In the 1980s, philosophical, historical and social studies of science underwent a change which later evolved into a turn to practice. Analysts of science were asked to pay attention to scientific practices in meticulous detail and along multiple dimensions, including the material, social and psychological. Following this turn, the interest in scientific practices continued to increase and had an indelible influence in the various fields of science studies. No doubt, the practice turn changed our conceptions and approaches of science, but (...) what did it really teach us? What does it mean to study scientific practices? What are the general lessons, implications, and new challenges? This volume explores questions about the practice turn using both case studies and theoretical analysis. The case studies examine empirical and mathematical sciences, including the engineering sciences. The volume promotes interactions between acknowledged experts from different, often thought of as conflicting, orientations. It presents contributions in conjunction with critical commentaries that put the theses and assumptions of the former in perspective. Overall, the book offers a unique and diverse range of perspectives on the meanings, methods, lessons, and challenges associated with the practice turn. (shrink)

In this article, John Locke's accounts of political liberty and legitimate government are read as expressions of a normative demand for non-arbitrariness. I argue that Locke locates infringements of political liberty in dependence on the arbitrary will of another, whether or not interference or restraint actually takes place. This way Locke is tentatively placed in that tradition of republican thought recently brought to our attention by Pettit, Skinner and others. This reading shifts the focus on legitimacy and identifies the independent (...) moral argument for legitimate government as ruling for the good of the people. Consent is left with a hypothetical role to play. (shrink)

Featuring contributions from the world’s leading experts on the subject and based partly on several detailed case studies, this volume is the first comprehensive analysis of the scientific notion of robustness as well as of the general ...

There has been a recent expansion of work within a variety of theoretical frameworks which looks at the role of discourses in policy and politics,much of it focused on environmental issues. Within this there is a particular category of polemical material which argues for discourse management and for managing discourse between actors to wards achieving a particular goal, such as sustainable development. The paper examines the different ways in which the significance of environmental discourse is recognised and its influence analysed. (...) It critically examines the claims made for normative discourse management and highlights the need to consider carefully the institutions through which environmental policy discourse is mediated. (shrink)

How do cognitive neuroscientists explain phenomena like memory or language processing? This book examines the different kinds of experiments and manipulative research strategies involved in understanding and eventually explaining such phenomena. Against this background, it evaluates contemporary accounts of scientific explanation, specifically the mechanistic and interventionist accounts, and finds them to be crucially incomplete. Besides, mechanisms and interventions cannot actually be combined in the way usually done in the literature. This book offers solutions to both these problems based on insights (...) from experimental practice. It defends a new reading of the interventionist account, highlights the importance of non-interventionist studies for scientific inquiry, and supplies a taxonomy of experiments that makes it easy to see how the gaps in contemporary accounts of scientific explanation can be filled. The book concludes that a truly empirically adequate philosophy of science must take into account a much wider range of experimental research than has been done to date. With the taxonomy provided, this book serves a stepping-stone leading into a new era of philosophy of science—for cognitive neuroscience and beyond. (shrink)

What kinds of norms constrain mechanistic discovery and explanation? In the mechanistic literature, the norms for good explanations are directly derived from answers to the metaphysical question of what explanations are. Prominent mechanistic accounts thus emphasize either ontic or epistemic norms. Still, mechanistic philosophers on both sides agree that there is no sharp distinction between the processes of discovery and explanation. Thus, it seems reasonable to expect that ontic and epistemic accounts of explanation will be accompanied by ontic and epistemic (...) accounts of discovery, respectively. As we will show here, however, recent discovery accounts implicitly rely on both ontic and epistemic norms to characterize the discovery process. In this paper, we develop an account that makes explicit that, and how, ontic and epistemic norms work together throughout the discovery process. By describing mechanism discovery as a process of pattern recognition we demonstrate that scientists have to develop epistemic activities to distinguish a pattern from its background. Furthermore, they have to determine which epistemic activities successfully describe how the pattern is implemented by identifying the pattern’s components. Our approach reveals that ontic and epistemic norms are equally important in mechanism discovery. (shrink)

Describing the Seas: Writing Practices of the Masters of the Royal Navy in the Long Eighteenth Century. The masters of the Royal Navy in the long eighteenth century are usually associated more with practical knowledge and experience than with an involvement with learned or ‚book‘ knowledge. However, their professional practices were based to a high degree on the usage and production of texts. This article examines how literary practices shaped the production of hydrographic knowledge by masters, in how far these (...) practices resembled those of learned culture at the time, and how masters employed them to gain access to the scientific community. (shrink)

ABSTRACT This article offers a new interpretation of the historical relation between two foundational works in cultural history: Johan Huizinga’s ‘The Autumntide of the Middle Ages’ (1919) and Jacob Burckhardt’s ‘The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy’ (1860). The tension between these works has commonly been understood as a scholarly dispute over the proper historical periodization of European fifteenth-century cultural practices: whilst Burckhardt reconstructed his material in terms of its technical novelty, its ability to ‘create’ (schöpfen) a post-medieval world, Huizinga (...) emphasized how fifteenth-century culture continued to ‘re-create’ (her-scheppen) culture according to medieval symbolic codes. The present article suggests understanding this tension not as a product of a trans-historical scholarly dispute over the character of a given period of time, but as a consequence of Huizinga’s experience of loss and nostalgia, his ‘heimwee’ for past times. Between 1903 and 1905, Huizinga witnessed a large-scale destruction of early-seventeenth-century architecture in Amsterdam so as to make way for ‘the spirit of entrepreneurship,’ and it was first in this context that Huizinga grew interested in the importance of historical recreations to European culture. This article shows how Huizinga’s experience of urban modernization and ‘the inhabited ruin’ mediated his critique of Burckhardt’s book on Renaissance Italy. (shrink)

Background: Persons with dementia are at risk of malnutrition and thus in need of assistance during mealtimes. Research suggest interventions for caregivers to learn how to facilitate mealtimes and eating, while other suggest a working environment enabling the encounter needed to provide high-quality care. However, the phenomenon of caring for this unique population needs to be elucidated from several perspectives before suggesting suitable implications that ensure their optimal health. Objectives: To illustrate the meanings within caregivers’ experiences of caring for persons (...) with dementia during mealtime situations. We also measured weight and food intake among individuals with dementia to explain better the phenomenon of caring for them during mealtimes. Methods: Mixed method including focus group interviews with seven caregivers analyzed using phenomenological hermeneutics. In addition, for nine persons with dementia, weight and food intake were collected and descriptive statistics were calculated. Ethical considerations: Ethical review was obtained from an ethics committee, and all caregivers signed a consent form after being informed on the issue of research ethics. Relatives for persons with dementia were informed and signed the consent. In addition, throughout the study, the persons’ expressions were observed aiming to respect their vulnerability, integrity, and dignity. Findings: One theme emerged from interviews (struggling between having the knowledge and not the opportunity), which was built upon three subthemes (being engaged and trying; feeling abandoned and insufficient; being concerned and feeling guilty). Seven of nine persons with dementia lost a minimum of 1.3 kg of weight and ate a maximum of 49.7% of the food served. Conclusion: Caregivers struggle because they have knowledge about how to provide high-quality care but are unable to provide this care due to organizational structures. The weight loss and insufficient eating among the persons with dementia may support this conclusion. Sufficient time for adequate care should be provided. (shrink)

This paper presents methodological reflections on power sharing and shifts of power in various interview situations. Narratives are said to be shaped by our attempts to position ourselves within social and cultural circumstances. In an interview situation, power can be seen as something that is created and that shifts between the interviewer and the interviewed. Reflexivity is involved when we as interviewers attempt to look at a situation or a concept from various perspectives. A modified form of discourse analysis inspired (...) by subject positioning was used to reflect on power relations in four different interview situations. The analyses indicate that reflection on the power relations can lead to other forms of understanding of the interviewee. The main conclusion that can be drawn from this study is that power relations are created within an interview situation and therefore it is important to be aware of dominant perspectives. Researchers and nurses face the challenge of constantly raising their level of consciousness about power relationships, and discursive reflexivity is one way of doing this. Thus, reflexivity is an important part of the qualitative research process. (shrink)

People have believed in the spiritual aspect of existence from the beginning of time. Many human cultures have left historical traces of their belief systems, such as knowledge of good and evil, sun worship, and the holy. Spirituality can be experienced in several sites, including Stonehenge, the Bamiyan Buddhas, the Almudena Cathedral in Madrid, Uluru in Alice Springs, the Bahá'í Gardens of Haifa, Fujiyama, Japan's holy mountain, the Kaaba in Saudi Arabia, and the Golden Temple in Amritsar. These websites might (...) be the product of people's attempts to understand the meaning of life and their place in it, or they could be objective realities. The most basic definition of religion is "the relationship of humans to what they regard as holy, sacred, spiritual, or divine." A series of organized rituals associated with that religion are typically used to form a community of individuals who share that faith. As previously stated, "commitments which deny a dimension of existence beyond this world" are a subset of the broader word "belief." The faiths mold our identity and other belief systems that surround us, whether we identify as religious or spiritual. However, our view of that religion or belief system will be impacted by other aspects of our history, identity, and how we interact with other cultures and religions that are seen as "different." A certain level of sensitivity to religious differences within the group would foster a positive and inspiring attitude, as well as an interest in the religious practices and beliefs of others. This may develop tolerance and understanding among individuals while also removing any strong biases against religious activities and concepts. (shrink)

The biofuel boom is placing enormous demands on existing cropping systems, with the most crucial consequences in the agri-food sector. The biofuel industry is responding by initiating private governance and certification. The Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO) and the Cramer Commission, among others, have formulated criteria on “sustainable” biofuel production and processing. This article explores the legitimacy of private governance and certification by the biofuel industry, highlighting opportunities and challenges. It argues that the concept of output based legitimacy is (...) problematic in the case of biofuel as long as no consensus or commonly agreed “best” solution has been established on what sustainable biofuel production is. Furthermore, it shows that the private governance initiatives analyzed fail to adequately include actors from developing countries. Finally, the article argues that we need mechanisms for control and accountability in order to guarantee that the political output of biofuel certification serves the common welfare. (shrink)

The transnational anti-gender movement often has a strong connection to conservative religious organisations. However, even if the anti-gender movement is easy to recognise in Sweden, it is impossible for it to propagate significant opposition to gender mainstreaming and gender studies by using the Church as a reference due to white Swedish people’s established and neo-colonial image of Sweden as exceptional, secular, modern, and a gender equal and tolerant nation. The aim of this article is to analyse how a transnational anti-gender (...) discourse transforms and produces fear in a Swedish context. In focus is the editorial writer for Svenska Dagbladet, one of Sweden’s most influential newspapers, Ivar Arpi and his critical articles and expressions in social media on gender studies and gender mainstreaming. The material shows that instead of connecting to religion in order to dismiss gender studies, gender studies is understood as the religion and conspiracy of our time, governing the state and its citizens. Drawing on Sara Ahmed, I argue that it is possible to follow how words and discourses act in affective ways and how gender studies, gender ideology and gender mainstreaming become a single body that inspires fear. (shrink)

Cities and local governments loom large on the sustainability agenda. Networks such as Fair Trade Towns International (FTT) and the Organic Cities Network aim to bring about global policy change from below. Given the new enthusiasm for local approaches, it seems relevant to ask to what extent local groups exercise power and in what form. City networks present their members as “ethical places” exercising _power with_, rather than _power over_ others. The article provides an empirical analysis of the power of (...) FTT and Organic Cities in Germany. In both cases, we found cities that are eager to emphasize their inclusive potential. Their willingness to compromise is demonstrated most illustratively by the fact that several cities are members of both networks: While the FTT campaign aims to address problems of international trade but does not abandon it, Organic Cities advocate for a new localism based on food supply from farmers in the same region. In both cases, city networks use their purchasing power to increase the share of certified products. By doing so, the city networks reproduce privileged positions of consumers benefitting from the global capitalist order (_power over_). However, our analysis revealed that networks also make citizens reflect upon agri-food challenges and allow developing alternatives for more sustainable systems (_power with_). (shrink)

Definition of the problemAdvance directives involve evaluative assumptions about the further course of one’s life that can be more or less appropriate and thus call for ethical reflection. This contribution focuses on the basis and criteria of such assumptions. We argue that considerations regarding the temporal structure of a good life constitute a particularly relevant perspective in this context.ArgumentsEmpirical studies on the individual composition of advance directives point to the important role of personal values and life plans that can change (...) over time. Therefore, we first contextualize advance directives from the perspective of an ethics of the good life and then discuss their implications with regard to different levels of temporality, comprising fundamental parameters of human existence in time, cultural models of the life course, as well as narratives of the individual trajectory of life.ConclusionConceptions of a good life and its temporal structure represent an important perspective for drafting and interpreting advance directives. Their consideration provides a more nuanced understanding of the evaluative implications of advance care planning. This can benefit individual patients, service providers, as well as policy makers. (shrink)

The Groningen Protocol aims at providing guidance in end-of-life decision-making for severely impaired newborns. Since its publication in 2005 many bioethicists and health care professionals have written articles in response. However, only very little is known about the opinion among the general population on this subject. The aim of this study was to present the general attitude towards neonatal euthanasia (NE) among the Austrian population and the factors associated with the respondents’ opinion.

Why should contemporary philosophers study philosophical texts of the past? Today, there are various answers to that question, but Bernard Williams was one of the first who has combined analytical and historical elements in his approach to it. Although several recent articles refer to Williams’ different remarks about the history of philosophy, his attitude has never been presented comprehensively. That desideratum will be fulfilled in this essay. In doing so, I will argue, firstly, that Williams rejects the position traditionally favoured (...) by analytical philosophers because of his very different understanding of philosophy and, secondly, that the three different methods he suggests for studying the history of philosophy are compatible with each other. (shrink)

This study focuses on the meaningful encounters of patients and next of kin, as seen from their perspective. Identifying the attributes within meaningful encounters is important for increased understanding of caring and to expand and develop earlier formulated knowledge about caring relationships. Caring theory about the caring relationship provided a point of departure to illuminate the meaningful encounter in healthcare contexts. A qualitative explorative design with a hermeneutic narrative approach was used to analyze and interpret written narratives. The phases of (...) the analysis were naïve interpretation, structure analysis on two different levels (narrative structure, and deep structure through metaphors) and finally a dialectic interpretation. The narratives revealed the meaning of the meaningful encounter as sharing, a nourishing fellowship, common responsibility and coming together, experienced as safety and warmth, that gives, by extension, life‐changing moments, a healing force and dissipated insight. The meaningful encounter can be seen as a complex phenomenon with various attributes. Understanding the meaningful encounter will enable nurses to plan and provide professional care, based on caring science, focusing on patient and next‐of‐kin experiences. (shrink)

We conducted two eye-tracking experiments investigating the processing of the Mandarin reflexive ziji in order to tease apart structurally constrained accounts from standard cue-based accounts of memory retrieval. In both experiments, we tested whether structurally inaccessible distractors that fulfill the animacy requirement of ziji influence processing times at the reflexive. In Experiment 1, we manipulated animacy of the antecedent and a structurally inaccessible distractor intervening between the antecedent and the reflexive. In conditions where the accessible antecedent mismatched the animacy cue, (...) we found inhibitory interference whereas in antecedent-match conditions, no effect of the distractor was observed. In Experiment 2, we tested only antecedent-match configurations and manipulated locality of the reflexive-antecedent binding (Mandarin allows non-local binding). Participants were asked to hold three distractors (animate vs. inanimate nouns) in memory while reading the target sentence. We found slower reading times when animate distractors were held in memory (inhibitory interference). Moreover, we replicated the locality effect reported in previous studies. These results are incompatible with structure-based accounts. However, the cue-based ACT-R model of Lewis and Vasishth ( 2005 ) cannot explain the observed pattern either. We therefore extend the original ACT-R model and show how this model not only explains the data presented in this article, but is also able to account for previously unexplained patterns in the literature on reflexive processing. (shrink)

A large number of legal rules create an obligation to prevent, repair or otherwise mitigate damage to human health or the environment. Many of these rules require that a legally relevant causal relation between human behaviour and the damage at issue is established, and in the establishment of causal relations of this kind scientific information is often pressed into service. This thesis examines this specifically legal use of scientific information. It shows that many legally relevant causal relations cannot be established (...) in this way. It also shows that the legal strategy for dealing with epistemic difficulties by relaxing the standard of proof is of limited value in tackling this problem. Consequently, the legal rules focused upon are less efficient tools for combating damage to human health and the environment than their appearances suggest. Other legal means to achieve this aim should therefore be considered. The thesis begins by presenting a framework which can be used to solve some important problems with communication and the division of labour that arise when scientific information is used to answer legal questions. This framework recognizes both epistemological and ontological differences between law and science. The latter are differences between the kinds of entity which are relevant in distinct theoretical contexts; the former, by contrast, are differences between applicable standards of proof. In subsequent parts of the thesis this framework shapes the discussion of the question: To what extent can legally relevant causal relations, involving legally significant entities, be established through the application of scientific information about other, scientifically relevant entities and legal standards of proof. The thesis concludes with a discussion of some of the ways in which the legal regulation could, potentially, be adapted, so as to counteract damage to human health and the environment more efficiently. (shrink)

Introduction Harry Collins is internationally recognized as a distinguished sociologist of science who writes creatively on a substantial number of varied subjects. He is acknowledged as one of the prominent specialists on the topic of tacit knowledge and has played an important role in the introduction of this topic into science studies. He has investigated the topic extensively, most famously through several case studies of physics [Collins 1974, 1984, 1985, 1990, 2001a,b, 2004], [Collins &...

Czech translation of Marguerite Léna’s Choisir l’ Europe: Constantin Sigov et la dignité humaine.

Il s’agit de montrer que Gorgias avait conçu une opposition structurelle entre une persuasion bonne et une persuasion mauvaise et trompeuse. Il a souvent paru difficile de concilier sa prétention à dire la vérité au sujet d’Hélène et sa description, au sein du même texte, du discours comme indissociable d’une persuasion explicitement dite trompeuse. L’ Éloge d’Hélène serait-il lui-même trompeur, sa vérité ne serait-elle en réalité qu’une δόξα parmi d’autres, puisque le discours faillirait à dire ce qui est? Au contraire, (...) Gorgias évoque « quelque mauvaise persuasion », suggérant que la persuasion, ambivalente, peut aussi être bonne ou neutre : il parlerait principalement d’une persuasion mauvaise associée à la tromperie pour démontrer l’innocence d’Hélène qui l’a subie. Cette persuasion trompeuse fonctionnerait parce que ses victimes méconnaîtraient les faits passés, présents et futurs. Toutefois, le texte suggère que certains individus puissent les connaître. Gorgias en ferait partie : il se présente en opposition avec les poètes, qui estiment détenir leur savoir des Muses mais diffusent des discours mensongers, et, loin de transmettre comme eux un discours acquis d’avance, il a recours au raisonnement, λογισμός, seul moyen d’accéder à une connaissance des événements. Il reste cependant comme les poètes tributaire de la tradition. (shrink)

Recent work in explainable artificial intelligence (XAI) attempts to render opaque AI systems understandable through a divide-and-conquer strategy. However, this fails to illuminate how trained AI systems work as a whole. Precisely this kind of functional understanding is needed, though, to satisfy important societal desiderata such as safety. To remedy this situation, we argue, AI researchers should seek mechanistic interpretability, viz. apply coordinated discovery strategies familiar from the life sciences to uncover the functional organisation of complex AI systems. Additionally, theorists (...) should accommodate for the unique costs and benefits of such strategies in their portrayals of XAI research. (shrink)

Nous partons baliser des milieux d’apprentissage non-hiérarchiques, non-rentables et non-disciplinaires où des collectifs se regroupent pour étudier des problèmes qui les interpellent : ils nous permettent de questionner et d’aérer d’une manière vitale nos structures de formation et de recherche. Il faut ne pas rester enlisé dans le dedans toxique et visqueux qui se déploie à la jonction entre l’intérieur de l’institution académique et l’extérieur du marché néo-libéral….

Our article examines how journalistic reports and online comments have made sense of computational politics. It treats the discourse around data-driven campaigns as its object of analysis and codifies four main perspectives that have structured the debates about the use of large data sets and data analytics in elections. We study American, British, and German sources on the 2016 United States presidential election, the 2017 United Kingdom general election, and the 2017 German federal election. There, groups of speakers maneuvered between (...) enthusiastic, skeptical, agnostic, or admonitory stances and so cannot be clearly mapped onto these four discursive positions. Coming along with the inconsistent accounts, public sensemaking was marked by an atmosphere of speculation about the substance and effects of computational politics. We conclude that this equivocality helped journalists and commentators to sideline prior reporting on the issue in order to repeatedly rediscover the practices they had already covered. (shrink)

У дослідженні розглянуто сучасний стан ринку юридичних послуг . Автор виокремлює проблеми функціонування та можливості розвитку регіонального ринку в умовах міжнародної інтеграції, виділяє можливі шляхи нівелювання впливу негативних чинників розвитку регіонального ринку юридичних послуг. Запропоновані комплексні заходи для формування регіональної концепції якості юридичних послуг; упровадження в програму підготовки сучасного юриста спеціальних навчальних курсів у сфері маркетингу, менеджменту, зв'язків із громадськістю; розвитку клієнтоорієнтованих технологій сервісного обслуговування, розробки регіональної програми збереження молодих юридичних кадрів.