., proxemics to a universal metalevel in terms of its key, undivided semiotic ingredients irrespective of cultural variation. We then extrapolate by discussing how these value acts trigger potential tensions and conflicts that can be approached using semiotics as a foundation for analysis. More specifically, the moral character that people portray in their value acts is theorized and applied as an explanatory tool to understand the semiosis and its repercussions in Dasein. We also introduce affordance as an additional dimension in the interplay and modalizations between moral character and moral choice to understand value acts and semiotic space awareness in subjects’ Dasein and Umwelt. (shrink)