When the social relevance of robotic applications is addressed today, the use of assistive technology in care settings is almost always the first example. So-called care robots are presented as a solution to the nursing crisis, despite doubts about their technological readiness and the lack of concrete usage scenarios in everyday nursing practice. We inquire into this interconnection of social robotics and care. We show how both are made available for each other in three arenas: innovation policy, care organization, and (...) robotic engineering. First, we analyze the discursive “logics” of care robotics within European innovation policy, second, we disclose how care robotics is encountering a historically grown conflict within health care organization, and third we show how care scenarios are being used in robotic engineering. From this diagnosis, we derive a threefold critique of robotics in healthcare, which calls attention to the politics, historicity, and social situatedness of care robotics in elderly care. (shrink)

Evil is a poorly understood phenomenon. In this provocative 2005 book, Professor Vetlesen argues that to do evil is to intentionally inflict pain on another human being, against his or her will, and causing serious and foreseeable harm. Vetlesen investigates why and in what sort of circumstances such a desire arises, and how it is channeled, or exploited, into collective evildoing. He argues that such evildoing, pitting whole groups against each other, springs from a combination of character, situation, and social (...) structure. By combining a philosophical approach inspired by Hannah Arendt, a psychological approach inspired by C. Fred Alford and a sociological approach inspired by Zygmunt Bauman, and bringing these to bear on the Holocaust and ethnic cleansing in the former Yugoslavia, Vetlesen shows how closely perpetrators, victims, and bystanders interact, and how aspects of human agency are recognized, denied, and projected by different agents. (shrink)

Ecologically responsible policies are concerned only in part with pollution and resource depletion. There are deeper concerns which touch upon principles of diversity, complexity, autonomy, decentralization, symbiosis, egalitarianism, and classlessness.

Introduction: Expressions of dignity as a clinical phenomenon in nursing homes as expressed by caregivers were investigated. A coherence could be detected between the concepts and phenomena of existence and dignity in relationships and caring culture as a context. A caring culture is interpreted by caregivers as the meaning-making of what is accepted or not in the ward culture. Background: The rationale for the connection between existence and dignity in relationships and caring culture is that suffering is a part of (...) existence, as well as compassion in relieving suffering, and ontological interdependency. Aim: To describe different expressions of dignity in relationships and existence in context of caring cultures from the perspective of the caregivers. Research design: The methodology and method are hermeneutic. The method used was to merge the theoretical preunderstanding as one horizon of understanding with empirical data. Participants and research context: Focus group interviews with caregivers in nursing homes. Ethical considerations: The principles of the Helsinki Declaration have been followed to, for example, preserve self-determination, integrity, dignity, confidentiality and privacy of the research persons. Findings: Data interpretation resulted in four themes: Encountering existential needs that promote dignity in a caring culture; To amplify dignity in relationships by the creative art of caring in a caring culture; Violation of dignity by ignorance or neglect in a non-caring culture and The ethic of words and appropriated ground values in a caring culture. Discussion: Dignity-promoting acts of caring, or dignity-depriving acts of non-caring are adequate to see from the perspective of dignity in relationships and existence and the caring culture. Conclusions: Dignity in relationships seems to touch the innermost existential life, as the existential life is dependent on confirmation from others. (shrink)

The evolutionary origin of phobias is strongly supported by behavioral genetics and monkey vicarious conditioning data. Prepared Pavlovian conditioning may be only one of the mechanisms mediating the evolutionarily determined outcome in phobias, avoidance. Davey's alternative biased expectancy hypothesis has merit in accounting for some aspects of laboratory data, but it is insufficient to explain the unconscious origin of phobic fear.

Die Studie betritt und erschliesst sowohl in ihrem Gegenstandsbereich als auch in methodologischer Hinsicht literaturwissenschaftliches Neuland. Vor dem Hintergrund der Auseinandersetzung deutschsprachiger Schriftsteller mit den für sie unlesbaren chinesischen Schriftzeichen entwickelt sie den Begriff der 'ästhetischen Resonanz' und erforscht die Präsenz und Funktion chinesischer Schriftzeichen in der deutschen Literatur- und Wissenschaftsgeschichte vom 17. bis zum 20. Jahrhundert. Sie fragt, welche Inspirationen die deutschsprachige Literatur aus der Begegnung mit diesen Schriftzeichen und poetischen Formen erhalten hat, was dann exemplarisch an Werken von (...) Ludwig August Unzer, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Friedrich Rückert, Yvan Goll, Albert Ehrenstein, Max Dauthendey und Max Kommerell aufgezeigt wird. Mit dem methodisch-theoretischen Ansatz der ästhetischen Resonanz wird der literaturwissenschaftlichen Forschung ein ganz neues Untersuchungsfeld eröffnet und definiert, in dem sprachliche Zeichen nicht mehr primär nach ihrem Sinngehalt oder ihrer signifikanten Struktur befragt werden, sondern nach ihrer affektiven und ästhetischen Wirkung. Für deren Analyse wird mit dem Konzept einer post-semiotischen Resonanzästhetik ein Ausgangspunkt geschaffen und zur Diskussion gestellt, von dem aus das vermeintlich Unlesbare diskursiv lesbar wird."--Publisher's description from Deutsche Nationalbibliothek. (shrink)

_In Perception, Empathy, and Judgment_ Arne Johan Vetlesen focuses on the indispensable role of emotion, especially the faculty of empathy, in morality. He contends that moral conduct is severely threatened once empathy is prevented from taking part in an interplay with cognitive faculties in acts of moral perception and judgment. Drawing on developmental psychology, especially British "object relations" theory, to illuminate the nature and functioning of empathy, Vetlesen shows how moral performance is constituted by a sequence involving perception, judgment, (...) and action, with an interplay between the agent's emotional and cognitive faculties occurring at each stage. In the powerful tradition from Kant to present-day theorists such as Kohlberg, Rawls, and Habermas, reason is privileged over feeling and judgment over perception, in such a way that basic philosophical questions remain unasked. Vetlesen focuses our attention on these questions and challenges the long-standing assertion that emotions are damaging to moral response. In the final chapter he relates his argument to recent feminist critiques that have also castigated moral theorists in the Kantian tradition for their refusal to recognize a role for emotion in morality. While the book's argument is philosophical, its method and scope are interdisciplinary. In addition to critiques of such philosophers as Arendt, MacIntyre, and Habermas, it contains discussions of specific historical, ideological, and sociological factors that may cause "numbing"—selective or broad-ranging, pathological insensitivity—in humans. The Nazis' mass killing of Jews is studied to illuminate these and other relevant empirical aspects of large-scale immoral action. (shrink)

Recent theoretical and empirical work in cognitive science and neuroscience is brought into contact with the concept of the flow experience. After a brief exposition of brain function, the explicit–implicit distinction is applied to the effortless information processing that is so characteristic of the flow state. The explicit system is associated with the higher cognitive functions of the frontal lobe and medial temporal lobe structures and has evolved to increase cognitive flexibility. In contrast, the implicit system is associated with the (...) skill-based knowledge supported primarily by the basal ganglia and has the advantage of being more efficient. From the analysis of this flexibility/efficiency trade-off emerges a thesis that identifies the flow state as a period during which a highly practiced skill that is represented in the implicit system’s knowledge base is implemented without interference from the explicit system. It is proposed that a necessary prerequisite to the experience of flow is a state of transient hypofrontality that enables the temporary suppression of the analytical and meta-conscious capacities of the explicit system. Examining sensory-motor integration skills that seem to typify flow such as athletic performance, writing, and free-jazz improvisation, the new framework clarifies how this concept relates to creativity and opens new avenues of research. (shrink)

The use of the concept of social history of science is sketched in the Anglo‐American and the German discussions from the mid 1970s up to recent work. By presenting a ‘social map’ of a selected scientific community it is argued that between the categories of discipline and single scientist there exists a wide ‘social space’ of groups within which science is pursued. In adopting a milieu theoretic approach an ecology of science is proposed as a suitable extension of the social (...) history of science. (shrink)

Many consumers implicitly associate sustainability with lower product strength. This so-called ethical = less strong intuition (ELSI) poses a major threat for the success of sustainable products. This article explores this pervasive lay theory and examines whether it is a key barrier for sustainable consumption patterns. Even more importantly, little is known about the underlying mechanisms that might operate differently at the implicit and explicit levels of the consumer’s decision-making. To fill this gap, three studies examine how the implicit judgments (...) that consumers activate automatically shape their consumption behaviors, in concert with their more controlled explicit beliefs about sustainable products. The Main Study investigates the ELSI’s imprint on actual shopping patterns and disentangles the implicit and explicit mechanisms of the lay theory. This paper also asks how this negative influence can be attenuated by examining whether the consumer’s interest in sustainable consumption reduces reliance on the ELSI. Two follow-up studies confirm the robustness from different methodological and practical perspectives. Implications for companies and policy makers are derived. (shrink)

Originally published in 1968. Scepticism is generally regarded as a position which, if correct, would be disastrous for our everyday and scientific beliefs. According to this view, a sceptical argument is one that leads to the intuitively false conclusion that we cannot know anything. But there is another, much neglected and more radical form of scepticism, Pyrrhonism, which neither denies nor accepts the possibility of knowledge and is to be regarded not as a philosophical position so much as the expression (...) of a philosophical way of life. Professor Naess argues that, given a sympathetic interpretation, Sextus Empiricus’s outline of Pyrrhonian scepticism provides the essentials of a genuine and rational sceptical point of view. He begins with a brief account of Pyrrhonism, then goes on to argue for the psychological possibility of this kind of scepticism, defending it against common objections, and examining some of its implications. The last two chapters provide detailed support for the rationality of Pyrrhonism, drawing mainly on certain methodological distinctions in semantics which both justify the Pyrrhonist’s failure to make assertions and restrict the scope of recent epistemological arguments against scepticism in such a way as to modify severely the conclusions based on them. (shrink)

Covering a period from the Middle Ages through the 1990s, and addressing phenomena overlooked by Rokkan such as statebuilding and nationalism, this book demonstrates that Rokkan's models continue to be relevant to modern political science and sociology. Kommisrud's study is a valuable contribution to Rokkanian approaches and the understanding of Eastern European development within the historical and geographic context of Europe as a whole.

The volume documents, and makes an original contribution to, an astonishing period in twentieth-century philosophy—the progress of Arne Naess's ecophilosophy from its inception to the present. It includes Naess's most crucial polemics with leading thinkers, drawn from sources as diverse as scholarly articles, correspondence, TV interviews and unpublished exchanges. The book testifies to the skeptical and self-correcting aspects of Naess's vision, which has deepened and broadened to include third world and feminist perspectives. Philosophical Dialogues is an essential addition to (...) the literature on environmental philosophy. (shrink)

Though doubtless two of the leading philosophers in ethics today, Habermas and Levinas have yet to be subjected to sys tematic comparison. This essay undertakes a first step. Differences of terminology aside, Habermas and Levinas can be seen to pursue, via separate routes, a similar core idea. I term this the idea of immanent normativity. While Habermas locates an unchosen normative pull in the medium of interpersonal communication, Levinas locates an unconditional ethical command in the Other as face. Hence they (...) unite in strongly opposing social contract theory's notion of moral ity as optional and of responsibility as conditional upon self-interest. Key Words: contractualism • Habermas • Levinas • vulnerability. (shrink)

Big Data and biopolitics are two major issues currently attracting attention in public health discourse, but also in sociology of knowledge, STS Studies as well as in philosophy of science and bioethics. The paper considers big data to be a new form and instrument of biopolitics which addresses both the categories of body and space. It is expected to fundamentally transform health care systems, domestic environments and practices of self-observation and reflection. Accordingly the paper points out some problems and pitfalls (...) as well as open questions that have emerged in the field of AAL, which merit more attention in future public and academic debate. (shrink)

“Living involves being exposed to pain every second—not necessarily as an insistent reality, but always as a possibility,” writes Arne Vetlesen in A Philosophy of Pain, a thought-provoking look at an inevitable and essential aspect of the human condition. Here, Vetlesen addresses pain in many forms, including the pain inflicted during torture; the pain suffered in disease; the pain accompanying anxiety, grief, and depression; and the pain brought by violence. He examines the dual nature of pain: how we attempt (...) to avoid it as much as possible in our daily lives, and yet conversely, we obtain a thrill from seeking it. Vetlesen’s analysis of pain is revealing, plumbing the very center of many of our most intense and complicated emotions. He looks at pain within different arenas of modern life such as family and work, and he specifically probes at a very common modern phenomenon, the idea of pushing oneself to the limit. Engaging throughout with the ideas of thinkers such as Søren Kierkegaard, Sigmund Freud, Martin Heidegger, Jean-Paul Sartre, Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Max Horkheimer, Theodor Adorno, Alice Miller, Susan Sontag, and Melanie Klein, A Philosophy of Pain asks which came first, thinking or feeling, and explores the concept and possibility of empathy. Vetlesen offers an original and insightful perspective on something that all of us suffer and endure—from a sprained ankle to a broken heart. Although pain is in itself unpleasant, our ability to feel it reminds us that we are alive. (shrink)