Background:Moral courage is defined as courage to act according to one’s own ethical values and principles even at the risk of negative consequences for the individual. In a complex nursing practice, ethical considerations are integral. Moral courage is needed throughout nurses’ career.Aim:To analyse graduating nursing students’ moral courage and the factors associated with it in six European countries.Research design:A cross-sectional design, using a structured questionnaire, as part of a larger international ProCompNurse study. In the questionnaire, moral courage was assessed with (...) a single question (visual analogue scale 0–100), the questionnaire also covered several background variables.Participants and research context:The sample comprised graduating nursing students (n = 1796) from all participating countries. To get a comprehensive view about graduating nursing students’ moral courage, the views of nurse managers (n = 538) and patients (n = 1327) from the same units in which the graduating nursing students practised were also explored, with parallel questionnaires.Ethical considerations:Ethical approvals and research permissions were obtained according to national standards in every country and all participants gave their informed consent.Results:The mean of graduating nursing students’ self-assessed moral courage was 77.8 (standard deviation 17.0; on a 0–100 scale), with statistically significant differences between countries. Higher moral courage was associated with many factors, especially the level of professional competence. The managers assessed the graduating nursing students’ moral courage lower (66.5; standard deviation 18.4) and the patients slightly higher (80.6; standard deviation 19.4) than the graduating nursing students themselves.Discussion and conclusions:In all countries, the graduating nursing students’ moral courage was assessed as rather high, with differences between countries and populations. These differences and associations between moral courage and ethics education require further research. (shrink)

This article analyzes the business ethics of digital games, using Ayn Rand’s philosophy of Objectivism. It identifies different types of monetization options as virtuous or nonvirtuous, based on Rand’s views on rational self-interest. It divides the options into ethical Mover and unethical Looter designs, presents those logics in relation to an illustrative case example, Zynga, and then discusses a view on the role of players in relation to game monetization designs. Through our analysis of monetization options in the context of (...) Objectivist ethics, the article contributes to discussions on game revenue ethics. It also expands the still understudied area of applying Rand’s ethics to business, in the context of a new sector, game development, and business. This research enables ethicists to apply a wider-than-before perspective on virtue ethics to online business, and helps game developers act in a virtuous manner, which provides them with a long-term business advantage. (shrink)

Many scientific models in biology are how-possibly models. These models depict things as they could be, but do not necessarily capture actual states of affairs in the biological world. In contemporary philosophy of science, it is customary to treat how-possibly models as second-rate theoretical tools. Although possibly important in the early stages of theorizing, they do not constitute the main aim of modelling, namely, to discover the actual mechanism responsible for the phenomenon under study. In the paper it is argued (...) that this prevailing picture does not do justice to the synthetic strategy that is commonly used in biological engineering. In synthetic biology, how-possibly models are not simply speculations or eliminable scaffolds towards a single how-actually model, but indispensable design hypotheses for a field whose ultimate goal is to build novel biological systems. The paper explicates this by providing an example from the study of alternative genetic systems by synthetic biologist Steven Benner and his group. The case will also highlight how the method of synthesis, even when it fails, provides an effective way to limit the space of possible models for biological systems. (shrink)

: This paper discusses critically W.V. Quine's relation to the tradition of pragmatism. Even though Quine is often regarded as a pragmatist, it is far from clear what his commitment to pragmatism actually amounts to. It is argued that while there are pragmatist elements in Quine's position, this is not sufficient to classify him as a pragmatist in any strong historical sense; indeed, he was not even clear himself what it means to be a pragmatist. It is also shown that (...) neither Quine's philosophy nor pragmatism are as anti-metaphysical as has sometimes been thought. In order to enrich the picture of Quine's place in the pragmatist tradition, some neopragmatist criticisms of his ideas (e.g., by Hilary Putnam and Richard Rorty) are also discussed. (shrink)

This paper discusses critically W.V. Quine's relation to the tradition of pragmatism. Even though Quine is often regarded as a pragmatist, it is far from clear what his commitment to pragmatism actually amounts to. It is argued that while there are pragmatist elements in Quine's position, this is not sufficient to classify him as a pragmatist in any strong historical sense; indeed, he was not even clear himself what it means to be a pragmatist. It is also shown that neither (...) Quine's philosophy nor pragmatism are as anti-metaphysical as has sometimes been thought. In order to enrich the picture of Quine's place in the pragmatist tradition, some neopragmatist criticisms of his ideas (e.g., by Hilary Putnam and Richard Rorty) are also discussed. (shrink)

We here develop a concept of an individualized niche in analogy to Hutchison’s population-level concept of the ecological niche. We consider the individualized niche as the range of environmental conditions under which a particular individual has an expected lifetime reproductive success of ≥ 1. Our concept has primarily an ecological function, as it refers to the match of an individual phenotype to its contemporary environment while we discuss evolutionary fitness as an evaluative parameter of this fit. We address four specific (...) challenges that occur when scaling the niche down from populations to individuals. In particular, we discuss the consequences of uniqueness of individuals in a population and the corresponding lack of statistical replication, the dynamic nature of individualized niches and how they can be studied either as time-slice niches, as prospective niches or as trajectory-based niches, the dimensionality of the individualized niche, that is greater than the population niche due to the additional dimensions of intra-specific niche space, how the boundaries of individualized niche space can be defined by expected lifetime reproductive success and how expected reproductive success can be inferred by marginalizing fitness functions across phenotypes or environments. We frame our discussion in the context of recent interest in the causes and consequences of individual differences in animal behavior. (shrink)

The aim of this study was to identify the ethical problems that nurse managers encounter in their work and the role of codes of ethics in the solutions to these difficulties. The data were collected using a structured questionnaire and analysed statistically. The target sample included all nurse managers in 21 specialized health care or primary health care organizations in two hospital districts in Finland (N = 501; response rate 41%). The most common ethical problems concerned resource allocation as well (...) as providing and developing high quality care. This was the case in different managerial positions as well as in types of organization. Professional codes of ethics were used more often for problems related to patients’ care compared with issues of resource allocation. Nurse managers at middle or strategic management levels used codes of ethics more often than those in charge of a ward. More research is required to investigate ethical decision making in nursing management, especially with regard to problem solving. In addition, new guidelines and continuing education in ethics are important for management personnel. (shrink)

University students seek counseling to discuss concerns about their academic skills, motivation, time management and well-being. This article examines the conversational activity of normalizing recurrently used by counselors to manage students’ negative emotions and troubles-telling. Normalizing refers to an activity in which something in the interaction is made normal by labeling it ‘normal’ or ‘commonplace’ or by interpreting it in an ordinary way. Three uses for normalizing were identified in a sample of 16 videotaped counseling sessions: supporting the student’s position, (...) challenging the student and presenting the student’s problem as workable. We argue that normalizing is a means of addressing students’ problematic emotions and offering support, yet in a way that maintains an orientation toward problem solving. Furthermore, while normalizing seems to serve affiliation, suggesting that the problems are not unique, it can be treated either as delicate or as problematic by the counselors and by the students. (shrink)

In this article, we examine the relationship between ethical organisational culture and organisational innovativeness. A quantitative empirical analysis is based on a survey of a total of 719 respondents from all levels of three Finnish organisations, both general staff and managers. The organisations belong to both the private and public sectors. The results of this study show that organisations’ ethical culture is associated with their organisational innovativeness, and that different dimensions of ethical culture are associated with different dimensions of organisational (...) innovativeness. The ethical culture of the organisation had a specific role in process and behavioural innovativeness. It was found that congruency of management was the single dimension with the highest effect on organisational innovativeness overall and specifically on process and behavioural innovativeness. These findings suggest that when organisations are aiming for specific outcomes, such as organisational innovativeness, they need to be aware of what dimensions of ethical culture are particularly relevant. (shrink)

This study participates in the discussion of the ethical culture of organizations by deepening the knowledge and understanding of the meaning of organizational ethical virtues in organizational innovativeness. The aim in this study was to explore how an organization’s ethical culture and, more specifically, organization’s ethical virtues support organizational innovativeness. The ethical culture of an organization is defined as the virtuousness of an organization. Organizational innovativeness is conceptualized as an organization’s behavioral propensity to produce innovative products and services. The empirical (...) data consisted of a total of 39 interviews from specialist organizations. Qualitative content analysis was used to analyze the data. The findings indicate that the organizational ethical virtues of feasibility, discussability, supportability, and congruency of management are those that support organizational innovativeness. The findings also show which specific elements of these virtues and related organizational practices are important to innovativeness. In addition, this study showed that the features of organizational innovativeness are not necessarily dichotomous but rather follow the ideas of virtues and are versatile in nature. (shrink)

This paper analyses and criticizes the idea that powers are representable as vectors. Mumford and Anjum have recently developed a vector model of powers as part of their account of dispositional causation. The purpose of this model is to represent dispositionality, i.e. a sui generis type of modality introduced by their power-based ontology, as well as to explain various features of their account of causation. In this paper, we criticise both the claim that powers are vectors and the concomitant claim (...) that the composition of causes can be understood as vector addition. We argue that powers cannot be thought of as even analogous to vectors, and that the vector model is simply misleading. We show that the root of the problem is in Mumford and Anjum’s thought that powers have magnitude and direction. (shrink)

Theologians speak of the silence of churches' prophetic voice in the 'new' South Africa, whilst the country features amongst the socio-economically most unequal countries in the world, and the urban areas in particular continue to be characterised by segregation. In this context I ask: where is liberation theology? I spell out my reading of some of the recent voices in the liberationist discourse. In dialogue with these scholars I, firstly, argue for the faith community to be made a conscious centre (...) of liberationist debates and praxis. Secondly, I do this by suggesting two theoretical building blocks for local faith communities that wish to grow in a liberationist fashion. (shrink)

This paper applies conceptual engineering to deal with four objections that have been levelled against operationalism in psychology. These objections are: operationalism leads to harmful proliferation of concepts, operationalism goes hand-in-hand with untenable antirealism, operationalism leads to arbitrariness in scientific concept formation, and operationalism is incompatible with the usual conception of scientific measurement. Relying on a formulation of three principles of conceptual engineering, I will argue that there is a useful form of operationalism that does not fall prey to these (...) four objections. (shrink)

_Good Teachers for Tomorrow’s Schools_ explores purpose of education, values in education and talents in education to map foundational, pedagogical and practical aspects of good teaching. It provides valuable research-based perspectives for scholars, teacher candidates, teacher educators and professional teachers.

The focus of this article is on how Finnish young women construct their transitions to adulthood and how they imagine their futures as women. Tensions in this process are analysed: many young women want to accelerate their shifts towards independent adult status. At the same time, some of them attempt to postpone the point of being locked into the lives of adult women. They look forward to acquiring the legal status of an adult citizen and to moving to homes of (...) their own. But they want to stay young, which means time for relationships, studying, work and travel, and definitely not children at an early age. Being an adult woman does not seem to be a very tempting position for some young women; being a girl is considered by them to open more possibilities. Those young women who are keener to embrace female adulthood are also discussed, focusing on ways in which they envisage their futures, and what contradictions they experience. These tensions are explored drawing from the research project ‘Tracing Transitions — Follow-Up Study of Post-16 Students’. In the study, 40 young women and 23 young men aged around 18 years were interviewed individually, in paris or in groups of three. The project is grounded on ethnographic research in which the same young people were followed when they started secondary school at the age of 13 years. (shrink)

The paper considers the nature of knowledge in communicative action. It is emphasized that knowledge is not a hypostatized sphere. Objective meaning is an element of the discourse space, which may be defined as an interaction between speech acts, extralinguistic reality and texts. We intend to show that discourse is a purview of social schemes and standards, and its impact on communicative community is connected with the fact that the speech act is a perlocutionary effect.

The article traces the motif of decomposition in Derrida’s Geschlecht III. It distinguishes Derrida’s understanding of the way decomposition affects sex, language, humanity and place through a logic of dissemination and divisibility from Heidegger’s reversal of decomposition in the polysemic gathering of the land. It shows how the working of the spectral figure of mother in its link to land through natality in Geschlecht III can be extended in its biodeconstructive formulation to a question of soil as multispecies ecology.

Psychometrics and the representational theory of measurement are widely used in social scientific measurement. They are currently pursued largely in isolation from one another. I argue that despite their separation in practice, RTM and psychometrics are complementary approaches, because they can contribute in complementary ways to the establishment of what I argue is a crucial measurement property, namely, representational interpretability. Because RTM and psychometrics are complementary in the establishment of representational interpretability, the current separation of measurement approaches is unfounded. 1Introduction2Two (...) Approaches to Measurement 2.1Representational theory of measurement2.2Psychometrics2.3Representational interpretability3Complementarity, Conceptually 3.1Representational theory of measurement: Conditions of representational interpretability3.2Psychometrics: Evidence of representational interpretability4Complementarity in Action 4.1What is the Rasch model?4.2Rasch and conjoint measurement5Conclusion: Critics and Fruits of Complementarity. (shrink)

Public officials rely on performance data that are self-reported by organizations to evaluate progress on a wide range of prosocial outcomes. Policies that require public disclosure of performance in health care are thought to enable patients to select high-quality providers, which in turn may spur quality improvements as providers seek to protect their reputation or increase economic returns. Drawing on institutional theory that examines how conflicting institutional pressures influence organizational decisions, we theorize how profit orientation may mediate the response of (...) health care providers to disclosure mandates in a public health crisis. We focus on measures of data quality—completeness and accuracy—in self-reported data on COVID-19 status and outcomes generated by thousands of long-term care facilities. Using pooled regressions and a difference-in-differences style design, we find that overall, for-profit and not-for-profit facilities report similarly complete data but that for-profit facilities report less accurate data than their not-for-profit counterparts. Our results suggest that it may be important to incentivize each dimension of data quality separately to address differential institutional pressures that affect reporting practices. (shrink)

Psychometrics is one of the main approaches to social scientific measurement. It is relied upon in drug testing, economic policymaking, recruitment, and other decision-making contexts. The first aim of this article is to introduce philosophers to key aspects of psychometrics, namely, classical test theory, item response theory, and construct validity. The second aim is to show how a debate on the nature of psychological attributes manifests in psychometrics. In this debate, realists claim that psychometric measures are indicators of independently existing (...) qualities, while operationalists argue that a measure defines its target attribute. The third and final aim is to argue that despite its poor reputation among philosophers, operationalism is a viable approach to psychometrics. (shrink)

The religious and cultural situation of the late twentieth - early twentieth centuries is connected with the change of many world-view dominant. The need to study religious issues is linked to the geopolitical and denominational position of Ukraine between East and West; with those changes in the self-identification of Ukrainians after the Orange Revolution; with the need to preserve the spirit of tolerance of different denominations and cultures existing in the multinational country, which is characteristic of the Ukrainian people. All (...) of this paves the way for some opportunities to join the global community. (shrink)

RESUMO O artigo é dedicado a um dos problemas centrais da ciência filológica moderna - o problema da palavra artística, no entendimento do qual vemos a interseção e interação frutífera da crítica literária e da linguística. O trabalho sistematiza conceitos relevantes para o estudo moderno da palavra artística, revelando sua natureza específica, bem como define as tendências gerais que são características de cada uma das abordagens existentes. A autora enfoca no conceito de palavra de Mikhail Bakhtin, que supera os extremos, (...) próprios do signo e das abordagens ontológicas, e esclarece as diferenças básicas entre as categorias de comunicação e diálogo presentes em Bakhtin. O artigo corrobora com a definição da palavra artística como uma estrutura semântica de dois vetores, na qual a comunicação-existência consiste e se desdobra. АННОТАЦИЯ Статья посвящена одной из центральных проблем современной филологической науки - проблеме художественного слова, в осмыслении которого плодотворно пересекаются и взаимодействуют литературоведение и лингвистика. В работе систематизированы актуальные для современного изучения художественного слова концепции, выявляющие его специфику, и определены общие тенденции, характерные для каждого из существующих подходов. В центре внимания автора - концепция слова М. М. Бахтина, в которой преодолеваются крайности, характерные для знакового и онтологического подходов, прояснены базовые отличия бахтинских категорий общения и диалога. Обосновано определение художественного слова как двухвекторной смысловой структуры, в которой заключается и развертывается бытие-общение. ABSTRACT The article is devoted to one of the central problems of modern philological science - the problem of the artistic word, in the understanding of which we see the fruitful intersection and interaction of literary criticism and linguistics. The work systematizes the concepts relevant for the modern study of the artistic word, revealing its specific nature, and defines the general tendencies characteristic of each of the existing approaches. The author focuses on the word concept by M. M. Bakhtin, which overcomes the extremes, characteristic of the sign and ontological approaches, and clarifies the basic differences between Bakhtin's categories of communion and dialogue. The article substantiates the definition of the artistic word as a two-vector semantic structure, in which being-communion consists and unfolds. (shrink)

In this introduction to the Topical Collection on Social and Cognitive Diversity in Science, we map the questions that have guided social epistemological approaches to diversity in science. Both social and cognitive diversity of different types is claimed to be epistemically beneficial. The challenge is to understand how an increase in a group’s diversity can bring about epistemic benefits and whether there are limits beyond which diversity can no longer improve a group’s epistemic performance. The contributions to the Topical Collection (...) discuss various proposals to maintain an appropriate amount of cognitive diversity in science, for instance, by recruiting and retaining practitioners from underrepresented social groups, providing incentives for explorative and risky research, encouraging interdisciplinary collaborations and stakeholder participation in research, requiring industry scientists to share their evidence, and developing strategies to encounter politically motivated attempts to manufacture doubt. To be successful, efforts to promote diversity in science should anticipate risks related to institutional interventions, navigate trade-offs between different types of epistemically good outcomes, and identify hidden costs that such policies may cause for various actors. Such efforts need to be assessed not only from an epistemic perspective but also from the point of view of fairness and the political legitimacy of scientific institutions. (shrink)

Erik Angner has argued that simultaneous endorsement of the representational theory of measurement and psychometrics leads to inconsistency. His claim rests on an implicit assumption: RTM and psychometrics are full-fledged approaches to measurement. I argue that RTM and psychometrics are only partial approaches that deal with different aspects of measurement, and that therefore simultaneous endorsement of the two is not inconsistent. The argument has implications for the improvement of measurement practices.

The Representational Theory of Measurement is the best known account of the kind of representation measurement requires. However, RTM has been challenged from various angles, with critics claiming e.g. that RTM fails to account for actual measurement practice and that it is ambiguous about the nature of measurable attributes. In this paper I use the critical literature on RTM to formulate Representation Minimalism – a characterization of what measurement-relevant representation requires at the minimum. I argue that Representation Minimalism avoids the (...) main problems with RTM while acknowledging its usefulness as the formal foundation of representation in measurement. (shrink)

The article Organizational Ethical Virtues of Innovativeness, written by Elina Riivari and Anna-Maija Lämsä, was originally published electronically on the publisher’s internet portal on 3 March 2017 without open access. With the author’ decision to opt for Open Choice the copyright of the article changed on 7 February 2019 to © The Author 2019 and the article is forthwith distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, duplication, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in (...) any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license and indicate if changes were made. (shrink)

When discussing scientific objectivity, many philosophers of science have recently focused on accounts that can be applied in practice when assessing the objectivity of something. It has become clear that in different contexts, objectivity is realized in different ways, and the many senses of objectivity recognized in the recent literature seem to be conceptually distinct. I argue that these diverse ‘applicable’ senses of scientific objectivity have more in common than has thus far been recognized. I combine arguments from philosophical discussions (...) of trust, from negative accounts of objectivity, and from the recent literature on epistemic risks. When we call X objective, we endorse it: we say that we rely on X, and that others should do so too. But the word ‘objective’ is reserved for a specific type of reliance: it is based on the belief that important epistemic risks arising from our imperfections as epistemic agents have been effectively averted. All the positive senses of objectivity identify either some risk of this type, or some efficient strategy for averting one or more such risks. (shrink)

Due to constraints on institutional capacity and financial resources, the road to universal health coverage (UHC) involves difficult policy choices. To assist with these choices, scholars and policy makers have done extensive work on criteria to assess the substantive fairness of health financing policies: their impact on the distribution of rights, duties, benefits and burdens on the path towards UHC. However, less attention has been paid to the procedural fairness of health financing decisions. The Accountability for Reasonableness Framework (A4R), which (...) is widely applied to assess procedural fairness, has primarily been used in priority-setting for purchasing decisions, with revenue mobilization and pooling receiving limited attention. Furthermore, the sufficiency of the A4R framework’s four criteria (publicity, relevance, revisions and appeals, and enforcement) has been questioned. Moreover, research in political theory and public administration (including deliberative democracy), public finance, environmental management, psychology, and health financing has examined the key features of procedural fairness, but these insights have not been synthesized into a comprehensive set of criteria for fair decision-making processes in health financing. A systematic study of how these criteria have been applied in decision-making situations related to health financing and in other areas is also lacking. This paper addresses these gaps through a scoping review. It argues that the literature across many disciplines can be synthesized into 10 core criteria with common philosophical foundations. These go beyond A4R and encompass equality, impartiality, consistency over time, reason-giving, transparency, accuracy of information, participation, inclusiveness, revisability and enforcement. These criteria can be used to evaluate and guide decision-making processes for financing UHC across different country income levels and health financing arrangements. The review also presents examples of how these criteria have been applied to decisions in health financing and other sectors. (shrink)

In this article, I examine how contemporary Finnish Jewish women understand their roles and identities as women in a small Orthodox Jewish community, on the one hand, and as members of a tiny minority in largely secular and predominantly Lutheran/Christian Finland, on the other. How do Finnish Jewish women negotiate their identities in relation to their community, strongly organised along gender lines, and in relation to Finnish society and especially its equality ideals and norms? I divide my article into four (...) sections. First, I give a short overview of the theory of intersectionality, concentrating on its possibilities and limitations for the study of religion and gender in general, and for the study of Judaism, specifically. Second, I focus on my informants’ views of the gendered practices of their Orthodox Jewish community, which, by many standards, is a very specific form of Orthodoxy, which could be called ‘Finnish Orthodoxy’. Third, I analyse my informants’ views on how they perceive being Jewish women in contemporary Finland. The intersection of the last two broad themes will highlight the realities of Finnish Jewish women in contemporary Finland. Fourth, I discuss possibilities and limitations of intersectional theorising in the light of my data. (shrink)

This study investigated the reasons that leaders have given for their leader role occupancy. By using a mixed-method approach and large leader data, we aimed to provide a more nuanced picture of how leader positions are occupied in real life. We examined how individual leadership motivation may associate with other reasons for leader role occupancy. In addition, we aimed to integrate the different reasons behind leader role occupancy into the framework of sustainable leader careers and its two indicators: leader’s health (...) and performance. The survey data consisted of 1,031 leaders from various sectors of working life. Qualitative analysis revealed that leaders mention various factors behind their leader role occupancy, resulting 26 themes. After inductive investigation of the data, theory-driven analysis focused on the sustainable career components and agency vs. non-agency. Qualitative data was quantitized based on the theory-driven categories for statistical analysis. Based on the these analysis, we found out that only Affective-Identity MTL predicted all of the studied reasons behind leader role occupancy, whereas the other motivation types did not. All of the reasons for leader role occupancy except non-agentic ones were related to both leaders’ own and their followers’ occupational well-being. Leaders with more person-related and agentic reasons for leader role occupancy experienced better occupational well-being. Person- and context-related and agentic reasons behind leader role occupancy associated also with followers’ occupational well-being, but the associations differed from those of leaders’ well-being: person-related and agentic reasons associated with followers’ exhaustion, but this association was not found among leaders. Our study provided important information for practitioners in the field of human resources and development, as it has shown that if the reasons for leader role occupancy mainly reflect circumstances or other non-person-related reasons, the experienced occupational well-being and person-career fit may remain weak. It is necessary to try to support the leadership motivation for those leaders, or to shape the job description in such a way that it can also offer the experiences of meaningfulness from aspects other than self-realization through a managerial role. (shrink)

En este trabajo abordamos la figura de Helena como rival amorosa en la Heroida 5, cuya redacción –en el plano ficcional– Ovidio atribuye a Enone. A través del análisis de distintos lexemas y sintagmas intentaremos demostrar que la voz enunciativa construye un relato con la intención de realzar su imagen y conmover al héroe para que regrese; y que, en contraste, pone en juicio las acciones de su rival con términos que cuestionan sus cualidades morales, su naturaleza fiable y sus (...) deberes matrimoniales, centrando toda la responsabilidad del abandono en las acciones de la espartana. Asimismo, mostraremos cómo, de acuerdo con el entramado de referencias intra e intertextuales que operan en torno a la figura de Helena en la tradición literaria, la voz de Enone construida por Ovidio no se limita a presentar a la rival como la causante de una desgracia personal, sino también como el motivo del padecimiento de pueblos y héroes. (shrink)

In 2017, the Finnish Immigration Service received approximately 1,000 asylum applications and appeals based on conversion from Islam to Christianity. The applications claimed that converted asylum seekers would face mortal danger if returned to their countries of origin. The applications posed an unprecedented dilemma for the Finnish Immigration Service: how was it, as a secular state institution, to evaluate these claims of conversion? This question also became an object of significant public and media debate. In this article, I examine how (...) journalists writing for a religious media publication, Kirkko ja kaupunki, the newspaper of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in the Helsinki region, sought to intervene in the debate on asylum seekers’ conversions. I focus my analysis on one central line of argument in their reporting: a call for the better- inclusion of and engagement with religious expertise on Christianity by the Finnish Immigration Service when evaluating conversion-based asylum applications and appeals. I show that this call both positioned religious expertise as an antidote to the challenges that efforts to evaluate conversion-based asylum appeals posed to Finnish Immigration Service employees in this time period, and constituted expertise as a site for negotiations over the ‘proper’ relationship between religion and state. (shrink)

Whereas much of the literature in the social epistemology of scientific knowledge has focused either on scientific communities or research groups, we examine the epistemic significance of scientific/intellectual movements (SIMs). We argue that certain types of SIMs can play an important epistemic role in science: they can remedy epistemic injus- tices in scientific practices. SIMs can counteract epistemic injustices effectively because many forms of epistemic injustice require structural and not merely individual remedies. To illustrate our argument, we discuss the case (...) of indigenous studies. (shrink)

For over four decades, feminist studies of assisted reproductive technologies have been interested in the ethical, political and personal implications of in vitro fertilization and other infertility treatments. Most work on the implications of ART for women has focused on the demanding cyclical process of trying to become pregnant by using the technology. However, less attention has been paid to the implications of experiencing IVF after the conception phase. This article tackles the under-researched topic of the aftermath of IVF, and (...) discusses the temporality of affective embodied experiences of infertility after one has stopped IVF. Drawing on an ethnographic study of peer support groups for the involuntarily childless in Finland, and on in-depth interviews with women suffering from infertility, this article juxtaposes two groups of women who have had IVF: those who have had children as a result of the procedure, and those who have not. The article proposes an exploration of experiences of childlessness after IVF as ‘lingering technological entanglements’ – that is, as affective and embodied experiences of the effects of IVF, including after the cessation of treatment. It argues that the lingering of these entanglements manifests itself in the enactment of childlessness in relation to the available technology. Furthermore, this results in parents identifying themselves as childless, even after they have gained temporal distance from IVF practices. (shrink)

The purpose of the research was to study Finnish people's attitudes towards biomedical research and whether the research sponsor makes a difference to those attitudes. A survey questionnaire was sent to a random sample of 25-64 years old. Respondents had a positive attitude towards biomedical research and there were only small variations by population group. When asked whether one's own clinical blood samples could be used in scientific biomedical research, 84 per cent of the respondents would allow it. The most (...) important reasons for giving routinely collected samples to a biobank were altruistic. Attitudes were strongly dependent on the sponsor of the research. Domestic research was looked at more positively than international research. Whether research was made by a public or private actor had less impact. The results suggest that people want to be research participants to help such research of their own free will, and to choose whom they help. This has an impact on the way participants are informed, on the criteria used by ethics committees and other research regulators, and also on transparency and access to research results. (shrink)

Переважну кількість сучасних наукових досліджень, присвячених феномену самотності, здійснюють у рамках психології, соціології та літературознавчої критики. Однак ці пошуки мають справу з конкретними проявами багатовимірного явища самотності, залишаючи поза увагою його природу й фундаментальну філософсько-антропологічну сутність, що ховається за вторинними нашаруваннями емпірики. Завданням цієї розвідки є розгляд феномену самотності у представників світової філософської думки новітніх часів, у вченнях яких він отримав найповніший вияв, зокрема у представників екзистенціалізму, філософії життя, феноменології та психодинамічної теорії, серед яких К. Ясперс, М. Бердяєв, М. Бубер, (...) М. Гайдеґґер, Е. Левінас. Відчутний спалах інтересу до феномену самотності у філософії був у середині ХІХ – ХХ ст., однак зацікавленість ним не зникла, про що свідчать сучасні праці, покликані заповнити лакуни, означені попередниками. Попри розбіжності у поглядах на характер самотності та її вплив на особистість, а також щодо моменту, коли відбувається зіткнення людини з її самотністю, у цих мислителів є й дещо спільне: усі вони самотність неодмінно розглядають крізь призму Іншого (чи то конкретної особистості, чи то цілого суспільства), як необхідну умову і для істинного пізнання речей, і для самопізнання. Що ж до розбіжностей у поглядах на самотність, то вони можуть бути породжені «термінологічним хаосом», що й досі панує при розгляді цього питання. На позначення різних проявів цього феномену використовують поняття «усамітнення», «відчуження», «ізоляція» та власне «самотність», часто не розрізняючи їх; вибудовують класифікації шляхом описових визначень. Неясність має бути подолано завдяки розмежуванню споріднених, але відмінних понять і виробленню єдиного підходу щодо взаємозв’язку між сутністю поняття і його різноманітними лексичними виявами. Ця стаття є спробою такого прояснення – шляхом виявлення спільного й відмінного в доробках філософів новітніх часів, які найбільше цікавилися феноменом самотності, відводячи їй важливе місце у власних філософських розвідках. (shrink)

It is essential for an introductory book, addressed to the reader who is new to the philosophical discourse, not only to give a representative picture of the main issues of the philosophical area which it studies, but also to be clear about its aims and its methodological approach. Furthermore, ideally it would not only refer to the literature for further independent investigation, but it would inspire the reader to pursue such an investigation too. Effingham’s Introduction to Ontology meets all the (...) aforementioned aims. Its light, yet careful and systematic, way of introducing the field of ontology and also presenting some background metaphysical concepts certainly does not scare off the uninitiated reader. In what follows I will present Effingham’s approach, focusing especially on some of the features of the book that reveal its contribution to the ontology educational literature.The book is comprised of ten chapters, which can be categorised into three parts: an introductory part (Ch .. (shrink)

In the social epistemology of scientific knowledge, it is largely accepted that relationships of trust, not just reliance, are necessary in contemporary collaborative science characterised by relationships of opaque epistemic dependence. Such relationships of trust are taken to be possible only between agents who can be held accountable for their actions. But today, knowledge production in many fields makes use of AI applications that are epistemically opaque in an essential manner. This creates a problem for the social epistemology of scientific (...) knowledge, as scientists are now epistemically dependent on AI applications that are not agents, and therefore not appropriate candidates for trust. (shrink)

This edited volume is a comprehensive presentation of views on the relations between metaphysics and logic from Aristotle through twentieth century philosophers who contributed to the return of metaphysics in the analytic tradition.

This article focuses on epistemic challenges related to the democratisation of scientific knowledge production, and to the limitations of current social accounts of objectivity. A process of ’democratisation’ can be observed in many scientific and academic fields today. Collaboration with extra-academic agents and the use of extra-academic expertise and knowledge has become common, and researchers are interested in promoting socially inclusive research practices. As this development is particularly prevalent in policy-relevant research, it is important that the new, more democratic forms (...) of research be objective. In social accounts of objectivity only epistemic communities are taken to be able to produce objective knowledge, or the entity whose objectivity is to be assessed is precisely such a community. As I argue, these accounts do not allow for situations where it is not easy to identify the relevant epistemic community. Democratisation of scientific knowledge production can lead to such situations. As an example, I discuss attempts to link indigenous oral traditions to floods and tsunamis that happened hundreds or even thousands of years ago. (shrink)