Rule-applying legal arguments are traditionally treated as a kind of syllogism. Such a treatment overlooks the fact that legal principles and rules are not statements which describe the world, but rather means by which humans impose structure on the world. Legal rules create legal consequences, they do not describe them. This has consequences for the logic of rule- and principle-applying arguments, the most important of which may be that such arguments are defeasible. This book offers an extensive analysis of the (...) role of rules and principles in legal reasoning, which focuses on the close relationship between rules, principles, and reasons. Moreover, it describes a logical theory which assigns a central place to the notion of reasons for and against a conclusion, and which is especially suited to deal with rules and principles. (shrink)

This paper gives a logical characterization of the interrelation between law and morals. To this purpose it first outlines a logic for defeasible reasoning with rules and principles and illustrates the operation of this logic in the field of law. Then it offers a brief argument why law and morals are interrelated. This paper ends by showing how the logic for defeasible reasoning provides tools to logically characterize some aspects of the interrelation between law and morals.

Background:Nurses working within acute psychiatric settings often face multifaceted moral dilemmas and incompatible demands.Methods:Qualitative individual and focus group interviews were conducted.Ethical considerations:Approval was received from the Norwegian Social Science Data Services. Ethical Research Guidelines were followed.Participants and research context:Thirty nurses working within acute psychiatric wards in two mental health hospitals.Results:Various coping strategies were used: mentally sorting through their ethical dilemmas or bringing them to the leadership, not ‘bringing problems home’ after work or loyally doing as told and trying to make (...) oneself immune. Colleagues and work climate were important for choice of coping strategies.Discussion:Nurses’ coping strategies may influence both their clinical practice and their private life. Not facing their moral distress seemed to come at a high price.Conclusions:It seems essential for nurses working in acute psychiatric settings to come to terms with distressing events and identify and address the moral issues they face. As moral distress to a great extent is an organisational problem experienced at a personal level, it is important that a work climate is developed that is open for ethical discussions and nourishes adaptive coping strategies and moral resilience. (shrink)

This paper deals with the questions of whether the law should be coherent and what this coherence would amount to. In this connection so‐called “integrated coherentism” is introduced. According to integrated coherentism, an acceptance set is coherent if and only if it contains everything that should rationally be accepted according to what else one accepts and does not contain anything that should rationally be rejected according to what else one accepts. Such an acceptance set is ideally a theory of everything, (...) including amongst others standards for rational aceptance. On the assumption that the law, as a social phenomenon, is what the best theory about the law says it is, the law must be coherent, because the best theory of the law is part of an integratedly coherent theory of everything. This view is compatible with Raz's view that the law stems from different sources that need not be coherent in the sense that they consistently elaborate the same underlying principles or policies. Raz's view is not a consequence of integrated coherentism, however. (shrink)

I denne artikkelen drøfter vi hvordan norske forbrukeres holdninger til genmodifisert mat har endret seg gjennom årene. Allerede da genteknologi ble etablert som et eget forskningsfelt og utviklingsområde på 1980-tallet, viste den norske opinionen stor skepsis. Den norske lovgivningen tidlig på 1990-tallet utmerket seg også som den mest restriktive i Europa. Dette bildet endret seg ikke mye i løpet av 1990-tallet, mens opinionen i mange europeiske land i disse årene kom mer på linje med den norske. I hele denne perioden (...) var både forbrukeropinionen og lovgivningen i USA langt mer aksepterende enn i Europa, noe som ga seg utslag i en handelskonflikt som toppet seg med EU sitt moratorium for utsetting av genmodifiserte planter i 1999. I denne artikkelen stiller vi spørsmålet om norske forbrukeres holdninger til genmodifisert mat har endret seg de siste årene. Artikkelen viser at mellom 2002 og 2007 er det en voksende gruppe av forbrukere som ser ut til å akseptere genmodifiserte matvarer hvis det fører til en helse- eller miljøgevinst. Men til tross for dette så er nordmenn fremdeles skeptiske til genmodifisert mat. Det kan tolkes slik at genmodifisert mat ikke har ført til den nytten som ansees nødvendig for å ta den risikoen det innebærer å gjøre et betydelig skifte i matseddel. Matpatriotisme og en kulturell konservatisme når det gjelder skifte i matvaner bidrar også til å forklare den dominerende vente-og-se-holdningen. (shrink)

The explosive emergence of net-based learning in higher education brings with it new possibilities and constraints in teaching and learning environments. This edited collection considers how the concept of Academic Bildung - a term suggesting a personal educational process beyond actual educational learning - can be applied to net-based higher education, drawing on Scandinavian research to address the topic from both a theoretical and practical standpoint. Chapters explore the facilitation of online courses and argue how and why universities should involve (...) dimensions of Academic Bildung on both a strategic and technological pedagogical content level.The book is structured in three parts: Part I frames the current state of net-based learning and introduces Bildung as a concept; Part II contains a set of 4 case studies in Norway, Sweden and Denmark, also including a fifth study that looks at Scandinavian approaches to teaching and learning in comparison with data from USA, UK, Australia and Canada; Part III provides a synthesis of theories and cases to examine whether a Scandinavian orientation can be discerned. Contributions suggest that in order to address one of the fundamental functions of higher education, the ability to produce new knowledge, the Academic Bildung of the students has to be in focus. Grounded in theoretical and empirical discussion, this book will appeal to researchers and academics in the field of higher education as well as personnel who work with teaching and learning with technology, and academics interested in the question of Academic Bildung. (shrink)

This paper deals with two issues in the field of reasoning by analogy in the law. The one issue is whether there exists such a thing as analogous rule application, or whether there is only the ‘normal’ application of a broadened rule. It is argued that if rules, as the entities made by a legislator, are distinguished from generalised solutions for cases, the idea of analogous application of rules makes sense. It is also shown how the so-called ‘reason-based model of (...) rule application’, in contrast to the traditional modus ponens or subsumption model, makes it easy to give a logical account of analogous rule application. The other issue is how to argue logically about whether two cases are sufficiently similar to adopt the outcome of the one case for the other case. Section 3 provides a general logical model to establish this. The model is based on the comparison of the reasons for and against a particular solution in the two cases. (shrink)

This article describes how the facts in social reality take an intermediate position between objective facts and purely subjective ‘facts’. In turn, these social facts can be subdivided into constructivist and non-constructivist facts. The defining difference is that non-constructivist facts are completely determined by an approximate consensus between the members of a social group, while constructivist facts are founded in such a consensus but can nevertheless be questioned. Ought fact are such constructivist facts. Because they are founded in social reality, (...) a naturalistic theory of ought facts is attractive. Because constructivist facts are always open to questioning, we can explain why the facts in social reality may found ought facts but are nevertheless not the final word about them. (shrink)

The aim of this article is to continue the discussion about factors of importance for an including ethics of care. A further polarization between partiality and impartiality does not seem a relevant approach. What is important is to direct attention both to the other and to the third person, which requires an acknowledgement of responsibility that extends beyond established relationships. Thus, we need to draw attention not only to the vulnerability existing within every seriously ill or injured person, but to (...) factors of importance for marginalization of groups like refugees, people suffering from serious mental illness, and substance misusers, to mention some in the Western world. Marginalized groups are groups experiencing a discrepancy between need of health care and care given. They are not given proper priority in the distribution of resources, and they may experience ignorance when they first meet the healthcare system as patients.Efforts to understand what circumstances can lead to inadequate inclusion indicate that the elements of differentness and extensive losses of life contexts which may be causing feelings of hopelessness and helplessness in the health professionals, are key factors posing challenges to empathy both within and beyond established relationships, besides geographical distance. Groups of people who have suffered extensive loss in their life contexts may be threatening for us, as they reflect our own fears, and remind us of our own vulnerability.I raise the question: How can we contribute to meeting the need for an ethics of care that extends beyond the familiar to the unfamiliar both in established and non‐established relationships? (shrink)

This article takes the failure to grasp fully the paradigmatic case of European security after the Cold War as an example of how International Relations (IR) would benefit from reformulating not only its empirical research questions but also several of its central conceptual building blocks with the aid of Bourdieusian sociology. The separation between theory and practice and the overemphasis on military power and state actors blind IR from seeing the power struggles that reshaped European security. Instead, a Bourdieusian reformulation (...) adds new types of agency, focuses on the social production of forms of power, and stresses the processual rather than the substantive character of social reality. (shrink)

ABSTRACT This article is written in the field of the philosophy of science. The aim is to express how painting and drawing can be used as part of a phenomenological research method. The painter or drawer is a visual researcher in the process of capturing a holistic and truthful experience of a cultural phenomenon. We will highlight the visual researcher process and how the experience of truth is known throughout this process. The paining and sketches, which we present in this (...) article, are part of a book, together with written narratives and pedagogical theory – on teaching as a phenomenon – called Lærerpraksis og Pedagogisk teori. The paintings and drawings present teaching in a way that complements and expands the written text. The sketches and painting of teaching attempt to establish the truth as unconcealment of a phenomenon. Our argumentation is based on the theories of Gadamer, Cassirer, Panofsky and Heidegger. Gadamer connects humanistic research with artistry and the experience of truth. Cassirer argues that the perception of a cultural phenomenon begins as a holistic understanding to bring forth the symbolic form or essence of the phenomenon. Panofsky transfers the theory of Cassirer into the field of painting. The concept of synthetic intuition is the intrinsic knowing of a painting, which corresponds to Cassirer’s concept of symbolic forms. Heidegger’s theory explores how art unfolds and preserves the truth. We will argue that the connection between art and truth could bring forth important perspectives on phenomenological science and turn the research activity closer to an artistic form. (shrink)

A drop of blood drawn from thy country's bosom Should grieve thee more than streams of foreign gore.—Shakespeare, First Part of King Henry the SixthA system of ethics produced by prohibitions is a community's condition of possibility. What maintains this system is the community's identity, the way members of the group mythically describe and convince themselves through mutual mimesis of their mutual belonging, that is, of their mutual ethics of nonviolence. This maintained space of ethical mutuality is defined against a (...) larger external space of mutual violence.First removed from mutual mimetic violence through prohibitions, community and its self-description as identity are then separated from outsiders through the... (shrink)

This article argues that it is possible to hold autonomous agents themselves, and not only their makers, users or owners, responsible for the acts of these agents. In this connection autonomous systems are computer programs that interact with the outside world without human interference. They include such systems as ‘intelligent’ weapons and self-driving cars. The argument is based on an analogy between human beings and autonomous agents and its main element asserts that if humans can be held responsible, so can, (...) in principle, autonomous agents, as humans are more like autonomous agents than is often assumed. (shrink)

There is an ongoing discussion concerning personal vs. impersonal considerations in professional care. In this article, three different positions within the ethics of closeness will be discussed. These are: (a) reserving the ethics of closeness for close experienced others, ‘including the experienced Other’, which is Nortvedt's position; (b) trying to bring the distant, non‐experienced others closer, ‘including the Third’; and (c) finally, an examination of whether a perspective of closeness may lead to the exclusion of various groups in need of (...) help, ‘including the Other at the expense of the Third’. These positions are discussed with a view to clarifying some of the challenges that the ethics of closeness faces when it maintains that greater ethical obligation is associated with personal than with impersonal relations, without discussing the terms on which the obligation is based. Key questions that arise for a nurse or other health professional are: If our primary moral responsibility is for those that are close to us, the experienced others, who is to be responsible for those that are outside the established health services, the non‐experienced others? Is it evident that favouring the experienced others is based on legitimate needs? Can a discussion on the legitimate basis of nursing be avoided in questions relating to closeness and priorities? This discussion touches the heart of our discipline. Is a one‐sided perspective of closeness, rejecting moral responsibility for those with whom we have no relationship, a defensible ethical position? (shrink)

BackgroundIn this article, the sources and features of moral distress as experienced by acute psychiatric care nurses are explored.Research designA qualitative design with 16 individual in-depth interviews was chosen. Braun and Clarke’s six analytic phases were used.Ethical considerationsApproval was obtained from the Norwegian Social Science Data Services. Participation was confidential and voluntary.FindingsBased on findings, a somewhat wider definition of moral distress is introduced where nurses experiencing being morally constrained, facing moral dilemmas or moral doubt are included. Coercive administration of medicines, (...) coercion that might be avoided and resistance to the use of coercion are all morally stressful situations. Insufficient resources, mentally poorer patients and quicker discharges lead to superficial treatment. Few staff on evening shifts/weekends make nurses worry when follow-up of the most ill patients, often suicidal, in need of seclusion or with heightened risk of violence, must be done by untrained personnel. Provision of good care when exposed to violence is morally challenging. Feelings of inadequacy, being squeezed between ideals and clinical reality, and failing the patients create moral distress. Moral distress causes bad conscience and feelings of guilt, frustration, anger, sadness, inadequacy, mental tiredness, emotional numbness and being fragmented. Others feel emotionally ‘flat’, cold and empty, and develop high blood pressure and problems sleeping. Even so, some nurses find that moral stress hones their ethical awareness.ConclusionMoral distress in acute psychiatric care may be caused by multiple reasons and cause a variety of reactions. Multifaceted ethical dilemmas, incompatible demands and proximity to patients’ suffering make nurses exposed to moral distress. Moral distress may lead to reduced quality care, which again may lead to bad conscience and cause moral distress. It is particularly problematic if moral distress results in nurses distancing and disconnecting themselves from the patients and their inner selves. (shrink)

In this article, we discuss the practice of conducting research in one's own field, in this case, from a position as a researcher with a nursing background doing fieldwork in a hospital and in one's own organization, an orthopedic surgical department. We show how an “insider” researcher position paves the way for analytical insights about sleep as an institutional phenomenon in the orthopedic surgical infrastructure and how acute and elective patient trajectories differ but build on the same logic, creating the (...) same dynamics of inclusion and exclusion. Through a situated and sociomaterial perspective, we analyze different clinical interactions in which we follow the hospital bed as an example of a central relational element that co‐creates sleep as an institutional phenomenon. Inspired by Karen Barad, we demonstrate how to move diffractively when doing and analyzing fieldwork and argue how moving diffractively as a researcher doing fieldwork “at home” is productive and challenges the concept and demand of “distance” as the phenomenological exercise in fieldwork. (shrink)

The paper consists of three parts. In the first part five kinds of defeasibility are distinguished that is ontological, conceptual, epistemic, justification and logical defeasibility. In the second part it is argued that from these, justification defeat is the phenomenon that plays a role in legal reasoning. In the third part, the view is defended that non-monotonic logics are not necessary to model justification defeat, but that they are so to speak the natural way to model this phenomenon.

This article examines one practice for challenging a co-participant, the use of polar interrogatives that are unanswerable. These are questions that are designed to receive a confirming answer of the same polarity as the question, so-called `Same Polarity Questions'. Speakers accomplish this bias by formatting the question in accordance with their state of knowledge. Based on the recipient's prior turns at talk, a speaker can infer what the recipient's stance towards some matter is and use a `Same Polarity Question' to (...) assert this inference and invite the recipient to confirm the stance. However, the sequential context in which these questions are produced means that with a confirming answer the recipient is heard to be in disagreement with the speaker and can subsequently be held accountable for this disagreement. Neither is a disconfirming response a real alternative, because this would contrast with the information provided by the recipient in prior talk. As this information is what leads the speaker to convey a certain belief about the recipient, the recipient is accountable for having misled the speaker. Because both confirming and disconfirming answers are accountable and hence problematic, recipients treat this type of question as unanswerable and instead orient to it as a challenge. (shrink)

This article is concerned with some of the ramifications of the affective dimension of Fanon’s writing. In their latest book, Commonwealth, Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri take Fanon’s attempt to transcend European universality through the struggle for a ‘new universality’ as an exemplary schema that informs their politics of alter-modernity. In the article, I show that the affective dimension of Fanon’s search for a new universality is far more anti- than alter-European, albeit in an ambivalent way. I analyse how this (...) difference between an affective ‘anti’ and an intellectual ‘alter’ arises in Fanon’s analysis and experience of racism. I refer to this particular experience as mis-interpellation and analyse the equally particular affect it generates. More generally, I show that if one is to make use of Fanon’s work today one cannot separate the intellectual and the affective that are so intertwined in his analytical work as Hardt and Negri do. To do so is to abstract from the serious political ramifications that the presence of this affective dimension entails. (shrink)

The paper focuses on Albert Borgmann’s philosophy of technology. We argue in support of Borgmann’s “Churchill principle” (“we shape our buildings, and afterwards they shape us”) as presented in Real American Ethics (RAE) (2006) by comparing it to findings within behavioral economics in general and to the “libertarian paternalism” of Cass R. Sunstein and Richard H. Thaler in particular. According to our interpretation of it, the Churchill principle implies that because our material environment in fact influences our choices, this environment (...) can and should be rearranged so that we “automatically” will tend to make better decisions. Having defended the Churchill principle, we go on to discuss how this principle is related to Borgmann’s approach in Technology and the Character of Contemporary Life (TCCL) (1984). In this earlier work, Borgmann suggests we reform technology by making room for focal practices, that is, meaningful practices in which we develop our skills and excellences. We argue that while these two works have different basic approaches—rearranging the material environment in RAE and developing certain skills and excellences in TCCL—they can and ought to be seen, not as mutually excluding, but as supplementing one another. Together they form a highly salient critique of technology that takes into consideration questions of the good life without becoming overly paternalistic. (shrink)

The paper focuses on Albert Borgmann’s philosophy of technology. We argue in support of Borgmann’s “Churchill principle” as presented in Real American Ethics by comparing it to findings within behavioral economics in general and to the “libertarian paternalism” of Cass R. Sunstein and Richard H. Thaler in particular. According to our interpretation of it, the Churchill principle implies that because our material environment in fact influences our choices, this environment can and should be rearranged so that we “automatically” will tend (...) to make better decisions. Having defended the Churchill principle, we go on to discuss how this principle is related to Borgmann’s approach in Technology and the Character of Contemporary Life. In this earlier work, Borgmann suggests we reform technology by making room for focal practices, that is, meaningful practices in which we develop our skills and excellences. We argue that while these two works have different basic approaches—rearranging the material environment in RAE and developing certain skills and excellences in TCCL—they can and ought to be seen, not as mutually excluding, but as supplementing one another. Together they form a highly salient critique of technology that takes into consideration questions of the good life without becoming overly paternalistic. (shrink)

The word ‘empowerment’ has become a popular term, widely used as an important claim, also within the health services. In this paper the concept's philosophical roots are traced from Freire and his ‘Pedagogy of the Oppressed’ to the philosophical thoughts of Hegel, Habermas, and Sartre. An understanding of the concept, as a way to facilitate coping and well‐being in patients through reflection and dialogue, emerges. Within an empowerment strategy the important claim on the nurse and the patient will be to (...) reveal the patient's own resources and limitations in times with sickness and reduced functionality to promote the patient's choice to act and cope. From this point of view an education‐programme for the frail elderly is outlined. If the nurse wants to empower the elderly patient she has to be willing to be educated through the dialogue with the patient, and to look for the patient's own meaning of being frail and elderly. The coping and self‐care solutions for the patient may then even be different from the preferences of the nurse, and this does not mean that the empowerment strategy is a failure or that the patient then has to continue without the assistance from the nurse. Within an empowerment strategy, in the Freirerian sense, the important thing is that both the patient and the nurse together critically reflect on the meanings of the sickness so that the patient can be able to make his own conscious choices. (shrink)

As part of the roundtable “International Institutions and Peaceful Change,” this essay focuses on the role of institutions as agents of peaceful change from a perspective that emphasizes the importance of a wide spectrum of human emotions to better understand the less quantifiable but nevertheless important conditions for being able to sustain initiatives for peaceful change. It aims to throw light on the often overlooked psychological and emotional hurdles standing in the way of agents’ ability to undertake and sustain action (...) designed to lead to peaceful change. To do so, the essay returns to the pioneering work of Ernst Haas and his important concept of “spillover.” The essay shows that the neofunctional understanding of spillover was a theoretically important innovation, but that it was missing three essential elements: an understanding of the need for positive emotions and ontological security; an understanding of the link between values and identity; and a realization of the importance of a shared vision for the “good life.” To illustrate the problems with Haas's version of spillover, but also to highlight the significant potential of the theory, the essay turns to the crisis of the liberal international order as an example of a forum where the agency to undertake peaceful change seems to be faltering. The essay concludes that the ability of the liberal order to effect peaceful change is currently hampered because the order is characterized by negative emotions, contested values, and a vision of the good life that is seen as mainly a benefit for the cosmopolitan elite. (shrink)

In this paper, we identify and describe a new practice for responding to unfinished requests, which we call telescoping responses, due to their being designed for telescoping the request sequence forward in the face of troubles with progressivity and in producing the request. Considering cases from an American shoe repair shop, we demonstrate that telescoping responses serve to telescope request sequences exactly because they are neither syntactically, prosodically or pragmatically fitted to the unfinished requests that they respond to.

It is timely and important that new developments in conversation analysis become the subject of principled debate. John Heritage’s recent papers on the role of epistemics constitute one such development, and by re-analysing excerpts from this work, the articles in this Special Issue reveal some significant problems with a programmatic approach to epistemics. This commentary agrees with the critics that there are dangers in an overemphasis on epistemics and in using isolated utterances and proposing abstract scales and terms. But the (...) commentary also warns against totally rejecting epistemics as a domain of inquiry in CA and points to places where the critics exaggerate their criticisms in a way that makes them unnecessarily hostile. (shrink)

The Languedoc region between the Rh.ne River and the Pyrenees is renowned for its medieval history. Or rather, its special version of medievalism. This article seeks to explain how and why the Albigensian Crusade (1209-1229) and the heretical Cathars came to be intertwined with myths about the Holy Grail after World War I by examining three different definitions of medievalism by Eco, Gentry & Müller, and Matthews. The theories approach medievalisms from different perspectives, but they all pay special attention to (...) the political usage of medievalisms, which can be detected in all corners of the Albigensian Crusade historiography and fictional literature. This shows that a special Occitanian medievalism-hybrid has been created, which is constantly being developed and highlighted by both literature, myths and the region’s tourism industry. Finally, the article argues that the perceptions of medieval Languedoc and the myths surrounding the area reflects the challenges and political reality of the authors’ own time and experiences. (shrink)

Norway is often presented as a model country when it comes to gender equality, for its achievements in combining high birth rates with a high level of female work participation. This article investigates the relations between gender equality and childcare policy since the 1970s from a grassroots perspective. Generally initiatives in respect of childcare arrangements have come from women’s movements but there have been major disagreements regarding the issue. Publicly funded daycare and a part of the parental leave scheme reserved (...) for fathers are two arrangements that relate childcare to gender equality and that have provoked political controversies between traditional equal value oriented women’s associations, on one hand, and equal rights and women’s liberation organizations, on the other. (shrink)

The paper consists of three parts. In the first part five kinds of defeasibility are distinguished that is ontological, conceptual, epistemic, justification and logical defeasibility. In the second part it is argued that from these, justification defeat is the phenomenon that plays a role in legal reasoning. In the third part, the view is defended that non-monotonic logics are not necessary to model justification defeat, but that they are so to speak the natural way to model this phenomenon.

På et fotballag i overgangen mellom barne- og ungdomsfotballen er spilletid på fotballbanen under kamp både en knapp ressurs og en kilde til diskusjoner om fordeling. Spørsmålet som er utgangspunkt for denne artikkelen, er hvilke hensyn som bør tas når trener og lagleder skal fordele samlet spilletid på enkeltspillere. Er det viktigst å vinne fotballkampen, eller har det størst betydning å fordele spilletiden mest mulig likt mellom spillerne? Skal det tas hensyn til guttenes evner, motivasjon og preferanser? Er deres familiebakgrunn (...) og personlighet av betydning? Diskusjonen baserer seg på en gjennomgang av ulike politiske rettferdighetsteorier for fordeling av knappe goder.Nøkkelord: rettferdighet, practice, fordelingsrettferdighet, diskursetikk, idrettsetikkEnglish summary: Minutes of justice: Distribution of time during football matches in a boys' teamDuring a football match, time for playing can be considered as a limited good. In this article the point of departure is the redistribution of time in a boys' football team in the transition phase between children and youth football. The questions are how and under which conditions time for playing should be distributed among the players. Is winning the game more important than trying to let every player play for an equal amount of time? Should the boys' talents, motivation, and preferences be considered while distributing time, or are family background and personality of importance? Different theories of political justice for the distribution of limited goods underpin the discussion of how to distribute the minutes of playing time during a football match. (shrink)

The policy projected by the Eighth Congress of the Socialist Unity Party of Germany rests on two cornerstones. First, there is the task of further raising the material and cultural living standard of the people on the basis of the higher rates of development of socialist production which result from increased efficiency, scientific-technological progress, and a rise in labor productivity. Second, there is the foreign policy task decided jointly with the Soviet Union and other fraternal socialist countries: "to create favorable (...) external conditions for the building of socialism, to further the strengthening of the community of socialist states, to strengthen international solidarity with peoples fighting for their freedom, to realize the Leninist principles of peaceful coexistence between states having different social systems, and to struggle actively against aggressive imperialism." (1. (shrink)

Reduplication is a phenomenon that can be applied to various linguistic units. In this article, I determine what action the reduplication of the Danish change-of-state token nå accomplishes in interaction. Following previous research on reduplication and using the method of Conversation Analysis, I show that reduplicated nå serves to register that the previous turn at talk implemented a larger course of action, namely that of revision.

With the point of departure in the ongoing discussion of the professional and moral responsibility for those who are not equally included in the established health services, the question of how to include individuals and groups facing marginalisation is one of the major challenges within the ethics of care. This makes marginalisation a core concept in our time, which is challenged by, among other things, differentness with respect to ethnicity and social status as well as breach with norms and laws. (...) The representation of individuals and groups facing marginalisation is not merely an intellectual question, however, but an epistemological one with political, practical and ethical implications. This article discusses a pilot project exploring what we can do within nursing education to sensitise students to professional and moral responsibility for individuals and groups facing marginalisation. A dialogical approach to knowledge, including cooperation with voluntary organisations and low-threshold facilities with a long tradition of trying to prevent people from falling through the net', was chosen to highlight the professional challenges and the ethical dilemmas that arise in the interface between closeness and distance, caring and marginalisation. Evaluation of data indicated that such an approach to knowledge seems to benefit the students' learning. (shrink)

This paper describes a model of legal reasoning and a logic for reasoning with rules, principles and goals that is especially suited to this model of legal reasoning. The paper consists of three parts. The first part describes a model of legal reasoning based on a two-layered view of the law. The first layer consists of principles and goals that express fundamental ideas of a legal system. The second layer contains legal rules which in a sense summarise the outcome of (...) the interaction of the principles and goals for a number of case types. Both principles, goals and rules can be used in legal arguments, but their logical roles are different. One characteristic of the model of legal reasoning described in the first part of the paper is that it takes these logical differences into account. Another characteristic is that it pays serious attention to the phenomena of reasoning about the validity and acceptance of rules, respectively principles and goals, and about the application of legal rules, and the implications of these arguments for the use of rules, principles and goals in deriving legal conclusions for concrete cases.The second part of the paper first describes a logic (Reason-Based Logic) that is especially suited to deal with legal arguments as described in terms of the previously discussed model. The facilities of the logic are illustrated by means of examples that correspond to the several aspects of the model. (shrink)

Long-term potentiation is one of the most extensively studied forms of neuroplasticity and is considered the strongest candidate mechanism for memory and learning. The use of event-related potentials and sensory stimulation paradigms has allowed for the translation from animal studies to non-invasive studies of LTP-like synaptic plasticity in humans. Accumulating evidence suggests that synaptic plasticity as measured by stimulus-specific response modulation is reduced in neuropsychiatric disorders such as major depressive disorder, bipolar disorders and schizophrenia, suggesting that impaired synaptic plasticity plays (...) a part in the underlying pathophysiology of these disorders. This is in line with the neuroplasticity hypothesis of depression, which postulate that deficits in neuroplasticity might be a common pathway underlying depressive disorders. The current study aims to replicate and confirm earlier reports that visual stimulus-specific response modulation is a viable probe into LTP-like synaptic plasticity in a large sample of healthy adults. Further, this study explores whether impairments in LTP-like synaptic plasticity is associated with self-reported subclinical depressive symptoms and stress in a healthy population. Consistent with prior research, the current study replicated and confirmed reports demonstrating significant modulation of visual evoked potentials following visual high-frequency stimulation. Current results further indicate that reduced LTP-like synaptic plasticity is associated with higher levels of self-reported symptoms of depression and perceived stress. This indicate that LTP-like plasticity is sensitive to sub-clinical levels of psychological distress, and might represent a vulnerability marker for the development of depressive symptoms. (shrink)