Techno-Anthropology is a new field, operating with a broad range of methodologies and approaches. This gives rise to the question: What does it mean for Techno-Anthropological research to be critical? In this paper, we discuss this question by developing and specifying the notion of ‘critical proximity.’ Critical proximity offers an alternative to critical distance, especially with respect to avoiding premature references to abstract panoramas such as democratization and capitalist exploitation in the quest to conduct ‘critical’ analysis. Critical proximity implies, instead, (...) granting the beings, fields, and objects we study their own rights and abilities to problematize grand scale claims. Critical proximity further entails that we as researchers are implicated in issues and their formation in ways that allow us to register these critiques and methods, and to emphasize or supplement them. We work through two cases—one on the involvement of users in innovation projects and another on commercial web technologies for tracing issues—to show how critical proximity may be practiced. We sum up the lessons derived in four methodological guidelines for doing research with critical proximity. (shrink)

The aim of this article is to present and critically investigate a type of argument against legalising assisted dying on request (ADR) for patients who are terminally ill and experiencing suffering. This type of argument has several variants. These—which we call ‘autonomy-based arguments’ against legalising ADR—invoke different specifications of the premise that we ought not to respect requests for assistance in dying made by terminally ill and suffering patients because the basic conditions of autonomy cannot be met in scenarios where (...) such requests are made. Specifically, it is argued either (1) that as a result of pain, anxiety or desperation, terminally ill patients are not competent decision makers or (2) that legalisation of ADR would lead to social pressure or in other ways change the patient's context of choice in ways that make such requests nonautonomous. We argue that these types of arguments are problematic in light both of empirical studies and the fact that we usually judge that it is morally right to respect the wishes and decisions of dying people even if they suffer. (shrink)

In conversation, individuals work together to achieve communicative goals, complementing and aligning language and body with each other. An important emerging question is whether interlocutors entrain with one another equally across linguistic levels (e.g., lexical, syntactic, and semantic) and modalities (i.e., speech and gesture), or whether there are complementary patterns of behaviors, with some levels or modalities diverging and others converging in coordinated fashions. This study assesses how kinematic and linguistic entrainment interact with one another across levels of measurement, and (...) according to communicative context. We analyzed data from two matched corpora of dyadic interaction between—respectively—Danish and Norwegian native speakers engaged in affiliative conversations and task‐oriented conversations. We assessed linguistic entrainment at the lexical, syntactic, and semantic level, and kinetic alignment of the head and hands using video‐based motion tracking and dynamic time warping. We tested whether—across the two languages—linguistic alignment correlates with kinetic alignment, and whether these kinetic‐linguistic associations are modulated either by the type of conversation or by the language spoken. We found that kinetic entrainment was positively associated with low‐level linguistic (i.e., lexical) entrainment, while negatively associated with high‐level linguistic (i.e., semantic) entrainment, in a cross‐linguistically robust way. Our findings suggest that conversation makes use of a dynamic coordination of similarity and complementarity both between individuals as well as between different communicative modalities, and provides evidence for a multimodal, interpersonal synergy account of interaction. (shrink)

Indigenous peoples are disproportionally vulnerable to climate change. At the same time, they possess valuable knowledge for fair and sustainable climate adaptation planning and policymaking. Yet Indigenous peoples and knowledges are often excluded from or underrepresented within adaptation plans and policies. In this paper we ask whether the concept of epistemic injustice can be applied to the context of climate adaptation and the underrepresentation of Indigenous knowledges within adaptation policies and strategies. In recent years, the concept of epistemic injustice has (...) gained prominence, indicating that someone has been unfairly discriminated against in their capacity as a knower. We argue that many climate adaptation policies are epistemically unjust towards Indigenous peoples because of the underrepresentation of Indigenous knowledges by showing how the case of Indigenous knowledges in climate adaptation planning and policy satisfies five conditions of epistemic injustice. We further consider what challenges there are to integrating local and Indigenous knowledges within development in general, and climate adaptation strategies in particular and how these can be addressed. Whether the lack of Indigenous knowledges in climate adaptation policies constitutes an epistemic injustice matters because an injustice denotes an unfair advantage to one group – whether by design or default – that ought to be remedied and redressed. (shrink)

In the generative tradition, the language faculty has been shrinking—perhaps to include only the mechanism of recursion. This paper argues that even this view of the language faculty is too expansive. We first argue that a language faculty is difficult to reconcile with evolutionary considerations. We then focus on recursion as a detailed case study, arguing that our ability to process recursive structure does not rely on recursion as a property of the grammar, but instead emerges gradually by piggybacking on (...) domain-general sequence learning abilities. Evidence from genetics, comparative work on non-human primates, and cognitive neuroscience suggests that humans have evolved complex sequence learning skills, which were subsequently pressed into service to accommodate language. Constraints on sequence learning therefore have played an important role in shaping the cultural evolution of linguistic structure, including our limited abilities for processing recursive structure. Finally, we re-evaluate some of the key considerations that have often been taken to require the postulation of a language faculty. (shrink)

Frames, i.e., recursive attribute-value structures, are a general format for the decomposition of lexical concepts. Attributes assign unique values to objects and thus describe functional relations. Concepts can be classified into four groups: sortal, individual, relational and functional concepts. The classification is reflected by different grammatical roles of the corresponding nouns. The paper aims at a cognitively adequate decomposition, particularly, of sortal concepts by means of frames. Using typed feature structures, an explicit formalism for the characterization of cognitive frames is (...) developed. The frame model can be extended to account for typicality effects. Applying the paradigm of object-related neural synchronization, furthermore, a biologically motivated model for the cortical implementation of frames is developed. Cortically distributed synchronization patterns may be regarded as the fingerprints of concepts. (shrink)

Certain instances of contraction are provable in Zardini’s system $\mathbf {IK}^\omega $ which causes triviality once a truth predicate and suitable fixed points are available.

In this paper I offer a normative account of development expertise. Although extending expertise beyond the traditional development experts to include local stakeholders, this normative account aims to delimit legitimate forms of expertise. I label this normative view third wave development expertise. Third wave expertise is distinguished from both the technocratic and the social constructivist views of development expertise. In particular, I discuss the notions of contributory and interactional expertise. Contributory expertise denotes the extent to which a group of agents (...) possesses knowledge which can make a significant contribution to development decision-making, while interactional expertise denotes the extent to which they are able to communicate this knowledge meaningfully. While local stakeholders may possess contributory expertise in matters of their own development, they may lack interactional expertise to communicate this knowledge. Resolving this issue, I argue, requires a mediator who can interact with and between external experts and local stakeholders. (shrink)

Body checking, characterized by the repeated visual or physical inspection of particular parts of one’s own body (e.g. thighs, waist, or upper arms) is one of the most prominent behaviors associated with eating disorders, particularly Anorexia Nervosa (AN). In this paper, we explore the explanatory potential of the Recalcitrant Fear Model of AN (RFM) in relation to body checking. We argue that RFM, when combined with certain plausible auxiliary hypotheses about the cognitive and epistemic roles of emotions, is able to (...) explain key characteristics of body checking, including how body checking behavior becomes habitual and compulsive. (shrink)

Two of the Scandinavian countries, Sweden and Finland have recently joined the European Communities. Together with a third Scandinavian country, Denmark, which joined the Communities two decades ago it seems likely that Scandinavian views and attitudes will make a great impact on the future work of the European Communities — including the on-going harmonisation in the field of corporate social responsibility.This article provides an examination of the Scandinavian view on the five best known models for achieving corporate social responsibility and (...) it shows the likely impact of the admittance of the Scandinavian countries on the future work in the European Communities with regard to corporate social responsibility. (shrink)

Abstract:It is a common belief that obesity is wholly or partially a question of personal choice and personal responsibility. It is also widely assumed that when individuals are responsible for some unfortunate state of affairs, society bears no burden to compensate them. This article focuses on two conceptualizations of responsibility: backward-looking and forward-looking conceptualizations. When ascertaining responsibility in a backward-looking sense, one has to determine how that state of affairs came into being or where the agent stood in relation to (...) it. In contrast, a forward-looking conceptualization of responsibility puts aside questions of the past and holds a person responsible by reference to some desirable future state of affairs and will typically mean that he or she is subjected to criticism, censure, or other negative appraisals or that he or she is heldcost-responsible in some form, for example, in terms of demanded compensation, loss of privileges, or similar. One example of this view is the debate as to whether the obese should be denied, wholly or partially, free and equal access to healthcare,notbecause they are somehow personally responsible in the backward-looking sense but simply because holding the obese responsible will have positive consequences. Taking these two conceptions of responsibility into account, the authors turn their analysis toward examining the relevant moral considerations to be taken into account when public policies regarding obesity rely on such a conception of responsibility. (shrink)

In a recent paper in this journal, Carter and Peterson raise two distinctly epistemological puzzles that arise for anyone aspiring to defend the precautionary principle. The first puzzle trades on an application of epistemic contextualism to the precautionary principle; the second puzzle concerns the compatibility of the precautionary principle with the de minimis rule. In this note, I argue that neither puzzle should worry defenders of the precautionary principle. The first puzzle can be shown to be an instance of the (...) familiar but conceptually harmless challenge of adjudicating between relevant interests to reach assessments of threats when applying the precautionary principle. The second puzzle can be shown to rely on a subtle but crucial misrepresentation of the relevant probabilities at play when applying the precautionary principle. (shrink)

Standard epistemology takes it for granted that there is a special kind of value: epistemic value. This claim does not seem to sit well with act utilitarianism, however, since it holds that only welfare is of real value. I first develop a particularly utilitarian sense of “epistemic value”, according to which it is closely analogous to the nature of financial value. I then demonstrate the promise this approach has for two current puzzles in the intersection of epistemology and value theory: (...) first, the problem of why knowledge is better than mere true belief, and second, the relation between epistemic justification and responsibility. (shrink)

It is widely assumed that human learning and the structure of human languages are intimately related. This relationship is frequently suggested to derive from a language-specific biological endowment, which encodes universal, but communicatively arbitrary, principles of language structure (a Universal Grammar or UG). How might such a UG have evolved? We argue that UG could not have arisen either by biological adaptation or non-adaptationist genetic processes, resulting in a logical problem of language evolution. Specifically, as the processes of language change (...) are much more rapid than processes of genetic change, language constitutes a both over time and across different human populations, and, hence, cannot provide a stable environment to which language genes could have adapted. We conclude that a biologically determined UG is not evolutionarily viable. Instead, the original motivation for UG arises because language has been shaped to fit the human brain, rather than vice versa. Following Darwin, we view language itself as a complex and interdependent which evolves under selectional pressures from human learning and processing mechanisms. That is, languages themselves are shaped by severe selectional pressure from each generation of language users and learners. This suggests that apparently arbitrary aspects of linguistic structure may result from general learning and processing biases deriving from the structure of thought processes, perceptuo-motor factors, cognitive limitations, and pragmatics. (shrink)

Memory is fleeting. New material rapidly obliterates previous material. How, then, can the brain deal successfully with the continual deluge of linguistic input? We argue that, to deal with this “Now-or-Never” bottleneck, the brain must compress and recode linguistic input as rapidly as possible. This observation has strong implications for the nature of language processing: (1) the language system must “eagerly” recode and compress linguistic input; (2) as the bottleneck recurs at each new representational level, the language system must build (...) a multilevel linguistic representation; and (3) the language system must deploy all available information predictively to ensure that local linguistic ambiguities are dealt with “Right-First-Time”; once the original input is lost, there is no way for the language system to recover. This is “Chunk-and-Pass” processing. Similarly, language learning must also occur in the here and now, which implies that language acquisition is learning to process, rather than inducing, a grammar. Moreover, this perspective provides a cognitive foundation for grammaticalization and other aspects of language change. Chunk-and-Pass processing also helps explain a variety of core properties of language, including its multilevel representational structure and duality of patterning. This approach promises to create a direct relationship between psycholinguistics and linguistic theory. More generally, we outline a framework within which to integrate often disconnected inquiries into language processing, language acquisition, and language change and evolution. (shrink)

Morten Frederiksen explores Carl Gustav Jung's elusive notion of synchronicity from a transrational perspective and relates synchronicity to the transpersonality of the "All-One". This is done by expanding the content and meaning of Wolfgang Dietrich's layers of Elicitive Conflict Mapping (ECM) through re-relating them to Ken Wilber's model of the structures of consciousness; with synchronicity as the literal connecting principle. The result, then, is an expanded notion of the transrational peace philosophy which includes Wilber's model of stages shorn of (...) its evolutionary slant and fathoms synchronicity in its theoretical outlook and practical application. Contents A Transrational Approach to Peace Studies through processing the Topic of Synchronicity Jungian Psychology and his Concept of Synchronicity Transrational Peace Philosophy and Consciousness Development Seven different Structures of Consciousness Consequences of Synchronicity for a transrational-oriented Peace Philosophy and Practice Target Groups Lecturers and Students of Psychology, Peace Students and Conflict Transformation Researchers Practitioners in the Field of Elicitive Conflict Transformation About the Author Morten Frederiksen is a Peace Researcher from the MA Program in Peace, Security, Development and International Conflict Transformation at the University of Innsbruck, Austria, and Coordinator of the Danish Development Aid Agency "U-landsforeningen Svalerne". (shrink)

BackgroundSurveys on attitudes towards assisted dying play an important role in informing public debate, policy and legislation. Unfortunately, surveys are often designed with insufficient attention to framing effects; that is, effects on the respondents’ stated attitudes caused by question wording and context. The purpose of this study was to demonstrate and measure such framing effects. MethodsSurvey experiment in which an eight-question survey on attitudes towards assisted dying was distributed to Norwegian citizens through a web-based panel. Two variations of question wording (...) as well as two variations of question order were employed. Respondents were randomized to receive one of four questionnaire versions. ResultsThree thousand and fifty responses were received. There were moderate to large question wording and question order effects. A majority of Norwegian citizens favour the legalization of assisted dying for patients with terminal or chronic disease. ConclusionsStakeholders in the assisted dying debate need to acknowledge potential framing effects, and accordingly should interpret survey results with caution. The same holds for researchers who conduct attitude surveys in the field of bioethics. (shrink)

For at least three decades, philosophers have argued that general causation and causal explanation are contrastive in nature. When we seek a causal explanation of some particular event, we are usually interested in knowing why that event happened rather than some other specified event. And general causal claims, which state that certain event types cause certain other event types, seem to make sense only if appropriate contrasts to the types of events acting as cause and effect are specified. In recent (...) years, philosophers have extended the contrastive theory of causation to encompass singular causation as well. In this article, I argue that this extension of the theory was a mistake. Although general causation and causal explanation may well be contrastive in nature, singular causation is not. (shrink)

Inquiry is an aim-directed activity, and as such governed by instrumental normativity. If you have reason to figure out a question, you have reason to take means to figuring it out. Beliefs are governed by epistemic normativity. On a certain pervasive understanding, this means that you are permitted – maybe required – to believe what you have sufficient evidence for. The norms of inquiry and epistemic norms both govern us as agents in pursuit of knowledge and understanding, and, on the (...) surface, they do so in harmony. Recently, however, Jane Friedman (2020) has pointed out that they are in tension with each other. In this paper, I aim to resolve this tension by showing that reasons for acts of inquiry – zetetic reasons – and epistemic reasons for belief can both be understood as flowing from the same general normative principle: the transmission principle for instrumental reasons. The resulting account is a version of epistemic instrumentalism that offers an attractive unity between zetetic and epistemic normativity. (shrink)

Recent works on the concept of dignity have opened up the otherwise quite deadlocked debate about assisted death (AD). Rather than just reinforcing already fixed positions, it seems to me that these conceptions of dignity make room for a moderate and normatively richer position on the moral permissibility of AD. I do not think that we have seen the full potential of the said conceptions and interpretations. I try in this article to contribute my part. First, I briefly recapitulate some (...) of the paradoxical ways in which dignity is typically invoked in the debate and try to clear up some of the obvious confusions. Then, I go on to explore a particular Kantian line of thought in some recent works on dignity and AD that seems to pave the way for a moderate position with a more principled foundation than the usual compromise positions. (shrink)

In this paper I propose a teleological account of epistemic reasons. In recent years, the main challenge for any such account has been to explicate a sense in which epistemic reasons depend on the value of epistemic properties. I argue that while epistemic reasons do not directly depend on the value of epistemic properties, they depend on a different class of reasons which are value based in a direct sense, namely reasons to form beliefs about certain propositions or subject matters. (...) In short, S has an epistemic reason to believe that p if and only if S is such that if S has reason to form a belief about p, then S ought to believe that p. I then propose a teleological explanation of this relationship. It is also shown how the proposal can avoid various subsidiary objections commonly thought to riddle the teleological account. (shrink)

The theory of belief, according to which believing that p essentially involves having as an aim or purpose to believe that p truly, has recently been criticised on the grounds that the putative aim of belief does not interact with the wider aims of believers in the ways we should expect of genuine aims. I argue that this objection to the aim theory fails. When we consider a wider range of deliberative contexts concerning beliefs, it becomes obvious that the aim (...) of belief can interact with and be weighed against the wider aims of agents in the ways required for it to be a genuine aim. (shrink)

In this review article, Christiansen provides a historical perspective on the two research traditions, implicit learning and statistical learning, thus nicely setting the scene for this special issue of Topics in Cognitive Science. In this “tale of two literatures”, he first traces the history of both literatures before sketching a framework that provides a basis for understanding implicit learning and statistical learning as a unified phenomenon.

Journal of Social Philosophy, EarlyView.

Does transparency in doxastic deliberation entail a constitutive norm of correctness governing belief, as Shah and Velleman argue? No, because this presupposes an implausibly strong relation between normative judgements and motivation from such judgements, ignores our interest in truth, and cannot explain why we pay different attention to how much justification we have for our beliefs in different contexts. An alternative account of transparency is available: transparency can be explained by the aim one necessarily adopts in deliberating about whether to (...) believe that p. To show this, I reconsider the role of the concept of belief in doxastic deliberation, and I defuse 'the teleologian's dilemma'. (shrink)

According to the thesis of pragmatic encroachment, practical circumstances can affect whether someone is in a position to know or rationally believe a proposition. For example, whether it is epistemically rational for a person to believe that the bank will be open on Saturdays, can depend not only on the strength of the person’s evidence, but also on how practically important it is for the person not to be wrong about the bank being open on Saturdays. In recent years, philosophers (...) have argued that moral considerations can also affect the epistemic rationality of belief, thus giving rise to moral encroachment. In previous work (Steglich-Petersen, forthcoming a), I have developed an explanation of pragmatic encroachment grounded in an instrumentalist theory of epistemic reasons. Here, I argue that this explanation extends to moral encroachment as well, including so-called “radical” moral encroachment. I also show how this explanation dispels the worry raised by Gerken (2019), that pragmatic encroachment might give rise to morally adverse consequences in the form of epistemic injustice. (shrink)

Epistemic instrumentalists seek to understand the normativity of epistemic norms on the model practical instrumental norms governing the relation between aims and means. Non-instrumentalists often object that this commits instrumentalists to implausible epistemic assessments. I argue that this objection presupposes an implausibly strong interpretation of epistemic norms. Once we realize that epistemic norms should be understood in terms of permissibility rather than obligation, and that evidence only occasionally provide normative reasons for belief, an instrumentalist account becomes available that delivers the (...) correct epistemic verdicts. On this account, epistemic permissibility can be understood on the model of the wide-scope instrumental norm for instrumental rationality, while normative evidential reasons for belief can be understood in terms of instrumental transmission. (shrink)

A popular account of epistemic justification holds that justification, in essence, aims at truth. An influential objection against this account points out that it is committed to holding that only true beliefs could be justified, which most epistemologists regard as sufficient reason to reject the account. In this paper I defend the view that epistemic justification aims at truth, not by denying that it is committed to epistemic justification being factive, but by showing that, when we focus on the relevant (...) sense of ‘justification’, it isn’t in fact possible for a belief to be at once justified and false. To this end, I consider and reject three popular intuitions speaking in favor of the possibility of justified false beliefs, and show that a factive account of epistemic justification is less detrimental to our normal belief forming practices than often supposed. (shrink)

How may clinical ethics committees inspire ethical reflection among healthcare professionals? How may they deal with organizational ethics issues? In recent years, Norwegian CECs have attempted different activites that stretch or go beyond the standard trio of education, consultation, and policy work. We studied the novel activities of Norwegian CECs by examining annual reports and interviewing CEC members. Through qualitative analysis we identified nine categories of novel CEC activities, which we describe by way of examples. In light of the findings, (...) we argue that some novel working methods may be well suited to promote ethical reflection among clinicians, and that the CEC may be a suitable venue for discussing issues of organizational ethics. (shrink)

A central task for clinical ethics consultants and committees (CEC) is providing analysis of, and advice on, prospective or retrospective clinical cases. However, several kinds of biases may threaten the integrity, relevance or quality of the CEC's deliberation. Bias should be identified and, if possible, reduced or counteracted. This paper provides a systematic classification of kinds of bias that may be present in a CEC's case deliberation. Six kinds of bias are discussed, with examples, as to their significance and risk (...) factors. Possible remedies are suggested. The potential for bias is greater when the case deliberation is performed by an individual ethics consultant than when an entire clinical ethics committee is involved. (shrink)

Controversies arise over abortion, assisted dying and conscientious objection in healthcare. The purpose of the study was to examine the relationship between attitudes towards these bioethical dilemmas, and secularity and religiosity. Data were drawn from a 2017 web-based survey of a representative sample of 1615 Norwegian adults. Latent moderated structural equations modelling was used to develop a model of the relationship between attitudes. The resulting model indicates that support for abortion rights is associated with pro-secular attitudes and is a main (...) “driver” for support for assisted dying and opposition to conscientious objection. This finding should be regarded as a hypothesis which ought to be tested in other populations. If the relationship is robust and reproduced elsewhere, there are important consequences for CO advocates who would then have an interest in disentangling the debate about CO from abortion; and for health systems who ought to consider carefully how a sound policy on CO can safeguard both patient trust in the services and the moral integrity of professionals. It is suggested that if religiosity wanes and pro-secular and pro-abortion attitudes become more widespread, support for CO might decline, putting into question whether present policies of toleration of conscientious refusals will remain acceptable to the majority. (shrink)

The alien invasive Red King Crab in the Barents Sea represents both a threat, via ecosystem impacts, and a gain as a revenue source from food sales. Uncertainties exist regarding the ecological impacts but debate in Norway has also emphasised the economic benefits to marginalised fisher communities. This paper reports on a Q-methodology study involving key stakeholders to probe the extent to which divisions exist between different groups. While divisions are indeed found and two groupings identified, these are not as (...) clear as suggested by the lines typically portrayed in the media and elsewhere -, i.e. economic gains versus ecological preservation. Stakeholder groups reported here generally agreed that biodiversity concerns should be central and that further invasion was undesirable due to potential impacts on ecosystem services. (shrink)

Blindsight is classically defined as residual visual capacity, e.g., to detect and identify visual stimuli, in the total absence of perceptual awareness following lesions to V1. However, whereas most experiments have investigated what blindsight patients can and cannot do, the literature contains several, often contradictory, remarks about remaining visual experience. This review examines closer these remarks as well as experiments that directly approach the nature of possibly spared visual experiences in blindsight.

A popular account of luck, with a firm basis in common sense, holds that a necessary condition for an event to be lucky, is that it was suitably improbable. It has recently been proposed that this improbability condition is best understood in epistemic terms. Two different versions of this proposal have been advanced. According to my own proposal :361–377, 2010), whether an event is lucky for some agent depends on whether the agent was in a position to know that the (...) event would occur. And according to Stoutenburg :319–334, 2015, Synthese, 1–15, 2018), whether an event is lucky for an agent depends on whether the event was guaranteed or certain to occur in light of the agent’s evidence. In this paper, I argue that we should prefer the account in terms of knowledge over that in terms of evidential certainty. (shrink)