The archive of the Nobel Assembly for Physiology or Medicine in Solna, Sweden, is a remarkable repository that contains reports and dossiers of the Nobel Prize nominations of senior and junior physicians from around the world. Although this archive has begun to be used more by scholars, it has been insufficiently examined by historians of surgery. No other German surgeon was nominated as often as Ferdinand Sauerbruch for the Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine in the first half of the (...) 20th century. This contribution reconstructs why and by whom Sauerbruch was nominated, and discusses the Nobel committee evaluations of his work. Political factors did not play an obvious role in the Nobel committee discussions, in spite of the fact that Adolf Hitler in 1937 had prohibited all German citizens to accept the Nobel Prize. The main reasons why Sauerbruch ultimately was not considered prize-worthy were that Sauerbruch’s achievements were marked by scientific priority disputes, and that his work was not seen as original enough. (shrink)

The archive of the Nobel Assembly for Physiology or Medicine in Solna, Sweden, is a remarkable repository that contains reports and dossiers of the Nobel Prize nominations of senior and junior physicians from around the world. Although this archive has begun to be used more by scholars, it has been insufficiently examined by historians of surgery. No other German surgeon was nominated as often as Ferdinand Sauerbruch for the Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine in the first half of the (...) 20th century. This contribution reconstructs why and by whom Sauerbruch was nominated, and discusses the Nobel committee evaluations of his work. Political factors did not play an obvious role in the Nobel committee discussions, in spite of the fact that Adolf Hitler in 1937 had prohibited all German citizens to accept the Nobel Prize. The main reasons why Sauerbruch ultimately was not considered prize-worthy were that Sauerbruch’s achievements were marked by scientific priority disputes, and that his work was not seen as original enough. (shrink)

“Prizeworthy Research?” Wilhelm Roux and His Program of Developmental Mechanics. The Nobel Prize in physiology or medicine is awarded annually to a maximum of three laureates. Not surprisingly, the number of nominees is much larger. Drawing on Nobel Prize nominations in the Nobel archives in Sweden, the core of this paper deals with the nomination letters for the physiologist Wilhelm Roux to discuss competition and some controversies among German physiologists around 1900 in this particular context. The paper elucidates the arguments (...) brought forward to portray Roux as a scientist who had conferred “the greatest benefit to mankind” in the field of physiology or medicine ; examines some other runners-up, and reconstructs why Roux as well as some of his peers were not awarded the Nobel Prize. On a more general level, we argue that an analysis of Nobel Prize nominations contributes to a broader history of excellence in science and medicine in the twentieth century. (shrink)

Contributing Authors: Lilli Alanen & Frans Svensson, David Alm, Gustaf Arrhenius, Gunnar Björnsson, Luc Bovens, Richard Bradley, Geoffrey Brennan & Nicholas Southwood, John Broome, Linus Broström & Mats Johansson, Johan Brännmark, Krister Bykvist, John Cantwell, Erik Carlson, David Copp, Roger Crisp, Sven Danielsson, Dan Egonsson, Fred Feldman, Roger Fjellström, Marc Fleurbaey, Margaret Gilbert, Olav Gjelsvik, Kathrin Glüer & Peter Pagin, Ebba Gullberg & Sten Lindström, Peter Gärdenfors, Sven Ove Hansson, Jana Holsanova, Nils Holtug, Victoria Höög, Magnus Jiborn, Karsten (...) Klint Jensen, Sigurður Kristinsson, Isaac Levi, Kasper Lippert-Rasmussen, David Makinson, Anna-Sofia Maurin, Philippe Mongin, Kevin Mulligan, Lennart Nordenfelt, Jonas Olson, Erik J. Olsson, Ingmar Persson, Johannes Persson, Björn Petersson, Philip Pettit, Hans Rott, Toni Rønnow-Rasmussen, Krister Segerberg, John Skorupski, Howard Sobel, Fredrik Stjernberg, Fred Stoutland, Caj Strandberg, Pär Sundström, Folke Tersman, Torbjörn Tännsjö, Peter Vallentyne, Bruno Verbeek, Stella Villarmea, and Michael J. Zimmerman. (shrink)

In order to explore public views on nanobiotechnology (NBT), convergence seminars were held in four places in Europe; namely in Visby (Sweden), Sheffield (UK), Lublin (Poland), and Porto (Portugal). A convergence seminar is a new form of public participatory activity that can be used to deal systematically with the uncertainty associated for instance with the development of an emerging technology like nanobiotechnology. In its first phase, the participants are divided into three “scenario groups” that discuss different future scenarios. In the (...) second phase, the participants are regrouped into three “convergence groups”, each of which contains representatives from each of the three groups from the first phase. In the final third phase, all participants meet for a summary discussion. This pilot project had two aims: (1) to develop and assess the new methodology and (2) to gather advice and recommendations from the public that may be useful for future decisions on nanobiotechnology (NBT). Participants emphasized that they wanted the technology to focus on solutions to environmental and medical problems and to meet the needs of developing countries. The need for further public participation and deliberation on NBT issues seemed to be acknowledged by all participants. Many of them also raised equality concerns. Views on the means by which NBT should be steered into socially useful directions were more divided. In particular, different views were expressed on how much regulation of company activities is needed to curb unwanted developments. The participants’ responses in a questionnaire indicate that the methodology of the convergence seminars was successful for decision-making under uncertainty. In particular, the participants stated that their advice was influenced both by access to different possible future developments and by the points of view of their co-participants, which is what the method is specifically intended to achieve. (shrink)

The AGM (Alchourrón-Gärdenfors-Makinson) model of belief change is extended to cover changes on sets of beliefs that are not closed under logical consequence (belief bases). Three major types of change operations, namely contraction, internal revision, and external revision are axiomatically characterized, and their interrelations are studied. In external revision, the Levi identity is reversed in the sense that one first adds the new belief to the belief base, and afterwards contracts its negation. It is argued that external revision represents an (...) intuitively plausible way of revising one's beliefs. Since it typically involves the temporary acceptance of an inconsistent set of beliefs, it can only be used in belief representations that distinguish between different inconsistent sets of belief. (shrink)

Cost–benefit analysis (CBA) is much more philosophically interesting than has in general been recognized. Since it is the only well-developed form of applied consequentialism, it is a testing-ground for consequentialism and for the counterfactual analysis that it requires. Ten classes of philosophical problems that affect the practical performance of cost–benefit analysis are investigated: topic selection, dependence on the decision perspective, dangers of super synopticism and undue centralization, prediction problems, the indeterminateness of our control over future decisions, the need to exclude (...) certain consequences for moral reasons, bias in the delimitation of consequences, incommensurability of consequences, difficulties in defending the essential requirement of transferability across contexts, and the normatively questionable but equally essential assumption of interpersonal compensability. (Published Online July 31 2007). (shrink)

ABSTRACT Semi-revision is a mode of belief change that differs from revision in that the input sentence is not always accepted. A constructive approach to semi-revision is proposed. It requires an efficient treatment of local inconsistencies, which is more easily obtainable in belief base models than in belief set models. Axiomatic characterizations of two semi-revision operators are reported.

In non-technical contexts, the word “risk” refers, often rather vaguely, to situations in which it is possible but not certain that some undesirable event will occur. In technical contexts, the word has many uses and specialized meanings. The most common ones are the following.

An agent can usually hold a very large number of beliefs. However, only a small part of these beliefs is used at a time. Efficient operations for belief change should affect the beliefs of the agent locally, that is, the changes should be performed only in the relevant part of the belief state. In this paper we define a local consequence operator that only considers the relevant part of a belief base. This operator is used to define local versions of (...) the operations for belief change. Representation theorems are given for the local operators. (shrink)

We prove that four theses commonly associated with coherentism are incompatible with the representation of a belief state as a logically closed set of sentences. The result is applied to the conventional coherence interpretation of the AGM theory of belief revision, which appears not to be tenable. Our argument also counts against the coherentistic acceptability of a certain form of propositional holism. We argue that the problems arise as an effect of ignoring the distinction between derived and non-derived beliefs, and (...) we suggest that the kind of coherence relevant to epistemic justification is the coherence of non-derived beliefs. (shrink)

A new possible world semantics for deontic logic is proposed. Its intuitive basis is that prohibitive predicates (such as "wrong" and "prohibited") have the property of negativity, i.e. that what is worse than something wrong is itself wrong. The logic of prohibitive predicates is built on this property and on preference logic. Prescriptive predicates are defined in terms of prohibitive predicates, according to the wellknown formula "ought" = "wrong that not". In this preference-based deontic logic (PDL), those theorems that give (...) rise to the paradoxes of standard deontic logic (SDL) are not obtained. (E.g., O(p & q) → Op & Oq and Op → O(p v q)) are theorems of SDL but not of PDL.) The more plausible theorems of SDL, however, can be derived in PDL. (shrink)

The outcome set of a belief change operator is the set of outcomes that can be obtained with it. Axiomatic characterizations are reported for the outcome sets of the standard AGM contraction operators and eight types of base-generated contraction. These results throw new light on the properties of some of these operators.

Abstract: This article offers a perspective on the role of philosophy in relation to other academic disciplines and to society in general. Among the issues treated are the delimitation of philosophy, whether it is a science, its role in the community of knowledge disciplines, its losses of subject matter to other disciplines, how it is influenced by social changes and by progress in other disciplines, and its role in interdisciplinary work. It is concluded that philosophy has an important mission in (...) promoting clarity, precision, and open-mindedness in academic research and in society at large. (shrink)

Generalizations of partial meet contraction are introduced that start out from the observation that only some of the logically closed subsets of the original belief set are at all viable as contraction outcomes. Belief contraction should proceed by selection among these viable options. Several contraction operators that are based on such selection mechanisms are introduced and then axiomatically characterized. These constructions are more general than the belief base approach. It is shown that partial meet contraction is exactly characterized by adding (...) to one of these constructions the condition that all logically closed subsets of the belief set can be obtained as the outcome of a single (multiple) contraction. Examples are provided showing the counter-intuitive consequences of that condition, thus confirming the credibility of the proposed generalization of the AGM framework. (shrink)

Two recent defences of the recovery postulate for contraction of belief sets are analyzed. It is concluded that recovery is defensible as a by-product of a formalization that is idealized in the sense of being simplified for the sake of clarity. However, recovery does not seem to be a required feature of the doxastic behaviour of ideal (perfectly rational) agents. It is reasonable to expect that there should be epistemic residues (remnants of rejected beliefs), but not that these should always (...) suffice to recover all the original beliefs if the discarded belief is reinstated. (shrink)

This thesis is about the conceptualization of persistence of physical, middle-sized objects within the theoretical framework of the revisionary ‘B-theory’ of time. According to the B-theory, time does not flow, but is an extended and inherently directed fourth dimension along which the history of the universe is ‘laid out’ once and for all. It is a widespread view among philosophers that if we accept the B-theory, the commonsensical ‘endurance theory’ of persistence will have to be rejected. The endurance theory says (...) that objects persist through time by being wholly present at distinct times as numerically the same entity. Instead of endurantism, it has been argued, we have to adopt either ‘perdurantism’ or the ‘stage theory’. Perdurantism is the theory that objects are four-dimensional ‘space-time worms’ persisting through time by having distinct temporal parts at distinct times. The stage theory says that objects are instantaneous temporal parts (stages) of space-time worms, persisting by having distinct temporal counterparts at distinct times. In the thesis, it is argued that no good arguments have been provided for the conclusion that we are obliged to drop the endurance theory by acceptance of the B-theory. This conclusion stands even if the endurance theory incorporates the claim that objects endure through intrinsic change. It is also shown that perdurantism and the stage theory come with unwelcome consequences. -/- Paper I demonstrates that the main arguments for the view that objects cannot endure in B-time intrinsically unchanged fail. Papers II and III do the same with respect to the traditional arguments against endurance through intrinsic change in B-time. Paper III also contains a detailed account of the semantics of the tenseless copula, which occurs frequently in the debate. The contention of Paper IV is that four-dimensional space-time worms, as traditionally understood, are not suited to take dispositional predicates. In Paper V, it is shown that the stage theory needs to introduce an overabundance of persistence-concepts, many of which will have to be simultaneously applicable to a single object (qua falling under a single sortal), in order for the theory to be consistent. The final article, Paper VI, investigates the sense in which persistence can, as is sometimes suggested, be a ‘conventional matter’. It also asks whether alleged cases of ‘conventional persistence’ create trouble for the endurance theory. It is argued that conventions can only enter at a trivial semantic level, and that the endurance theory is no more threatened by such conventions than are its rivals. (shrink)

Present science policy discourse is focused on a broad concept of “techno-science” and emphasizes practical economic goals and gains. At the same time scientists are worried about the freedom of research and the autonomy of science. Half a century ago the difference between basic and applied science was widely taken for granted and autonomy was a value in high esteem. Most recent accounts of the history of science policy start abruptly from World War II, emphasize the Cold War context, and (...) neglect the pioneering role of the Soviet Union in forming todays “big science.” This paper claims that a closer look into the intellectual heritage from the early twentieth century will be helpful in navigating present issues of science policy. The “Lysenko affair” was a paradigmatic case in forming Cold War views on science and politics. (shrink)

Science is praxis relevant to the extent that it guides goal-directed action by telling us how to act in order to achieve the goals. Investigations aiming at high praxis relevance are performed in various disciplines under names such as clinical trials, evaluation research, intervention research and social experiments. In this contribution, the notion of (direct) praxis relevance is delineated, and it is distinguished from related properties of science such as those of being applied and being practically useful in a wider (...) sense. Recommendations for the achievement of praxis relevance are offered in the form of five principles: the prerogative of direct experiments, minimized theory-induced uncertainty, multiple approximations, causal chain decomposition and successive improvements. (shrink)

PurposeSocial media has increased as a marketing channel, and Facebook is the biggest social media company globally. Facebook contains both positive and negative information about companies; therefore, it is important for companies to manage their Facebook page to best serve their own interests. Although most users are familiar with business and marketing activities on Facebook, they use it primarily for fun and personal purposes. The most effective methods for companies to use Facebook have not been clear. The personal nature of (...) Facebook presents unique challenges for companies by raising ethical and social responsibility issues that are important to users. The purpose of this paper is to discover how companies can optimize their use of Facebook as a marketing channel.Design/methodology/approachA survey was conducted. The respondents were 158 users of Facebook in Sweden; complete answers were provided by all respondents. In a series of specific questions and comments, the respondents were asked to describe an optimal marketing solution on Facebook for companies. They rated different functions, which were illustrated with pictures, to help in the cognitive process and to avoid misunderstandings.FindingsMost users who have an opinion on the issue accept marketing on Facebook, but only in the right amount. There are basically two groups: those who think that companies have no place on Facebook and those who want companies to be active on Facebook. The latter group emphasizes the importance of meaningful posts without unsolicited sales messages, and would prefer to search for the companies themselves rather than being bombarded by company messages. By far, status updates and pictures/images were found to be the most important functions to respondents.Research limitations/implicationsThe sample consisted of only Swedish users. Another limitation was that, since many Facebook users do not normally think about the implications of being exposed to marketing on Facebook, they have difficulty taking a position on many issues related to the service.Practical implicationsThe results give companies a clear idea of how to effectively use Facebook in their marketing efforts.Originality/valueA large number of companies are currently asking themselves, “How can we use Facebook in an optimal way?” The results in this study answer this question and lead directly to saving time and resources for these companies. (shrink)

The basic assumption of repertoire contraction is that only some of the logically closed subsets of the original belief set are viable as contraction outcomes. Contraction takes the form of choosing directly among these viable outcomes, rather than among cognitively more far-fetched objects such as possible worlds or maximal consistent subsets of the original belief set. In this first investigation of repertoire contraction, postulates for various variants of the operation are introduced. Necessary and sufficient conditions are given for when repertoire (...) contraction coincides with AGM contraction or with operations generated by AGM-style contraction on a belief base. A close connection is shown to hold between repertoire contraction and specified meet contraction. (shrink)

EKONOMEN: Nej, det vi alla borde enas om är i stället att göra en rationell avvägning mellan olika samhällsmål. Vi har i själva verket genomfört flera mycket avancerade forskningsprojekt inom det nya området contingent valuation of violence, CVV. På grundval av noggranna analyser har vi t ex konstaterat att en våldtäkt bör värderas som en kostnad av 1237000 kronor, räknat i penningvärdet den 1 juli 2001.

Inom hakparentes anges den ordagranna betydelsen, när denna skiljer sig mycket från frasens gängse filosofiska innebörd. På tre- och fler-staviga ord har har ett accenttecken satts in före den betonade vokalen. (Tvåstaviga latinska ord har alltid betoningen på första stavelsen.).

Se resumen las ventajas y desventajas de la formalización en filosofía. Se concluye que la filosofía formalizada es una especialidad en peligro que necesita ser revitalizada, y que debe incrementar sus interacciones con la filosofía no formalizada. El estilo enigmático, que es común en la lógica filosófica, debe llevar a discusiones explícitas sobre la relación problemática entre modelos formales, conceptos filosóficos y temas que motiven su desarrollo.

BackgroundAddictive behavior of gambling, gaming and internet activity is partly a new research domain and has not been well investigated with regard to sexual minority populations. Although health disparities between sexual minorities and the general population are well documented, there is a lack of inclusion of sexual minorities in both research and clinic. Among lesbian, gay and bisexual populations certain features could be present that play a role for the development of addictive behaviors, such as social isolation and increased risk (...) of other psychiatric problems. The aim of this study was to investigate problem gambling, problem gaming and problematic internet behavior in a European context and if it is affected by sexual orientation status.MethodsAn online web-survey was distributed among web-panels in England, Poland, Switzerland, Italy, Spain, Denmark, and Sweden in 2017–2018.Result10 983 complete answers were collected. 7.1% of the participants had a sexual minority status. Regression models found that there was no difference in gambling, gaming and internet behavior among heterosexual and sexual minority men. Sexual minority women were associated with problematic gambling and gaming behavior, when also controlling for age and nationality. When also controlling for psychological distress, women defining as having another sexual minority status than lesbian and bisexual remained significant for having a problematic gaming behavior.ConclusionAn awareness of female sexual minority perspectives is relevant in facilities treating behavioral addiction as well as in future research in behavioral addiction. More research is needed in problematic gambling and gaming behavior in different sexual minority populations with regard to psychiatric comorbidity and living conditions. An inclusion of sexual minority groups defining as other than gay and bisexual is needed in future research. No significant differences were found between heterosexual and sexual minority men in adjusted analysis in this study. (shrink)