I give an account of Max Weber's views concerning the basis of the objectivity of the cultural sciences. In this connection, I offer a critical discussion of his distinction between different "value spheres," each with its own "intrinsic logic." I then consider parallels between Weber's "value spheres" and central elements of Bourdieu's field theory and Luhmann's systems theory, and try to show to what extent Bourdieu's and Luhmann's problems, and the solutions they suggest, can be seen as similar to Weber's. (...) I conclude by a general consideration of Weber's, Bourdieu's, and Luhmann's approach to the problem of objectivity. Key Words: Max Weber • Pierre Bourdieu • Niklas Luhmann • social differentiation • objectivity • value spheres • inherent logic • field theory • systems theory. (shrink)

The author, a High Court Judge, has chaired the Danish Committee on Scientific Dishonesty (DCSD) since its establishment in 1992. The Committee has worked in the health sector, but from 1999 the scope has been broadened to cover all fields of science. The article describes how the work is organised and the experiences gained.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Protestant Responses to Darwinism in Denmark, 1859–1914Hans Henrik HjermitslevFrom the 1870s onwards, Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution, published in On the Origin of Species (1859) and Descent of Man (1871), was an important topic among the followers of the influential Danish theologian N.F.S. Grundtvig (1783–1872). The Grundtvigians constituted a major faction within the Danish Evangelical-Lutheran Established Church, which included more than ninety percent of the population in the (...) period 1859–1914.This article demonstrates the influence of local contexts on the reception of scientific ideas by analyzing how specific aspects of Danish intellectual culture made the Grundtvigian reactions to Darwin’s theory different from Protestant denominations in America and Britain. Firstly, Grundtvig’s critique of Lutheran scriptural theology and his preference for the living word to the letters of the Bible legitimized liberal interpretations of Scripture. Secondly the philosophy of the Søren Kierkegaard protagonist, Rasmus Nielsen, made it possible for Grundtvigians to draw radical distinctions between science and faith. This specific “Danish Protestantism,” as the clergyman Frederik Jungersen phrased it in 1873, led the way for liberal Grundtvigians in coming to terms with Darwinism in the first decades of the twentieth century.1 [End Page 279]Protestant Responses to EvolutionIn recent decades historians have paid considerable attention to religious responses to Darwinism. Studies have revealed a variety of reactions to evolution depending on local contingencies, which has made it impossible to uphold any grand narrative of the dissemination of Darwinism.2 In his study of Calvinist attitudes toward Darwinism in Princeton, Belfast, and Edinburgh, David N. Livingstone thus emphasizes the importance of place in the reception of evolution.3 The historical complexities shaped by local contexts have been further demonstrated by scholars, who have explored the responses to Darwinism in a wide range of Protestant denominations in Britain and America.4 From the 1870s, when evolution was generally accepted among British and American scientists, liberal and even some orthodox theologians advocated various kinds of theistic evolutionism. It was not until the 1920s that creationists, who rejected evolution in general and human evolution in particular, took center stage in American Protestant answers to the Darwinian challenge. While many Protestant theologians in the decades around 1900 accepted that God had created the living world, including man, through evolution, very few embraced the specific Darwinian mechanism of natural selection that was often said to have atheistic implications. Instead liberal theologians, in line with many naturalists, often applied Lamarckian concepts of use-inheritance and teleological [End Page 280] development and prevalent ideas of progress that were seen as consistent with viewing evolution as a meaningful process and the unfolding of the Creator’s plan. According to James R. Moore, Peter J. Bowler, and Frederick Gregory this was the common way for liberal Christians to respond to organic evolution at least in the English-speaking world. It offered an acceptable compromise between science and faith. However, this article demonstrates that this strategy did not dominate in Denmark, where a separation model of science and faith was a more widespread approach when embracing the theory of evolution.5While studies by Jon H. Roberts and Ronald L. Numbers reveal considerable differences within the leading Protestant denominations such as Calvinists, Baptists, Lutherans, Episcopalians, and Methodists in their attitudes toward evolution, they detect no significant differences among the groups. Numbers notes however that “distinctive theological convictions sometimes influenced how people viewed Darwin’s theory.”6 This was especially the case when we move from the Protestant mainstream into distinctive groups such as the Seventh-day Adventists and the Pentecostals. In the case of the Adventists, their hyper-literalism and strong support for young-earth creationism owed much to the inspired writings of their founding prophetess Ellen G. White, while the relative indifference to evolution among Pentecostals can be explained by their Wesleyan-Methodist focus on religious experience over the study of Scripture.7 Likewise, in a study of attitudes toward evolution within the British Quaker community, Geoffrey Cantor has shown how discussions of Darwinism between evangelicals and moderates centred on the relative importance that should be paid to the Bible versus the doctrine of the Inner Light. Emphasizing... (shrink)

Summary This article analyses the Danish 1909 celebrations of the centenary of Charles Darwin's birth on 12 February 1809. I argue that the 1909 meetings, lectures and publications devoted to Darwin and his theory of evolution by natural selection can be characterised by ambivalence: on the one hand, tribute to a great man of science who established a new view of nature and, on the other hand, scepticism towards the Darwinian mechanism of natural selection and the wider religious and political (...) implications drawn from his theory. The article examines both professional and popular commemorative activities, focusing primarily on celebratory articles carried in widely circulated magazines and newspapers. I identify three types of interpretations of Darwin's ideas which I characterise as ‘radical’, ‘evangelical’ and ‘safe’ science. These different positions were closely linked to the political and cultural divisions of the periodical press. Moreover, my analysis of the popular press offers a solid basis for asserting that to most people Darwinism was associated with human evolution, primarily the relationship between man and apes, while more sophisticated discussions about the crisis of Darwinism prominent among naturalists played only a secondary role in the public arena. This article demonstrates the value of using newspapers as historical sources when looking for public images of Darwin, popular receptions of Darwinism and representations of science in general. (shrink)

Stress-related psychopathology is on the rise, and there is a pressing need for improved prevention strategies. Positive appraisal style, the tendency to appraise potentially threatening situations in a positive way, has been proposed to act as a key resilience mechanism and therefore offers a potential target for preventive approaches. In this article, we review n = 99 studies investigating associations of positive cognitive reappraisal, an important sub-facet of positive appraisal style, with outcome-based resilience and relevant other outcomes, which are considered (...) resilience-related. According to the studies reviewed, positive cognitive reappraisal moderates the relation between stressors and negative outcomes and is positively related to several resilience-related outcomes. It also mediates between other resilience factors and resilience, suggesting it is a proximal resilience factor. (shrink)

Quand, en 1936, le philosophe du droit et professeur de droit danois Alf Ross a publié un hommage à la Théorie pure du droit de Hans Kelsen dans un journal scandinave de science juridique, il s'associait à un mouvement de plus en plus présent dans la philosophie du droit européenne, qui était très critique à l'égard du « droit naturel ». Cependant, en même temps, il élaborait une critique significative de la théorie de Kelsen, qui a permis de conforter (...) la place de Ross lui-même en tant qu'imp.. (shrink)

Prácticamente toda la producción de Heidegger en relación con Schelling orbita en torno a las Investigaciones sobre la esencia de la libertad humana, y así lo hace también la literatura secundaria que se ocupa del tema. En este artículo queremos preguntarnos, sin embargo, por otros materiales menos conocidos, para preguntarnos hasta qué punto han ejercido también alguna influencia en el desarrollo del pensamiento de Heidegger. Podemos, efectivamente, ver, en la superación schellingiana del Idealismo de Fichte, un avance del Dasein de (...) SZ y, en la posición sistemática que la obra de arte adquiere en su filosofía, una cierta prefiguración de la filosofía del arte del Heidegger posterior. Pero será la liberación con respecto a la metafísica idealista, que se opera en la Filosofía de la Naturaleza de Schelling, lo que se nos revelará como la aportación más notable del pensamiento de este al de Heidegger. (shrink)

Artikeln är en översikt av den tysk-judiska invandringen till Sverige från 1770-talet och framåt. Till en början skedde invandringen till stor del i form av kedjemigration från Mecklenburg. Många i pionjären Aaron Isaacs släktkrets invandrade, likaså i släktkretsen kring hans kompanjon Abraham Aaron. Under 1800-talet fortsatte frivilliginvandringen men nu i mindre form av kedjemigration och med mer differentierad geografisk bakgrund än tidigare. Så småningom kom invandringen från Tyskland numerärt att överflygas av den så kallade östjudiska invandringen; av de judar (...) som bodde i Sverige 1880 var bara åtta procent födda i Tyskland och 1920 mindre än fem procent. Många tysk-judiska invandrare vid denna tid, såsom bankmannen Louis Frænckel, gjorde betydelsefulla insatser i det svenska industriundret. Trots den restriktiva invandringspolitiken på 1930-talet kom ett antal tysk-judiska flyktingar till Sverige, såväl individuellt som genom särskilda kvoter. Många blev betydande aktörer i olika sektorer av samhället, och några blev internationellt kända namn som författaren och Nobelpristagaren Nelly Sachs och kärnfysikern Lise Meitner. Många flyktingar fick dock inte arbete som motsvarade deras utbildningar. Bland ”1945 års räddade” fanns tämligen få från Tyskland. (shrink)

Abstract.If norms are neither true nor false, can logical relations such as contradiction and entailment obtain between them? Earlier logical positivists and also Hans Kelsen in his later years have answered the question with No. While appreciating the seriousness of the problem, the author of the present paper makes a fresh attempt to answer the question with Yes. His answer presupposes that norms can be judged from the point of view of their rationality. The deontic loic or logic of (...) norms built on this foundation is much more restricted, however, than tae “classical” systems. This again is a consequence of the author's opinion that the sentential connectives (negation, conjunction, disjunction, etc.) apply to norms only on condition that they can be “shifted” from joining norm‐formulations to the descriptive contents of the norms themselves. (shrink)

Abstract.If norms are neither true nor false, can logical relations such as contradiction and entailment obtain between them? Earlier logical positivists and also Hans Kelsen in his later years have answered the question with No. While appreciating the seriousness of the problem, the author of the present paper makes a fresh attempt to answer the question with Yes. His answer presupposes that norms can be judged from the point of view of their rationality. The deontic loic or logic of (...) norms built on this foundation is much more restricted, however, than tae “classical” systems. This again is a consequence of the author's opinion that the sentential connectives (negation, conjunction, disjunction, etc.) apply to norms only on condition that they can be “shifted” from joining norm‐formulations to the descriptive contents of the norms themselves. (shrink)

As in other European countries, in Denmark philosophy was an important factor in the cultural life of the nineteenth century. Kierkegaard lived and wrote in Copenhagen, where Hegelianism both flourished and met with serious criticism, and both of these elements can be found in his authorship. This chapter explores possible sources of inspiration for Kierkegaard's rejection of Danish Hegelianism and its follower, speculative theology, and discusses his influence on the fashionable Danish philosopher of the day, Rasmus Nielsen. By way of (...) conclusion, it is emphasized that Kierkegaard's understanding of Christianity and his struggle over it were decisive for a shift in Danish intellectual life around 1870. (shrink)

Written in the 1960s, TRUTH AND METHOD is Gadamer's magnum opus.

This book presents the first study of the development of the theory of modal syllogistic in the Middle Ages.

Hans Albert bin ich zum ersten Mal zu Beginn der 1970er Jahre begegnet. Werner Becker, ein früherer Adorno-Assistent, der „zum Feind der kritischen Rationalität übergelaufen“ war, nahm mich mit nach Karlsruhe zu Veranstaltungen, die von Hans Albert und Hans Lenk organisiert wurden. Dort traten „Größen“ wie Georg Henrik von Wright oder Karl Popper auf; aber für mich erwies sich Hans Albert als die eigentliche Größe. Er war die unsichtbare Hand im Hintergrund, durch deren Wirken sich (...) mein eigener Weg in die und durch die Philosophie und auch die Politische Ökonomik gestaltete. (shrink)

BackgroundAn ethics reflection group is one of a number of ethics support services developed to better handle ethical challenges in healthcare. The aim of this article is to evaluate the significance of ERGs in psychiatric and general hospital departments in Denmark.MethodsThis is a qualitative action research study, including systematic text condensation of 28 individual interviews and 4 focus groups with clinicians, ethics facilitators and ward managers. Short written descriptions of the ethical challenges presented in the ERGs also informed the analysis (...) of significance.ResultsA recurring ethical challenge for clinicians, in a total of 63 cases described and assessed in 3 ethical reflection groups, is to strike a balance between respect for patient autonomy, paternalistic responsibility, professional responsibilities and institutional values. Both in psychiatric and general hospital departments, the study participants report a positive impact of ERG, which can be divided into three categories: 1) Significance for patients, 2) Significance for clinicians, and 3) Significance for ward managers. In wards characterized by short-time patient admissions, the cases assessed were retrospective and the beneficiaries of improved dialogue mainly future patients rather than the patients discussed in the specific ethical challenge presented. In wards with longer admissions, the patients concerned also benefitted from the dialogue in the ERG.ConclusionThis study indicates a positive significance and impact of ERGs; constituting an interdisciplinary learning resource for clinicians, creating significance for themselves, the ward managers and the organization. By introducing specific examples, this study indicates that ERGs have significance for the patients discussed in the specific ethical challenge, but mostly indirectly through learning among clinicians and development of clinical practice. More research is needed to further investigate the impact of ERGs seen from the perspectives of patients and relatives. (shrink)

Émile Durkheim remains one of the most controversial, and deeply misunderstood, classics of social theory. His work differs from the dominant version of sociology that has essentially accepted the modernist self-description of contemporary societies; and it contradicts the individualism that has come to dominate the social sciences. For everybody who is interested in constructing theoretical alternatives to this individualism, Durkheim's sociology can be a useful inspiration - not only because of the solutions it suggests, but already because of the questions (...) it asks. Making use of the theoretical possibilities offered by the Durkheimian tradition, however, requires going beyond the familiar appropriations. The Oxford Handbook of Émile Durkheim takes stock of the different recent debates on Durkheimian sociology, and makes them accessible to a wide audience spanning various disciplines; this includes crucial debates that, due to language barriers, are not easily accessible for an English-reading public. The handbook's chapters elucidate the controversial key concepts of Durkheimian sociology; situate them within the contemporary political and theoretical debates they were originally responding to; offer surveys of empirical research that uses Durkheimian concepts (on topics that were already central for Durkheim's own work as well as on topics that Durkheim hardly touched upon), thus demonstrating the possibilities of a Durkheimian sociology; bring out the divergent, and competing, ways in which Durkheim's ideas have been appropriated and reformulated within more recent theoretical developments in the social sciences. In doing so, this volume is an important resource for all scholars and students looking to understand Durkheimian sociology. (shrink)

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

Since the 1980s the concept of ANT has remained unsettled. ANT has continuously been critiqued and hailed, ridiculed and praised. It is still an open question whether ANT should be considered a theory or a method or whether ANT is better understood as entailing the dissolution of such modern ‘‘genres’’. In this paper the authors engage with some important reflections by John Law and Bruno Latour in order to analyze what it means to ‘‘do ANT,’’ and, doing so after ‘‘doing (...) ANT on ANT.’’ In particular the authors examine two post-ANT case studies by Annemarie Mol and Marilyn Strathern and outline the notions of complexity, multiplicity, and fractality. The purpose is to illustrate the analytical consequences of thinking with post-ANT. The analysis offers insights into how it is possible to ‘‘go beyond ANT,’’ without leaving it entirely behind. (shrink)

The claim that there are bare particulars — individuals possessing no properties — is a highly controversial thesis in metaphysics. It has been heavily criticized and is often thought to be subject to a number of decisive counterarguments, some of which aim to show that there is something incoherent about the very idea of a bare particular. I believe that the theory of bare particulars can, given certain modifications, be defended from such accusations. But the fact that a theory is (...) not incoherent does not suffice for it to be a good theory, and I believe that the theory of bare particulars — although capable of coherence — is a deeply unsatisfactory theory in metaphysics, for reasons rarely appreciated in the discussion. In sections 2 and 3 of this paper, I introduce the notion of a bare particular by presenting two of the central theoretical tasks for which the postulation of such entities has been thought necessary. In section 4, I present three of the classical arguments intended to show that the theory of bare particulars is fundamentally flawed or even incoherent. In section 5, I argue that if we adopt what I call the minimal view of bare particulars, the theory can handle all of these objections. Finally, in section 6, I argue that despite not being undermined by the classical arguments, the minimal view of bare particulars makes it highly implausible to suppose that there are any entities of that kind. The theory of bare particulars can be made coherent only at the cost of being made highly theoretically unattractive. (shrink)

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

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

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

This book aims at beginning the rewriting of the history of skepticism by highlightening the medieval sources of the modern skeptical discussions.

Pragmatism gained considerable attention in bioethical discussions in the early 21st century. However, some dimensions and contributions of pragmatism to bioethics remain underexplored in both research and practice. It is argued that pragmatism can make a distinctive contribution to bioethics through its concept, developed by Charles S. Peirce and John Dewey, that ethical issues can be resolved through experimental inquiry. Dewey’s proposal that policies can be confirmed or disconfirmed through experimentation is developed by comparing it to the confirmation of scientific (...) hypotheses, with a focus on the objection that the consequences of following a moral view or policy do not provide guidance on choosing among competing ethical perspectives. As confirmation of scientific hypotheses typically relies on evidence gathered from observation, the possibility of ethically relevant observation is then explored based on Peirce’s views on feelings as emotional interpretants. Finally, the connection between Dewey’s experimental ethics and democracy is outlined and compared to unfettered ethical progressivism. (shrink)

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

Artificial intelligence is rapidly entering our daily lives in the form of driverless cars, automated online assistants and virtual reality experiences. In so doing, AI has already substituted human employment in areas that were previously thought to be uncomputerizable. Based on current trends, the technological displacement of labor is predicted to be significant in the future – if left unchecked this will lead to catastrophic societal unemployment levels. This paper presents a means to mitigate future technological unemployment through the introduction (...) of a Basic Income scheme, accompanied by reforms in school curricula and retraining programs. Our proposal argues that such a scheme can be funded by a special tax on those industries that make use of robotic labour; it includes a practical roadmap that would see a government take this proposal from the conceptual phase and implement it nationwide in the span of one decade. (shrink)