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32Levi on the reality of dispositionsIn Erik J. Olsson (ed.), Knowledge and Inquiry: Essays on the Pragmatism of Isaac Levi, Cambridge University Press. pp. 313--326. 2006.Isaac Levi is more interested in inquiry and how it progresses than he is in metaphysics. Questions concerning the role of disposition predicates in inquiry are more central to him than those concerning the nature and reality of dispositions. It has not stopped him from giving me and others very useful metaphysical advice. Currently, where empirical metaphysics is in vogue, there is every reason to see whether the two forms of philosophical interest might interlock substantially. Levi has stimul…Read more
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32BACKGROUND: Representing is about theories and theory formation. Philosophy of science has a long-standing interest in representing. At least since Ian Hacking's modern classic Representing and Intervening analytical philosophers have struggled to combine that interest with a study of the roles of intervention studies. With few exceptions this focus of philosophy of science has been on physics and other natural sciences. In particular, there have been few attempts to analyse the use of the notio…Read more
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31Why metaphysicians do not explainIn Anne Reboul (ed.), Philosophical Papers Dedicated to Kevin Mulligan, . 2011.The paper discusses the concept of explanation in metaphysics. Different types of explanation are identified and explored. Scientific explanation is compared with metaphysical explanation. The comparison illustrates the difficulties with applying the concept of explanation in metaphysics.
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30Science and proven experience : a Swedish variety of evidence based medicine and a way to better risk analysis?Journal of Risk Research. forthcoming.A key question for evidence-based medicine is how best to model the way in which EBM should‘[integrate] individual clinical expertise and the best external evidence’. We argue that the formulations and models available in the literature today are modest variations on a common theme and face very similar problems when it comes to risk analysis, which is here understood as a decision procedure comprising a factual assessment of risk, the risk assessment, and the decision what to do based on this a…Read more
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30Background Positivism is sometimes rejected for the wrong reasons. Influential textbooks on nursing research and in other disciplines tend to reinforce the misconceptions underlying these rejections. This is problematic, since it provides students of these disciplines with a poor basis for making epistemological and methodological decisions. It is particularly common for positivist views on reality and causation to be obscured. Objectives and design The first part of this discussion paper identi…Read more
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30A key question for evidence-based medicine is how best to model the way in which EBM should “[integrate] individual clinical expertise and the best external evidence”. We argue that the formulations and models available in the literature today are modest variations on a common theme and face very similar problems. For example, both the early and updated models of evidence-based clinical decisions presented in Haynes, Devereaux and Guyatt assume that EBM consists of, among other things, evidence …Read more
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28Semmelweis’s methodology from the modern stand-point: intervention studies and causal ontologyStudies in History and Philosophy of Science Part C: Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences 40 (3): 204-209. 2009.
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27A New Challenge for Objective Uncertainties and The Propensity TheoristMetaphysica 19 (2): 219-224. 2018.The paper is concerned with the existence of objective uncertainties. What would it take for objective uncertainties to exist, and what would be the consequences for our understanding of the world we live in? We approach these questions by considering two common theories on how we are to understand the being of propensities and how it pertains to possible outcomes that remain unmanifested. It is argued that both or these theories should be rejected, and be replaced with a theory we call unrestri…Read more
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26Will science and proven experience converge or diverge? : The ontological considerationsIn Robin Stenwall & Tobias Hansson Wahlberg (eds.), Maurinian Truths : Essays in Honour of Anna-Sofia Maurin on her 50th Birthday, Department of Philosophy, Lund University. pp. 97-106. 2019.Proven experience can be shared. Given this, we cannot assume that the character of proven experience is always manifest as a physical token in each individual sharing it. But the token might still exist somewhere. Perhaps that is a condition of the proven experience’s existence. Something similar could have been accepted as true of scientific knowledge, especially if those who argued that scientific claims were only shorthand for more complicated claims about observations had been right. But it…Read more
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24Climate change, values, and the cultural cognition thesisEnvironmental Science and Policy 52 (1-5). 2015.Recently the importance of addressing values in discussions of risk perception and adaptation to climate change has become manifest. Values-based approaches to climate change adaptation and the cultural cognition thesis both illustrate this trend. We argue that in the wake of this development it is necessary to take the dynamic relationship between values and beliefs seriously, to acknowledge the possibility of bi-directional relationships between values and beliefs, and to address the variety o…Read more
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23“Science and proven experience” : How should the epistemology of medicine inform the regulation of healthcare?Health Policy. forthcoming.The Swedish medico-legal concept of “science and proven experience” is both legally important and ambiguous. The conceptual uncertainty associated with it can hamper effective assessment of medical evidence in legal proceedings and encourage medical professionals to distrust legal regulation. We examine normative criteria a functioning medico-legal notion should presumably meet, e.g. clarity, acceptability and consistency with existing laws. We also survey healthcare professionals to see how the…Read more
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22Toward an alternative dialogue between the social and natural sciencesEcology and Society 23 (4). 2018.Interdisciplinary research within the field of sustainability studies often faces incompatible ontological assumptions deriving from natural and social sciences. The importance of this fact is often underrated and sometimes leads to the wrong strategies. We distinguish between two broad approaches in interdisciplinarity: unificationism and pluralism. Unificationism seeks unification and perceives disciplinary boundaries as conventional, representing no long-term obstacle to progress, whereas plu…Read more
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21Examining the factsPoznan Studies in the Philosophy of the Sciences and the Humanities 76 87-108. 2000.Facts are once again put to work in philosophical enterprises. The discussion in this paper is conducted under the presumption that we for this reason need to examine the nature of facts anew. To some extent it has been taken for granted that the question of properties and particulars is the primary problem to solve, and that the question of facts is secondary. This approach naturally leads to many of the old problems of facts and complexes. By taking facts as truly basic, we should see how we c…Read more
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19According to Jon Elster, mechanisms are frequently occurring and easily recognizable causal patterns that are triggered under generally unknown conditions or with indeterminate consequences. In the absence of laws, moreover, mechanisms provide explanations. In this paper I argue that Elster’s view has difficulties with progressing knowledge. Normally, filling in the causal picture without revising it should not threaten one’s explanation. But this seems to be Elster’s case. The critique is const…Read more
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19THERE WAS A TIME when many philosophers agreed that metaphysics was dead. Anyone aquatinted with the works of D.H. Mellor knows that the subject is alive and well. Two young philosophers who are familiar with his work, Anna-Sofia Maurin and Johannes Persson, met him in Cambrige for an interview.
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18Harnessing local knowledge for scientific knowledge production : challenges and pitfalls within evidence-based sustainability studiesEcology and Society 23 (4). 2018.The calls for evidence-based public policy making have increased dramatically in the last decades, and so has the interest in evidence-based sustainability studies. But questions remain about what “evidence” actually means in different contexts and if the concept travels well between different domains of application. Some of the most relevant questions asked by sustainability studies are not, and in some cases cannot be, directly answered by relying on research evidence of the kinds favored by t…Read more
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18On the relation between experience, personal experience, and proven experienceIn N. E. Sahlin (ed.), Vetenskap och beprövad erfarenhet/Science and proven experience, . pp. 55-64. 2021.
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16What is explanatory asymmetry?In Mika Kiikeri & Petri Ylikoski (eds.), Explanatory Connections: Electronic essays dedicated to Matti Sintonen, . pp. 1-21. 2001.The overall aim of this paper is to examine the claim that explanation is asymmetrical because causation is asymmetrical. The link between causal and explanatory asymmetry is focussed on. It is argued that many theories of causation account for causal asymmetry in a way that stops a causal model from contributing to our understanding of explanatory asymmetry. What appears to be generally advantageous with causal approaches is normally true only of a few specific causal accounts. These remaining …Read more
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15Ibe and ebiIn Johannes Persson & Petri Ylikoski (eds.), Rethinking Explanation, Springer. pp. 137--147. 2007.
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15Why separate risk assessors and risk managers? Further external values affecting the risk assessor qua risk assessorJournal of Risk Research 13 (5): 687-700. 2010.The functional separation of risk assessment and risk management has long been at the heart of risk analysis structures. Equally long it has been criticized for creating technocratic risk management due to valuations being done in the risk assessment to which the stakeholders do not have access. The criticism has mostly been of an ethical nature. Arguably, in separating risk assessment and risk management, one hopes to fulfil two requirements: Social requirement: we want risk management to meet …Read more
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15Importing notions in health law: science and proven experienceEuropean Journal of Health Law 24 (5). 2017.In Swedish law, the notion of ‘science and proven experience’ defines the gold standard for public decision-making and practice, especially in medicine. The notion is notoriously vague but nevertheless plays an important role in the distribution of rights and duties of patients and healthcare workers. For example, failure to provide care in accordance with this standard can lead to penal responsibility. The notion also helps to define Swedish patients’ right to reimbursement for cross-border hea…Read more
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14Ruling out risks in medical researchJournal of Risk Research 22 (6): 796-802. 2019.In medical research, it is not unusual that risks are ruled out without any specification the exact risk that was ruled out. This makes it difficult to balance expected health benefits and risk of harm when choosing between alternative treatment options. International guidelines for reporting medical research results are sufficiently specific when it comes to establishing health benefits. However, there is a lack of standards for reporting on ruling out risks. We argue that transparency is neede…Read more
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14Resilience: Some Philosophical Remarks on Defining Ostensively and StipulativelySustainability: Science, Practice, and Policy 11 (1): 64-74. 2015.Although contentious, the concept of resilience is common in sustainability research. Critique of the concept have often focused on the content of the concept. In this paper we focus on another feature of concepts, namely how they are defined. We distinguish between concepts that are ostensively defined, that aim to point to some phenomena, and stipulatively defined concepts, where the content of the concept is given in the definition itself. We argue that although definitions themselves are sim…Read more
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13Value uncertainty and value instability in decision-makingIn Julien Dutant, Davide Fassio & Anne Meylan (eds.), Liber Amicorum Pascal Engel, . pp. 100-110. 2014.The purpose of this paper is to clarify the role of value uncertainty and value instability in decision-making that concerns morally controversial issues. Value uncertainty and value instability are distinguished from moral uncertainty, and several types of value uncertainty and value instability are defined and discussed. The relations between value uncertainty and value instability are explored, and value uncertainty is illustrated with examples drawn from the social sciences, medicine and eve…Read more
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13Why internal validity is not prior to external validity: Paper presented at PSA 2012Brunswik Society Newsletter 27 37-38. 2012.In Persson & Wallin we show that the common claim that internal validity should be understood as prior to external validity has, at least, three epistemologically problematic aspects: experimental artefacts, the implications of causal relations, and how the mechanism is measured. Each aspect demonstrates how important external validity is for the internal validity of the experimental result. This note is an invited summary of these results.
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13Toward an alternative dialogue between the social and natural sciencesEcology and Society 23 (4). 2018.Interdisciplinary research within the field of sustainability studies often faces incompatible ontological assumptions deriving from natural and social sciences. The importance of this fact is often underrated and sometimes leads to the wrong strategies. We distinguish between two broad approaches in interdisciplinarity: unificationism and pluralism. Unificationism seeks unification and perceives disciplinary boundaries as conventional, representing no long-term obstacle to progress, whereas plu…Read more
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12Climate change: Motivation for taking measure to adaptGlobal Environmental Change 19 (1): 100-104. 2009.We tested two consequences of a currently influential theory based on the notion of seeing adaptations to climate change as local adjustments to deal with changing conditions within the constraints of the broader economic–social–political arrangements. The notion leaves no explicit role for the strength of personal beliefs in climate change and adaptive capacity. The consequences were: adaptive action to climate change taken by an individual who is exposed to and sensitive to climate change is n…Read more
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10A Reply to Mellor’s “Propensities and Possibilities”Metaphysica 20 (2): 149-150. 2019.We would like to thank D. H. Mellor for taking time to comment on our paper “A New Challenge for Objective Uncertainties and The Propensity Theorist”.
Areas of Interest
Metaphysics |
General Philosophy of Science |