A main issue in Swedish school debate is the question of how to teach the student a common value system based on democracy and western humanism. The debate is rather intense, to say the least. Not only is the premise that there exists one value system that we share a target for critique, but there is also the question of what value education is or could be. There is, as well, quite a body of research on children's moral development, where (...) many take as their departure the work of Kohlberg. However, there has been little or no attention on how the individual learner conceptualizes and makes meaning out of ethical issues. That is, descriptions of processes. In this paper we will present what we take to be urgent questions that need to be investigated against the background of prior research and practical work at Södra teatern in Stockholm, Sweden. For eight years in a row, Södra teatern has had as a main project to lead a practice on the subject of philosophy with children. Several groups of youths in the age of nine to eighteen have regularly met to discuss philosophical thoughts and problems, which in a democratic manner are settled for discussion by the participants. Today this philosophical practice has spread to the north of Sweden. In Backman's final exam within the teacher education she has explored the development of children's (7‐8 years old) ability to argue for different ethical positions, both verbally and in writing and painting. This practice has been inspired by the tradition at Södra teatern, but customized to fit a regular school class in Luleå, with very little experience of philosophical discussion. In the very short period of five weeks Backman has been able to see quite significant changes in the children's ability to argue for their ethical positions. The study was initiated by examining some argumentative abilities of the pupils, for instance the ability of expressing an argument for an ethical position in writing. In the final part of the study, the same ability was examined in very similar circumstances, and the augment of expressed arguments in writing was significant. Another consideration that was raised as a consequence of the study regards the pupil's conceptualizing of ethical issues. In some conversations about the notion of justice it became clear that children interpreted the term very differently. This is not very surprising but important to pay further attention to. As mentioned earlier, there has been very little attention on how individual children conceptualize ethical issues. In this paper we argue that more interest should be put on investigating these issues in more depth, and we will do this by an outlining of a research application. (shrink)

The project “A Plurality of Lives” was funded and hosted by the Pufendorf Institute for Advanced Studies at Lund University, Sweden. The aim of the project was to better understand how a second origin of life, either in the form of a discovery of extraterrestrial life, life developed in a laboratory, or machines equipped with abilities previously only ascribed to living beings, will change how we understand and relate to life. Because of the inherently interdisciplinary nature of the project aim, (...) the project took an interdisciplinary approach with a research group made up of 12 senior researchers representing 12 different disciplines. The project resulted in a joint volume, an international symposium, several new projects, and a network of researchers in the field, all continuing to communicate about and advance the aim of the project. (shrink)

In this article, we distinguish between three approaches to ethics in school, each giving an interpretation of the expression ‘ethics in school’: the descriptive facts about ethics approach, roughly consisting of teaching empirical facts about moral matters to students; the moral fostering approach, consisting of mediating a set of given values to students; and the philosophical ethics (PE) approach, consisting of critically discussing and evaluating moral issues with students. Thereafter, three influential arguments for why there ought to be ethics in (...) school are discussed, and each argument is interpreted given each approach to ethics in school, respectively. Thereby, we evaluate which interpretation of ‘ethics in school’ produces the strongest arguments, and thus, which approach is best supported by these arguments. The conclusion is that there ought to be PE in school. (shrink)

New technologies and practices, such as drug testing, genetic testing, and electronic surveillance infringe upon the privacy of workers on workplaces. We argue that employees have a prima facie right to privacy, but this right can be overridden by competing moral principles that follow, explicitly or implicitly, from the contract of employment. We propose a set of criteria for when intrusions into an employee''s privacy are justified. Three types of justification are specified, namely those that refer to the employer''s interests, (...) to the interests of the employee her- or himself, and to the interests of third parties such as customers and fellow workers. For each of these three types, sub-criteria are proposed that can be used to determine whether a particular infringement into an employee''s privacy is morally justified or not. (shrink)

In this paper, the nature of the contract of employment is explored from an ethical point of view. It is argued that certain normative arguments should be taken into account in order to justify such a contract. Furthermore, an argument is developed against the claim that (a) the individual’s freedom of decision and (b) the practice of institutional arrangements are sufficient to justify a contract of employment. The dimensional analysis offered shows that further conditions are needed: (a) must be elaborated (...) and interpreted to the extent that this condition is not sufficient – rather sub-criteria regarding the agent’s state of knowledge must be met; and (b) should be supplemented by a demand for fairness. A tentative analysis of existing work contracts is the starting point for the ethical analysis. The aim is to show what a legitimate, or reasonable, contract of employment will require. Finally, some important normative implications and consequences regarding the contract’s normative status are discussed. (shrink)

In this paper, we are mainly concerned with coherentism as an approach to ethical dialog in school. We have two different but connected aims with the paper. The first aim is to say something about general philosophical questions relating to coherentism as a theory in metaethics, and especially in relation to value education; the second aim is to explore some possible implications of coherentism as a method in studying the enterprise of discussing ethical issues and questions with children as well (...) as the study of the actual ethical discussion in school. Furthermore, we evaluate the connection between a coherentistic approach to justification and the methodological parts of a Philosophy with Children, or Community of Inquiry, approach to ethics in school. Related to this, we scrutinize what implications this has for evaluating ethical learning within Philosophy with Children, or Community of Inquiry, as well as implications for evaluation of the Philosophy with Children, or Community of Inquiry, approaches as methods for dealing with ethical matters in school. (shrink)

This article is about a coming project concerning a coherentist approach to ethics in school. The project has two main parts; one theoretical and one empirical. The former focuses on philosophical problems and issues concerning coherentism as a metaethical position in general, and particularly when applied to the field of value education, and the latter aims to study some consequences of a coherentist approach to the study of discussing ethical matters with children.Metaethical coherentism is a position in the discussion about (...) justification of moral judgements. According to coherentism, we build some kind of web in which different moral judgements are connected by some justification‐relation or the like. Some judgements might be more central than others, but these can be justified by the more particular and peripheral ones, and vice versa. Coherentism differs from foundationalism, according to which there are some foundational judgements that are not justified by any other judgements. The rest of our judgements are justified if they are justified by this foundation. We wish to study what benefits a coherentist approach might have in the study of ethical discussions in school. In Sweden, the educational system has as one of its main purposes to mediate a "value foundation" based on "Christian ethical tradition and western humanism" to the pupils. Suppose now that you have a foundationalist approach to ethical discussion in schools, as many seem to have had historically, and that some pupil expresses the judgement that some of his classmates have a lower value than him, due to the colour of their skin. This judgement conflicts with the judgement that the colour of ones skin does not have any bearing of ones value, included in the value foundation of the school. According to a foundationalist, we here have a conflict between foundational values, or so we can suppose. In this case, there is nothing obvious to do to resolve this conflict, because the foundational values cannot be justified; it is supposed that we simply realise the correctness of them by our moral intuition, or the like. A coherentist, on the other side, could point to how these two different judgements gain different amount of justification from other judgements, and thereby hopefully find consensus, and hence dissolve the conflict.Coherentism is not theoretically unproblematic, though. One problem is how to understand the justification‐relation. What does it mean that two propositions justify each other? Philosophers have discussed several different proposals. We give a new proposal, based on some of Arne Naess' theories. With regard to methods for ethical discussion in relation to a coherentistic approach, it seems as a "philosophy with children" approach will seem as a natural choice. (shrink)

The notion of historical thinking has in recent years become popular in research on history education, particularly so in North America, the UK and Australia. The aim of this paper is to discuss th...

In this article two inter-related issues concerning the ongoing commercialisation of biomedical research are analyzed. One aim is to explain how scientists and clinicians at Swedish public institutions can make profits, both commercially and scientifically, by controlling rare human biological material, like embryos and embryonic stem cell lines. This control in no way presupposes legal ownership or other property rights as an initial condition. We show how ethically sensitive material (embryos and stem cell lines) have been used in Sweden as (...) a foundation for a commercial stem cell enterprise—despite all official Swedish strictures against commercialisation in this area. We also show how political decisions may amplify the value of controlling this kind of biological material. Another aim of the article is to analyze and discuss the meaning of this kind of academic commercial enterprise in a wider context of research funding strategies. A conclusion that is drawn is that the academic turn to commercial funding sources is dependent on the decline of public funding. (shrink)

This article examines the effects of globalization on changing notions of the ‘savage’. We compare discussions taking place in different contexts in the late 18th century concerning two Swedish scholars and travellers to Africa: Anders Sparrman (1748–1820), a naturalist and Linnaean disciple, and Carl Bernhard Wadström (1746–99), an engineer and economist. Both moved in Swedish Swedenborgian circles, and both became involved in the British abolitionist movement. Nevertheless, their images of African ‘Others’ diverged in crucial respects, reflecting differences in their (...) ideological outlooks, institutional affiliations, and understandings of how the world was changing. More specifically, we argue that the perception of global change brought about by a new economic framework of production and consumption provides a key for reading and comparing Wadström’s and Sparrman’s texts. Comparing their divergent uses of ‘savagery’, the article also highlights the versatility of the savage as a tool for presenting distant parts of the world to a domestic audience. (shrink)

This paper critically compares the philosophy of Günther Anders and the contemporary transhumanists, like Julian Savulescu, Ingmar Persson, or Thomas Douglas. The Andersian concepts of moral blindness, promethean gap, and promethean shame will be discussed in order to understand human beings’ outdatedness; parallel to this, we will also expose the transhumanist analysis on the unfitness of human beings in evolutive and cognitive terms. We will show that much of the transhumanist analysis is a reformulation of the Andersian thesis, (...) now under scientific terminology. Finally, we will approach the transhumanist proposal of moral enhancement, explaining and confronting some critics raised on the grounds of freedom and moral responsibility. (shrink)

Festschrift for prof. Helge Malmgren. -/- Contents: • Kristoffer Ahlström: Two Levels of Epistemic Inquiry; • Jan Almäng: Till frågan om trancendentala argument; • Kent Gustavsson: Perceptionens gåta; • Björn Haglund: Some Notes on Induction; • Ingvar Johansson: Money and Fictions; • Frank Lorentzon: Intuition och kunskap; • Ingmar Persson: Double Effect Troubles; • Filip Radovic: Wittgenstein om tautologier och andra logiska satser; • Claes Strannegård: Anthropomorphic Artificial Intelligence; • Bolof Stridbeck: Den motbjudande slutsatsen & den plågade filosofen; • (...) Christer Svennerlind: Armstrong on Instantiation as Partial Identity; • Anders Tolland: Mr Darcys berättigade stolthet; • Björn Vickhoff: H-speech: the Musical Self - A Phenomenological Approach to Music & Emotion; • Dag Westerståhl: On the Aristotelian Square of Opposition; • Carl-Gustaf Wikstrand: On Pain States & Mental Causation;. (shrink)

Distributive theories evaluate distributions of goods based on candidate recipients’ characteristics, e.g. how well off candidates are, how deserving they are, and whether they fare below sufficiency. But such characteristics vary across possible worlds, so distributive theories may differ in terms of the world which for them settles candidates’ characteristics. This paper examines how distributive theories differ in terms of whether candidate recipients’ relevant characteristics are grounded in the possible world that would take place if the distributor does not intervene (...) (call it the “input” world) or if they are grounded in each possible world that the distributor can bring about through different decisions (call each an “output” world). We illustrate the importance of this distinction in relation to one distributive theory, prioritarianism. As we show, both input and output versions of prioritarianism are plausible interpretations of the literature, and there are good reasons to take input prioritarianism seriously. Ultimately, however, we argue that input prioritarianism should be rejected. (shrink)

This article presents a fairness principle for evaluating decision-making based on predictions: a decision rule is unfair when the individuals directly impacted by the decisions who are equal with respect to the features that justify inequalities in outcomes do not have the same statistical prospects of being benefited or harmed by them, irrespective of their socially salient morally arbitrary traits. The principle can be used to evaluate prediction-based decision-making from the point of view of a wide range of antecedently specified (...) substantive views about justice in outcome distributions. (shrink)

We use a theorem from M. J. Schervish to explore the relationship between accuracy and practical success. If an agent is pragmatically rational, she will quantify the expected loss of her credence with a strictly proper scoring rule. Which scoring rule is right for her will depend on the sorts of decisions she expects to face. We relate this pragmatic conception of inaccuracy to the purely epistemic one popular among epistemic utility theorists.

There are many things that can be done to educate young people about controversial topics - including historical monuments - in schools. At the same time, however, we argue that there is little warrant for optimism concerning the educational potential of classroom instruction given the interpretative frame of the state-approved history curriculum; the onerous institutional constraints under which school teachers must labour; the unusual constellation of talents history teachers must possess; the frequent absence of marginalized voices in these conversations; and (...) finally, the not unlikely indifference - if not outright hostility - expressed by far too many members of the dominant group. For these reasons, we think it best to expand the scope of educational possibilities one is willing to consider. (shrink)

A large number of Swedish public authorities produce ‘platform of values’ texts that present core values. This article presents a study of how such texts and practices, including the core values they revolve around, are legitimized. Using Van Leeuwen’s legitimation framework, three different data sets are analysed: 47 ‘platform of values’ texts, a focus group discussion with seven senior HR officers, and a quantitative questionnaire study answered by civil servants at three public authorities. The analysis shows how the existence of (...) ‘platform of values’ texts and practices is legitimized through rationalizations, above all by describing the texts as concrete means for reaching specific ends and, with regard to the choice of core values, through a custom-conformity type of authority. Thus, this article addresses discursive transformations of contemporary organizations with a particular focus on available discursive space for critical thinking in the wake of New Public Management and related developments. (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)

Sometimes retracted or refuted scientific information is used and propagated long after it is understood to be misleading. Likewise, retracted news items may spread and persist, despite being publi...

In this article we discuss the moral and legal aspects of causing the death of a terminal patient in the hope of extending their life in the future. We call this theoretical procedure cryothanasia. We argue that administering cryothanasia is ethically different from administering euthanasia. Consequently, objections to euthanasia should not apply to cryothanasia, and cryothanasia could also be considered a legal option where euthanasia is illegal.

The issue of voting rights for older children has been high on the political and philosophical agenda for quite some time now, and not without reason. Aside from principled moral and philosophical reasons why it is an important matter, many economic, environmental, and political issues are currently being decided—sometimes through indecision—that greatly impact the future of today’s children. Past and current generations of adults have, arguably, mortgaged their children’s future, and this makes the question whether (some) children should be granted (...) the right to vote all the more pressing. Should (some) children be given the right to vote? Moreover, does the answer to this question depend on civic education, on whether children have been deliberately prepared for the exercise of that right? These are the questions that will occupy us in this article. Our answer to the first will be that older children—children roughly between 14 and 16 years of age1—ought to be given the right to vote. (shrink)

Over the past two decades, a growing number of large multinational corporations have come to view philanthropy as an important part of their business operations. This has stimulated research on the many different strategies that are pursued by these corporations in their attempts to become more philanthropic while remaining economically responsible. In this situation, some researchers have argued, corporations run the risk of being caught out as hypocrites. Through an analysis of the corporate social responsibility reports of the biggest multinational (...) corporations, this article shows how the risk of hypocrisy is managed communicatively through the use of euphemisms. The article argues that the use of euphemisms makes it possible to communicate both economically and philanthropically without manifest contradictions. Euphemisms, however, are also risky in their own right. (shrink)

_In this article we justify why justice ought to be considered in scenarios of energy transitions, stipulate what dimensions should reasonably be considered, and investigate whether such considerations are taken in Swedish parliamentary debates on energy policies. Through interviews we investigated how Swedish parliamentary politicians think through justice in energy transitions, providing a practical perspective. We conclude that while there is some overlap between minimal conditions for energy justice and the issues brought forward by Swedish politicians, several issues are omitted. (...) Examples include procedural justice and recognizing Sámi interests. On the other hand, principles of energy justice omit economic issues, which are however often brought up by respondents. It can be argued that justice issues, and not only the technical and economic issues that currently dominate the political debate, should be considered in energy transitions. It is therefore unfortunate that questions about justice are not adequately recognized by Swedish members of parliament, as outlined here by interview results. Stronger conclusions would require more empirical work, but the article points out several discrepancies between the topics discussed in the research literature on energy policies, and the topics discussed by elected parliamentarians having a specific focus on energy policies. _ _Keywords_: energy justice; energy transitions; Swedish energy policies; climate justice. (shrink)

The book brings together leading contemporary thinkers of war to outline the aesthetic dimension of warfare across art, technology, and politics.

We argue that the fragility of contemporary marriages—and the corresponding high rates of divorce—can be explained (in large part) by a three-part mismatch: between our relationship values, our evolved psychobiological natures, and our modern social, physical, and technological environment. “Love drugs” could help address this mismatch by boosting our psychobiologies while keeping our values and our environment intact. While individual couples should be free to use pharmacological interventions to sustain and improve their romantic connection, we suggest that they may have (...) an obligation to do so as well, in certain cases. Specifically, we argue that couples with offspring may have a special responsibility to enhance their relationships for the sake of their children. We outline an evolutionarily informed research program for identifying promising biomedical enhancements of love and commitment. (shrink)

In this article, I argue that Adorno’s conception of a possible reconciliation with nature is neither one of complete synthesis, nor absolute alienation. The most elaborated formulations regarding the possibility of such a reconciliation, which would be tantamount to a liberated nature, are to be found in Adorno’s aesthetics, and particularly in his discussion of the art–nature relation. The article engages Simon Hailwood’s recent criticism of the concept of the Anthropocene and his discussion of Adorno’s conception of the domination of (...) nature. While I concur with Hailwood’s insistence on the idea of “alienation from nature” in order to reach a more appropriate understanding of our current predicament, his analysis of Adorno’s take on this idea is problematic. I conclude by discussing another recent work on our troubled relationship with nature. While more attentive to artistic expressions than Hailwood’s work, Andreas Malm’s The Progress of This Stormconstitutes an inverted parallel to the former through its negligence of Adorno’s contribution to the discussion of the human–nature dialectic. (shrink)

Internationale vergelijkingen vormen een waardvolle bron van inzicht bij het analyseren van maatschappelijke problemen en het beoordelen van beleidsmatige antwoorden op die problemen. Vergelijkend onderzoek levert vaak interessante of nuttige informatie op doordat er verschillen én overeenkomsten worden geconstrueerd, bijvoorbeeld: hoe ‘leefbaar’ is Toronto vergeleken met Berlijn? Zelfs wanneer de definities verschillen en de gebruikte meeteenheden enigszins onnauwkeurig kunnen zijn – bijvoorbeeld “leefbaar voor wie en ten opzichte van wat?” – zijn vergelijkingen leerrijk en aanleiding voor verdere reflectie. Maar internationale (...) vergelijkingen kunnen op verschillende manieren ook problematisch zijn. (shrink)