This study explored 12 cancer patients’ experiences from participating in an online and on-site Shared Reading group for 16 weeks in Norway. Shared Reading is a practice in which prose and poetry are read aloud in small parts and discussed along the way. The study is a qualitative evaluation study with a particular focus on how the participants experienced the reading group supported their life living with cancer. The study was mainly based on the data collected from focus group discussions (...) with the participants, which was analysed qualitatively through open coding. In total, four themes were identified: open space, disconnecting through connecting, community, and resonances and echoes. The participants expressed that the RG helped them to “balance life and cancer”, and “disconnect” from their illness. The cognitive effort needed was beneficial for the participants as a form for “cognitive training.” Since many of the participants had, due to their illness, completely stopped reading books, the reading group also brought literature back into the participants’ lives. Furthermore, it was essential for the participants to feel they contributed to a community, to feel useful and valuable for others. The texts were also important, as some of them resonated strongly with the participants in the way of activating memories and connecting a text to own experiences. After a session, a text could still have an impact as an echo. The results are synthesised, discussed, and supported through the framework of self-determination theory and, more specifically, the basic psychological need theory. The reading group was experienced as a support for autonomy, competence, and relatedness and promoted a feeling of intrinsic motivation that brought about new dimensions in the participants’ lives. The study wishes to increase our knowledge of the benefits of integrating Shared Reading groups as a low-cost, literature-based psychosocial support in cancer organisations. (shrink)

The Golden Age of postwar capitalism has been eclipsed, and with it seemingly also the possibility of harmonizing equality and welfare with efficiency and jobs. Most analyses believe that the emerging postindustrial society is overdetermined by massive, convergent forces, such as tertiarization, new technologies, or globalization, all conspiring to make welfare states unsustainable in the future. Social Foundations of Postindustrial Economies takes a second, more sociological and more institutional, look at the driving forces of economic transformation. What, as a result, (...) stands out is postindustrial diversity, not convergence. Macroscopic, global trends are undoubtedly powerful, yet their influence is easily rivalled by domestic institutional traditions, by the kind of welfare regime that, some generations ago, was put in place. It is, however, especially the family economy that hold the key as to what kind of postindustrial model will emerge, and to how evolving tradeoffs will be managed. Twentieth-century economic analysis depended on a set of sociological assumptions that, now, are invalid. Hence, to better grasp what drives today's economy, we must begin with its social foundations. (shrink)

ABSTRACTIn clinical circles, the concept of “moral injury” has rapidly gained traction. Yet, from a moral philosophical point of view the concept is less clear than is suggested. That is, in current conceptualizations of moral injury, trauma’s moral dimension seems to be understood in a rather mechanistic and individualized manner. This article makes a start in developing an adequately founded conceptualization of the role of morality in deployment-related distress. It does so by reviewing and synthesizing insights from different disciplines into (...) morality and trauma. This discussion will lead to three positions: values and norms are by definition characterized by conflict, moral conflict may entail important social dimensions, and moral conflict may lead to altered beliefs about previously held values. These insights provide important steps in further developing conceptions of the role of morality in deployment-related suffering. (shrink)

This article explores a question format consisting of `you say' plus a version of what the co-participant has said, which is used to ask for confirmation of something said in an earlier sequence. Questions using this you say x format often request not only confirmation but also accounts and can, on occasions, be taken as challenging the interactional balance, that is, be treated as disaffiliative. The article investigates the sequential, prosodic and grammatical conditions for affiliative and disaffiliative uses of you (...) say x questions and discusses the potential institution specificity of the phenomenon. It is found that the clearly disaffiliative you say x questions are parts of dispreferred and disaligning moves, that they have `marked' prosody, that they raise problems, and that they are most often prefaced by `objecting' particles. Affiliative you say x questions are aligning next sequences in environments where the focus is on information delivery. They have `unmarked' prosody and they contribute to getting information on record. You say x questions which call for accounts without being clearly disaffiliative, are also examined. Even though they often raise problematic issues, they are not sequentially disaligning and have less `marked' prosody than the disaffiliative cases. (shrink)

This article analyses the micro dynamics of agency represented in the life story of a Mexican right-wing female politician — particularly how agency manifests itself in the way she repeats the rhetorical structures of her party’s discourse. Although claiming to be a modern woman, a high ranking political participant, she repeatedly refers to the traditional ideal of motherhood that also figures prominently in the right-wing party to which she belongs. Still, at some point, she goes beyond merely repeating the dominant (...) discourse in constructing her own political subjectivity. In tracking her life story, the micro dynamics of her agency are explored through text and discourse analysis in which intertextuality and intersectionality of gender are instrumental. An attempt is made to overcome framing agency in the dichotomy between compliance and resistance. In doing so, the article also engages in recent debate on agency in European Journal of Women’s Studies. (shrink)

Publication Zero Point shows the results of a four-years inquiry into the concept of 'measurability'. The book encompasses thirty-eight pictureworks and a philosophical thought experiment. It invites the reader to contemplate and compile their personal 'zero point' as a portrait of God. -/- Measurability appears to be a problematic concept. The boundaries between fixed and fluid; between sharp and vague; between coloured and non-coloured; between love and hate. When does one state of affairs turn into the other? When is something (...) still measurable? And: is it essential for something to be measurable at all? -/- A single drinking glass was the starting point for transformational processes of photographic images into multi-layered pictureworks. Pictorial spaces that are variable and subject to chance in an experimental, unconscious method of choice, chance, inspiration, and demolition. The results of split, remodel, and repeat invite you to explore and contemplate the notions of space and time as a dimension, in which meaning remains something definitely unfinished, but in which measurability is crucial. After all, when there is nothing to hold on to, you have to choose a point of departure from which you can reorganise your life. -/- There are several ways to leaf through the book and engage in its content. Each of the thirty-eight pictureworks is accompanied by a philosophical caption. These captions are part of a larger philosophical deliberation of three countenances which together make a portrait of God. Each caption can be read separately next to the picturework. Each picturework can be enjoyed next to a specific caption. Another way to work with the captions is to read them within their larger con text: unfold the last page of the book, reflect, and search for cross-references next to any particular picturework. (shrink)

This paper discusses the Uniqueness Thesis, a core thesis in the epistemology of disagreement. After presenting uniqueness and clarifying relevant terms, a novel counterexample to the thesis will be introduced. This counterexample involves logical disagreement. Several objections to the counterexample are then considered, and it is argued that the best responses to the counterexample all undermine the initial motivation for uniqueness.

A key question in the philosophy of logic is how we have epistemic justification for claims about logical entailment (assuming we have such justification at all). Justification holism asserts that claims of logical entailment can only be justified in the context of an entire logical theory, e.g., classical, intuitionistic, paraconsistent, paracomplete etc. According to holism, claims of logical entailment cannot be atomistically justified as isolated statements, independently of theory choice. At present there is a developing interest in—and endorsement of—justification holism (...) due to the revival of an abductivist approach to the epistemology of logic. This paper presents an argument against holism by establishing a foundational entailment-sentence of deduction which is justified independently of theory choice and outside the context of a whole logical theory. (shrink)

Name der Zeitschrift: Semiotica Jahrgang: 2018 Heft: 225 Seiten: 77-102.

The present study investigates the influence of self-regulatory focus on consumer ethical beliefs (i.e., consumers’ judgment of various unethical consumer practices). The self-regulatory focus framework is highly influential and applies to an impressively wide spectrum of topics across a diverse array of domains. However, previous research has not yet examined the link between this personality construct and the consumer ethics field. Findings indicate that promotion affects one’s attitude toward questionable consumer practices with those having a stronger (versus weaker) promotion focus (...) being more likely to believe these consumer misbehaviors to be acceptable. Further, this study shows that prevention influences one’s perception of morally dubious consumer practices with those having a stronger (versus weaker) prevention focus being more inclined to believe these questionable consumer activities to be unacceptable. (shrink)

Sociologist Niklas Luhmann argued that the law functions as society’s immune system by regulating conflicts that threaten the certainty of expectation structures. In this article, we argue that law itself has become a target of new social immune mechanisms. Since the 1980s, welfare states have increasingly seen their own structures as a threat. Today, the ideal is a public sector consisting of organizations that constantly emerge anew by selecting the structures that fit each specific moment, case, and citizen. To protect (...) public sector organizations against their own structures, ‘potentialization’ now functions as a social autoimmune mechanism by initiating a constant search for new openings and possibilities. This critique of structures includes a critique of legal structures like rights. Looking at the Danish law of early retirement as our empirical case, this paper analyzes, how the tension between law and ‘potentialization’ is built into the law itself. While the law gives citizens certain rights to early retirement, it simultaneously ‘protects’ against the same rights by potentializing citizens. ‘Potentialization’ here functions as a mechanism that protects the operations of a system against its legal structures. It functions by ‘un-relating’ those operations from the structures. This means that when citizens claim their right to pensions, the social workers can reject them on the grounds of a right to a future that is not foreclosed and ‘parked’ on a pension. The paper’s contribution is to show how potentialization works by dissolving even fundamental legal expectations. This profoundly transforms the relationship between the citizen and the public sector. (shrink)

Fenomenološki etos, po katerem je povzet naslov knjige, izhaja iz etične prenove v evropski filozofiji, ki se je začela na začetku 20. stoletja. Zasnoval ga je oče fenomenologije Edmund Husserl in se ob tem deloma navezal na Schelerjev koncept materialne etike, etike vrednot. Avtor v knjigi prikaže, kaj to pomeni na eni strani za etiko samo, na drugi strani pa za odnos med etičnostjo in religioznostjo. Celotno problematiko pa konkretizira z analizo in interpretacijo razmerja med kategoričnim imperativom in zlatim pravilom (...) kot najstarejšim moralnim pravilom vseh svetovnih civilizacij, tako da ga danes obravnavamo kot ključni element svetovnega etosa. V tem kontekstu sta prek Assmannovega in Girardovega tematiziranja krščanstva problematizirana tudi monoteistična ekskluzivnost in nasilnost. V sklepnem delu knjige je prikazan razvoj fenomenološkega etosa od Husserl prek Heideggerja in Levinasa do Derridaja in Mariona. Knjiga se sklene s predstavitvijo vloge in pomena fenomenološkega etosa v kontekstu globalne krize sodobnega sveta. (shrink)

It is shown that the elementary principles Count and Count are logically independent in the system IΔ0 of Bounded Arithmetic. More specifically it is shown that Count implies Count exactly when each prime factor in p is a factor in q.

I would like to thank Prof. Stephen Read ( 2011 ) and Prof. Andrew Benjamin ( 2011 ) for both giving inspiring and elaborate comments on my article “Dwelling in-between walls: the architectural surround”. As I will try to demonstrate below, their two different responses not only supplement my article very nicely, but also augment each other’s. In the beginning of Read’s comment, as he sets the stage for his observations, he unknowingly also points in the direction of Benjamin’s remarks: (...) “I propose not to de-construct therefore, or add a point of view from an orthogonal position, but to try in the spirit of multidisciplinarity to talk in languages not well practiced—to begin to build what Bowker and Star call ‘boundary objects’ between different starting positions; points we can gather around to think further together” (Read 2011 ). Whereas Read facilitates a multidisciplinary dialogue, Benjamin focuses on how the absence of an initial distinction might threaten the endeavour of my paper. In my reply to Read and Benjamin, I will discuss their suggestions and arguments, while at the same time hopefully clarifying the postphenomenological approach to architecture. (shrink)

The aim of this paper is threefold. Firstly, §1 and §2 introduce the novel concept logical akrasia by analogy to epistemic akrasia. If successful, the initial sections will draw attention to an interesting akratic phenomenon which has not received much attention in the literature on akrasia (although it has been discussed by logicians in different terms). Secondly, §3 and §4 present a dilemma related to logical akrasia. From a case involving the consistency of Peano Arithmetic and Gödel’s Second Incompleteness Theorem (...) it’s shown that either we must be agnostic about the consistency of Peano Arithmetic or akratic in our arithmetical theorizing. If successful, these sections will underscore the pertinence and persistence of akrasia in arithmetic (by appeal to Gödel’s seminal work). Thirdly, §5 concludes by suggesting a way of translating the dilemma of arithmetical akrasia into a case of regular epistemic akrasia; and further how one might try to escape the dilemma when it’s framed this way. (shrink)

Default logic has been a very active research topic in artificial intelligence since the early 1980s, but has not received as much attention in the philosophical literature thus far. This paper shows one way in which the technical tools of artificial intelligence can be applied in contemporary epistemology by modeling a paradigmatic case of deep disagreement using default logic. In §1 model-building viewed as a kind of philosophical progress is briefly motivated, while §2 introduces the case of deep disagreement we (...) aim to model. On the heels of this, §3 defines our formal framework, viz., a refined Horty-style default logic. §4 then uses the framework to model deep disagreement, and finally §5 provides a critical discussion of the result. (shrink)

Various kinds of user and patient involvement are spreading in healthcare in most Western countries. The purpose of this study is to critically assess the actual conditions for patients’ involvement in healthcare practice in Greenland and to point to possibilities for development. Patients’ perspectives on their own conduct of everyday life with illness and their possibilities for participation when hospitalized are examined in relation to the conditions in a hospital setting dominated by biomedical practice. On a theoretical level, it is (...) argued that the concept of ‘participation’ is preferable to the concept ‘involvement’ in healthcare. The study shows that there are several interconnected areas for development: the structural frames of hospital practice, including professionals’ possibilities for handling patient participation, and the agency of the patients conducting their everyday lives when hospitalized. Consequences of the biomedical hegemony are discussed in relation to WHO ́s broader approach to disease, illness and health and the still existing postcolonial traces of power and hierarchy. Finally it is argued that patient participation during hospitalization will promote the patients ́ conduct of everyday life, the cultural knowledge of the professionals, and the democratization of the healthcare sector. Such changes might be connected to a more encompassing democratic societal development – in Greenland as well as globally. (shrink)

The experience of grace is currently attracting increased empirical interest. Validated instruments to assess aspects of the experience of grace in a secularized context are scarce which limits current psychological research on grace in other than highly religious populations. We present a bottom-up construction of the Experiencing Grace Scale (EGS) and evidence supporting its reliability and validity. Confirmatory factor analysis showed a good fit for the four subscales: Appraising Grace, Giving Grace, Receiving Grace, and Divine Grace. Reliability analysis showed overall (...) good internal consistency and test–retest stability. Convergent validity was demonstrated by means of expected associations between subscales of the EGS and other relevant measures. Predictive validity was confirmed by associations between subscales of the EGS at measurement Wave 1 with mental well-being scales at Wave 2. The EGS contributes to further research on the experience of grace and its relationship to other psychosocial variables in the field of positive psychology. (shrink)

For each $p \geq 2$ there exists a model ${\bf M}^{*}$ of $I\Delta_{0}(\alpha)$ which satisfies the Count( $p$ ) principle. Furthermore, if $p$ contains all prime factors of $q$ there exist $n,r \in {\bf M}^{*}$ and a bijective map $f \in {\rm dom}({\bf M}^{*})$ mapping $\{1,2,\ldots,n\}$ onto $\{1,2,\ldo ts,n+q^{r}\}$ . A corollary is a complete classification of the Count( $q$ ) versus Count( $p$ ) problem. Another corollary shows that the pigeon-hole principle for injective maps does not follow from any (...) of the Count( $q$ ) principles. This solves an open question [Ajtai 94]. (shrink)

“Sometimes there is no other word but ‘beautiful’ to describe the evocation of the death of an otherwise insignificant warrior”. Buxton (2004, 151-152) refers to a group of similes and comparisons in Homeric death scenes that thus far has not been studied thoroughly. There is an abundance of dying scenes in the Homeric epics, especially in the “Iliad”, and in particular those illustrated by similes and comparisons add significant meaning to the plot. Similes and comparisons have various literary functions and (...) are often used as structuring elements in the narrative. Death similes are used to characterize the victim and aggressor during their fatal confrontation. By extension, they equally provide a characterization of death itself, which can be depicted from different points of view. Death can be seen as a natural part of the cycle of human life or, in the heroic war ideology, as an instrument to win glory. Many of the typically “Homeric” similes and comparisons used in death scenes have been imitated in later epics. Not only the bare images, but also the deeper message they can imply is often transferred to its new context. This paper describes the occurrence of death similes in the “Iliad” and “Odyssey” as a foundation for its reception in the “Posthomerica” of Quintus of Smyrna. This 3rd century AD epic provides a clear example of Homeric imitatio and aemulatio. Quintus’ typically Homeric style includes an abundant use of Homeric similes, also in dying scenes. In fact, similes prove to be even more frequently used for this purpose in the Posthomerica than in the Homeric epics. This study analyses Quintus’ rich reception of the Homeric death simile and its effects on the narrative structures of the Posthomerica. Although obviously inspired by Homer, Quintus’ use of death similes is further elaborated to support the plot by means of a linearly evolving characterization of both death and its aggressors and victims. This study therefore proposes an interpretation of the Posthomerica as an original literary composition. (shrink)

In this paper I first discuss the colour-octahedron and the position of this model as an idealized system with respect to the remarks on colour-concepts in Remarks on Colour (RC). The next part examines the notion of aspect seeing in the light of the colour-octahedron and RC. From there a connection is made with On Certainty (OC). By linking the remarks on colour, seeing aspects and certainty, it may become clear that the investigations of Wittgenstein concerning colour and certainty direct (...) us towards a reflective dynamics and an anthropological interpretation of his ideas. (shrink)

Acts of civil disobedience are undertaken in defense of a variety of causes ranging from banning GMO crops and prohibiting abortion to fighting inequality and saving the environment. Recently, Brownlee has argued that the merit of a cause is not relevant to the establishment of a moral right to civil disobedience. Instead, it is the fact that a dissenter believes his cause for protest to be morally right that is salient. We may term her and similar such theories belief-relative theories (...) of civil disobedience. In this paper, I first argue that Brownlee’s important argument from conscientious conviction fails in its aim to establish a belief-relative moral right to civil disobedience. I then provide a more general argument that no purely belief-relative theory of civil disobedience grounded in a basic moral value will be tenable. Any moral warrant of civil disobedience that is derived from a value must be limited by the value from which it is derived, as well as by other similarly weighty values. If the moral warrant of civil disobedience is derived from the value of autonomy, then the warrant does not extend to acts of civil disobedience that violate the autonomy of others, or other similarly weighty values. Furthermore, granting a right to disobey in promotion of a grossly unjust view is problematic because civil disobedience ought to serve the role of promoting justice. (shrink)

Name der Zeitschrift: Cognitive Linguistics Jahrgang: 27 Heft: 1 Seiten: 137-145.

This paper is concerned with English noun phrases that denote generalized instances: they do not refer to actual spatio-temporal instances, but to virtual ones that are abstracted from a limited number of actual instances, e.g., a student in Three times, a student complained (Langacker, Foundations of Cognitive Grammar. Volume II: Descriptive application, Stanford University Press, 1991, Dynamicity, fictivity, and scanning: The imaginative basis of logic and linguistic meaning, Cambridge University Press, 2005, forthcoming). Langacker likens generalized instances to generic ones, which (...) constitute “global” generalizations over all actual instances of a type. On the basis of authentic data, I argue that, even though the profiled instance denoted by generic and generalized noun phrases is similar, the way the respective instances are accessed in discourse is very different. My data set consists of English noun phrases that are explicitly marked for generalized instantiation by the addition of a secondary determiner such as same in The twin brothers bought the same car or kind of in There was no way we could match that kind of offer. I compare noun phrases of four sets of secondary determiners, viz. adjectives of multiple exposure (usual), of identity (same, identical), of similarity (similar, comparable) and type noun constructions (kind of/type of/sort of). These data also allow me to refine the concept of generalized instantiation in terms of its semantic subtypes, the semantic interaction between secondary determiner and primary determiner, and the selection criteria for secondary determiners that can express it. (shrink)

The article presents a particular case of undergraduate students working on subprojects within the framework of their supervisors' (the authors') research project during Autumn Semester 2012 and Spring Semester 2013. The article's purpose is to show that an institutionalized focus on students as "research learners" rather than merely curriculum learners proves productive for both research and teaching. We describe the specific university learning context and the particular organization of undergraduate students' supervision and assistantships. The case builds on and further enhances (...) a well-established and proven university model of participant-directed, problem-oriented project work. We explore students' and researchers' experiences of being part of the collaboration, focusing on learning potentials and dilemmas associated with the multiple roles of researcher and student that characterized this particular intertwined research and education arrangement. We show that the connection to the research project assisted students to orientate, learn, and contribute in relation to empirical and theoretical aspects of research and supported the development of broad perspectives and deep analysis. (shrink)

The entanglement of ethics and technology makes it necessary for us to understand and reflect upon our own practices and to question technological hypes. The information and communication technology literacy required to navigate the twenty-first century has to do with recognizing our own human limitations, developing critical measures and acknowledging feelings of estrangement, puzzlement as well as sheer wonder of technology. ICT literacy is indeed all about visions of the good life and the art of living in the twenty-first century. (...) The main focus of this paper is to explore and discuss ICT in relation to pupils and teachers and try to understand why and how these technologies are implemented in the school system. This focus not only allows us to better understand how concepts and habits with respect to ICT are shaped in numerous children, but teaches us to acquire an enhanced sensitivity with regard to ICT in the ‘classic’ literacy context of the educational system. (shrink)

How do the pictures Wittgenstein and his relatives took during his life relate to his philosophical work? The exhibition at the Leopold Museum in Vienna in 2021 demonstrated a complex network of resemblances, overlaps, and cross-references between Wittgenstein’s way of working and the pictures he collected. In this essay, the network is used as an example to argue that a combination of philosophy and artistic sensibility might be a fruitful enrichment for a philosophical practise.

Ernst Jünger is known for his war writings, but is largely ignored by contemporary phenomenologists. In this essay, I explore his e Adventurous Heart which has recently been made available in English. is work consists of a set of fragments which, when related, disclose a coherent ow of philosophical thinking. Speci cally, I show that, beneath a highly poetic and obscure prose, Jünger posits how subjective experience and poetry allow individuals to realize truth. I relate parts of Jünger’s insights to (...) contributions by Husserl, Heidegger and Merleau-Ponty, arguing that Jünger o ers a unique and valuable contribution to the phenomenological discipline. (shrink)

This article introduces the concept of inversion as a rhetorical-political strategy used to redescribe climate concerns from being sacrificed in favour of profitability to seeing that profitability necessitates climate concerns. Drawing on discourse theory and rhetorical analysis, the article analyses discursive struggles in the dominant discourse of fossil-fuel growth in Norway, from 2013 to 2019. By inverting the image of fossil-fuel dependency from growth and success to loss and stagnation in the Norwegian public discourse on fossil fuels and climate risk, (...) those who challenge the hegemonic pro-fossil fuel-investments system pave the way for an alternative description of an ideal welfare state. As such, inversion, as a practice and rhetorical-political strategy may help us understand the strategic manoeuvring of the environmental movements as counter-hegemonic forces. (shrink)

Previous studies show evidence of double standards in terms of individuals being more tolerant of questionable consumer practices than of similar business practices. However, whether these double standards are necessarily due to the fact that one party is a business company while the other is a consumer was not addressed. The results of our two experimental studies, conducted among 277 (Study 1) and 264 (Study 2) participants from a Western European country by means of an anonymous self-administered online survey, demonstrate (...) that the respondents were not only harsher in their judgments of unethical business (vs. consumer) behavior, but also harsher in their judgments of unethical behavior by prosperous (vs. non-prosperous) consumers and prosperous (vs. non-prosperous) business companies (Study 1). Further, they were also less tolerant of unethical behavior by consumers (vs. one’s best friend) and business companies with which they have a less than good (vs. a good) relationship (Study 2). These results indicate that double standards are due to differences in perceived wealth between subjects and in the individual’s relationship with subjects. These two factors imply that double standards are not strictly reserved to consumer–business relations, but might also be used in business–business and consumer–consumer relations. Further, these results indicate that companies need to be aware of the fact that good financial figures may backfire as they might lead individuals to be more critical of a company’s deceptive practices. Moreover, these findings point to the importance of businesses investing resources—and to keep investing resources—in developing a good relationship with stakeholders as these good relationships lead to stakeholders being less prone to make moral condemnations. (shrink)

In this paper I argue that the notion of aspect seeing is a substantial tool to shed light on the question whether rule-following is something necessary individual or social and on how this issue is connected to novelty. Bloor's (1997) insights will be used as representative of the social primacy of rule-following and Luntley (2003) will be taken up in order to examine an example of the individual stance. Weighing pros and cons and taking the notion of aspect seeing into (...) account, these insights will lead us to the conclusion not only that the individual and the social are merely constructs, created by us for practical purposes, but also that we tend to overlook our most basic ties with the world, exactly because of these constructs and conventions. If we adopt an artistic meta-view and make use of the philosopher’s reflection, Wittgenstein's emphasis on the importance of ‘everyday life’, also in philosophy, takes on a new meaning. (shrink)

Recently, several scholars have argued that scientists can accept scientific claims in a collective process, and that the capacity of scientific groups to form joint acceptances is linked to a functional division of labor between the group members. However, these accounts reveal little about how the cognitive content of the jointly accepted claim is formed, and how group members depend on each other in this process. In this paper, I shall therefore argue that we need to link analyses of joint (...) acceptance with analyses of distributed cognition. To sketch how this can be done, I shall present a detailed case study, and on the basis of the case, analyze the process through which a group of scientists jointly accept a new scientific claim and at a later stage jointly accept to revise previously accepted claims. I shall argue that joint acceptance in science can be established in situations where an overall conceptual structure is jointly accepted by a group of scientists while detailed parts of it are distributed among group members with different areas of expertise, a condition that I shall call a heterogeneous conceptual consensus. Finally, I shall show how a heterogeneous conceptual consensus can work as a constraint against scientific change and address the question how changes may nevertheless occur. (shrink)

What do we mean by ‘reality’? Merging philosophical insights with contemporary art, Tine Wilde lets us consider and contemplate who and what we ‘really’ are. Working on artists’ book Zero Point, the article presents a brief overview of her thoughts, relating a spatial-geometrical perspective to the quest for self-knowledge, and subsequently extrapolating the findings to the notion of unknown knowledge.

This paper extends Mori’s (IEEE Robot Autom Mag 19:98–100, 2012) uncanny valley-hypothesis to include technologies that fail its basic criterion that uncanniness arises when the subject experiences a discrepancy in a machine’s human likeness. In so doing, the paper considers Mori’s hypothesis about the uncanny valley as an instance of what Heidegger calls the ‘challenging revealing’ nature of modern technology. It introduces seeming autonomy and heteronomy as phenomenological categories that ground human being-in-the-world including our experience of things and people. It (...) is suggested that this categorical distinction is more foundational than Heidegger’s existential structures and phenomenological categories. Having introduced this novel phenomenological distinction, the paper considers the limits of Mori’s hypothesis by drawing on an example from science fiction that showcases that uncanniness need not only be caused by machines that resemble human beings. In so doing, it explores how the seeming autonomy-heteronomy distinction clarifies (at least some of) the uncanniness that can arise when humans encounter advanced technology which is irreducible to the anthropocentrism that shapes Mori’s original hypothesis. (shrink)

How does a coloured bird end up on a TUGboat? This is the story of an artist who studied philosophy and combined her skills in a PhD at the University of Amsterdam (NL). In order to write her dissertation, she had to learn the LaTeX typesetting programme. Many years later, she still makes art and still writes down her thoughts in LaTeX, with the Memoir class and XeLaTeX as first choice. Always trying to stretch the limits of the programme to (...) her convenience. -/- This essay is not a technical article written by a developer conjuring up ingenious innovations to the LaTeX programme. By contrast, it discusses the relationship between LaTeX, art (photography) and the concept of 'measurability' from the perspective of a philosophising artist. (shrink)

This article focuses on the welfare state, which includes social protection, health, education and training, housing, and social services, but can also be conceived more broadly to include policies that affect earnings capacity and the structure of the labour market. It discusses the difficulties of capturing the impact of the welfare state on income inequality, given that one does not observe what the distribution would be in the absence of the welfare state or specific aspects of it. Theories of welfare (...) state redistribution are reviewed, and the conventional categorization into welfare ‘regimes’ discussed. The empirical evidence about the extent and nature of redistribution by the welfare state is described, including noncash services as well as cash transfers, and the impact on poverty in particular is discussed. Economic inequality is also strongly affected by the political process, and vice versa. (shrink)

Inspired by an institutional logics approach, this article analyzes the barriers to and drivers of the integration of social media in the communication practices in Norwegian ministries. Drawing on rich ethnographic data, the paper analyzes the process of integrating social media logic into government communication units that were largely organized through a news media regime. To understand the process, it emphasizes four dimensions: how the symbolic resources, material resources, formal rules and practices have defined the logics of government communication in (...) the period studied (May 2015–May 2016). The analysis meets the call for more empirical investigation into the interplay between the traditional news logics and new digital logics. (shrink)

Open peer commentary on the article “Lived Experience and Cognitive Science Reappraising Enactivism’s Jonasian Turn” by Mario Villalobos & Dave Ward. Upshot: We argue that Villalobos and Ward’s criticism misses two crucial aspects of Varelian enactivism. These are, first, that enactivism attempts to offer a rigorous scientific justification for its teleological claims, and second, that enactivism in fact pays too little attention to the nature of human phenomenology and intentionality, rather than anthropomorphically over-valuing it.