What makes insurance special among risk technologies is the particular way in which it links solidarity and technical rationality. On one hand, within insurance practices ‘risk’ is always defined in technical terms. It is related to monetary measurement of value and to statistical probability calculated for a limited population. On the other hand, and at the same time, insurance has an inherent connection to solidarity. When taking out an insurance, one participates in the risk pool within which each member is (...) reciprocally responsible for others’ risks. The combination of technical controllability and solidarity has made insurance a successful tool for governing welfare societies during the twentieth century. From the point of view of business ethics, it is interesting that, as we argue in this article, the connection between insurance and solidarity is not limited to social welfare assemblages, but is evident in relation to private insurance as well. At the same time, however, it is important to understand that insurance does not advance all forms of solidarity. Hence, this theoretical article analyzes the specific conceptions of solidarity that the different forms of insurance practice produce. Particular emphasis is put on the distinction between ‘chance solidarity’ and ‘subsidizing solidarity’. The main questions of the article are: What kinds of conceptions of solidarity are built in the insurance technology? And how are the limits of solidarity defined and justified in different forms of insurance? (shrink)

For quite some time, reinsurance companies have been pricing the ongoing climate change using weather- and catastrophe-related instruments and thus have been able to make money through climate change. Yet, at the same time, for reinsurance companies it is crucial that the likelihood of the events they underwrite is diminished as much as possible. Consequently, while profiting from the situation, these key actors of global capitalism also work to prevent climate change from taking place, and support the kinds of measures, (...) on all political scales, that diminish the likelihood of severe climate change destruction. This article analyzes the materials that the reinsurance company Munich Re has distributed to stakeholders and asks how climate change is objectified by the reinsurance industry. How are weather-related catastrophes made into a financial risk and opportunity? The key conceptual tools for answering these questions are provided by Michel Serres’s work on world-objects. (shrink)

The article presents two main arguments. First, we claim that in contemporary societies, insurance enacts peculiar kinds of solidarities as well as inequality and exclusion. Especially important in this respect are life, health, disability and old age pension insurance, both in compulsory and voluntary forms. Second, the article maintains that the ideas of solidarity, inequality and exclusion are transformed by the machinery of insurance. In other words, the concrete ways in which insurance relations are practically arranged have an effect on (...) the ways in which the related moral and political concepts are perceived. We elaborate on three different forms of insurance solidarity, which we call chance, risk and income solidarity. The existence of multiple forms of solidarity relevant to insurance is significant because practices of insurance require decisions concerning what kind of solidarity is emphasised, when it is emphasised, and on what grounds. Moreover, what is solidarity for some can entail exclusion and inequality for others. Showing these internal tensions within insurance practice underlines the inherently political and moral nature of insurance. (shrink)

Over the past few decades, the work of Georg Simmel (1858–1918) has again become of interest. Its reception, however, has been fairly one-sided and selective, mostly because Simmel’s philosophy has been bypassed in favor of his sociological contributions. This article examines Simmel’s explicit reflections on the nature of philosophy. Simmel defines philosophy through three aspects which, according to him, are common to all philosophical schools. First, philosophical reasoning implies the effort to think without preconditions. Second, Simmel maintains that in contrast (...) to other sciences, only philosophy is oriented toward constructing a general view of the world. Third, Simmel claims that philosophical work worthy of the name creates a sphere of a typical way of being in relation to world, a third sphere that is between the personal and the objective. According to Simmel, what has made philosophy’s eminent figures great is that they have advanced a type of thinking and developed it into a particularly interesting form, and this type can still correspond with the way we experience the world. It is significant that these three aspects through which Simmel defines philosophical activity emphasize the forms of questioning, not the contents or objects of thought. Still, he thinks that an interaction with concrete examples is always required in order to make philosophy a meaningful activity. This stance is reflected in the wide variety of topics studied by Simmel himself. In his last works Simmel began to emphasize another aspect of philosophy, its nature as a living movement of thought related to fundamental human limitedness: just as life itself ceaselessly reaches beyond its present form, so philosophy constantly strives to overcome the preconditions of thinking. (shrink)

While Michel Serres’ work has become relatively well-known among social theoreticians in recent years, his explicit thematization of the foundations of human collectives has gained surprisingly little attention. This article claims that Serres’ approach to the theme of foundations can be clarified by scrutinizing the way in which he poses and answers the following three questions: How are we together? What and whom do we exclude from our togetherness and how? Who are we today? Instead of starting with a ready-made (...) order, be it in the form of individuals or society, Serres pushes social research to take up the challenge of examining the point at which order is about to emerge out of noise and chaos, but where the outcome of the process remains uncertain. Especially relevant to the discussion are Serres’ books Rome, Statues and Geometry, all three of which bear the subtitle Book of Foundations. (shrink)

Request-for-proposals are documents in IT tendering that define the selection criteria, evaluation procedures and system requirements including system usability. IT vendors' perspective on RFP-originated system configuration and usability design is less studied than of IT procuring organizations. Analysis of empirical data collected from large IT tendering shows that from the vendor's perspective the objectives and means of usability design during the tendering differ drastically from general usability work. During the tendering, the fundamentals of usability recommendations can be based solely on (...) the requirements of RFPs with no adequate intention to improve system usability in the use context. An ethical analysis of the situation and possible futures and alternatives is represented. (shrink)

The aim of this article is to provide an epistemological account of the concept of a point of view. The focus of the article is componential and therefore different variables in the concept of a point of view will be discussed. The article concludes that the concept of a point of view refers to mental viewing or rational consideration, which has many constituents, some of which relate to the observing subject, some to the tools of observing, and some to the (...) object of observation. Most components of points of view are related to the subject of the point of view and his or her interests. (shrink)

Cultural variants may spread by being more appealing, more memorable, or less offensive than other cultural variants. Empirical studies suggest that such “emotional selection” is a force to be reckoned with in cultural evolution. We present a research paradigm that is suitable for the study of emotional selection. It guides empirical research by directing attention to the circumstances under which emotions influence the likelihood that an individual will influence another individual to acquire a cultural variant. We present a modeling framework (...) to translate such knowledge into specific and testable predictions of population-level change. A set of already analyzed basic cases can serve as a toolbox. (shrink)

Although much research has found girls to be less interested in mathematics than boys are, there are many countries in which the opposite holds. I hypothesize that variation in gender differences in interest are driven by a complex process in which national culture promoting high math achievement drives down interest in math schoolwork, with the effect being amplified among girls due to their higher conformity to peer influence. Predictions from this theory were tested in a study of data on more (...) than 500,000 grade 8 students in 50 countries from the 2011 and 2015 waves of TIMSS. Consistent with predictions, national achievement levels were strongly negatively correlated with national levels of math schoolwork interest and this variation was larger among girls: girls in low-achievement, high-interest countries had especially high interest in math schoolwork, whereas girls in high-achievement, low-interest countries had especially low interest in math schoolwork. Gender differences in math schoolwork interest were also found to be related to gender differences in math achievement, emphasizing the importance of understanding them better. (shrink)

This book takes stock of the wide range of practices of deliberative mini-publics. More concretely, it takes an informed look at preconditions, processes, and outcomes. Furthermore, it provides a critical assessment of the experience with mini-publics, in particular policy-impact. The book brings together leading scholars in the field, most notably James S. Fishkin and Mark E. Warren. It speaks to students and scholars with an interest in democracy and democratic innovations. This is the first comprehensive account of the booming practice (...) of deliberative mini-publics. Not only does it provide the reader with a systematic review of the variety of mini-publics, it also discusses their weaknesses and makes recommendations on how to make mini-publics a viable component of democracy. (shrink)

Alongside his work as a practising architect, Sigurd Frosterus (1876–1956) was one of Finland’s leading architectural critics during the first decades of the 20th century. In his early life, Frosterus was a strict rationalist who wanted to develop architecture towards scientific ideals instead of historical, archaeological, or mythological approaches. According to him, an architect had to analyse his tasks of construction in order to be able to logically justify his solutions, and he must take advantage of the possibilities of the (...) latest technology. The particular challenge of his time was reinforced concrete. Frosterus considered that the buildings of a modern metropolis should be constructivist in expressing their purpose and technology honestly. The impulses of two famous European architects – Otto Wagner and Henry van de Velde – had a life-long influence on his work. Urban architecture with long street perspectives and houses with austere façades and unified eaves lines was the stylistic ideal that he shared with the Austrian architect Wagner. An open and enlightened urban experience was Frosterus’s future vision, not National Romantic capriciousness or intimacy drawing from the Middle Ages. According to Frosterus, the Belgian van de Velde was the master interior architect of the epoch, the interior of the Nietzsche Archives in Weimar being an excellent example of his work. However, already in the 1910s Frosterus’s rationalism developed towards a broader understanding of the functions of the façades of business edifices. In his brilliant analyses of the business palaces by the Finnish architects Armas Lindgren and Lars Sonck, he considered the symbolic and artistic values of the façades to be even more important than technological honesty. Moreover, references to the history of architecture had a crucial role in the 1920s and 1930s when he wrote about his main work– the Stockmann department store in the centre of Helsinki.  . (shrink)

The colic cry as a signal of undifferentiated vigour, and not a disease, is good news. This hypothesis also has neurobiological perspectives. Feeding increases the pain threshold of the infant and has an effect on its brain functions. These may contribute, by neurobiological mechanisms, to the gradual decline in the tendency for excessive crying during the first months of life.

Volume 25, Issue 4, June 2020, Page 488-490.

In this paper, I will introduce and argue for a new view on religious faith and language, a view that focuses on the use and context of use of religious expressions. I call this view implicaturism. As one may guess, ‘implicaturism’ comes from ‘implicature’, a term coined by Paul Grice. For Grice, implicature is a technical term for certain kinds of inferences that are drawn from statements without those inferences being logical implications or entailments. In the view of religious faith (...) and language, implicaturism denotes the claims about the existence of God or other supernatural beings as pragmatic conclusions of the expressions used in religious practice, not the ground or presupposition of religious practice. In other words, in religious context, the claims of the form “X exists” (e.g. “God exists”) or “there are Xs” (e.g. “There are angeles”) are inferences that are based on prayers and worship expressions and their relatedbackground assumptions. This pattern of reasoning is not deductive, but abductive, thus inference from consequences to a possible cause. This kind of inference is logically invalid, in that the conclusion “God exists” is not a logical consequence of the premises: the religious expressions. The existential claims in religion (”God exists” or “There are angels” as examples) are thus some sort of a posteriori reasons or explanations for religious behaviour and related expressions, not their prior presuppositions. (shrink)

This article offers a reading of Ken Loach’s 2016 film I, Daniel Blake, a fictionalised account of experiences of the UK welfare system in conditions of austerity. We consider, firstly, the significant challenge the film poses to dominant figurations of welfare recipients under austerity, through a focus on vulnerability to state processes. We follow with a reading of some of the film’s interventions in relation to reciprocity, drawing on the important trajectories of care, community and resistance that the film renders (...) visible through the collective stories of the major characters. Finally, we conclude with reflections on citizenship, subject narratives and alternative imaginaries of ‘deservingness’. Our article offers an ‘against the grain’ reading of the film, highlighting some of the radical possibilities of the more minor moments, character arcs and subject positionalities within the film’s central narrative of Daniel’s experiences in the shadow of the steadily crumbling welfare state. (shrink)

The Bhagavadgītā, part of the sixth book of the Hindu epic The Mahābhārata, offers a practical approach to mokṣa, or liberation, and freedom from saṃsāra, or the cycle of death and rebirth. According to the approach, known as karmayoga, salvation results from attention to duty and the recognition of past acts that inform the present and will direct the future. In the Bhagavadgītā, Kṛṣṇa advocates selfless action as the ideal path to realizing the truth about oneself as well as the (...) ultimate reality. Kṛṣṇa proclaims that humans have rights only to actions and not to their results, whether good or bad. Therefore, humans should not desire any results whatsoever. The prisoner’s dilemma is a fictional story that shows why individuals who seek only their personal benefit meet worse outcomes than those possible by cooperating with others. The dilemma provides an effective, albeit often overlooked, method for studying the Hindu principle of niṣkāmakarma that is arguably the central teaching of the Bhagavadgītā. In the context of the prisoner’s dilemma, a prisoner who wants to uphold niṣkāmakarma may choose one of two decision-making strategies: to be indifferent and leave the decision to chance or to either pursue the common good or the other person’s benefit instead of his or her own. Assuming that followers of niṣkāmakarma can be goal-oriented, the second strategy is more appropriate than the first, as long as one pursues unselfish goals and remains both indifferent and uncommitted to personal benefit. (shrink)

There are uses of the term merit in Indian religions which also appear in secular contexts, but in addition there are other uses that are not encountered outside religion. Transfer of merit is a specific doctrine in whose connection the term merit is used with an intention which is not the same as that found in nonreligious contexts. Two main types of transfer of merit can be distinguished. First, the transfer of merit has been associated with certain ritual practices in (...) Hinduism and in Buddhism. Another main type of transfer of merit is connected with Mahāyāna belief in bodhisattvas' loving-kindness towards other beings. In the orthodox Hindu schools, in Hnayāna Buddhism and in Jainism, transfer of merit has been rejected on account of the doctrine of karma according to which the person can acquire karmic outcomes for only those actions he or she has performed by himself. (shrink)

Determining optimal units of representing morphologically complex words in the mental lexicon is a central question in psycholinguistics. Here, we utilize advances in computational sciences to study human morphological processing using statistical models of morphology, particularly the unsupervised Morfessor model that works on the principle of optimization. The aim was to see what kind of model structure corresponds best to human word recognition costs for multimorphemic Finnish nouns: a model incorporating units resembling linguistically defined morphemes, a whole-word model, or a (...) model that seeks for an optimal balance between these two extremes. Our results showed that human word recognition was predicted best by a combination of two models: a model that decomposes words at some morpheme boundaries while keeping others unsegmented and a whole-word model. The results support dual-route models that assume that both decomposed and full-form representations are utilized to optimally process complex words within the mental lexicon. (shrink)

Game theory is a formal approach to behavior that focuses on the strategic aspect of situations. The game theoretic approach originates in economics but has been embraced by scholars across disciplines, including many philosophers and biologists. This approach has an important weakness: the strategic aspect of a situation, which is its defining quality in game theory, is often not its most salient quality in human cognition. Evidence from a wide range of experiments highlights this shortcoming. Previous theoretical and empirical work (...) has sought to address this weakness by considering learning across an ensemble of multiple games simultaneously. Here we extend this framework, incorporating artificial neural networks, to allow for an investigation of the interaction between the perceptual and functional similarity of the games composing the larger ensemble. Using this framework, we conduct a theoretical investigation of a population that encounters both stag hunts and prisoner’s dilemmas, two situations that are strategically different but which may or may not be perceptually similar. (shrink)

Game theory is a formal approach to behavior that focuses on the strategic aspect of situations. The game theoretic approach originates in economics but has been embraced by scholars across disciplines, including many philosophers and biologists. This approach has an important weakness: the strategic aspect of a situation, which is its defining quality in game theory, is often not its most salient quality in human cognition. Evidence from a wide range of experiments highlights this shortcoming. Previous theoretical and empirical work (...) has sought to address this weakness by considering learning across an ensemble of multiple games simultaneously. Here we extend this framework, incorporating artificial neural networks, to allow for an investigation of the interaction between the perceptual and functional similarity of the games composing the larger ensemble. Using this framework, we conduct a theoretical investigation of a population that encounters both stag hunts and prisoner’s dilemmas, two situations that are strategically different but which may or may not be perceptually similar. (shrink)

This paper introduces a new solution concept for games with incomplete preferences. The concept is based on rationalizability and it is more general than the existing ones based on Nash equilibrium. In rationalizable strategies, we assume that the players choose nondominated strategies given their beliefs of what strategies the other players may choose. Our solution concept can also be used, e.g., in ordinal games where the standard notion of rationalizability cannot be applied. We show that the sets of rationalizable strategies (...) are the maximal mutually nondominated sets. We also show that no new rationalizable strategies appear when the preferences are refined, i.e., when the information gets more precise. Moreover, noncooperative multicriteria games are suitable applications of incomplete preferences. We apply our framework to such games, where the outcomes are evaluated according to several criteria and the payoffs are vector valued. We use the sets of feasible weights to represent the relative importance of the criteria. We demonstrate the applicability of the new solution concept with an ordinal game and a bicriteria Cournot game. (shrink)

The general aim of this very welcome volume is to explore the relation between pragmatism and neuroscience. The thirteen chapters are evenly divided into four parts, roughly organized around the themes of brain and pragmatism, emotion and cognition, creativity and education, and ethics.The beginning chapter written by the editors attempts to show that advances in behavioral and brain sciences intersect core theses of pragmatism with regards to cognition and the mind-world relation. The basic assumption is that neuroscience and pragmatism share (...) a naturalist program: pragmatism refers all philosophical explanation to experimental science and neuroscience explains all.. (shrink)

The rapid dynamics of COVID-19 calls for quick and effective tracking of virus transmission chains and early detection of outbreaks, especially in the “phase 2” of the pandemic, when lockdown and other restriction measures are progressively withdrawn, in order to avoid or minimize contagion resurgence. For this purpose, contact-tracing apps are being proposed for large scale adoption by many countries. A centralized approach, where data sensed by the app are all sent to a nation-wide server, raises concerns about citizens’ privacy (...) and needlessly strong digital surveillance, thus alerting us to the need to minimize personal data collection and avoiding location tracking. We advocate the conceptual advantage of a decentralized approach, where both contact and location data are collected exclusively in individual citizens’ “personal data stores”, to be shared separately and selectively, voluntarily, only when the citizen has tested positive for COVID-19, and with a privacy preserving level of granularity. This approach better protects the personal sphere of citizens and affords multiple benefits: it allows for detailed information gathering for infected people in a privacy-preserving fashion; and, in turn this enables both contact tracing, and, the early detection of outbreak hotspots on more finely-granulated geographic scale. The decentralized approach is also scalable to large populations, in that only the data of positive patients need be handled at a central level. Our recommendation is two-fold. First to extend existing decentralized architectures with a light touch, in order to manage the collection of location data locally on the device, and allow the user to share spatio-temporal aggregates—if and when they want and for specific aims—with health authorities, for instance. Second, we favour a longer-term pursuit of realizing a Personal Data Store vision, giving users the opportunity to contribute to collective good in the measure they want, enhancing self-awareness, and cultivating collective efforts for rebuilding society. (shrink)

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