Research indicates that people value music primarily because of the emotions it evokes. Yet, the notion of musical emotions remains controversial, and researchers have so far been unable to offer a satisfactory account of such emotions. We argue that the study of musical emotions has suffered from a neglect of underlying mechanisms. Specifically, researchers have studied musical emotions without regard to how they were evoked, or have assumed that the emotions must be based on the mechanism for emotion induction, a (...) cognitive appraisal. Here, we present a novel theoretical framework featuring six additional mechanisms through which music listening may induce emotions: (1) brain stem reflexes, (2) evaluative conditioning, (3) emotional contagion, (4) visual imagery, (5) episodic memory, and (6) musical expectancy. We propose that these mechanisms differ regarding such characteristics as their information focus, ontogenetic development, key brain regions, cultural impact, induction speed, degree of volitional influence, modularity, and dependence on musical structure. By synthesizing theory and findings from different domains, we are able to provide the first set of hypotheses that can help researchers to distinguish among the mechanisms. We show that failure to control for the underlying mechanism may lead to inconsistent or non-interpretable findings. Thus, we argue that the new framework may guide future research and help to resolve previous disagreements in the field. We conclude that music evokes emotions through mechanisms that are not unique to music, and that the study of musical emotions could benefit the emotion field as a whole by providing novel paradigms for emotion induction. (shrink)

In the past years, food has found itself a central focus of creativity in contemporary culture and a pinnacle of this trend has been the kind of culinary creativity displayed at Noma in Copenhagen. But what is culinary creativity? And what is distinctive about the kind of culinary creativity displayed at places like Noma? In this paper, I attempt to answer these two questions. Building up on pioneering work on creativity by Margaret Boden, I argue that creativity is a matter (...) of adding new valuable things to the world. I then distinguish three different ways a recipe can be creative, building up on different culinary trends. I then focus on the specific case of Noma and argue that what is specific about the kind of culinary creativity displayed at Noma is that it emphasizes the role that recipes can play in mediating our relation to the environment. (shrink)

Do recipes and their instances, i.e. dishes, have any representational power? This is vexed question in the philosophy of food. In this paper, I take a fresh look on the issue by means of a theory of recipes. I argue that once a certain conception of recipes is in place, complemented by a certain conception of traditions, it becomes plausible that certain recipes, traditional ones, and their instances, traditional dishes, can be said to represent past living conditions. Hence, at some (...) some food items experiences could be said to genuinely possess a representational dimension. (shrink)

A successor to the acclaimed 'Music and Emotion', The Handbook of Music and Emotion provides comprehensive coverage of the field, in all its breadth and depth. As well as summarizing what is currently known about music and emotion, it will also stimulate further research in promising directions that have been little studied.

Den form for anvendt etik, som denne antologi repræsenterer, sigter mod at anvise løsninger på de etiske problemer, som samfunds- og teknologi-udviklingen fører med sig. De helt konkrete aktuelle etiske udfordringer, som tages op i denne bog er: Virksomheders adgang til jobansøgeres straffeattester, det fælles medicinkort, fordelingsretfærdighed i forhold til miljøudfordringer, Al Qaedas brug af de elektroniske medier, Irak-krigens legitimitet, evidensbaseret pædagogik samt personers ansvar for egen sundhed. Bogens syv bidrag er skrevet af forskere ved universiteterne i Aalborg, Roskilde, Aarhus (...) og Syddanske Universitet og forsynet med en indledning ved de to redaktører Patrik Kjærsdam Telléus og Mogens Pahuus. (shrink)

Can culinary items bear heritage value? That is, can culinary items bear the kind of universal value shared by, say, a paleolithic site and the Hiroshima P.

This book examines the role of ethics and philosophy in biodiversity conservation. The objective of this book is two-fold: on the one hand it offers a detailed and systematic account of central normative concepts often used, but rarely explicated nor justified, within conservation biology. Such concepts include 'values', 'rights', and 'duties'. The second objective is to emphasize to environmental philosophers and applied ethicists the many interesting decision-making challenges of biodiversity conservation. The book argues that a nuanced account of instrumental values (...) provides a powerful tool for reasoning about the values of biodiversity. It also scrutinizes relational values, the concept of rights of nature, and risk, and show how moral philosophy proves indispensable for these concepts. Consequently, it engages with recent suggestions on normative aspects of biodiversity conservation, and show the need for moral philosophy in biodiversity conservation. The overriding aim of this book is to provide conservation biologists and policy-makers with a systematic overview of concepts and assessments of the reasons for reaching prescriptive conclusions about biodiversity conservation. This will prove instrumental in clarifying the role of applied ethics and a refined understanding of the tools it can provide. This title will be of interest to students and scholars of conservation biology, conservation policy, environmental ethics and environmental philosophy. (shrink)

In discourses on digitization and the data economy, it is often claimed that data subjects shall beownersof their data. In this paper, we provide a problem diagnosis for such calls fordata ownership: a large variety of demands are discussed under this heading. It thus becomes challenging to specify what—if anything—unites them. We identify four conceptual dimensions of calls for data ownership and argue that these help to systematize and to compare different positions. In view of this pluralism of data ownership (...) claims, we introduce, spell out and defend a constructive interpretative proposal: claims for data ownership are charitably understood as attempts to call for theredistributionof material resources and the socio-culturalrecognitionof data subjects. We argue that as one consequence of this reading, it misses the point to reject claims for data ownership on the grounds that property in data does not exist. Instead, data ownership brings to attention a claim to renegotiate such aspects of thestatus quo. (shrink)

The purpose of this book is to explore new developments in the field of economic sociology. It contains cutting-edge theoretical discussions by some of the world's leading economic sociologists, with chapters on topics such as the economic convention, relational sociology, economic identity, economy and law, economic networks and institutions.The book is distinctive in a number of ways. First, it focuses on theoretical contributions, by pulling together and extending what the contributors believe to be the most important theoretical innovations within their (...) own particular areas of the field. Second, there are contributions by leading economic sociologists from both the US and Europe, which gives the book both wider scope and appeal, while also creating the opportunity for some interesting dialogue between distinct theoretical traditions. The book will be of interest to researchers, Ph.D. students, and advanced students on both side of the Atlantic, and indispensible in advanced economic sociology courses. (shrink)

Sustainable ecosystem management often requires setting goals despite uncertainty regarding the achievability and desirability of the intended state of affairs. Coming to doubt the achievability or desirability of a previously set goal might sometimes, but not always, require reconsidering that goal. There is, however, a need to strike a balance between responsiveness to new information and knowing when to retain goals despite doubts. By critically engaging with adaptive ecosystem management, as advocated by environmental pragmatist Bryan G. Norton, criteria for warranted (...) reconsideration of long-term goals are investigated. (shrink)

Constructing energy scenarios is traditionally an endeavour driven by experts. I suggest that an outcome of relying solely on expertise is incompleteness. Moreover, expertise, while being a necessary condition, is not a sufficient condition for epistemic quality and normative legitimacy of energy scenarios given the scope of transitions that energy scenarios entail, which includes substantial societal repercussions. Four reasons will be provided for wide participation when constructing energy scenarios. First, there are several forecasting shortcomings of top-down approaches. Second, to rely (...) solely on expertise provides incomplete conceptualizations of energy and central concepts such as ‘smartness’, in addition to neglecting normative views. Third, increased epistemic quality is an outcome of wide participation. A fourth reason is derived from the argument of inductive risks, stating that thresholds of evidence should reflect the potential outcomes if erroneously corroborating or rejecting a hypothesis. As energy scenarios provide input to decision-making having potentially large societal impact, they ought to be both normatively legitimate as well as of sufficient epistemic quality, components provided by wide participation. -/- . (shrink)

This article (in Swedish) situates John Stuart Mill's normative discussion on 'stationary state' in contemporary sustainability categories.

The general aim of this licentiate thesis is to analyze the framework in which long-term goals are set and subsequently achieved. It is often claimed that goals should be realistic, meaning that they should be adjusted to known abilities. This thesis will argue that this might be very difficult in areas related to sustainable development and climate change adaptation, and that goals that are, to an acceptable degree, unrealistic, can have important functions. Essay I discusses long-term goal setting. When there (...) is a great temporal discrepancy between the point in time of setting and achieving a goal, many uncertainties have to be considered. The surrounding world and the agent’s abilities and values might change. This is an ontological uncertainty. We often form beliefs regarding how abilities and values might change, but this belief is always uncertain. This is an epistemological uncertainty. A form of goal called cautiously utopian goals is proposed, which incorporate such uncertainties, but enables goal setting with long time-frames. Essay II discusses the issue of goals intended to reduce great risks. We cannot expect an agent to do something that lies beyond this agent’s abilities, as exemplified in the principle ‘ought implies can’. Adjusting goals to what we currently, with a high degree of certainty know could be done is difficult. If not including an estimation of how abilities can change, important performance-enhancing functions of goals might be lost. It is argued that very ambitious goals should be set. This is partly due to the great magnitude and likelihood of unwanted consequences and partly due to the difficulty of delineating what lies in agents’ capacity to manage complex risks. Essay III discusses a decision-facilitating tool Sustainability Analysis to be used by Swedish municipal planners. One sub-part of the tool, Goal Conflict Analysis, can be used to identify how the consequences of a planned adaptation measure will affect other long-term municipal goals. Identified goal conflicts can then be used in order to determine whether the conflicts are acceptable, or whether a different adaptation measure should be worked out. The paper discusses a workshop in a Swedish municipality in which the tool has been tested. (shrink)

This paper on post-truth politics argues that to the extent that one wants to understand political discourses generally (post-truth political discourses in particular), it is crucial to see them as circulating talk that performs rather than reports. This implies a shift in focus. Many react strongly to ‘post-truth’ assertions by appealing to evidence, objectivity, facts and truth. In this paper, it is suggested that, when analysing political discourses, there is no point asking, ‘Is it true?’ One should rather ask, ‘What (...) happens as a result?’ Understanding political discourses as performative demands that the resulting doing, transforming and changing may transcend established parameters and known patterns. That also means problematising the types of argument allowed, or discourse considered appropriate, in a given situation. What, then, is the force within the performative discourse driving transformation? What role does intention play? And who—if anybody—can be designated as the master of the discourse? One way of answering these questions is to broaden the perspective of what happens in verbal exchanges. The hearer-speaker relation is fundamental, one in which meaning is shaped and the performative force is formed. A political discourse in general, and a post-truth political discourse in particular, cannot do and perform—cannot function—in a vacuum. This evokes serious questions about accountability and responsibility and also about human action and freedom. (shrink)

To facilitate recruitment of conscript cyber soldiers in Sweden, the Cyber Test for Future Soldiers was developed as a complement to the existing generic enrolment test. Consisting of several parts, CTFS measures different aspects of computer-related knowledge and cognitive abilities that we believe are of particular relevance to cyber security. This article describes the evaluation regarding CTFS’s validity and reliability based on data from 62 conscripts that took the test and the 27 selected conscripts finishing the training 1 year later. (...) Reliability was predicted through internal consistency and test–retest measures. Cronbach’s alpha for CTFS ranges from 0.79 to 0.86 whereas the test–retest reliability is 0.60. Evidence regarding validity was collected based on test content and internal structure. Convergent, discriminant, and predictive evidence are also presented. Perhaps most importantly, CTFS could predict the cyber soldiers’ performance during their training and added incremental validity to I-prov 2000. When adjusted for range restriction, I-prov 2000 predicted 20% of the variation in course score, while 34% of the variance was explained when CTFS was used in conjunction with I-prov 2000. The results show that CTFS already in its first version is adding value for the Swedish Armed Forces. (shrink)

In fluid-dynamics, several motivating factors can spur new lines of inquiry. Beginning with considerations on the exchange of momentum that takes place at small scales inside a fluid, and after introducing a generalized categorization of different types of fluid media, Understanding the Nature of Science presents a critical analysis of contemporary issues which are being debated in the scientific community. Next, the authors present an evolutionary ecological approach in which human knowledge is studied as the ecology of interacting data-information-knowledge systems (...) developing in time as a consequence of incessant learning from interactions with the environment on various levels of organization. The concluding section suggests the use of problem-based learning to promote conceptual changes from the "Nature of Science" naive views, usually found in students, to more informed views. (shrink)

Culinary products have culinary value. That is, they have value qua culinary products. However, what is the nature of culinary value and what elements determine it? In the light of the central and universal role that culinary products play in our lives, offering a philosophical analysis of culinary value is a matter of interest. This paper attempts to do just this. It develops three different possible models of culinary value, two rather restricted ones and a third more encompassing one, rejects (...) the first two, and defends the third one. (shrink)

For any market to work properly, certain key elements are necessary: competition, pricing, rules, clearly defined offers, and easy access to information. Without these components, there would be chaos. Orderly Fashion examines how order is maintained in the different interconnected consumer, producer, and credit markets of the global fashion industry. From retailers in Sweden and the United Kingdom to producers in India and Turkey, Patrik Aspers focuses on branded garment retailers--chains such as Gap, H&M, Old Navy, Topshop, and Zara. (...) Aspers investigates these retailers' interactions and competition in the consumer market for fashion garments, traces connections between producer and consumer markets, and demonstrates why market order is best understood through an analysis of its different forms of social construction. Emphasizing consumption rather than production, Aspers considers the larger retailers' roles as buyers in the production market of garments, and as potential objects of investment in financial markets. He shows how markets overlap and intertwine and he defines two types of markets--status markets and standard markets. In status markets, market order is related to the identities of the participating actors more than the quality of the goods, whereas in standard markets the opposite holds true. Looking at how identities, products, and values create the ordered economic markets of the global fashion business, Orderly Fashion has wide implications for all modern markets, regardless of industry. (shrink)

Attention serves to represent selectively relevant information at the expense of competing and irrelevant information, but the mechanisms and effects of attention are not unitary. The great variety of methods and techniques used to study automaticity and attention for facial expressions suggests that the time should now be ready for a better breaking down of the concepts of automaticity and attention into elementary constituents that are more tractable to investigations in cognitive neuroscience. This article reviews both the behavioral and neuroimaging (...) literature on the automatic perception of facial expressions of emotion in healthy volunteers and patients with brain damage. It focuses on aspects of automaticity in face perception that relate to task goals, attentional control, and conscious awareness. Behavioral and neuroimaging findings converge to support some degree of automaticity in processing facial expressions and is likely to reflect distinct components that should be better disentangled at both the behavioral and neural level. (shrink)

During recent years the relevance of environmental ethics to nature conservation has been increasingly questioned. This doubt mainly takes two forms: (1) Conservation biology is regarded as solely a scientific endeavor, and therefore ethics is redundant; (2) It is acknowledged that values are part and parcel of conservation science, practice and policy, but environmental ethics is considered to have little positive contribution to make. We focus on the latter form and argue that it enables only suppressed normative premises omitted from (...) critical scrutiny, and that relying on suppressed premises for making prescriptive conclusions is normatively unreasonable. Furthermore, even if the normative premises were well-founded, the stance has unwelcome implications. We show ways in which environmental ethics provides critical and structured manners of reasoning on normative premises. This invites more collaboration between nature conservation and environmental ethics in the future. (shrink)

‘Relational value’ (RV) has intuitive credibility due to the shortcomings of existing axiological categories regarding recognizing the ethical relevance of people’s relations to nature. But RV is justified by arguments and analogies that do not hold up to closer scrutiny, which strengthens the assumption that RV is redundant. While RV may provide reasons for ethically considering some relations, much work remains to show that RV is a concept that does something existing axiological concepts cannot, beyond empirically describing relations people have (...) to environmental areas and places. (shrink)

A somewhat prominent view in the literature is that language provides opportunity to program the brain with ‘cognitive gadgets’, or ‘virtual machines’. Here, I explore the possibility that thinking itself – internal symbolic responses to stimuli that are either intrinsic or extrinsic, and computational procedures that operate on these internal symbolic representations – is such a software product rather than just an emergent phenomenon of the brain’s hardware being ‘complex enough’, or the brain processing information in a manner that is (...) ‘integrated enough’. I also present a testable hypothesis that would indicate the presence of such a thought-gadget, and briefly overview some evolutionary pre-requisites for its existence. Further, I explore some consequences the existence of such a gadget would entail for our understanding of consciousness. The nature of the gadget is left unspecified as the article is not a blueprint for the thinking gadget, but an argument in favor of its existence. (shrink)

The purpose of this theoretical article is to contribute to the analysis of knowledge and valuation in markets. In every market actors must know how to value its products. The analytical point of departure is the distinction between two ideal types of markets that are mutually exclusive, status and standard. In a status market, valuation is a function of the status rank orders or identities of the actors on both sides of the market, which is more entrenched than the value (...) of what is traded in the market. In a market characterized by a standard, the situation is reversed; the scale of value is more entrenched than the rankings of actors in the market. In a status market actors need to know about the other actors involved as there is no scale of value for evaluating the items traded in the market independently of its buyers and sellers. In a standard market it is more important to know how to meet the standard in relation to which all items traded are valued. The article includes empirical examples and four testable hypotheses. (shrink)

Climate ethics and environmental ethics sometimes provide conflicting action guidance. For instance, favored climate policies to avoid global mean increases beyond 1.5-2 °C may have detrimental effects on biodiversity by requiring transforming environmental areas into croplands for bioenergy and for negative emission technologies. From this follows a potential moral conflict between the demands of climate ethics, according to which transforming natural ecosystems to cropland for bioenergy is permissible and perhaps even obligatory if it reduces risks of climate change, and the (...) demands of environmental ethics, according to which transforming natural ecosystems into croplands is prohibited if it reduces biodiversity, assuming that biodiversity, or its components, have moral standing. Consequently, there is a choice: either preserve biodiversity, but accept higher risks of dangerous climate change; or reduce the risks of dangerous climate change with the aid of negative emission technologies but increase biodiversity deterioration. In this paper I investigate other options like lower population growth and relying on technological efficiency; I conclude that neither will ultimately be consistent with both climate and environmental ethics. I argue that both climate and environmental ethics can support limiting the consumption of energy while mitigating emissions of greenhouse gases and preserving biodiversity, hence resolving the conflicting moral recommendations. I further suggest that virtues such as humility and simplicity can accommodate just such an expansion of moral concern and provide environmental ethical guidance in climate policies. (shrink)

Interreligious dialogue and conversion are two contentious foci for understanding how religion operates. An interpretation of George Lindbeck serves as a starting point for discussion in this paper. The dominant reading is that Lindbeck claims that traditions absorb the world. Religious traditions are isolated, and the one with a greater capacity to assimilate others’ concerns emerges the strongest – implying what is called exclusivism. My proposal is that a different reading of Lindbeck is possible; I am not so much questioning (...) Lindbeck as highlighting another aspect of his oeuvre. If grammar, framework and structure – and not propositional first-order ontological contents – are given first place, dialogue and conversion appear differently. Questions must be raised, however; isn't it true that there is always some content and substance – even if hidden or disguised? (shrink)

Most commentators have agreed with our thesis, that musical emotions cannot be studied without regard to underlying mechanisms. However, some commentators have expressed concerns that are addressed in this response. Others have suggested directions for future research. Topics discussed in our response include terminology, elaborations on particular mechanisms, possible additional mechanisms, ways of distinguishing among emotions and mechanisms, the prevalence of musical emotions, the relationship between perceived and felt emotions, developmental issues, and evolutionary perspectives. We end our response with a (...) plea for researchers to reach beyond the traditional disputes in the field to pave the way for more theory-driven studies that can facilitate a deeper understanding of musical emotions. (shrink)

I will outline four justifications of regional ecological obligations calling for different political authorities to collaborate for ecological reasons: through voluntary agreement between political entities united by an ecological region; by a shared regional history or cultural relations to an ecological region; with reference to ‘place-based’ duties with an ecological basis; or by obligations to an extended set of individual right-holders. None are conclusive reasons but show that there are normative grounds for regional collaboration of separate political authorities. The article (...) contributes to discussion on, despite its practical relevance, a much neglected concept in political philosophy. (shrink)

Xenotransplantation is any transplantation, implantation, or infusion of either live cells, tissues, or organs from a nonhuman animal source, or human bodily fluids, cells, tissues, or organs that have had ex vivo contact with live nonhuman animal cells, tissues, or organs into a human recipient. Most scientists agree that clinical xenotransplantation should not be performed in the absence of accompanying public health safeguards The science upon which that consensus is based has been extensively described in the literature. By and large (...) the most compelling reason for public health safeguards is the possible introduction of new infectious agents into the human life cycle as a result of xenotransplantation.The most frequent source of new infectious diseases in human populations is the transfer of agents, such as viruses, bacteria, or prions, from animals to man. Human diseases and infectious agents that are thought to have originated from animals include influenza, rabies, malaria, lassa fever, lyme disease, AIDS, yellow fever, tuberculosis, the human t-cell lymphotropic virus, the herpes B virus, the hantavirus, and even the bubonic and pneumonic plagues. (shrink)

It is commonly assumed that there are differences in physicians’ and caregivers’ ethical attitudes towards clinical situations. The assumption is that the difference is driven by different values, views and judgements in specific situations. At Aalborg University Hospital, Denmark, we aimed to investigate these assumptions by conducting a large quantitative study. The study design, based on the Factorial Survey Method, was a carefully constructed survey with 50 questions designed to test which factors influenced the respondents’ ethical reasoning. The factors were (...) clustered into three categories of ethical reasoning and values. The categories were formulated in terms of easily recognizable ethical positions: consequential ethics, deontological ethics and relational ethics. Based on 2129 respondents, we found significant support for the assumption of differences between physicians and caregivers. The group of caregivers favoured the relational ethics view in clinical ethical situations, and the group of ph... (shrink)

Empathic perspective taking involves a phenomenally rich reaction to another’s mental state, in an attempt to understand the other by feeling with them. But can we take just any perspective, even if the person we aim to understand seems fundamentally different from us? In this paper, we will explore the possibility of empathically understanding others that are different from us with respect to one aspect of their mental life: their sensibility.

Social decision-making involving risks ideally results in obligations to avoid expected harms or keep them within acceptable limits. Ambitious goals aimed at avoiding or greatly reducing risks might not be feasible, forcing the acceptance of higher degrees of risk (i.e. unrealistic levels of risk reduction are revised to comport with beliefs regarding abilities). In this paper, the philosophical princi- ple ‘ought implies can’ is applied to the management of complex risks, exempli- fied by the risks associated with climate change. In (...) its common interpretation, the principle states that we cannot expect an agent to perform something that lies beyond his or her abilities. However, it is here argued that this principle requires setting thresholds for legitimate claims of inabilities that justify the waiving of normative demands. This paper discuss three claims: (1) that caution is required before revising a risk-reducing goal that is perhaps exceedingly ambitious; (2) that claims on abilities are not only descriptive, but also value-laden; and (3) that the function of a goal has to be clarified before risk-reducing goals are revised. Risk-reducing goals that initially seem unrealistic arguably serve performance- enhancing purposes in risk management. Neglecting such goals could lead to choosing less desirable, but certainly feasible, risk-reducing goals. (shrink)