Can literary fictions convey significant philosophical views, understood in terms of propositional knowledge? This study addresses the philosophical value of literature by examining how literary works impart philosophy truth and knowledge and to what extent the works should be approached as communications of their authors. Beginning with theories of fiction, it examines the case against the prevailing ‘pretence’ and ‘make-believe’ theories of fiction hostile to propositional theories of literary truth. Tackling further arguments against the cognitive function and value of literature, (...) this study illustrates how literary works can contribute to knowledge by making assertions and suggestions and by providing hypotheses for the reader to assess. Through clear analysis of the concept of the author, the role of the authorial intention and the different approaches to the ‘meaning’ of a literary work, this study provides an historical survey to the cognitivist—anti-cognitivist dispute, introducing contemporary trends in the discussion before presenting a novel approach to recognizing the cognitive function of literature. An important contribution to philosophical studies of literature and knowledge. (shrink)

ABSTRACT:Within corporate social responsibility (CSR), the exploration of the political role of firms (political CSR) has recently experienced a revival. We review three key periods of political CSR literature—classic, instrumental, and new political CSR—and use the Rawlsian conceptualization of division of moral labor within political systems to describe each period’s background political theories. The three main arguments of the paper are as follows. First, classic CSR literature was more pluralistic in terms of background political theories than many later texts. Second, (...) instrumental CSR adopted classical liberalism and libertarian laissez-faire as its structural logic. Third, new political CSR, based on a strong globalist transition of responsibilities and tasks from governments to companies, lacks a conceptualization of division of moral labor that is needed to fully depart from a classical liberalist position. We end by providing a set of recommendations to develop pluralism in political CSR. (shrink)

Global climate change has been characterised as the crisis of reason (Val Plumwood), imagination (Amitav Ghosh) and language (Elizabeth Rush), to mention some. The ‘everything change’, as Margaret Atwood calls it, arguably also impacts on how we aesthetically perceive, interpret and appreciate nature. This article looks at philosophical theories of nature appreciation against global environmental change. The article examines how human-induced global climate change affects the ‘scientific’ approaches to nature appreciation which base aesthetic judgment on scientific knowledge and the competing (...) ‘non-scientific’ approaches which emphasise the role of emotions, imagination and stories in the aesthetic understanding of environment. The author claims that both approaches are threatened by global climate change and cannot continue as usual. In particular, he explores aesthetic imagination in contemporary times when our visions about environment are thoroughly coloured by worry and uncertainty and there seems to be little room for awe and wonder, which have traditionally characterised the aesthetic experience of nature. Finally, he proposes that art could stimulate environmental imagining in this age of uncertainty. (shrink)

The fundamental ethical problem in bankruptcy is that insolvents have promised to pay their debts but can not keep their promise. The Ethics of Bankruptcy examines the morality of bankruptcy. The author compares and contrasts the Humean doctrine of promises as useful conventions with the Kantian view of autonomous agency constituting promissory obligations; he explores ethical concerns raised by forgiveness, utilitarianism and distributive justice and the moral aspects of insolvents' contractual, fiduciary, tortious and criminal liability. Finally, the author assesses recent (...) bankruptcy law reforms. Bankruptcies severly hurt creditors and society. For the insolvents and their families the experience is painful and stigmatising, yet philosophers have paid little attention to the moral aspects of this violent social phenomenon. The Ethics of Bankruptcy is the first comprehensive study that employs the tools of ethics to examine the controversies surrounding insolvency, which makes valuable and sometimes controversial reading in a decade recovering from the Recession. (shrink)

Directed acyclic graphs (DAGs) constitute a qualitative representation for conditional independence (CI) properties of a probability distribution. It is known that every CI statement implied by the topology of a DAG is witnessed over it under a graph-theoretic criterion of d-separation. Alternatively, all such implied CI statements are derivable from the local independencies encoded by a DAG using the so-called semi-graphoid axioms. We consider Labeled Directed Acyclic Graphs (LDAGs) modeling graphically scenarios exhibiting context-specific independence (CSI). Such CSI statements are modeled (...) by labeled edges, where labels encode contexts in which the edge vanishes. We study the problem of identifying all independence statements implied by the structure and the labels of an LDAG. We show that this problem is coNP-hard for LDAGs and formulate a sound extension of the semi-graphoid axioms for the derivation of such implied independencies. Finally we connect our study to certain qualitative versions of independence ubiquitous in database theory and teams semantics. (shrink)

Suicidal ideation would often appear to relate to ideas about life’s meaninglessness. In this chapter, I consider the suicidal thoughts of an elderly person in light of the recent philosophical discussion on the meaning of life. I start by distinguishing between two importantly different questions about life’s meaning and explaining how they differ from certain other issues sometimes treated as questions about the meaning of life. Then I address the two questions about life’s meaning in turn, connecting them to the (...) example case. After that, I briefly consider how the elderly person’s committing suicide would appear from the viewpoint of the philosophical debate on life’s meaning. I conclude by summing up how the philosophical discussion on the meaning of life I have referred to might help a person like the one in the example case. (shrink)

In this paper, the author argues that literary works have distinct cognitive significance in changing their readers’ beliefs. In particular, he discusses ‘philosophical fictions’ and truthclaims that they may imply. Basing himself broadly on Aristotle’s view of the enthymeme, he argues that a work of literary fiction persuades readers of its truths by its dramatic structure, by illustrating or implying the suppressed conclusion. Further, he suggests that it is exactly this ‘literary persuasion’ which distinguishes literary works from merely didactic works (...) prone to overt ‘argumentation’ and instruction. (shrink)

Emancipatory aesthetics : Eino Krohn as a critic of art and literature.

Bayesian paradigm has been widely acknowledged as a coherent approach to learning putative probability model structures from a finite class of candidate models. Bayesian learning is based on measuring the predictive ability of a model in terms of the corresponding marginal data distribution, which equals the expectation of the likelihood with respect to a prior distribution for model parameters. The main controversy related to this learning method stems from the necessity of specifying proper prior distributions for all unknown parameters of (...) a model, which ensures a complete determination of the marginal data distribution. Even for commonly used models, subjective priors may be difficult to specify precisely, and therefore, several automated learning procedures have been suggested in the literature. Here we introduce a novel Bayesian learning method based on the predictive entropy of a probability model, that can combine both subjective and objective probabilistic assessment of uncertain quantities in putative models. It is shown that our approach can avoid some of the limitations of the earlier suggested objective Bayesian methods. (shrink)

This study in the context of short-stay surgery is based on a definition according to which informed consent consists of five elements: consent, voluntariness, disclosure of information, understanding and competence. The data were collected in four district hospitals in southern Finland by using a structured questionnaire. The population consisted of short-stay and one-day surgery patients (n = 107). Data analysis was based on statistical methods. The results indicated some problems in the realization of informed consent. Most commonly, consent was expressed (...) by voluntary admission. Most patients had indicated their voluntary consent by making their decision independently. There were also certain problems with information. The respondents were least well informed about the drawbacks of anaesthesia and about alternative forms of treatment. The patients had not understood all the information they had received; problems of understanding were greatest with information about the advantages and disadvantages of anaesthesia. Problems were also reported with competence. These patients had the most difficulty in assessing the advantages and drawbacks of different treatments and anaesthesia. (shrink)

We investigated the impact of situational awe on topic-specific interest and recognition memory for information presented in immersive planetarium films. Adult participants (N = 131) were recruited among science centre visitors who were going to view one of the films shown in the science centre’s planetarium. Participants responded to questions about prior knowledge, topic-specific interest in the film and background information before viewing one of the three planetarium films. After the film, they completed the topic-specific interest scale, epistemically-related emotion scales, (...) situation-specific awe scale, critical thinking disposition scale and a recognition task of the film contents. The results showed that during viewing planetarium films participants experienced awe, but the strength of this emotion varied among films. Additionally, situation-specific awe was strongly associated with another epistemic emotion, namely surprise. As for the recognition task performance, awe decreased error and nonsense detection, and increased false recognition of inferential statements. Finally, awe was found to substantially increase topic-specific interest. These results present evidence that awe has potential to prompt individuals to become more interested in science-related topics. (shrink)

This bibliography aims to gather together studies in the philosophy of literature by Finnish researchers. It consists of articles and monographs which treat i) philosophical literary theory, ii) philosophical literature, or iii) literary philosophy and philosophers’ use of literary devices. The bibliography, collected by requests of publication data and from several Finnish publication databases, is not intended inclusive. Nevertheless, it is being throughout updated, and all kinds of suggestions, updates and corrections are most welcome.

With the advent of evolutionary developmental research, or EvoDevo, there is hope of discovering the roles that the genetic bases of development play in morphological evolution. Studies in EvoDevo span several levels of organismal organization. Low-level studies identify the ultimate genetic changes responsible for morphological variation and diversity. High-level studies of development focus on how genetic differences affect the dynamics of gene networks and epigenetic interactions to modify morphology. Whereas an increasing number of studies link independent acquisition of homoplastic or (...) convergent morphologies to similar changes in the genomes, homoplasies are not always found to have identical low-level genetic underpinnings. This suggests that a combination of low- and high-level approaches may be useful in understanding the relationship between genetic and morphological variation. Therefore, as an empirical and conceptual framework, we propose the causality horizon to signify the lowest level that allows linking homoplastic morphologies to similar changes in the development. A change in a system below the causality horizon cannot be generalized. In more concrete terms, homoplastic morphologies cannot be reduced to the same change in gene regulation when that change occurs below the causality horizon; rather, a higher-level mechanism should be identified. (shrink)

The dominant framing of the political corporate social responsibility discussion challenges the traditional economic conception of the firm and aims to produce a paradigm shift in CSR studies wherein the traditional, apolitical view of corporations’ roles in society is replaced by the political conception of CSR. In this paper, we show how the major framing of the political CSR discussion calls for a redirection to take international hard legal and moral regulations, as well as the need for the boundaries between (...) business and politics into account. (shrink)

Biodiversity loss is an immense ecological crisis of our time. But while “biodiversity” has become a buzzword in media and policy, conservationists have found it difficult to build a common understanding on the nature and severity of biodiversity loss and the means to tackle it. Perhaps surprisingly, many biologists and philosophers have proposed that biodiversity might be best defended with reference to its aesthetic value. This article explores whether aesthetic values could provide strong support for biodiversity conservation. By exploring the (...) question from the viewpoints of species diversity, ecosystem diversity, and genetic diversity, we argue that there is a mismatch between apparent and real biodiversity and that aesthetics can, at best, give only limited support for biodiversity conservation. (shrink)

We argue that although E-Z Reader does a good job in simulating many basic facts related to readers' eye movements, two phenomena appear to pose a challenge to the model. The first has to do with word length mediating the way compound words are identified; the second concerns the effects of initial fixation position in a word on eye behavior.

We agree with Frost that flexible letter-position coding is unlikely to be a universal property of word recognition across different orthographies. We argue that it is particularly unlikely in morphologically rich languages like Finnish. We also argue that dual-route models are not overly flexible and that they are well equipped to adapt to the linguistic environment at hand.

We review the notion of complementarity of observables in quantum mechanics, as formulated and studied by Paul Busch and his colleagues over the years. In addition, we provide further clarification on the operational meaning of the concept, and present several characterisations of complementarity—some of which new—in a unified manner, as a consequence of a basic factorisation lemma for quantum effects. We work out several applications, including the canonical cases of position–momentum, position–energy, number–phase, as well as periodic observables relevant to spatial (...) interferometry. We close the paper with some considerations of complementarity in a noisy setting, focusing especially on the case of convolutions of position and momentum, which was a recurring topic in Paul’s work on operational formulation of quantum measurements and central to his philosophy of unsharp reality. (shrink)

Consumer driven and globally competitive financial markets are crucial for the future prosperity of the Finnish society (Laitamäki, Lehti and Paasio 1996). The largest transfer of wealth in history is currently taking place as Baby Boomers (born 1946-1964) prepare for their retirement and inherit the assets of the previous generation. Due to cognitive limitations and emotional biases these consumers don’t always make rational decisions with financial services. This conceptual study addresses irrational financial consumer behavior and its impact on the Finnish (...) business and society. The study focuses on two research questions: 1) What type of behavioral finance concepts explain irrational consumer behavior? 2) What are the implications of these behaviors for the Finnish business and society? The purpose of this study is to assist individual consumers, business leaders and policy makers in making better financial services related decisions in Finland. The need for better decisions has been illustrated during Finnish and international financial crises including the US sub-prime loan turmoil in 2008. (shrink)

In this paper, I shall examine two types of assertions in literary narrative fiction: direct assertions and those I call literary assertions. Direct assertions put forward propositions on a literal level and function as the author’s assertions even if detached from their original context and applied in so-called ordinary discourse. Literary assertions, in turn, intertwine with the fictional discourse: they may be, for instance, uttered by a fictional character or refer to fictitious objects and yet convey the author’s genuine assertions. (...) The structure of the paper is twofold. The first, descriptive part is a question–answer type of discussion in which I shall introduce general philosophical arguments against assertions in fiction and present counter-arguments to them, paving the road to my account of literary assertions. In the second, argumentative part, in turn, I shall examine the nature of literary assertions, such as their semantic and ‘aspectival’ characteristics and their peculiar illocutionary force as well as the reader’s stance toward them. (shrink)

Kommentoin artikkelissa Hanna Meretojan The Ethics of Storytelling -teoksessa esittämiä näkemyksiä kaunokirjallisten kertomusten eettisestä arvosta. Kritisoin Meretojan edustamaa lähestymistapaa, jossa kaunokirjallisten teosten vaikutuksista teoretisoidaan ilman empiirisiä viitepisteitä taikka pohdintaa siitä, mistä väitteille voitaisiin löytää tukea tai kuinka teoriaa voitaisiin koetella. Lisäksi esitän huomioita muun muassa kaunokirjallisten kertomusten soveltamisesta arkeen sekä kertomusten kontingenteista vaikutuksista.

In this paper, I shall sketch a preliminary ground for a cognitivist theory of fiction and argue that theories which align fiction-making with (aesthetically valuable) story-telling consider the act of fiction-making too narrowly. As a paradigmatic example of such anti-cognitivist theories, I shall examine Peter Lamarque and Stein Haugom Olsen’s influential theory of fiction, which suggests that recognizing the author’s fictive and literary intentions manifested in the text would lead to dismissing her aims to make genuine claims and suggestions. I (...) shall illustrate my argument concerning the act of fiction-making by showing that there are sub-genres of fiction, for instance, so-called philosophical fiction, in which the author’s intention to advance genuine points and to invite the reader to entertain the beliefs expressed can reasonably be argued to be as important for understanding the work as is her aim to create an aesthetically valuable and/or entertaining fictional narrative. Leaning on Noël Carroll’s theory of literary thought experiments, I shall suggest that philosophical fictions convey assertions or suggestions in a way similar to philosophers’ fictional thought experiments and are aimed to be understood as such. (shrink)

Consider that an individual improves her capacities by neuroscientific means. It turns out that, besides altering her in the way(s) she intended, the enhancement also changes her personality in significant way(s) she did not foresee. Yet the person endorses her new self because the neuroenhancement she underwent changed her. Can the person’s approval of her new personality be autonomous? While questions of autonomy have already gathered a significant amount of attention in philosophical literature on human enhancement, the problem just described—henceforth (...) referred to as the question whether selfvalidating neuroenhancement can be autonomous—would not appear to have received due consideration. This article takes a step towards remedying the shortage. I start by explicating the main points of departure of its argument. In the subsequent sections of the article, I consider several possible reasons for deeming self-validating neuroenhancement incompatible with autonomy. On the basis of the consideration, I propose that self-validating neuroenhancement can be autonomous. (shrink)

Consider a case of a patient receiving life-supporting treatment. With appropriate care the patient could be kept alive for several years. Yet his latest prognosis also indicates that his mental abilities will deteriorate significantly and that ultimately he will become incapable of understanding what happens around and to him. Despite his illness, the patient has been eager to live. However, he finds the prospect that he is now faced with devastating. He undergoes an unconscious process that results in his finding (...) himself with a preference to die. Consequently, he requests his doctor to stop the treatment that she is providing. Other things being equal, standard medical ethics and the legislations of most Western countries allow the doctor to adhere to the patient’s request if it is autonomous. While its origins can be traced back to at least J.S. Mill’s work on women’s rights, unconscious alteration of one’s preferences in light of the options available for one has figured, for example, in recent discussion on female oppression and social choice theory. Yet the topic has not received attention in the debate on voluntary euthanasia. The inattention is unfortunate because the central problem with such adaptation has been taken to be that it undermines personal autonomy. This motivates the main question examined in this chapter, i.e. the problem of whether a request for euthanasia based on an adaptive preference is autonomous. (shrink)

We argue that the idea of ECC is more in line with libertarian than liberal thinking. The basic idea of ECC is the dislocation of the provider of citizenship rights from governments to corporations: corporations provide and administrate the same citizenship rights, which governments provided earlier, before the political processes started the privatization of these entitlements . According to John Rawls’ liberal viewpoint, citizens’ relations to the public structures of society are supposed to be fundamentally different from their relations to (...) private associations like business corporations. In libertarian thinking , instead, citizens relations to public institutions do not significantly differ from their relations to business corporations. Both are based on voluntary agreements, bringing forth the idea of a contract-society. Since ECC is backed up by this kind of contractsociety, it brings forth libertarian interpretations of the most central political matters - like the basic structure of society, and the concepts of freedom and democracy. (shrink)