Ob zumindest jeder Mensch eine Person ist, ist eine Frage von großer Tragweite. Eine eindeutige Antwort scheitert allerdings häufig an der Schwierigkeit einer Verständigung über den Personbegriff, dessen Bedeutung mehr denn je strittig zu sein scheint. In seiner Monographie Personen stellt Robert Spaemann sein Verständnis von "Person" dar und liefert mit folgender Auffassung einen neuen Ansatz: Dass mindestens jeder Mensch eine Person ist, zeige das Gewissen von allen diskutierbaren Merkmalen am trefflichsten. Die vorliegende Arbeit möchte den Weg hin zu dieser (...) These nachskizzieren und steht dabei vor der Herausforderung, das Gewissen in all seiner Komplexität zu entschlüsseln und zu systematisieren. (shrink)

In this book, Kristina Musholt offers a novel theory of self-consciousness, understood as the ability to think about oneself. Traditionally, self-consciousness has been central to many philosophical theories. More recently, it has become the focus of empirical investigation in psychology and neuroscience. Musholt draws both on philosophical considerations and on insights from the empirical sciences to offer a new account of self-consciousness—the ability to think about ourselves that is at the core of what makes us human. -/- Examining theories (...) of nonconceptual content developed in recent work in the philosophy of cognition, Musholt proposes a model for the gradual transition from self-related information implicit in the nonconceptual content of perception and other forms of experience to the explicit representation of the self in conceptual thought. A crucial part of this model is an analysis of the relationship between self-consciousness and intersubjectivity. Self-consciousness and awareness of others, Musholt argues, are two sides of the same coin. -/- After surveying the philosophical problem of self-consciousness, the notion of nonconceptual content, and various proposals for the existence of nonconceptual self-consciousness, Musholt argues for a non-self-representationalist theory, according to which the self is not part of the representational content of perception and bodily awareness but part of the mode of presentation. She distinguishes between implicitly self-related information and explicit self-representation, and describes the transitions from the former to the latter as arising from a complex process of self–other differentiation. By this account, both self-consciousness and intersubjectivity develop in parallel. (shrink)

Workplace learning and competence development in work are frequently used concepts. A wide spread notion is that societal, institutional, and organizational changes require the development of knowledge, methods and strategies for learning at workplaces, in both public and private enterprises. In research on learning and competence development at work, the organizational learning and development as well as individual accomplishments are investigated from various perspectives and in different contexts. The theoretical base for research projects can, accordingly, be focused at a number (...) of organizational and system levels. This paper describes a research project called "Workplace development and learning in elder care" in which learning and knowledge were key issues and where Activity Theory was used as the theoretical base. The project was joint project between two research and development field units. These were UFFE, a municipal social services’ field research unit, and Äldrecentrum Västerbotten, a county council field research unit which aims to serve the interests of the elderly. The project was launched in the fall of 2000 and ended in the summer of 2003. I was employed part-time as a research leader at the municipal research unit and became the research leader for this particular project. A number of students, as well as employees from the county council geriatric care services and the municipal elder care participated in the project. The general aims of the project were to: a) investigate the prerequisites for development and learning; b) test and evaluate interventions at a workgroup level; and c) identify the need for new knowledge. The results were expected to be useful for the field research units as well as for the municipal and county eldercare services in their research and development work. I start with a presentation of the theoretical concepts and apply them in order to form a tentative hypothesis on the status of learning and knowledge in elder care. The next section contains a short description of the different parts of the project and the main results are presented. Finally, the results are discussed and related to the conditions and impact of workplace interventions. (shrink)

This paper inquiries into the complex issue of informed consent applying artificial intelligence in medical diagnostic consultations. The aim is to expose the main ethical and legal concerns of the New Health phenomenon, powered by intelligent machines. To achieve this objective, the first part of the paper analyzes ethical aspects of the alleged right to explanation, privacy, and informed consent, applying artificial intelligence in medical diagnostic consultations. This analysis is followed by a legal analysis of the limits and requirements for (...) the explainability of artificial intelligence. Followed by this analysis, recommendations for action are given in the concluding remarks of the paper. (shrink)

Sandra Harding's feminist standpoint epistemology makes two claims. The thesis of epistemic privilege claims that unprivileged social positions are likely to generate perspectives that are “less partial and less distorted” than perspectives generated by other social positions. The situated knowledge thesis claims that all scientific knowledge is socially situated. The bias paradox is the tension between these two claims. Whereas the thesis of epistemic privilege relies on the assumption that a standard of impartiality enables one to judge some perspectives as (...) better than others, the situated knowledge thesis seems to undermine this assumption by suggesting that all knowledge is partial. I argue that a contextualist theory of epistemic justification provides a solution to the bias paradox. Moreover, contextualism enables me to give empirical content to the thesis of epistemic privilege, thereby making it into a testable hypothesis. (shrink)

: It is now recognized that relations of trust play an epistemic role in science. The contested issue is under what conditions trust in scientific testimony is warranted. I argue that John Hardwig's view of trustworthy scientific testimony is inadequate because it does not take into account the possibility that credibility does not reliably reflect trustworthiness, and because it does not appreciate the role communities have in guaranteeing the trustworthiness of scientific testimony.

In todays’ super-diverse societies, communication and interaction in clinical encounters are increasingly shaped by linguistic, cultural, social and ethnic complexities. It is crucial to better understand the difficulties patients with migration background and healthcare professionals experience in their shared clinical encounters and to explore ethical aspects involved. We accompanied 32 migrant patients during their medical encounters at two outpatient clinics using an ethnographic approach. Overall, data of 34 interviews with patients and physicians on how they perceived their encounter and which (...) difficulties they experienced are presented. We contrasted the perspectives on the difficult aspects and explore ethical questions surrounding the involved issues. Patients and physicians describe similar problem areas, but they have diverging perspectives on them. Two main themes were identified by both patients and physicians: >patients’ behaviour in relation to doctors’ advice relationship issues<. A deeper understanding of the difficulties and challenges that can arise in cross-cultural settings could be provided by bringing together healthcare professionals’ and patients’ perspectives on how a cross- cultural clinical encounter is perceived. Ethical aspects surrounding some of the difficulties could be highlighted and should get more attention in clinical practice and research. (shrink)

Uncertainty, insufficient information or information of poor quality, limited cognitive capacity and time, along with value conflicts and ethical considerations, are all aspects thatmake risk managementand riskcommunication difficult. This paper provides a review of different risk concepts and describes how these influence risk management, communication and planning in relation to forest ecosystem services. Based on the review and results of empirical studies, we suggest that personal assessment of risk is decisive in the management of forest ecosystem services. The results are (...) used together with a reviewof different principles of the distribution of risk to propose an approach to risk communication that is effective aswell as ethically sound. Knowledge of heuristics and mutual information on both beliefs and desires are important in the proposed risk communication approach. Such knowledge provides an opportunity for relevant information exchange, so that gaps in personal knowledge maps can be filled in and effective risk communication can be promoted. (shrink)

It is a widely accepted assumption within the philosophy of mind and psychology that our ability for complex social interaction is based on the mastery of a common folk psychology, that is to say that social cognition consists in reasoning about the mental states of others in order to predict and explain their behavior. This, in turn, requires the possession of mental-state concepts, such as the concepts belief and desire. In recent years, this standard conception of social cognition has been (...) called into question by proponents of so-called ‘direct-perception’ approaches to social cognition and by those who argue that the ‘received view’ implies a degree of computational complexity that is implausible. In response, it has been argued that these attacks on the classical view of social cognition have no bite at the subpersonal level of explanation, and that it is the latter which is at issue in the debate in question. In this paper, I critically examine this response by considering in more detail the distinction between personal and subpersonal level explanations. There are two main ways in which the distinction has been developed. I will argue that on either of these, the response proposed by defenders of the received view is unconvincing. This shows that the dispute between the standard conception and alternative approaches to mindreading is a dispute concerning personal-level explanations - what is at stake in the debate between proponents of the classical view of social cognition and their critics is how we, as persons, navigate our social world. I will conclude by proposing a pluralistic approach to social cognition, which is better able to do justice to the multi-faceted nature of our social interactions as well as being able to account for recent empirical findings regarding the social cognitive abilities of young infants. (shrink)

Self-consciousness can be defined as the ability to think 'I'-thoughts. Recently, it has been suggested that self-consciousness in this sense can (and should) be accounted for in terms of nonconceptual forms of self-representation. Here, I will argue that while theories of nonconceptual self-consciousness do provide us with important insights regarding the essential genetic and epistemic features of self-conscious thought, they can only deliver part of the full story that is required to understand the phenomenon of self-consciousness. I will provide two (...) arguments to this effect, drawing on insights from the philosophy of language and on structural differences between conceptual and nonconceptual forms of representation. Both arguments rest on the intuition that while self-consciousness requires explicit self-representation, nonconceptual content can at best provide implicit self-related information. I will conclude that in order to explain the emergence of self-conscious thought out of more basic forms of representations one has to explain the transition between implicit self-related information and explicit self-representation. (shrink)

An analysis of group justification enables us to understand what it means to say that a research group is justified in making a claim on the basis of evidence. I defend Frederick Schmitt's (1994) joint account of group justification by arguing against a simple summative account of group justification. Also, I respond to two objections to the joint account, one claiming that social epistemologists should always prefer the epistemic value of making true judgments to the epistemic value of maintaining consistency, (...) and another one claiming that the notion of joint commitment implicit in the joint account is epistemically unacceptable. (shrink)

This paper distinguishes between implicit self-related information and explicit self-representation and argues that the latter is required for self-consciousness. It is further argued that self-consciousness requires an awareness of other minds and that this awareness develops over the course of an increasingly complex perspectival differentiation, during which information about self and other that is implicit in early forms of social interaction becomes redescribed into an explicit format.

Much of the literature on values in science is limited in its perspective because it focuses on the role of values in individual scientists’ decision making, thereby ignoring the context of scientific collaboration. I examine the epistemic structure of scientific collaboration and argue that it gives rise to two arguments showing that moral and social values can legitimately play a role in scientists’ decision to accept something as scientific knowledge. In the case of scientific collaboration some moral and social values (...) are properly understood to be extrinsic epistemic values, that is, values that promote the attainment of scientific knowledge. (shrink)

There is widespread agreement among both supporters and opponents that affirmative action either must not violate any principle of equal opportunity or procedural justice, or if it does, it may do so only given current extenuating circumstances. Many believe that affirmative action is morally problematic, only justified to the extent that it brings us closer to the time when we will no longer need it. In other words, those that support affirmative action believe it is acceptable in nonideal theory, but (...) not ideal theory. This paper argues that affirmative action is entirely compatible with equal opportunity and procedural justice and would be even in an ideal world. I defend a new analysis of Rawlsian procedural justice according to which it is permissible to interfere in the outcomes of procedures, and thus I show that affirmative action is not morally problematic in the way that many have supposed. (shrink)

I introduce a case study from organization studies to argue that social epistemologists’ recommendation to cultivate diversity and dissent in science is unlikely to be welcomed in the social sciences unless it is coupled with another epistemic ideal: the norm of epistemic responsibility. The norm of epistemic responsibility enables me to show that organization scholars’ concern with the fragmentation of their discipline is generated by false assumptions: the assumption that a diversity of theoretical approaches will lead to fragmentation and the (...) assumption that an imposed consensus on a theoretical approach is needed to maintain the unity of the discipline. (shrink)

Current education paradigms were informed by the classical Newtonian worldview of brain functioning in which the mind is simply the physical activity of the brain, and our thoughts cannot have any effect upon the physical world. However, researchers in the field of quantum mechanics found that the outcomes of certain subatomic experiments are determined by the consciousness of the observer, leading philosophers to propose that the observed and the observer are linked. Quantum mechanics also demonstrates that distant minds may behave (...) in simultaneous correlational ways, in the absence of being linked through any known energetic signal. Further, researchers in this field propose that an external memory space is operating in the human brain, suggesting that this proposed external memory space may be a quantum field surrounding the brain and interacting with other fields, generating a global mental field of information flow. This article proposes that current education paradigms, which have been informed by a classical Newtonian physics worldview may need to be expanded to include a quantum mechanics worldview. The author seeks to understand if, and how, quantum mechanics could inform education practices, theories and paradigms and invites discussion, debate and speculation on the implications this would have for education systems. (shrink)

: As a response to the critics of feminist science studies I argue that it is possible to formulate empirical hypotheses about gender ideology in the practice of the physical sciences without (1) reinforcing stereotypes about women and mathematical sciences or (2) assuming at the outset that the area of physics under investigation is methodologically suspect. I will then critically evaluate two case studies of gender ideology in the practice of the physical sciences. The case studies fail to show that (...) gender ideologies have influenced the practice of the physical sciences in a profound way--not because it is impossible to conceive how gender ideologies could influence the practice of the physical sciences even in a profound way--but because they do not provide the right kind of evidence. This, however, leaves open the possibility that future studies might provide such evidence. (shrink)

Knowledge of factors that trigger human response to climate change is crucial for effective climate change policy communication. Climate change has been claimed to have low salience as a risk issue because it cannot be directly experienced. Still, personal factors such as strength of belief in local effects of climate change have been shown to correlate strongly with responses to climate change and there is a growing literature on the hypothesis that personal experience of climate change explains responses to climate (...) change. Here we provide, using survey data from 845 private forest owners operating in a wide range of bio-climatic as well as economic-social-political structures in a latitudinal gradient across Europe, the first evidence that the personal strength of belief and perception of local effects of climate change, highly significantly explain human responses to climate change. A logistic regression model was fitted to the two variables, estimating expected probabilities ranging from 0.07 to 0.81 for self-reported adaptive measures taken. Adding socio-demographic variables improved the fit, estimating expected probabilities ranging from 0.022 to 0.91. We conclude that to explain and predict adaptation to climate change, the combination of personal experience and belief must be considered. (shrink)

It is now recognized that relations of trust play an epistemic role in science. The contested issue is under what conditions trust in scientific testimony is warranted. I argue that John Hardwig's view of trustworthy scientific testimony is inadequate because it does not take into account the possibility that credibility does not reliably reflect trustworthiness, and because it does not appreciate the role communities have in guaranteeing the trustworthiness of scientific testimony.

Volume 20, Issue 8, August 2020, Page 67-69.

Ethical issues around triage have been at the forefront of debates during the Covid‐19 pandemic. This essay compares both discussion and guidelines around triage and the reality of what happened in the United States and in Europe, both in anticipation of and during the first wave of the pandemic. Why did the issue generate so many vivid debates in the United States and so few in most European countries, although the latter were also affected by the rationing of health care (...) resources? Are countries with socialized health care systems better equipped to face the hard choices of triaging? Important lessons in transparency, trust, and accountability for policy‐makers can be drawn from this comparison, demonstrating that fostering public involvement and ethical debate remains a critical element for the sustained acceptance of any triage plan. (shrink)

This paper examines parents experiences of medical decision-making and coping with having a critically ill baby in the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit (NICU) from a cross-cultural perspective (France vs. U.S.A.). Though parents experiences in the NICU were very similar despite cultural and institutional differences, each system addresses their needs in a different way. Interviews with parents show that French parents expressed overall higher satisfaction with the care of their babies and were better able to cope with the loss of their (...) child than American parents. Central to the French parents perception of autonomy and their sense of satisfaction were the strong doctor–patient relationship, the emphasis on medical certainty in prognosis versus uncertainty in the American context, and the sentimental work" provided by the team. The American setting, characterized by respect for parental autonomy, did not necessarily translate into full parental involvement in decision-making, and it limited the rapport between doctors and parents to the extent of parental isolation. This empirical comparative approach fosters a much-needed critique of philosophical principles by underscoring, from the parents perspective, the lack of emotional work" involved in the practice of autonomy in the American unit compared to the paternalistic European context. Beyond theoretical and ethical arguments, we must reconsider the practice of autonomy in particularly stressful situations by providing more specific means to cope, translating the impersonal language of rights" and decision-making into trusting, caring relationships, and sharing the responsibility for making tragic choices. (shrink)

The social-philosophical discourse of the last 20 years pictured recognition mainly as medium of human autonomy. In recent years however, concerns have been raised over whether recognition might not occasionally work in the opposite direction, as means of subjection. This article contends that these concerns rely on a misconstruction of the relationship between recognition and subjection as merely contingent. Developing themes from Foucault’s work, it argues that recognition rather always necessarily involves a moment of subjection. In the first part, I (...) show that Foucault, especially in his power-analytic writings, can plausibly be read as theorist of recognition insofar as every relation of power presupposes the recognition of the other as free. In the second part, I elaborate that every concrete relation of power depends on conditions - knowledge and norms - that precede it and that are formed and transformed in complex historical processes, in which the authority of individual subjects is always only a limited one. Against this background, it will become visible that recognition indeed allows us to conduct ourselves autonomously as certain kinds of subjects according to certain norms but as such also always subjects us as it ties our freedom to conditions that we remain largely exposed to. (shrink)

In today’s pandemic, many countries have experienced shortages of medical resources and many healthcare providers have often been faced with dramatic decisions about how to allocate beds, intensive care, or ventilators. Despite recognizing the need for triage, responses are not the same everywhere, and opinions and practices differ around what guidelines should be used, how they should be implemented, and who should ultimately decide. To some extent, triage issues reflect community values, revealing a given society’s moral standards and ideals. Our (...) goal is to study two countries which share many common features—Italy and France—as they deal with the pandemic, revealing the moral organization of medicine and healthcare, the power structures, and the nature of the disruptions in each context. (shrink)

Wind damage to forests can be divided into (1) the direct damage done to the forest and(2) indirect effects. Indirect effects may be of different kinds and may affect the environ- ment as well as society. For example, falling trees can lead to power and telecommunica- tion failures or blocking of roads. The salvage harvest of fallen trees is another example and one that involves extremely dangerous work. In this overview we provide examples of different entities, services, and activities that (...) may be affected by wind damage to for- ests. We illustrate how valuation of the damage depends on the perspective applied and how the affected entities, services, and activities may represent different types of values. Finally we suggest means for how to actively manage the risk in an ethically sustainable way. Many of our examples will be drawn from the experiences of the wind damage Gudrun in southern Sweden on 8–9 January 2005. The direct as well as indirect effects, which are described, are by no means unique to the Gudrun wind damage event and similar or even worse effects have been described after the wind damage events Martin and Lothar in 1999, and Klaus in 2009. (shrink)

This article gives an overview of 4 important lacunae in political liberalism and identifies, in a preliminary fashion, some trends in the literature that can come in for support in filling these blind spots, which prevent political liberalism from a correct assessment of the diverse nature of religious claims. Political liberalism operates with implicit assumptions about religious actors being either ‘liberal’ or ‘fundamentalist’ and ignores a third, in-between group, namely traditionalist religious actors and their claims. After having explained what makes (...) traditionalist religious actors different from liberal and fundamentalist religious actors, the author develops 4 areas in which political liberalism should be pushed further theoretically in order to correctly theorize the challenge which traditional religious actors pose to liberal democracy. These 4 areas are: the context of translation; the politics of exemptions; the multivocality of theology; and the transnational nature of norm-contestation. (shrink)

This chapter treats Hubert Dreyfus’ account of skilled coping as part of his wider project of demonstrating the sovereignty of practical intelligence over all other forms of intelligence. In contrast to the standard picture of human beings as essentially rational, individual agents, Dreyfus argued powerfully on phenomenological and empirical grounds that humans are fundamentally embedded, absorbed, and embodied. These commitments are present throughout Dreyfus’ philosophical writings, from his critique of Artificial Intelligence research in the 1970s and 1980s to his rejection (...) of John McDowell’s conceptualism in his 2005 APA Presidential Address. The present chapter articulates Dreyfus’ proposal for a contentless, non-mentalistic form of intentionality by contrasting his position with that of his U.C. Berkeley colleague John Searle and defending it as a plausible alternative to the so-called “Standard Story” of intentional action as the effect of an agent’s mental states. (shrink)

Corpus surveys have shown that the exact forms with which idioms are realized are subject to variation. We report a rating experiment showing that such alternative realizations have varying degrees of acceptability. Idiom variation challenges processing theories associating idioms with fixed multi-word form units, fixed configurations of words, or fixed superlemmas, as they do not explain how it can be that speakers produce variant forms that listeners can still make sense of. A computational model simulating comprehension with naive discriminative learning (...) is introduced that provides an explanation for the different degrees of acceptability of several idiom variant types. Implications for multi-word units in general are discussed. (shrink)

I argue that in epistemically well-designed scientific communities, scientists are united by mutual epistemic responsibilities, and epistemic responsibilities are understood not merely as epistemic but also as moral duties. Epistemic responsibilities can be understood as moral duties because they contribute to the well-being of other human beings by showing respect for them, especially in their capacity as knowers. A moral account of epistemically responsible behaviour is needed to supplement accounts that appeal to scientists’ self-interests or personal epistemic goals. This is (...) because neither the self-interest nor the epistemic account can always explain why it is rational for an individual scientist to be epistemically responsible. (shrink)

Spinoza scholars have claimed that we are faced with a dilemma: either Spinoza's definitions in his Ethics are real, in spite of indications to the contrary, or the definitions are nominal and the propositions derived from them are false. I argue that Spinoza did not recognize the distinction between real and nominal definitions. Rather, Spinoza classified definitions according to whether they require a priori or a posteriori justification, which is a classification distinct from either the real/nominal or the intensional/extensional classification. (...) I argue that Spinoza uses both a priori and a posteriori definitions in the Ethics and that recognizing both types of definitions allows us to understand Spinoza's geometric method in a new way. We can now understand the geometric method as two methods, one resulting in propositions that Spinoza considers to be absolutely certain and another resulting in propositions that Spinoza does not consider certain. The latter method makes use of a posteriori definitions and postulates, whereas the former method uses only a priori definitions and axioms. (shrink)

This paper argues that while regulatory frameworks in aged care authorise restraints to protect vulnerable persons living with dementia from harm, they also serve as normalising practices to control challenging monstrous Others. This argument emerges out of an observed unease in aged care discourse where older people living with dementia are described as ‘vulnerable’, while dementia behaviours are described as ‘challenging’. Using narrative analysis on a case study from the Final Report of the Australian Royal Commission into Aged Care Quality (...) and Safety (RCAC), this paper investigates how the RCAC (re)produced constructions of persons with dementia as ‘vulnerable monsters’. Drawing upon monstrous theory about ‘unruly and leaky’ bodies, extracts from the case study reveal how the RCAC repeated and reinforced monstrous constructions of dementia. Dementia behaviours, particularly ‘wandering’, were constructed through a dehumanising crisis frame that produced ‘challenging’ bodies and legitimised ‘last resort’ normalising practices, such as physical and chemical restraints. In failing to resist monstrous constructions of dementia behaviours, the RCAC accepted and authorised a regime of scaled responses leading to restrictive practices for control of challenging bodies in aged care. Although dementia care and restrictive practices received substantial attention in the RCAC, this paper reveals a missed opportunity for deeper review of institutionalised use of restraints that has relevance for ongoing reform of Australian aged care following conclusion of the RCAC. (shrink)

This research replicates Bhattacharjee et al. :1167–1184, 2013) moral decoupling model and extends the original along the dimensions of theory, method, and context. Adopting a branding perspective and focusing on the corporate domain rather than the public figures investigated by Bhattacharjee and colleagues, this research examines the proposition that consumers dissociate judgments of morality from judgments of performance to justify purchasing from companies deemed to act immorally. The original study is further extended by applying the model in a different cultural (...) context and employing a more realistic stimulus to establish external and ecological validity. The results of the replication generally support the original findings, in particular, under conditions of higher product involvement, a theoretical extension. (shrink)

This paper is about conflicts of rights, and the particularly difficult challenges that such conflicts present when they entail women’s equality and claims of cultural recognition. South Africa since 1994 has presented a series of challenging—but by no means unique—circumstances many of which entail conflicting claims of rights. The central aim of this paper is, to make sense of the idea that the institution of traditional leadership can be sustained—and indeed given new, more concrete powers—in a democracy; and to explore (...) the implications that this has for women’s equality and equal human rights. This is a particularly pertinent question in the South African context, and I think it is worth reiterating from the outset that there is a distinct impression that women’s equality is always “up for grabs” when other, perhaps more powerful interests, come into play, in a way that would be unacceptable for other aspects of identity, and therefore signifiers of equality. It would be inconceivable, for example, to countenance a claim for a hierarchical racial arrangement in a given community, no matter how deeply culturally entrenched that arrangement was, and regardless of how much support it (ostensibly) had from the community concerned. I think therefore that we are obliged to ask difficult questions about the new legislation on traditional leadership, and to put it under the microscope of political theory in assessing the claim that this is one way of recognizing people’s rights and freedoms in a new democracy. (shrink)