"The nature of intuition and its relation to other mental faculties, particularly perception, is one of the most hotly contested debates in philosophy of mind and psychology. Do intuitions justify belief or merely dispositions to believe? Is intuition a mental state with distinctive phenomenal qualities and if so, how do these differ from normal perceptual states? Drawing on the most recent philosophical research on intuition and perception, Ole Koksvik defends the idea that intuition not only justifies belief but can play (...) a much wider role in our everyday epistemic lives than previously thought. Arguing that intuitional experience is similar to perceptual experience he develops a novel view of intuition as conscious experience. His argument involves both a close description of the kind of experience that intuition is and a defence of intuition against criticism from experimental philosophy. The picture that emerges defends intuitions not because they can be found to be true or false but because they permit us to consider the world as it is might otherwise be and are continuous with the rest of general human inquiry"--. (shrink)

Rational addiction theories illustrate how absurd choice theories in economics get taken seriously as possibly true explanations and tools for welfare analysis despite being poorly interpreted, empirically unfalsifiable, and based on wildly inaccurate assumptions selectively justified by ad-hoc stories. The lack of transparency introduced by poorly anchored mathematical models, the psychological persuasiveness of stories, and the way the profession neglects relevant issues are suggested as explanations for how what we perhaps should see as displays of technical skill and ingenuity are (...) allowed to blur the lines between science and games. (shrink)

ABSTRACTWhat do we disagree about when we disagree about logic? On the face of it, classical and nonclassical logicians disagree about the laws of logic and the nature of logical properties. Yet, s...

The model-theoretic analysis of the concept of logical consequence has come under heavy criticism in the last couple of decades. The present work looks at an alternative approach to logical consequence where the notion of inference takes center stage. Formally, the model-theoretic framework is exchanged for a proof-theoretic framework. It is argued that contrary to the traditional view, proof-theoretic semantics is not revisionary, and should rather be seen as a formal semantics that can supplement model-theory. Specifically, there are formal resources (...) to provide a proof-theoretic semantics for both intuitionistic and classical logic. We develop a new perspective on proof-theoretic harmony for logical constants which incorporates elements from the substructural era of proof-theory. We show that there is a semantic lacuna in the traditional accounts of harmony. A new theory of how inference rules determine the semantic content of logical constants is developed. The theory weds proof-theoretic and model-theoretic semantics by showing how proof-theoretic rules can induce truth-conditional clauses in Boolean and many-valued settings. It is argued that such a new approach to how rules determine meaning will ultimately assist our understanding of the apriori nature of logic. (shrink)

Bitcoin is a peer-to-peer electronic payment system that operates as an independent currency. This paper is a philosophical investigation of the ontological constitution of Bitcoin. Using Slavoj Žižek’s ontological triad of the real, the symbolic and the imaginary, the paper distinguishes between three ideal typical theories of money: commodity theory, fiat theory, and credit theory. The constitution of Bitcoin is analysed by comparing the currency to each of these ideal types. It is argued that Bitcoin is commodity money without gold, (...) fiat money without a state, and credit money without debt. In conclusion, it is suggested that Bitcoin poses an ideological challenge to conventional forms of money in so far as it not only provokes sedimented beliefs about money but also exposes the forms of exploitation, risk and even violence inherent in the existing system of state authorized credit money. (shrink)

In this paper it is argued that we should not give money to beggars. Rather than spending our welfare budget on the people whom we happen to pass by on the street, we should spend it on those who are genuinely poor and who can be helped the most with each pound that we give. A pound given to a beggar in a Western country, it is argued, is a pound spent on someone who is relatively well off. That pound, (...) if spent better, could have rescued the life of a starving child in another part of the world. (shrink)

Logic isn’t special. Its theories are continuous with science; its method continuous with scientific method. Logic isn’t a priori, nor are its truths analytic truths. Logical theories are revisable, and if they are revised, they are revised on the same grounds as scientific theories. These are the tenets of anti-exceptionalism about logic. The position is most famously defended by Quine, but has more recent advocates in Maddy, Priest, Russell, and Williamson. Although these authors agree on many methodological issues about logic, (...) they disagree about which logic anti-exceptionalism supports. Williamson uses an anti-exceptionalist argument to defend classical logic, while Priest claims that his anti-exceptionalism supports nonclassical logic. This paper argues that the disagreement is due to a difference in how the parties understand logical theories. Once we reject Williamson’s deflationary account of logical theories, the argument for classical logic is undercut. Instead an alternative account of logical theories is offered, on which logical pluralism is a plausible supplement to anti-exceptionalism. (shrink)

This thesis seeks to advance our understanding of what intuitions are. I argue that there is a class of mental states deserving of the label ‘intuition’, and which is a good candidate for a psychological kind, a kind which cuts the mind at its natural joints. These mental states are experiences of a certain kind. In particular, they are experiences with representational content, and with a certain phenomenal character.

1University of BergenThe Heart of What Matters: The Role for Literature in Moral Philosophy AnthonyCunningham University of California Press 2001x + 296£17.95.

The paper is a contribution to current debates about conspiracy theories within philosophy and cultural studies. Wittgenstein’s understanding of language is invoked to analyse the epistemological effects of designating particular questions and explanations as a ‘conspiracy theory’. It is demonstrated how such a designation relegates these questions and explanations beyond the realm of meaningful discourse. In addition, Agamben’s concept of sovereignty is applied to explore the political effects of using the concept of conspiracy theory. The exceptional epistemological status assigned to (...) alleged conspiracy theories within our prevalent paradigms of knowledge and truth is compared to the exceptional legal status assigned to individuals accused of terrorism under the War on Terror. The paper concludes by discussing the relation between conspiracy theory and ‘the paranoid style’ in contemporary politics. (shrink)

When a person has an intuition, it seems to her that things are certain ways; to many it seems that torturing the innocent for fun is wrong, for example. When a person has an intuition, there is also something particular it is like to be her: intuitions have a characteristic phenomenal character. This article asks how the phenomenal character of intuition is related to two core core questions in the philosophy of intuition, namely: Is intuition a source of justification and (...) knowledge? and What are intuitions?. (shrink)

The aim of this paper is to contribute to an understanding of the school strikes for climate, initiated in August 2018 by the Swedish student Greta Thunberg, soon to become a global social movement involving hundreds of thousands of students. I examine 10 speeches of Thunberg as recontextualizations of environmental ethical values that have been formulated within the context of United Nations. With this approach, guided by an ethical and educational interest grounded in moral education, and informed by conceptions of (...) Seyla Benhabib, this paper demonstrates how students become democratic citizens appropriating the concern for future generations as a cosmopolitan claim in a resistance to exclusions from current politics. (shrink)

Logic, Logical connectives, Verbal disputes, Proof theory, Non-classical logic.

Anti-exceptionalism about logic is the Quinean view that logical theories have no special epistemological status, in particular, they are not self-evident or justified a priori. Instead, logical theories are continuous with scientific theories, and knowledge about logic is as hard-earned as knowledge of physics, economics, and chemistry. Once we reject apriorism about logic, however, we need an alternative account of how logical theories are justified and revised. A number of authors have recently argued that logical theories are justified by abductive (...) argument (e.g. Gillian Russell, Graham Priest, Timothy Williamson). This paper explores one crucial question about the abductive strategy: what counts as evidence for a logical theory? I develop three accounts of evidential confirmation that an anti-exceptionalist can accept: (1) intuitions about validity, (2) the Quine-Williamson account, and (3) indispensability arguments. I argue, against the received view, that none of the evidential sources support classical logic. (shrink)

In discussion about basic theoretical approaches in a non-Cartesian psychology several candidates for a key concept were proposed, such as action, activity, relation, dialogue and discourse. None of these concepts, however, sufficiently grounds psychological theories of individual psychology in social practice. To accomplish this we need to conceptualize subjects as participants in structures of ongoing social practice. In this paper I argue why and address issues of subjectivity as encountered by persons in their participation in complex structures of social practice. (...) I introduce the concept of personal conduct of life and life-trajectory as elaborations of my theory. And I discuss this theoretical approach and show what is at stake in developing it by comparing it to similar approaches in the current literature on the person, self, and identity. (shrink)

This paper explores the meaning of the Confucian concept of Cheng as a philosophical proposition for facilitating publicity and justice according to ethical best practice. Cheng is interpreted as a guide for teleological judgement and a moral prescript for cultivation that provides orientation for becoming a Junzi, an “accomplished person”. It can also serve to describe a form of proper behavior indicating a moral character. In particular, Cheng interconnects and qualifies all internal and external acts in relation to Ren and (...) Yi. It represents the interface between intentionality and practice in view of the subject individual concerned with introspective self-attention Shen qi du and publicity and justice in view of her/his role in society, facilitated through the functional and performative requirements of Cheng. Thus, it can be accommodated with a maxim ethics that expressly requires publicity and justice as indicators for acceptability. (shrink)

'Business Ethics and Organizational Values' operates on three levels - society, organization and values. First, the dynamics of modern society are analyzed. Secondly, organizations are viewed as autopoietic systems constantly engaged in value debates with their stakeholders. Thirdly, values are placed in a business context.

We argue that deliberative decision-making that is inclusive, transparent and accountable can contribute to more trustworthy and legitimate decisions on difficult ethical questions and political trade-offs during the pandemic and beyond.

The Norwegian high-school drama series Skam is produced and published by the Norwegian Broadcasting Corporation, a publicly funded institution distinguished by an explicit obligation to the public interest, not only serving their audience as consumers but even as citizens. Generally, the normativity expressed in Skam may be summarized by treating all with respect, involving not only moral considerations of what is right, but also ethical conceptions of what is good, offered, opened up and obstructed by the living social order established (...) there. In season three, given attention here, the plot revolves around issues concerning same-sex relationships, mental disorder and religion. Here Skam becomes interesting for the field of moral education, elaborating on how to encounter the challenges of pluralistic societies that undergo continuous changes and in which common values have become open questions. In this paper attention is drawn toward Skam’s ethical dimension, considering Skam as an instance of public moral education. Faced with tensions, hindrances and conflicts, the norm of treating all with respect, irrespective of how trivial it may appear outside of context, becomes loaded with meaning, while the actualization of the good life is at risk. Appalling is the way hegemonic religion is transformed in the living social order. Decisive is the active role taken by the youths in the series, recontextualizing the norm. The social order here is not a static, given condition, but a continuous, moving, cultivating project. In that respect, a certain democratic aspect of the public moral education of Skam also becomes visible. Together, the youths portrayed in the series seem to accommodate a variety of expressions of life emerging within their community. (shrink)

When Ian Hacking won the Holberg International Memorial Prize 2009 his candidature was said to strengthen the legitimacy of the prize after years of controversy. Ole Jacob Madsen, Johannes Servan and Simen Andersen Øyen have talked to Ian Hacking about current questions in the philosophy and history of science.

The philosophical discussion about logical constants has only recently moved into the substructural era. While philosophers have spent a lot of time discussing the meaning of logical constants in the context of classical versus intuitionistic logic, very little has been said about the introduction of substruc-tural connectives. Linear logic, affine logic and other substructural logics offer a more fine-grained perspective on basic connectives such as conjunction and disjunction, a perspective which I believe will also shed light on debates in the (...) philosophy of logic. In what follows I will look at one particularly interesting instance of this: The development of the position known as logical inferentialism in view of substructural connectives. I claim that sensitivity to structural properties is an interesting challenge to logical inferentialism, and that it ultimately requires revision of core notions in the inferentialist litera-ture. Specifically, I want to argue that current definitions of proof theoretic harmony give rise to problematic nonconservativeness as a result of their insensitivity to substructurality. These nonconservativeness results are undesirable because they make it impossible to consistently add logical constants that are of independent philosophical interest. (shrink)

Prioritarianism is an ethical theory that gives extra weight to the well-being of the worse off. In contrast, dominant policy-evaluation methodologies, such as benefit-cost analysis, cost-effectiveness analysis, and utilitarianism, ignore or downplay issues of fair distribution. Based on a research group founded by the editors, this important book is the first to show how prioritarianism can be used to assess governmental policies and evaluate societal conditions. This book uses prioritarianism as a methodology to evaluate governmental policy across a variety of (...) policy domains: taxation, health policy, risk regulation, education, climate policy, and the COVID-19 pandemic. It is also the first to demonstrate how prioritarianism improves on GDP as an indicator of a society's progress over time. Edited by two senior figures in the field with contributions from some of the world's leading economists, this volume bridges the gap from the theory of prioritarianism to its practical application. (shrink)

In ‘Is prostitution harmful?’ I argue that if casual sex is acceptable, then so is prostitution.1 Anna Westin, in ‘The harms of prostitution: critiquing Moen's argument of no-harm’, raises four objections to my view.2 Let me reply to these in turn.Westin's first objection is that it is ‘fundamentally problematic [to] categorise sexual ethics into merely two types’, the type that accepts casual sex and the type that does not. The reason why, she explains, is that this ‘incompletely frames the contemporary (...) discourse in sexual ethics’. She points to the views of Linda McDowell, Roger Scruton, Raja Halwani and the Roman Catholic Church to illustrate the breadth of contemporary ethical theorising about sex.Westin is right that I do not provide an account of contemporary sexual ethics. Neither …. (shrink)

A recent experiment performed by S. Afshar [first reported by M. Chown, New Sci. 183:30, 2004] is analyzed. It was claimed that this experiment could be interpreted as a demonstration of a violation of the principle of complementarity in quantum mechanics. Instead, it is shown here that it can be understood in terms of classical wave optics and the standard interpretation of quantum mechanics. Its performance is quantified and it is concluded that the experiment is suboptimal in the sense that (...) it does not fully exhaust the limits imposed by quantum mechanics. (shrink)

The paper presents a revised view of quantum mechanics centered on the notion (“genuine fortuitousness”) that the click in a counter is a totally lawless event, which comes by itself. A crucial point is the distinction between events on the spacetime scene and the content of the symbolic algorism. A revised conception of matrix variables emerges, by which such a variable, as part of a whole, does not have a value, under any circumstance. This conception is at variance with that (...) of indeterminate variables. A matrix variable not having a value does not enter spacetime and is not a measurable quantity, but manifests itself by a click in a counter with the remarkable property of having an onset, a beginning, from which the click develops. The individual click with its immense complexity is unique and lawless, even beyond probability. The notion of probability only applies to clicks in low resolution, and the completeness of a probabilistic theory is thereby seen in a new perspective. The genuinely fortuitous click is not produced by the impact of a particle, nor caused by an event in the source prior to the click in the counter. Indeed, there are no particles on the spacetime scene. The theory is thereby liberated from notions, which go with particles having indeterminate variables, and which have given to quantum mechanics the image of an unfathomable theory. With no particle as intermediary, the connection between source and detector is non-local, as is the entire theory, which deals exclusively with distributions of clicks. The locality permeating quantum mechanics is a symbolic one. The wave function enters in the sole role of encoding the probability distributions of clicks. The quest to understand the occurrence of the click in terms of the evolution of the wave function loses its meaning. However, click distributions in low resolution can be analyzed in terms of the connection between click distributions for different sets of counters, as given by the wave function. With increasing resolution, the probabilities, and the wave function, gradually lose significance, whereby the onset remains beyond reach. Thus, the downward path from events on the spacetime scene does not extend beyond the onset. The notion that quantum mechanics deals with particles (or fields) is rooted in the historical evolution but appears unable to accomodate genuine fortuitousness. The latter concept is given its due place by fully accepting the abstract nature of the matrix variables. (shrink)

Assessment of evidence is becoming a centralpart of health policy decisions – not least inlimit setting decisions. Limit-settingdecisions can be defined as the withholding ofpotentially beneficial health care. Thisarticle seeks to explore the value choicesrelated to the use of evidence in limit-settingdecisions at the political level. To betterspecify the important but restricted role ofevidence in such decisions, the value choicesof relevance are discussed explicitly. Fourcriteria are often considered when settinglimits:1. The severity of disease if untreated or treatedby standard care2. The (...) effectiveness of the new technology3. The cost-effectiveness of the new technology4. The quality of evidence on (1)–(3)The production and assessment of evidence isimportant for each criterion, but severalpoints are identified where the practice ofevidence-based medicine could be furtherdeveloped to capture a broader spectrum ofethical and political concerns that suchdecisions naturally evoke among citizens. (shrink)

Dialectic IV convenes contributions with new takes on the long held proposition that architects are providers of design services. They service everyone from the status quo all the way to the subaltern. We know well how architects have historically fashioned themselves to be able to procure the most valued building commissions a people have to offer. There are temples, churches, and shrines, palaces and private villas, and surely monuments, state institutions, and corporate headquarters. But how have the members of the (...) same profession managed to fashion themselves as the custodians of the public good? (shrink)