Hegel, Snellman och språket -- Snellman och Lagus -- Ur Israel Hwassers politiska idévärld -- En finländsk motsvarighet till striden mellan Thibaut och Savigny -- Hans Järta och J.J. Nordström -- "Thomas Frisk," ett inlägg i 1860-talets svenska reformdebatt -- Axel Liljenstrand -- C.G. Estlander, "kultursvensk" och gammalliberal -- Robert Hermanson och nationalitetsbegreppet -- K.J. Ståhlberg och Finlands statsskick.

BackgroundDebates around euthanasia and physician-assisted suicide are ongoing around the globe. Public support has been mounting in Western countries, while some decline has been observed in the USA and Eastern Europe. Physicians’ support for euthanasia and PAS has been lower than that of the general public, but a trend toward higher acceptance among physicians has been seen in recent years. The aim of this study was to examine the current attitudes of Finnish physicians toward euthanasia and PAS and whether there (...) have been changes in these attitudes over three decades.MethodsA questionnaire survey was conducted with all Finnish physicians of working age in 2020 and the results were compared to previous studies conducted in 1993, 2003 and 2013.ResultsThe proportions of physicians fully agreeing and fully disagreeing with the legalization of euthanasia increased from 1993 to 2020. The number of physicians, who expressed no opinion for or against euthanasia decreased from 19 to 5% during the same period. The proportion of physicians having no opinion of whether a physician should be punished for assisting in a suicide decreased from 20 to 10%.ConclusionsThis study shows that Finnish physicians’ ambivalence toward euthanasia and PAS has decreased. The ongoing debate has probably forced physicians to form more solid opinions on these matters. Our study highlights that attitudes toward euthanasia and PAS are still divided within the medical profession. (shrink)

Mainstream analytic epistemology conceives knowledge as representation: as true justified (un-Gettiered) belief. Such representation is conceived as independent of practice, its justification to consist in experience, and experience as mere observation. Such notion of experience is too narrow to take the epistemic value of experimentation into account. But science is emphatically experimental. On the other hand, John Dewey defined experience as organism–environment interaction. Such interaction is bidirectional and hence experimental by nature. It involves feedback. Cybernetics studies feedback systems. Hence, cybernetic (...) epistemology is a consequence of Dewey’s definition. Cybernetic epistemology maintains that knowledge is practice, that is, an (approximately and relatively) invariant pattern of potential organism–environment interaction, rather than something independent of practice. In this article, I will make a case for cybernetic epistemology. It seems to dispense with the representational notion of knowledge and to provide an original justification for process ontology. (shrink)

This paper investigates how unsupervised machine learning methods might make hermeneutic interpretive text analysis more objective in the social sciences. Through a close examination of the uses of topic modeling—a popular unsupervised approach in the social sciences—it argues that the primary way in which unsupervised learning supports interpretation is by allowing interpreters to discover unanticipated information in larger and more diverse corpora and by improving the transparency of the interpretive process. This view highlights that unsupervised modeling does not eliminate the (...) researchers’ judgments from the process of producing evidence for social scientific theories. The paper shows this by distinguishing between two prevalent attitudes toward topic modeling, i.e., topic realism and topic instrumentalism. Under neither can modeling provide social scientific evidence without the researchers’ interpretive engagement with the original text materials. Thus the unsupervised text analysis cannot improve the objectivity of interpretation by alleviating the problem of underdetermination in interpretive debate. The paper argues that the sense in which unsupervised methods can improve objectivity is by providing researchers with the resources to justify to others that their interpretations are correct. This kind of objectivity seeks to reduce suspicions in collective debate that interpretations are the products of arbitrary processes influenced by the researchers’ idiosyncratic decisions or starting points. The paper discusses this view in relation to alternative approaches to formalizing interpretation and identifies several limitations on what unsupervised learning can be expected to achieve in terms of supporting interpretive work. (shrink)

B. von Juhos; The Empirical and the Grammatical Doubt, Analysis, Volume 5, Issue 3-4, 1 May 1938, Pages 56–59, https://doi.org/10.1093/analys/5.3-4.56.

In this essay Juho Ritola develops a justificationist approach to social epistemology, which holds that normatively satisfactory social processes pertaining to the acquisition, storage, dissemination, and use of knowledge must be evidence-based processes that include appropriate reflective attitudes by the relevant agents and, consequently, the relevant institutions. This implies that the teaching of critical thinking and reasoning in general should strive to bring about such attitudes in students. Ritola begins by sketching a justificationist approach and defending it on a (...) general level against the criticism posed by Alvin Goldman. He then defends it on the level of individual reasoners against the argument set out by Michael Bishop and J.D. Trout. Based on empirical evidence, Bishop and Trout argue that the kind of reflection advocated by a justificationist approach to reasoning leads to worse outcomes than the use of various statistical prediction rules. Ritola, in contrast, maintains that one cannot and should not replace critical reflection on evidence by a mechanical application of rules. Instead, he asserts, statistical prediction rules and empirical evidence regarding our reasoning performance are part of the total evidence that we should reflect on in our critical reasoning. (shrink)

Es wird ausgegangen von den in den empirischen Wissenschaften vorkommenden Satzarten. Die Abhängigkeit der Kennzeichnungen "vollständig" bzw. "hinreichend verifiziert" von den Kriterien der benützten Überprüfungsverfahren wird untersucht. Die irrigen Voraussetzungen extremer Verallgemeinerungen, wie der "Verifikations-these" Wittgensteins und der "asymmetrischen Falsifikationstheorie" Poppers, werden aufgezeigt. Die methodologische Symmetrie von Verifikation und Falsifikation wird durch den Hinweis auf die gleicherweise unerläßliche Bedeutung der induktiven Schritte und des kontrollierenden Aufsuchens von Unverträglichkeiten für den wissenschaftlichen Fortschritt begründet. Unter Berücksichtigung dieser Kriterien werden empirische Allsätze als (...) die Beschreibung der realen Ordnung empirischer Phänomene gedeutet. (shrink)

Michael Huemer () argues that following the epistemic strategy of Critical Thinking—that is, thinking things through for oneself—leaves the agent epistemically either worse off or no better off than an alternative strategy of Credulity—that is, trusting the authorities. Therefore, Critical Thinking is not epistemically responsible. This article argues that Reasonable Credulity entails Critical Thinking, and since Reasonable Credulity is epistemically responsible, the Critical Thinking that it entails is epistemically responsible too.

The Estonian philosopher Rein Vihalemm (1938–2015) wished to reform realism in the philosophy of science. He was dissatisfied with the mainstream analytic philosophy of science—scientific realism and the various anti-realisms alike. He considered these approaches theory-driven and hence too distanced from actual scientific practice. His alternative, which he called practical realism, was inspired and influenced by Joseph Rouse’s original reading of Thomas Kuhn. Moreover, Vihalemm viewed as important some lessons from Marxism, which was prevalent in Estonian philosophy during the Soviet (...) occupation. For him, Marx himself inaugurated practical realism with his novel notion of practice that does not consider agency distinct from nature. He also mentions Kant, interpreted in a realistic manner, as a significant influence for his thesis that concepts only apply to practice. In this article, I will critically examine practical realism from the standpoint of classical pragmatism. My primary question is: what kind of realism practical realism can possibly be. (shrink)

Deleuze put forth a description of fluid control in computerized society in his text ‘Postscript on Control Societies’. With the help of the philosophy of Gilbert Simondon, we can broaden and complexify this view and understand digital systems through the concept of modulation. These modulatory systems intervene in human individuation by controlling individuals as ‘dividuals’. In contemporary digital technologies, like blockchain platforms, the modulatory dividual control can be fierce and even total. Simondon’s concepts of pre-individual, individuation, and transindividuation present us (...) with an ontology for this contemporary mode of control and enable us to better understand the complex relations between the being of humans and technical networks. (shrink)

Is it possible to conceptualize universality in a way that does not exclude particularity, difference, and change? In his approach to universality, Merleau-Ponty distinguishes between acquired universality, which is supposedly objective and non-temporal, and the lateral differentiation of universals, which is temporal and changing. My suggestion, in this article, is that he does not assert that there is a specific kind of unchanging universal norm to which all different styles of experience should be anchored; instead, there is a never-finished diversification (...) through which universal dimensions are instituted. However, I will also present a critical examination of the concept of change as it can also mean oppressive transformation. Ultimately, Merleau-Ponty’s political view of colonial situation seems to contradict his concept of open universality. (shrink)

This paper discusses Lippert-Rasmussen’s [Philosophical Studies 104, (2001) 123–141] claim that there are reasonable question-begging arguments. It is first argued that his arguments devalue the distinction between justifiable and justified beliefs, a distinction that is important for the fallacy theory. Second, it is argued that the role of the argument in the discussed cases can be questioned. In addition, the role of second order beliefs is discussed.

Practice-based philosophy of science has gradually arisen in the sociology of scientific knowledge (SSK) and science and technology studies (STS) during the past decades. It studies science as an ensemble of practices and theorising as one of these practices. A recent study has shown how the practice-based approach can be methodologically justified with reference to Peirce and Dewey. In this article, I will explore one consequence of that notion: science, as practice, is necessarily social. I will disambiguate five different senses (...) in which science is social. First, science presupposes language, which is essentially social. Second, practices, including science, are adaptations of the behaviour of an organism to an environment, of which other organisms are a part. Third, practices, including science, are public and hence shareable. Fourth, scientific knowledge can serve as a vehicle of social and moral reform. Fifth, scientific knowledge can be applied to improve the human condition. This fivefold result bears on the problem of realism. (shrink)

In this essay, I first discuss the conditions set by theorists of democratic deliberation on proper deliberation. These conditions call for reasoned decisions from mutually acceptable premises. Next, I present the ideal of critical thinking that should guide the citizen in this deliberation. I then examine the empirical literature on human reasoning. Some research results in the empirical literature paint a bleak picture of human rationality: we fall victim to heuristics and biases, persevere in our beliefs in the face of (...) contrary evidence, and justify our moral judgments by post hoc-reasoning. In addition, the deliberating groups have problems of their own. The groups may, for example, amplify errors or fall victim to information cascades. Though these epistemically detrimental processes can be overcome, they do present a challenge to our rationality. The essay concludes by arguing that the empirical evidence in fact supports an internalistic approach to group deliberation, a claim challenged by Solomon. (shrink)

In the “Temporality” chapter of Phenomenology of Perception, Merleau-Ponty refers to the Kantian notion of “self-affection.” The subject has an affective self-relation through time because the subject is of time. Merleau-Ponty shows that it is crucial that self-affection is not understood as an immediate self-coincidence. According to him, the idea of an immediate self-possession renders self-relation impossible. Instead, temporal self-relation should be understood as a paradox of connection and difference: the contact of the self to itself always also implies distance. (...) The temporal subject is not transparent to itself but has a connection to its past and its future through the temporal thickness of the present. (shrink)

Für diesen Titel ist kein Beschreibungstext vorhanden.

Es wird die Entwicklung von Positivismus und Empirismus, beginnend vom Anfang des vorigen Jahrhunderts, untersucht. Als das "Gegebene" wollte der ältere Positivismus allein die Erlebnisdaten gelten lassen. Die kritische Auseinandersetzung mit der kantischen Einteilung der Satzformen führte nicht nur zur Gegenüberstellung der empirischen Daten und der analytischen Strukturen als "gegebenen" Bereichen, sondern ließ auch die sprachlogisch-hypothetische Form der Ausdrücke und Sätze über die objektive Realität erkennen. Die erkenntnislogische Analyse gelangte so zur Unterscheidung dreier gegebener Bereiche: der Erlebnisdaten , der logisch-mathematischen (...) Formen und der objektiven Realität. Bezogen auf diese drei Bereiche gewinnen wissenschaftliche Grundbegriffe wie "Raum", "Zeit", "Wahrheit", "Wahrscheinlichkeit" u.a.m. unterschiedliche Bedeutungen, wodurch die Grundlagenfragen in ganz neuem Sinne gestellt werden müssen. Der logisch fundierte Positivismus und Empirismus erweisen sich so als eine erkenntnisanalytische Methode, die von den Satzarten der Wissenschaften und des Alltags, den Methoden ihrer Gewinnung und Nachprüfung und den zu ihrer Darstellung benutzten sprachlogischen Elementen als dem "Gegebenen" ausgeht. (shrink)