This paper reviews the research done in Finland on medical ethics in the last three years and published in four leading journals. The general characteristics of this area are discussed and some comments on its most conspicuous representatives are offered. The conclusion reached is that medical ethics in Finland is still in a rather embryonic stage of development, and that more systematic and theoretically sophisticated approaches are required. However, since many physicians have become interested in ethical questions, it can be (...) reasonably assumed that a more lively and theoretically grounded discussion will ensue in the near future. (shrink)

Two Dogmas of Rorty's Pragmatism Here I discuss two controversial distinctions that have an essential role in Rorty's pragmatism: the distinction between descriptive and normative discourses, and the distinction between the private and public dimensions of human life. Neither of them is Rorty's novelty, but the way he stresses them is unique. The first is a central presupposition of his Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature (1979), while the other is the argumentative base of Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity (1989). I (...) will argue that the distinctions provide metaphilosophical tools for Rorty's pragmatism, and that our stance towards the latter depends on the plausibility of them. (shrink)

Intonation plays an integral role in comprehending spoken language. Listeners can rapidly integrate intonational information to predictively map a given pitch accent onto the speaker's likely referential intentions. We use mouse tracking to investigate two questions: (a) how listeners draw predictive inferences based on information from intonation? and (b) how listeners adapt their online interpretation of intonational cues when these are reliable or unreliable? We formulate a novel Bayesian model of rational predictive cue integration and explore predictions derived under a (...) concrete linking hypothesis relating a quantitative notion of evidential strength of a cue to the moment in time, relative to the unfolding speech signal, at which mouse trajectories turn towards the eventually selected option. In order to capture rational belief updates after concrete observations of a speaker's behavior, we formulate and explore an extension of this model that includes the listener's hierarchical beliefs about the speaker's likely production behavior. Our results are compatible with the assumption that listeners rapidly and rationally integrate all available intonational information, that they expect reliable intonational information initially, and that they adapt these initial expectations gradually during exposition to unreliable input. All materials, data, and scripts can be retrieved here: https://osf.io/dnbuk/. (shrink)

The article analyzes the work of Hanno Kesting, Reinhart Koselleck, Roman Schnur, and Nicolaus Sombart—four young followers of Carl Schmitt in postwar Germany. Their “intellectual Schmittianism” was less than a full commitment to Schmitt’s political positions, yet had more than an arbitrary similarity with them: it pertained to assumptions, categories, and modes of thought. Drawing on Pocock’s terminology, I identify a particular “language” of intellectual Schmittianism, introduce its key components, and analyze their interaction. I focus on six categories derived from (...) Schmitt’s narrative of European political modernity: discrimination, historical parallels, secularization, global civil war, open/latent civil war, and category blurs. The analysis shows that these categories were interlinked argumentative devices rather than mere rhetoric and that they systematically upheld the postwar scholars’ arguments. While the Schmittian language enabled the young scholars to express their political skepticis... (shrink)

Panksepp (2001) has kindly provided an unexpected and critical commentary on my article “Feeling as knowing” (published in two parts in Consciousness & Emotion; Jarvilehto, 2000b, and 2001), in which I try to clarify some conceptual problems in emotion research on the basis of the theory of the organism-environment system (Järvilehto, 1998a, b, 1999, 2000a). While I am always grateful for any criticism of my ideas, because it is the only way to develop them further, the commentary does not contain (...) much substantial criticism of my theoretical considerations, but it is rather related to science politics (“Jarvilehto’s holistic approach would … discourage investigators…”; Panksepp, 2001, p. ), and to the problem what kind of theory could be useful in guiding neuroscientific experimental work. The commentary seems to contain also some misunderstanding of my basic ideas, indicating that I didn’t formulate them well enough in the two articles. Therefore, I try to elucidate in this reply somewhat more the background of my approach, and to move the discussion to a more substantial theoretical level. (shrink)

Despite recent advances in the research related to air pollution and associated adverse cardiovascular events, the combined effects of air pollution, climate change, and SARS‐CoV‐2 infection on cardiovascular health need to be researched further. This Commentary addresses their impacts on cardiovascular health in the approximately 25 million people with a severe form of inherited hypercholesterolemia, called familial hypercholesterolemia (FH). The arterial endothelium in these individuals is potentially under multiple attacks caused by particles of both endogenous and exogenous origin. Thus, they (...) have a lifelong highly elevated level of circulating low density lipoprotein (LDL) cholesterol which drives premature atherosclerosis. The high levels of LDL particles, often associated with an elevated level of circulating lipoprotein(a) particles, are both capable of inducing and maintaining endothelial dysfunction. Such pre‐existing endothelial dysfunction can be exacerbated by exposure to SARS‐CoV‐2 viral particles, by exposure to fine particulate matter generated by climate change‐associated wildfires, and by dehydration during deadly heatwaves linked to the globally rising temperatures. The external factors can severely worsen the pre‐existing endothelial dysfunction, and thereby significantly increase the risk of a cardiovascular event in the exposed FH patients. (shrink)

In Reinhart Koselleck's history of concepts, the general orientation that concepts are to be understood in their proper contexts is intertwined with the assumption that they are manifestations of particular political conflicts. The essay shows that the dense compound of context and conflict in Koselleck's thought springs from Carl Schmitt's political theory and also forms an important point of continuity between Koselleck's early work and his later methodological writings. The formalized assumption of conflict, somewhat problematically, binds Koselleckian conceptual history to (...) a particular conception of politics, one that sees politics ultimately as struggle and conflict. Once the historical-theoretical contingency of this conception is recognized, it becomes both possible and necessary to reassess the role of conflict in the methodology of conceptual history. (shrink)

In Vagaries of Desire, Timo Airaksinen develops a new philosophical account of desire understood as mental state that focuses on a desirable possible world. Literary and philosophical themes, including sexuality, are discussed in terms of their metaphoric and metonymic features.

Carl Schmitt emphatically rejected intermediate formations between peace and war. Analysing Schmitt's oscillation between the domestic and the international, the article suggests that the notion of ?intermediate state? provides a vital route to the core of Schmitt's political theory. The concept emerges in Schmitt's analysis of the Rhineland crisis, recurs in his vehement critique of Weimar pluralism, and, finally, reappears in his theory of modern war from the Third Reich to the Cold War. ?Intermediate state? has both qualitative and temporal (...) aspects; it connotes not only categorical confusion and impurity but also instability and limited duration. Despite his criticism, Schmitt himself utilised the ambiguity, polysemy, and normative ambivalence of the intermediate state in his argumentation, finally giving it an open theological reinterpretation in his later work. Schmitt's theory of political conflict, consequently, is problematically bound to the vague intermediate state of perpetual conflict that he sought to avoid, and to the metaphorical aspects of the notion of battle that he explicitly rejected. (shrink)

Abstract According to Habermas' colonization thesis, reification is a social pathology that arises when the communicative infrastructure of the lifeworld is 'colonized' by money and power. In this paper I argue that, thirty years after the publication of the Theory of Communicative Action, this thesis remains compelling. However, while Habermas offers a functionalist explanation of reification, his normative criticism of it remains largely implicit: he never explains what is wrong with reification from the perspective of the people whose social relations (...) are reified. As a result, Habermas cannot explain why only some forms of colonization lead to reification effects. In particular, he suggests that reification effects result from the juridification of communicatively structured domains of action but not from the commodification of labour power. I criticize this argument and suggest that if the normative dimension of the colonization thesis is made explicit, a more nuanced explanation of reification becomes possible. (shrink)

A central goal of research in explainable artificial intelligence (XAI) is to facilitate human understanding. However, understanding is an elusive concept that is difficult to target. In this paper, we argue that a useful way to conceptualize understanding within the realm of XAI is via certain human abilities. We present four criteria for a useful conceptualization of understanding in XAI and show that these are fulfilled by an abilities-based approach: First, thinking about understanding in terms of specific abilities is motivated (...) by research from numerous disciplines involved in XAI. Second, an abilities-based approach is highly versatile and can capture different forms of understanding important in XAI application contexts. Third, abilities can be operationalized for empirical studies. Fourth, abilities can be used to clarify the link between explainability, understanding, and societal desiderata concerning AI, like fairness and trustworthiness. Conceptualizing understanding as abilities can therefore support interdisciplinary collaboration among XAI researchers, provide practical benefit across diverse XAI application contexts, facilitate the development and evaluation of explainability approaches, and contribute to satisfying the societal desiderata of different stakeholders concerning AI systems. (shrink)

The role of uncertainty within an organization’s environment features prominently in the business ethics and management literature, but how corporate investment decisions should proceed in the face of uncertainties relating to the natural environment is less discussed. From the perspective of ecological economics, the salience of ecology-induced issues challenges management to address new types of uncertainties. These pertain to constraints within the natural environment as well as to institutional action aimed at conserving the natural environment. We derive six areas of (...) ecology-induced uncertainties and propose ecology-driven real options as a conceptual approach for systematically incorporating these uncertainties into strategic management. We combine our results in an integrative investment framework and illustrate its application with the case of carbon constraints. (shrink)

The devices with which experimental economists account for and justify their own and their opponents’ views are investigated by examining transcripts of interviews with two participants in experimental economics. The earlier investigations of natural scientists’ discourse provide material for comparisons. The results suggest that in assessing an opponent’s deviating view experimentalists in economics can be more cautious than natural scientists to characterize their opponents as influenced by personal and social factors. Indeed, they seem to admit that to some extent both (...) their own and their opponents’ behavior involves these influences. Regarding the development of disputes, the respondents constructed accounts where general optimism concerning the ability of empirical arguments to resolve disputes was linked with an idea of dialogues between theorists and experimentalists as vehicles of progress. (shrink)

So-called identity theories that postulate the identity of mental phenomena with brain states are usually associated with materialistic ontology. However, the historical picture of the actual attempts at spelling out the mind–brain identities is more complex. In the eighteenth century such identities were most enthusiastically proposed by dualists , whereas non-reductionistic materialists such as Diderot tried to get along without them. In the nineteenth century physiologists such as Broca, Charcot and Wernicke, who postulated discrete and localizable neural correlates for ideas (...) and mental images, ended up, despite their professed materialism, defending theories that resembled Cartesian schemes and the theories of their eighteenth-century dualistic predecessors. Some problems resulting from the use of these theoretical models postulating local and discrete traces, images or representations in the brain in the context of materialist ontology are obviously related to their dualistic origins and to the fact that they are necessarily bound up with dualistic presuppositions. In the context of the criticism of the nineteenth-century memory trace paradigm it is, however, important to bear in mind that functional localization as such is not dependent on the notion of localizable representations. Nor are materialist theories of the mind necessarily dependent on postulating specific type–type identities between the mental and the physiological. (shrink)

We introduce a framework for a graph-theoretic analysis of the semantic paradoxes. Similar frameworks have been recently developed for infinitary propositional languages by Cook and Rabern, Rabern, and Macauley. Our focus, however, will be on the language of first-order arithmetic augmented with a primitive truth predicate. Using Leitgeb’s notion of semantic dependence, we assign reference graphs (rfgs) to the sentences of this language and define a notion of paradoxicality in terms of acceptable decorations of rfgs with truth values. It is (...) shown that this notion of paradoxicality coincides with that of Kripke. In order to track down the structural components of an rfg that are responsible for paradoxicality, we show that any decoration can be obtained in a three-stage process: first, the rfg is unfolded into a tree, second, the tree is decorated with truth values (yielding a dependence tree in the sense of Yablo), and third, the decorated tree is re-collapsed onto the rfg. We show that paradoxicality enters the picture only at stage three. Due to this we can isolate two basic patterns necessary for paradoxicality. Moreover, we conjecture a solution to the characterization problem for dangerous rfgs that amounts to the claim that basically the Liar- and the Yablo graph are the only paradoxical rfgs. Furthermore, we develop signed rfgs that allow us to distinguish between ‘positive’ and ‘negative’ reference and obtain more fine-grained versions of our results for unsigned rfgs. (shrink)

El presente trabajo muestra cómo, a pesar de que Kant y Hobbes parten del supuesto de una natural belicosodad de los seres humanos y una tendencia hacia la desobediencia, cada uno arriba a soluciones radicalmente diferentes. Kant, en el escrito Acerca del dicho: ¿Esto puede ser verdad en teoría pero no en la práctica¿ contiene un capítulo expresamente contra Hobbes y, fundado en las tesis de la Ilustración, intenta salvar el derecho de los subditos frente al monarca, no obstante que (...) lo reduce a la libertad de expresión. (shrink)

L'exégèse paulinienne du XX° siècle ayant principalement été le fait des spécialistes de confession protestante, l'article suit les changements opérés et s'attarde sur deux figures qui ont notablement animé et marqué les recherches actuelles, E.P. Sanders et H. Räisänen. Avec sa théorie du nomisme d'alliance, Sanders a sans doute le plus œuvré pour montrer le primat de la christologie dans la sotériologie paulinienne. Si son idée de nomisme d'alliance était vraie, Paul n'aurait jamais pensé que le judaïsme était une religion (...) légaliste. L'apôtre doit bien plutôt y avoir vu un nomisme d'alliance. L'idée de légalisme doit être d'origine plus tardive, et vient de la théologie biblique protestante. Pour Sanders, Paul est un adepte du nomisme d'alliance, qui construit sa sotériologie christologique sur une base juive, et n'a pas voulu critiquer la conduite de la foi juive, le nomisme ; il ne nie pas les croyances juives, mais sa christologie dicte sa sotériologie. Sans nier que Christ soit le centre de la sotériologie de l'apôtre, l'article essaie de voir si Sanders a bien mis en évidence la structure de base de la pensée de Paul et sa relation aux enseignements des écrits du judaïsme du second Temple. La discussion de la théorie de Sanders et de certains de ceux qui ont suivi ses idées, montre que l'idée qu'ils se font du judaïsme du second Temple est trop étroite, et cela a eu pour conséquence de leur faire mal interpréter la relation de Paul au judaïsme de son temps.Pauline exegesis of the past century was generally the work of prostestant specialists. This article considers the changes brought about, concentrating on two individuals who had animated and influenced present day research, E.P. Sanders and H. Raïsänen. Without doubt, Sanders with his theory of covenant nomism, had worked the most to show the primacy of Christology in Pauline soteriology. If his idea of covenant nomism were true, Paul would never have thought that Judaism was a legalistic religion. Rather, the apostle must have seen a covenant nomism in it. The idea of legalism must have had a later origin, and comes from protestant biblical theology. For Sanders, Paul is an adept of covenant nomism, which constructed his Christological soteriology on a Jewish basis, and he did not want to criticize the conduct of the Jewish faith, nomism. He did not deny Jewish beliefs, but his Christology dictated his soteriology. Without denying that Christ was the center of the apostole's soteriology, ther article tries to see if Sanders clarified the basic structure of Paul's thought and its relation to the teachings of the writings of Judaism of second Temple. The discussion of Sander's theory, and of those who followed his ideas, shows that the idea they have of second Temple Judaism is too narrow, and this had the consequence of leading them to a bad interpretation of the relation of Paul to the Judaism of his time. (shrink)

Paul Ricœur considered the theme of non-peace in self-affirmation to have such existential and phenomenological bearing that he devoted his intellectual capacity to explore the self that is never immediately present to oneself or at immediate peace with oneself. Not all reasons for such originating non-peace are well observed in Ricœur scholarship. This article proposes that Ricœur approaches the self by means of occupied spatiality or under the notion of “having” the self. The argument is made that self-affirmation is reliant (...) on objectification that, subsequently, results in the self “having” or possessing itself as an object. Such necessary structure for the process of self-affirmation leads the self to grasp a notion of itself as an expropriated appropriator; this achievement leaves the self in a perpetuated state of non-peace. Here the analysis—complementary to those already presented in Ricœur scholarship—approaches religious question-setting. Making a reference to Augustine the article accords with his personal assessment considering his “unfinished state” of needing to wait and hope for “that utter peace” when the problems of human existence do not disturb him any more. (shrink)

Name der Zeitschrift: Neue Zeitschrift für Systematische Theologie und Religionsphilosophie Jahrgang: 59 Heft: 3 Seiten: 394-409.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Diderot philosopheTimo KaitaroColas Duflo. Diderot philosophe. Paris: Honoré Champion, 2003. Pp. 543. Cloth, € 85,00.Diderot's thought has often been believed to be full of incoherencies and paradoxes, lacking the unity characteristic of philosophical systems. It is true that he preferred the form of a dialogue to that of a systematic treatise and that his ideas on a specific subject tend to be dispersed in a variety of philosophical, (...) literary or epistolary texts. However, the different pieces fit together nicely, if one has the patience to put them together. In his new monograph Colas Duflo manages to show the coherence and unity of Diderot's philosophy, not only by showing the consistency of the philosopher's thought on epistemological, aesthetical and moral subjects separately, but also by showing the close interdependence of different aspects of his philosophical inquiry and their grounding in his biological materialism.Before the author examines Diderot's philosophy proper, he introduces the reader to Diderot's manner of writing and shows how the literary forms in which the encyclopedist presented his philosophy are indistinguishable from its content. Diderot did not write dialogues just in order to present in a palatable and entertaining form a philosophy that could well have been presented in erudite treatises. Dialogue was the original form of Diderot's thought. It helped him to distance himself from his thoughts and to put his ideas in a dialogue with each other, instead of systematizing them. In his dialogues the truth is approached by multiplying perspectives instead of being viewed from a central perspective which unifies the various points of view in one vision. Reminding the reader of this aspect of Diderot's philosophy is important. One would look in vain for the traditional mouthpiece of the truth among the protagonists of his dialogues; and this is true even in cases when he stages himself among them.Colas Duflo starts his discussion of Diderot's philosophy by examining the philosopher's complex and changing relation to metaphysical finalism in his first philosophical works. Duflo also lets this theme of finalism run through the book as the main thread, which provides a coherent framework for the treatement of the different aspects of Diderot's philosophy. The presentation of Diderot's early writings situates these works in their contemporary context and manages to reveal the internal logic of Diderot's development from a finalist deist to an antifinalist atheist in a convincing manner. The chapter dealing with Le rêve de d'Alembert provides a careful and well-thought-out reading of this work and shows the originality of Diderot's biological materialism, which has really nothing to do with the mechanism sometimes falsely attributed to him (and to La Mettrie). Diderot's thought was not so much rooted in the mechanical world-view as it was in the sciences of life of his time. In relation to the problem of unity vs. multiplicity in Diderot's organicistic materialism, Duflo tends to emphasize multiplicity. One could, in fact, with as much reason, argue the opposite and put the emphasis on unity. But this is perhaps a matter of taste, since Diderot's originality lies in fact in his ability to take into account both aspects of the organisms by describing the continuing tensions between unifying and disrupting forces at work within them.The part of the book dealing with aesthetics places the encyclopedist's theory of taste in the context of his materialism. The interpretations proposed are convincing although one has to take account of the fact that Duflo uses the word "spontaneous," not in its usual sense referring to immediate and unreflected reactions, but rather as a synonym of innate [End Page 498] (see 303). Diderot emphasized the former but denied the latter. The juxtaposition of Diderot's aesthetics with that of Kant provides some enlightening insights into both. From taste one passes fluently to Diderot's moral philosophy: according to Diderot moral judgements resemble those of taste in so far as they are often as spontaneous as the latter. And despite this they are not innate but based on experience.The chapters dealing with the moral and political philosophy of... (shrink)